The Scholastic Model of Angelic Agency on the Corporeal World and the Condemnations of 1277

The scholastic scheme that emerges during the thirteenth century to explain an gelic action on the corporeal world - according to which the separate substance can induce a variety of effects, all of them mediated by local movement - rests on a series of philosophical assumptions that go back to Aristotle’s Physics. As a result of the Condemnations of 1277, these assumptions are subjected to extensive revision in the following decades, but curiously, the thesis that the angel affects the supralu nar and/or sublunar bodies through local displacement continues until well into the seventeenth century. With modernity, this somewhat anomalous situation came to an end. In the new worldview, angels no longer seem to have a definite causal role, a fact that undoubtedly precedes the cultural and even theological marginalization of a reality that constitutes an integral part of the Christian faith. This article ex plores some aspects of this conceptual shift and the challenges it still poses today for those who want to develop a coherent explanation of angelic agency.