wane during the Renaissance, which saw a flourishing of new translations, commentaries, and other interpretations of his works, both in Latin and in the vernacular. After the Reformation, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics continued to be the main authority for the discipline of ethics at Protestant universities until the late seventeenth century, with over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean Ethics before 1682. In terms of method, philosophy was considered during the late Middle Ages as a subject that required robust enquiry on the part of people trained in the subject's technical vocabulary. Philosophical texts and problems were typically approached through university lectures and 'questions'. The latter, similar in some ways to modern debates, examined the pros and cons of particular philosophical positions or interpretations. They were one of the cornerstones of the 'scholastic method', made students who proposed or responded to questions quick on their feet, and required a deep familiarity with all of the known philosophical tradition, which would often be invoked in support of or against specific arguments. This style of philosophy continued to have a strong following in the Renaissance. Pico della Mirandola's Disputations, for instance, depended directly on this tradition, which was not at all limited to university lecture halls. Topics in philosophy Given the remarkable range of Aristotelian philosophy, it was possible to discuss all kinds of issues in medieval and Renaissance philosophy. Aristotle had treated directly problems such as the trajectory of missiles, the habits of animals, how knowledge is acquired, the freedom of the will, how virtue is connected with happiness, the relationship of the lunar and the sublunar worlds. Indirectly he had stimulated discussion on two points that were particularly of concern to Christians: the immortality of the soul and the eternity of the world. All of these continued to be of considerable interest to Renaissance thinkers, but we shall see that in some cases the solutions offered were significantly different because of changing cultural and religious landscapes. Discontinuities Having established that many aspects of philosophy were held in common during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it will now be useful to discuss in what areas changes were afoot. The same outline as above will be used, to show that within trends of continuity one can also find surprising differences. Sources of philosophy It is therefore useful to reconsider what was mentioned above about philosophical sources. The Renaissance saw a significant