Published in The Medieval Aesthetics

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The Middle Ages, in its reception and systematization of concepts of the classical tradition, has linked the good with the final cause and what is beautiful with the formal cause. Plotinus and Augustine had already declared that speciosus comes from species, form. In the 13th century, when the doctrine of transcendentals concepts begins its journey in search of foundation, finds in the Summa fratris Alexandri a key in the reference of the form at the substantial principle of life, that is, the concept of Aristotelian form. Franciscan thought, which in this context asume an unusual strength in the work initiated by Alexander of Hales and continued by Buenaventura, provides the medieval thought a new reflection on the basis of the transcendentals concepts: they are convertible and differ logically, and therefore, the truth is thought of as the layout of the form relative to the interior of the entities, while the beauty points out the disposition of an entity in relation to the outside. This paper aims to trace the source of the medieval doctrine about the transcendental beauty in the analysis of the concept of form in Boethius, specifically the formulations presented in both texts De Trinitate and The Consolatione Philosophiae.