Dos opúsculos de Tomás de Aquino: Sobre las suertes y Sobre el juicio de los astros

Both Aquina’s opuscles Liber de sortibusand De iudiciis astrorum deal with the issue of lots: their origin, typology, ef-ficacy and utility, as well as their moral-ity. Human life is filled with events that seem casual to us; nevertheless, it is possible to foresee some of these events with some certainty by knowing the tra-jectory of the stars and the behavior of certain animals; other events, however, are unpredictable. In both cases, human-ity has appealed to lots; hence, we have, for instance, just to give an example, that rolling dices have helped to establish an order, or a land distribution dispute is solved by watching birds flight . How-ever, what is the efficacy of these ac-tions? Are there any circumstances that support or even justify their use, as the last reasonable instance to decide, before boundary situations. Thomas Aquinas faces these and other questions with his usual intellectual rigour and mastery Reflecting upon Aristotle’s notion of ens per accidens, and closely following Augus-tin’s and patristic Biblical hermeneutic, Saint Thomas writes in these two opus-cles a brilliant exercise on metaphysics of everyday life. Jorge Medina Delga-dillo and Jose Martin Castro Manzano introduce, comment and translate both opuscles, offering us a new bilingual ver-sion of them, backed up by an attractive critical apparatus