1 Making Room for Miracles: John Duns Scotus on Homeless Accidents * Giorgio Pini ABSTRACT: In this paper, I consider Duns Scotus’s treatment of accidents existing without substances (= homeless accidents) in the Eucharist to shed light on how he thinks Aristotle’s metaphysics should be modified to make room for miracles. In my reconstruction, Duns Scotus makes two changes to Aristotle's metaphysics. First, he distinguishes a given thing’s natural inclinations (its “aptitudes”) from the manifestations of those inclinations. Second, he argues that it is up to God’s free decisions (organized in systematic policies) whether a thing’s aptitudes manifest or do not manifest themselves in any given situation. In this way, Duns Scotus tries to find a point of equilibrium between the necessary causal order he attributes to Aristotle and his followers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, God’s freedom to break the natural order at any moment. There is no place for miracles in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Granted, the future may defy our expectations. Suppose that today for the first time in twenty years you are not in the library at 10 a.m. when the ceiling collapses on all the people who are there and for an incredible coincidence have never been there before (Rhet. I, 5, 1362a9–11). Or suppose that a chicken is born with four legs and four wings (GA IV, 4, 770a19–20). Indeed, these would be highly improbable (and disturbing) events. But they would still be the outcome of the way the things of this world exercise or fail to exercise their powers. By and large, later medieval thinkers embraced Aristotle’s metaphysics. But they also believed in the existence of miracles, which they understood as events lying outside the scope of natural agents’ powers. In the normal course of events, fire burns any combustible substance nearby and human beings do not have the power to walk on the water. Still, the Bible says that the three boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were not harmed by the fire into which they had been thrown (Daniel 3:8–30) and that Jesus and Peter walked on the water (Matthew 14:22–33; John 6:16–21). Is it possible to accept miracles while remaining committed to the essential features of Aristotle’s metaphysics? And, if the answer to the question is ‘yes’, how should Aristotle’s thought be modified to make room for miracles? * The final version of this paper appeared in Res Philosophica 99 (2022): 121–137.