Descartes mentions the Conimbricenses (in Latin; “Coimbrans” in English) among the textbooks that contributed to his philosophical education (AT III 185, CSMK 154). What he refers to is a set of commentaries on Aristotle (with some complementary pieces) written by a team of Jesuits at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) between 1592 and 1606 to provide an authorized version of the philosophy courses that were delivered there. The project was initially under the supervision of Manuel de Gois (1542–97), who published the first six parts. He was succeeded by Cosmas de Magalhães (1551–1624). The other contributors were Balthasar Alvares (1561–1630) and Sebastião do Couto (1567–1639) – who wrote alone the entire Dialectic.

Commenting on Aristotle, mostly in the form of disputed questions, was the usual way of teaching philosophy in universities since the Middle Ages. The Jesuits, a teaching order, produced a great number of such textbooks that, officially at least, followed Thomas Aquinas's line of interpretation of Aristotle. Taken together, these textbooks would provide a complete curriculum (cursus) in philosophy. Such was the intention of the Conimbricenses. However, whereas a cursus would normally comprise logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics, the Conimbricenses did not include a volume on metaphysics. The Coimbran Jesuit Pedro de Fonseca's famous commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics may have made it unnecessary, and, moreover, Francisco Suárez, whose Metaphysical Disputations were widely influential, also taught at Coimbra. Thus, the Conimbricenses (eight parts in five, in-quarto volumes) include a volume on Aristotle's logic (Dialectica, published last); commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteors, On the Soul, and Short Treatises on Nature for the natural philosophy section; and a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. Because of their quality, the Conimbricenses were best sellers, even in Protestant countries, and were republished many times in the seventeenth century. Like other Jesuit textbooks, they came to represent the quintessential “philosophy of the School” (see Scholasticism). They were undoubtedly important in Descartes’ education and are essential for understanding his vocabulary and the Scholastic ideas he eventually either rejected or conserved. When he decides in 1640 to reread some Scholastic philosophy to prepare his counteroffensive against the Jesuits (and to prepare to write what became the Principles of Philosophy), Descartes finds that the Conimbricenses corpus is too voluminous for his purpose. The textbook he finally chose as representative of Scholastic thought is Eustachius a Sancto Paulo's Summa quadripartita.