It seems to be a paradox that in different authors, the same features of Aristotle’s style were interpreted as the characteristics of his obscurity or perspicacity. The present study aims at tracing the issue in question, comparing two texts that exemplify these sharply contradictory poles: the chapter VII (Incertam esse Aristotelis doctrinam ex modo scribendi ipsius) of Examen vanitatis by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and a fragment of a letter by Franz Burchard, being a paraphrase of the declamation De vita Aristotelis by Philip Melanchthon. The methodology of the study is intended to be as close as possible to the investigated authors’ way of thinking. Consequently, in the light of the fact that in humanists’ writings, the obscurity of Aristotelian style became a kind of a Topic based on ancient commentators (such as Ammonius or Simlicius), the results of recent research on sixteenth – century commonplaces books are employed for structuring material and interpretation. Thanks to the analysis of the texts under consideration, it can be concluded that the Topic of obscurity underwent modifications depending on the system, in the frames of which it functioned. In the case of Melanchthon, it was dialectic tinged by Aristotle, whereas in Pico, the Topic was adopted to his philosophical scepticism.