Saint Albertus Magnus
German theologian, scientist, and philosopher
English Saint Albert The Great, German Sankt Albert Der
Grosse, byname Albert Of Cologne, or Of Lauingen, or Doctor
Universalis (Latin: “Universal Doctor”)
born c. 1200, Lauingen an der Donau, Swabia [Germany]
died November 15, 1280, Cologne; canonized Dec. 16, 1931;
feast day November 15
Main
Dominican bishop and philosopher best known as a teacher of
St. Thomas Aquinas and as a proponent of Aristotelianism at
the University of Paris. He established the study of nature
as a legitimate science within the Christian tradition. By
papal decree in 1941, he was declared the patron saint of
all who cultivate the natural sciences. He was the most
prolific writer of his century and was the only scholar of
his age to be called “the Great”; this title was used even
before his death.
Albertus was the eldest son of a wealthy German lord.
After his early schooling, he went to the University of
Padua, where he studied the liberal arts. He joined the
Dominican order at Padua in 1223. He continued his studies
at Padua and Bologna and in Germany and then taught theology
at several convents throughout Germany, lastly at Cologne.
Sometime before 1245 he was sent to the Dominican convent
of Saint-Jacques at the University of Paris, where he came
into contact with the works of Aristotle, newly translated
from Greek and Arabic, and with the commentaries on
Aristotle’s works by Averroës, a 12th-century
Spanish-Arabian philosopher. At Saint-Jacques he lectured on
the Bible for two years and then for another two years on
Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the theological textbook of the
medieval universities. In 1245 he was graduated master in
the theological faculty and obtained the Dominican chair
“for foreigners.”
It was probably at Paris that Albertus began working on a
monumental presentation of the entire body of knowledge of
his time. He wrote commentaries on the Bible and on the
Sentences; he alone among medieval scholars made
commentaries on all the known works of Aristotle, both
genuine and spurious, paraphrasing the originals but
frequently adding “digressions” in which he expressed his
own observations, “experiments,” and speculations. The term
experiment for Albertus indicates a careful process of
observing, describing, and classifying. His speculations
were open to Neoplatonic thought. Apparently in response to
a request that he explain Aristotle’s Physics, Albertus
undertook—as he states at the beginning of his Physica—“to
make . . . intelligible to the Latins” all the branches of
natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy,
ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. While he was
working on this project, which took about 20 years to
complete, he probably had among his disciples Thomas
Aquinas, who arrived at Paris late in 1245.
Albertus distinguished the way to knowledge by revelation
and faith from the way of philosophy and of science; the
latter follows the authorities of the past according to
their competence, but it also makes use of observation and
proceeds by means of reason and intellect to the highest
degrees of abstraction. For Albertus these two ways are not
opposed; there is no “double truth”—one truth for faith and
a contradictory truth for reason. All that is really true is
joined in harmony. Although there are mysteries accessible
only to faith, other points of Christian doctrine are
recognizable both by faith and by reason—e.g., the doctrine
of the immortality of the individual soul. He defended this
doctrine in several works against the teaching of the
Averroists (Latin followers of Averroës), who held that only
one intellect, which is common to all human beings, remains
after the death of man.
Albertus’ lectures and publications gained him great
renown. He came to be quoted as readily as the Arabian
philosophers Avicenna and Averroës and even Aristotle
himself. Roger Bacon, a contemporary English scholar who was
by no means friendly toward Albertus, spoke of him as “the
most noted of Christian scholars.”
In the summer of 1248, Albertus was sent to Cologne to
organize the first Dominican studium generale (“general
house of studies”) in Germany. He presided over the house
until 1254 and devoted himself to a full schedule of
studying, teaching, and writing. During this period his
chief disciple was Thomas Aquinas, who returned to Paris in
1252. The two men maintained a close relationship even
though doctrinal differences began to appear. From 1254 to
1257 Albertus was provincial of “Teutonia,” the German
province of the Dominicans. Although burdened with added
administrative duties, he continued his writing and
scientific observation and research.
Albertus resigned the office of provincial in 1257 and
resumed teaching in Cologne. In 1259 he was appointed by the
pope to succeed the bishop of Regensburg, and he was
installed as bishop in January 1260. After Alexander IV died
in 1261, Albertus was able to resign his episcopal see. He
then returned to his order and to teaching at Cologne. From
1263 to 1264 he was legate of Pope Urban IV, preaching the
crusade throughout Germany and Bohemia; subsequently, he
lectured at Würzburg and at Strasbourg. In 1270 he settled
definitively at Cologne, where, as he had done in 1252 and
in 1258, he made peace between the archbishop and his city.
During his final years he made two long journeys from
Cologne. In 1274 he attended the second Council of Lyon,
France, and spoke in favour of acknowledging Rudolf of
Habsburg as German king. In 1277 he traveled to Paris to
uphold the recently condemned good name and writings of
Thomas Aquinas, who had died a few years before, and to
defend certain Aristotelian doctrines that both he and
Thomas held to be true.
Albertus’ works represent the entire body of European
knowledge of his time not only in theology but also in
philosophy and the natural sciences. His importance for
medieval science essentially consists in his bringing
Aristotelianism to the fore against reactionary tendencies
in contemporary theology. On the other hand, without feeling
any discrepancy in it, he also gave the widest latitude to
Neoplatonic speculation, which was continued by Ulrich of
Strasbourg and by the German mystics of the 14th century. It
was by his writings on the natural sciences, however, that
he exercised the greatest influence. Albertus must be
regarded as unique in his time for having made accessible
and available the Aristotelian knowledge of nature and for
having enriched it by his own observations in all branches
of the natural sciences. A preeminent place in the history
of science is accorded to him because of this achievement.
