A German Dominican friar, Catholic bishop, and one of only 36 Doctors of the Church, St. Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280) was renowned not only for his sanctity but also for his learning. He was a lecturer at Cologne, as well as in Regensburg, Freiburg, Strasbourg, and Hildesheim before taking the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James at the University of Paris, where he taught another Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas. Albert was not only the first to comment on virtually all of the writings of Aristotle, he also composed extensive commentaries on both Averroes and Avicenna. He was bishop of Regensburg from 1260-1263, but was then recalled by the Pope to preach the eighth Crusade. He helped found both the Angelicum in Rome, and the University of Cologne, the oldest university in Germany.
His encyclopedic knowledge led to writings on logic, theology, botany, geography, astronomy, astrology, mineralogy, alchemy, zoology, physiology, phrenology, economics, justice, law, friendship, and love. He wrote extensively on proportions in music, particularly on the importance of silence as an integral part of music. He digested, interpreted, and systematized the whole of Aristotle’s works: most modern knowledge of Aristotle was preserved and presented by Albert.
His love of experimental science was so great that contemporaries sometimes accused him of neglecting theology. He laid down basic scientific principles: in De Mineralibus [lib. II, tr. II, I] Albert points out that “The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature.” Similarly, in his treatises on plants, he states “Experiment is the only safe guide in such investigations” [De Veg., VI, II, I]. “In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power: we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass” [Coelo et Mundo, I, tr. IV, X].
He is named the discoverer of the element arsenic and experimented with photosensitive chemicals, including silver nitrate. He also makes one of the first references to sulfuric acid. Humboldt praised his knowledge of physical geography (Cosmos, II, vi). Meyer writes (Gesch. der Botanik): “No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with him... and after him none has painted nature in such living colours, or studied it so profoundly, until the time of Conrad, Gesner, and Cesalpini. All honour, then, to the man who made such astonishing progress in the science of nature as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but even to equal him for the space of three centuries.” Albert gives an elaborate demonstration of the sphericity of the earth; his knowledge arguably led to the eventual discovery of America (cf. Mandonnet, in “Revue Thomiste”, I, 1893; 46-64, 200-221).
As the Encyclopedia Britannica points out, “Albertus’s 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 ... 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.”
Throughout his life, Albert rejected the idea of the “double truth”— one truth for faith and a contradictory truth for reason. He insisted everything that all truths are joined in harmony. For these reasons and many more, he was declared Doctor of the Church in 1931 and patron saint of natural scientists in 1941.
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