ALBERTUS MAGNUS

Also known as Albert the Great, A. de Lauging, A. Teutonicus, A. Coloniensis, Doctor Universalis). Born Lauingen, Bavaria, c. 1200; Died Cologne, Prussia, 15 November 1280., Theology, moral philosophy, natural philosophy.

For some time now, historical research has underestimated Albertus Magnus’s originality and significance in terms of intellectual history. He has not been considered an independent thinker, but rather has been viewed as a precursor of his disciple, Thomas Aquinas. More recent research challenges this antiquated stereotype, proving that he was a rigorously systematic thinker and the originator of a theologically based system of scientific explication that covers the entire scope of reality as conceived conceptually and experienced empirically. His outstanding contribution to the history of science was the introduction of Aristotelian philosophy into scientific reflection throughout the Latin West, as well as the delimitation of secular science from theology. He was one of the first medieval thinkers to justify both philosophy and the nontheological scientific disciplines on the one hand, and theology on the other hand, with a view to the conception of science contained in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. In doing so, he treated each of them with respect to their subjects, principles, methods, as well as objectives and identified them as autonomous sciences in the strict sense of the word.

Life.

Albertus Magnus was born around 1200 in the Swabian town of Lauingen on the Danube, the son of a family of knights or ministeriales. His childhood remains obscure, with the exception of a few reminiscences in his works dating from this time. From about 1222 onward, he was studying in North Italy, probably Padua, where he acquired his initial basic knowledge of Aristotle’s writings on the philosophy of nature. There he met Jordan of Saxony in 1223, the master-general of the Dominican order, who recruited him to join the Order of Preachers. Following the novitiate and the basic studies in theology at Cologne, in the late 1220s or early 1230s, he was entrusted with teaching duties at houses of study run by the Teutonia, the Dominicans’ German province, in Hildesheim, Freiburg in Breisgau, Regensburg, and Strasbourg. In the early 1240s, the order’s master-general, Johannes of Wildeshausen, sent him to Paris to obtain a doctorate in theology. From 1245 until the summer of 1248, he held one of the Dominican chairs at the University of Paris. Commissioned in 1248 with the establishment and operation of the Dominicans’ studium generale (general house of studies) in Cologne by the order’s general chapter, he traveled there together with his student, Thomas Aquinas. From 1254 to 1257, he was provincial of the order’s province of Teutonia. In 1256 he spent time at the Papal Curia in Anagni, where he defended the mendicant orders against the attacks of the secular clergy and took a position on the heterodox teachings of monopsychism and astral determinism.

The years 1257 to 1260 saw him once again teaching at the studium generale in Cologne. On 5 January 1260, Pope Alexander IV installed him as bishop of Regensburg. Despite the objection raised by the Dominican mastergeneral, Humbert of Roman, Albert obeyed the pope’s will and assumed the bishopric, though resigning the episcopal see one year later — after the death of Alexander IV in 1261. From 1261 to 1263, he was working as a private tutor at the papal curia in Viterbo and Orvieto. Pope Urban IV appointed him papal legate, preaching the crusade in Germany, Bohemia, and throughout the German-speaking area. Supported by the Franciscan preacher Berthold of Regensburg, he carried this assignment out only until Urban IV’s death on 2 October 1264. From 1264 to 1269, he lectured at the Dominican houses of study in Würzburg and Strasbourg.

Following the wish of the master-general, Johannes of Vercelli, he proceeded to Cologne, arbitrating between the archbishop, Engelbert of Falkenburg (1261–1274), and the citizenry of Cologne. He remained loyal to the city until his death. Despite diminishing strength and progressively deteriorating eyesight, he continued to be active in a variety of fields, among other things on behalf of the pope and King Rudolf of Habsburg. His alleged participation in the Council of Lyons in 1274 and a journey to Paris for the purpose of defending the teachings of his student, Thomas Aquinas, against condemnation are not historically documented and are rather doubtful, not least of all due to his advanced age. He passed away on 15 November 1280 at the Dominican convent in Cologne and was interred in the convent church. Because of  abolition of the monastery under Napoléon Bonaparte and the closure of the church in 1802, his grave was relocated to St. Andreas Church where it remains to this day. In 1931 Albert was canonized and made doctor ecclesiae (teacher of the church) by Pope Pius XI. In 1941 Pope Pius XII declared him the patron saint of those pursuing the natural sciences.

Work. 

Albert was involved in almost all areas of contemporary science and left to posterity an extensive literary work. This oeuvre may be classified in three groups:
(1) the theological works,
(2) the philosophical treatises, and
(3) occasional writings.
The writings included in first category cover the entire sphere of systematic, biblical, and practical theology. Among them—apart from the moral-theological first work, De natura boni, the first three-part draft of the commentary on the sentences (De sacramentis, De incarnatione, and De resurrectione), the two-part Summa de creaturis, and the Summa de bono—are, above all, the commentary on the sentences itself and the commentary on the Corpus Dionysiacum, that is, on the mystical theology of the Christian Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. The last-mentioned theological work, characterized by Neoplatonic thought, stands out by virtue of its richness in content and originality, as well as the systematic significance it occupies within Albert’s complete works and the thinking of the Doctor Universalis. In addition, close to thirty theological treatises (Quaestiones) have come down, written in Paris and Cologne. From his creative period in Paris, four university sermons are extant. A major part of Albertus Magnus’s theological writings is composed of the commentaries on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. His late writings include two works on theological systematics and one exegetic commentary, the Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia dei I–II, a two-part explanation of the mass liturgy and the sacrament of the Eucharist, Super missam and De corpore domini, as well as the Commentary on Job.

The second class of writings encompasses the philosophical works, whose core elements are considered the commentaries on the Corpus Aristotelicum, that is, on all of Aristotle’s writings available in Latin translation at the time, in addition to other works attributed to Aristotle. Apart from the commentaries, this category also encompasses original works of Albert himself that close any gaps in Aristotle’s scientific edifice. Even prior to introducing at Cologne’s studium generale, his philosophical project of commentating all of Aristotle’s writings and subsequently putting it into practice, he was holding lectures there on the Nicomachean Ethics from 1250 to 1252. These lectures comprise the first of Albert’s two Ethics commentaries and the first commentary ever composed in the Latin West on the entirety of this Aristotelian work. In this work, Albert presents his interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophical ethics in the form of a literal exposition with questions. Making a strict methodical distinction between philosophical ethics and theological moral doctrine and between the philosophical and theological order of science and understanding, the tract appeared in print for the first time in the years 1968 to 1972 (Books I–V) and 1987 (Books VI–X).

After interpreting the Nicomachean Ethics, Albert set about working on his large-scale philosophical project of commentating (and supplementing) the Aristotelian body of writings, including some pseudepigraphic works that were attributed to Aristotle. He introduced his program at the beginning of the commentary on the Physics, justifying it on the one hand with the demands of a solid study of the natural sciences based on a secure foundation, and on the other hand with the request on this score made repeatedly over many years to him by his cobrethren. As a guiding principle for the planning and realization of his project, he used the Platonic-Aristotelian division of philosophy that he had adapted, which distinguishes philosophia realis (natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics) from philosophia moralis (moral philosophy) and philosophia rationalis (logic).

Achievements. 

In carrying out his Aristotle project, Albert on the one hand rendered the philosophical and scientific teachings in the Stagirite’s works intelligible to Latin speakers, demonstrating that they did not pose a threat to the Christian-oriented worldview and way of thinking but instead offered great benefits. On the other hand, he considerably extended the Aristotelian system of science and the knowledge potential it freed. He accomplished this by critical examination, constructive combination, and the assimilation of previous insights in the field of the philosophical and exact sciences as derived from various sources, namely from the Greek, Islamic-Arabian, Jewish, and Latin cultural regions, and as characterized by different philosophical systematics. Particularly noteworthy are the field of anthropology — especially the theory of intellect, in which he expounds his doctrine of the possibility of an intellectual and moral perfection of human beings — and the disciplines relating to the philosophy of nature and natural sciences such as mineralogy, botany, and zoology; the mathematical area including geometrical perspective and geometry; and, not least, metaphysics as the philosophy of being and first philosophy, in other words, the philosophical fundamental science par excellence. In all of the fields mentioned, Albert critically consolidated the previous knowledge he encountered and used it for the benefit of both contemporaries and subsequent generations.

The last section of Albert’s works is composed of occasional writings, by means of which he expressed his opinion on urgent topical issues relating to the doctrine as well as questions of legal practice and everyday life. He authored them by order or request of superiors or friends, revealing Albert virtually in the role of a consultant. Among these tracts are the short works “On the Unity of the Intellect” (De unitate intellectus) and “On Fate” (De fato), representing the written reports of Albert’s public statements at the Papal Curia in Anagni about the heterodox teachings of the Arabic philosophers on monopsychism and determinism.

The peculiarity of Albert’s thinking stems from its ontotheological foundation and holistic approach. His work and thinking, founded on theology, are univeralist in character and limited neither to one particular aspect of reality nor to one specific mode of its examination and explanation. Their significance cannot be attributed merely to their relevance in terms of the history of philosophy, as most researchers still assume, for they exceed the field of philosophy and theoretical sciences by far and display a more comprehensive, theologically based dimension of intellectual history. Any acknowledgment of Albert’s life’s work has to take into consideration this specific way of thinking and his way of life as well, with the latter indeed helping to explain this way of thinking. The theological foundation and structure of his thinking prove to be the hermeneutic key to the Albertan system of a holistic interpretation that confronts the demands of scientific investigation in its fullest form and consequence and lives up to these demands; it constitutes an interpretation of the whole of reality, both as it is understood conceptually and as it is experienced. If one were to reduce this system to its philosophical content, it would be, in terms of philosophical systematics, eclectic, inconsistent, and in the final analysis incomprehensible.

By Henryk Anzulewicz in "New Dictionary of Scientific Biography" vol.1, Noretta Koertge, editor in chief, Tomson-Gale, USA, 2008,excerpts p. 36-39. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.