V. Attitude Toward Astrology
Emphasis on the influence of the stars—Problem of the authorship of the Speculum astronomiae—Mandonnet fails to prove Albert hostile to astrology—Nature of the heavens and the stars—The First Cause and the spheres—Things on earth ruled by the stars—Conjunctions—Comets—Man and the stars—Free will—Ptolemy on free will—Nativities—Galen on the stars and human generation—Plato on boys and the stars—The doctrine of elections—Influence of the stars on works of art—Astrological images—Discussion of fate in the Summa theologiae—Attempt to reconcile the Fathers with the astronomers—Glossing over Augustine—Christ and the stars—Patristic arguments against astrology upheld, but perhaps not by Albert.
Bibliography Concerning Albertus Magnus
In the following bibliography I include some works that I have not been able to examine and cannot vouch for, and omit others which I have seen but which seemed of doubtful value or treated sides of Albert’s personality and writings which have little connection with our investigation, such as accounts of Albert as a saint, or theologian, or metaphysician, or psychologist. Of recent years a bewildering underbrush of German monographs has sprung up concerning Albert as one of the few prominent persons that Germany could claim as its own among the many scholars of the medieval period.
A number of works that do not deal primarily with Albert will be cited in the course of the chapter rather than here, and mention of his individual works and of manuscripts of them will also be found in connection with the following text.
I. His Own Writings
M. Weiss. Primordia novae bibliographiae B. Alberti Magni, Paris, 1898.
B. Alberti Magni Opera omnia, ed. Augustus Borgnet, Paris, 1890-1899, in 38 vols. My references are regularly to this edition. Its text, however, has been a good deal criticized.
Of more recent and critical editions of single works by Albert, that of the Historia animalium by H. Stadler from the Cologne autograph MS in Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Philos, d. Mittelalters, vols. 15-16, is the only one of a work with which we are concerned. Stadler attempts to distinguish Albert’s additions from Aristotle’s text and to trace their sources. German criticism of the genuineness of large portions of the text of Aristotle’s Historia animalium has in my opinion been carried altogether too far and based upon the gratuitous assumption that Aristotle would not have said anything superstitious. For recent editions of other single works by Albert see v. Hertling (1914) 23.
Separate bibliographies of printed texts and MSS of certain works of doubtful or spurious authorship ascribed to Albert will be given later in separate chapters dealing with these.