In 1253, the same year that Robert Grosseteste died, four years after William of Auvergne, opened the pontificate of Alexander IV, of which Ptolemy of Lucca wrote: “In his time flourished two great doctors in the Order of Preachers. Doubtless many others were famous during this same time both in life and doctrine. But these two transcended and deserve to be placed before all others.”[1692] The two Dominicans whom Ptolemy had in mind were, of course, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.[1693] It is customary and natural to couple their names. Besides being members of the same order, they were master and student; they were also the two scholars of their time who did most to adapt the natural philosophy of Aristotle to Christian use, a fact which in itself suggests their interest in natural science. It may seem strange to us today that two theologians, and even more so two members of an order vowed to asceticism, apostolic poverty, and the maintenance of strict orthodoxy against heresy, should play a leading part in interpreting the ideas of Greek and Arabic philosophers and should display such an interest in natural science. The fact, however, is indisputable. It is to the credit of the medieval church and its religious orders. But it is even more a tribute to the power that philosophy and natural science exercise upon every able mind that really studies them. As for the relations between Albert and Aquinas, it must be added that while the former outlived his pupil, he was born a full generation before him. It was thus Aquinas who profited by and built upon Albert’s work.
Dates of birth and death.
Ptolemy of Lucca states that Albertus Magnus was over eighty years old when he died in 1280, and that for about three years before his death he largely lost control of his intellectual faculties.[1694] That he outlived his pupil Aquinas by six years, and that his writings are cited by other contemporaries who died before he did—Vincent of Beauvais and Petrus Hispanus, are other indications of his longevity. There consequently seems little reason for questioning the traditional date of his birth, 1193, although Pouchet has suggested 1205[1695] and Father Mandonnet, more recently, 1206.[1696] The main argument for placing his birth about 1206 is that a fourteenth century chronicler[1697] states that he was only sixteen when he entered the Dominican Order, while in the fifteenth century Peter of Prussia asserts that Albert himself used to say that he had been in the Order “from his very boyhood.”[1698] His birthplace was at Lauingen in Swabia and he was the oldest son of the count of Bollstädt.
Early life.
Albert studied at Padua, where he tells us that in his youth he saw a well which exhaled a deadly vapor,[1699] while at Venice he beheld a royal figure painted by nature upon marble.[1700] He perhaps entered the Dominican Order in 1222 or 1223. According to Peter of Prussia,[1701] a few years later he was made reader or lecturer of the friars at Cologne and “twice gloriously lectured on the Sentences.” Then he was successively Lector at Hildesheim in 1233, at Freiburg, for two years in Ratisbon, and at Strasburg. Albert alludes in his works to a comet which he saw in Saxony in 1240.[1702]
Probable early date of some of his works.
Although Ptolemy of Lucca mentions Albert and Aquinas as flourishing during the pontificate of Alexander IV, 1253-1261, much of the former’s writing as well as teaching probably antedates this. Presumably he was already famous when young Aquinas came all the way from Italy to Cologne or Paris to study with him about 1244 or 1245. If the Speculum naturale of Vincent of Beauvais was written by 1250, many of Albert’s writings which it freely cites must have appeared before that date, for instance, the De anima (III, 41), De sensu et sensato (V. 108), De somno et vigilia (XXVI, 23), De animalibus (XVII, 71). The treatise on sleep and waking is found in a manuscript written in a French hand in 1258.[1703] Even in the treatise on minerals,[1704] which has been regarded as written after 1250 because Vincent of Beauvais does not cite it, and in which Albert speaks of having been in Paris as well as Cologne, he also speaks of one of his associates who saw in the possession of the emperor, Frederick II, 1212-1250, a magnet which instead of attracting iron was drawn to that metal.[1705] On the other hand, in his work on animals Albert cites the emperor Frederick’s book on falcons, so that Albert’s treatise on animals was probably not finished until at least the latter part of that monarch’s reign.[1706] But even Mandonnet who delays Albert’s birth to 1206 believes that his first writings date back to 1240 and that his great philosophical works began to appear about 1245. I should be inclined to push these dates back ten or twenty years. Albert was probably teaching at Paris from about 1245 to 1248, in which year he signed the condemnation of the Talmud in that city and then became regent of the new school at Cologne established by the Dominicans.[1707]
Events of his life after 1250.
The two chief ecclesiastical offices held by Albert were those of provincial of his order in Germany from 1254 to 1257, and of bishop of Ratisbon, 1260-1262. He resigned from both positions, apparently preferring the scholar’s life. Ptolemy of Lucca explains that German bishops had to use the sword too much for Albert’s taste. In his work on animals Albert alludes in one passage to his villa on the Danube.[1708] In 1256 he went to Rome to defend the friars against the attacks of William of St. Amour, and while in Italy discovered the De motibus animalium of Aristotle. In his theological Summa he speaks of having collected the material for his treatise On the Unity of the Intellect against Averroes, when he was “in the curia at the command of Lord Alexander the Pope.”[1709] In 1259, when the general chapter of the Dominicans met at Valenciennes, he was appointed upon a committee to draw up a course of study for the Order along with Aquinas and Pietro di Tarantasia, who in 1276 became Pope Innocent V. After resigning the bishopric of Ratisbon in 1262, Albert returned to teaching at Cologne, but in 1263 he preached the crusade in Germany and Bohemia, and his name appears in documents at Würzburg in that year and those immediately following.[1710] In his Politics he speaks of having been papal nuncius in Saxony and Poland, where he found the barbaric custom still observed of killing the old men of the tribe when they had outlived their period of usefulness.[1711] We are told that in 1270 he despatched a treatise to Paris to help Aquinas in connection with the affair of Siger de Brabant, and in 1277 visited that city again in person to defend his own Aristotelian teaching and the memory of Aquinas in connection with the condemnation by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, and other doctors of 219 opinions ascribed to the same Siger de Brabant and others,[1712]—an affair of which we shall have more to say later. The Catholic Encyclopedia and Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique repeat the assertion of fifteenth century biographers that Albert attended the Council of Lyons in 1274, but the Histoire Littéraire de la France eighty years ago assured us that his name is not mentioned in the records of that assembly.[1713]
Albert at Cologne.