Albert the Great
A life which combines religious perfection with the study of Wisdom has a marvelous power of arousing and lifting up the hearts of the faithful.
Albert was one of the early intellectuals of the Dominican order, founded in 1216. He gave a large part of the patrimony of universal wisdom to the thirteenth century, and was declared patron of all those who devote themselves to the natural sciences, by Pope Pius XII in 1941. He is more traditionally known as Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great). He was born in Swabia, within a few years of 1200 (the date is a mystery); the eldest son of a family belonging to the equestrian nobility. He was educated at the University of Padua, already a scientific center, and joined the Dominicans as a young man. After completing his studies he taught theology; going to Paris about 1240, where he took the degree of master in sacred theology between 1245 and 1246. For the next thirty years he led a very wonderous life as teacher and administrator: including periods as provincial of his order in Germany - and later as bishop of Ratisbon - outlining the roads of Europe on long journeys. Yet his printed works, which were mostly composed in this period, fill thirty-eight quarto volumes and cover every field of learning. At Cologne and Paris he had St Thomas Aquinas as his pupil, and one of his prophetic missions was to defend some of Thomas's writings against attacks at Paris in 1277. He died in 1280 - a genius with mystic forgetfulness setting in - piously chanting loving hymns to Our Lady. He was canonized and declared a Holy Doctor of the Church in 1931.
Christendom in the thirteenth century was by no means a secure and static civilization. Socially, materially and intellectually too, it was on the march. The Church, as ever, was changing with the times. The mendicant orders, whether Dominican or Franciscan or Carmelite, opened up a new kind of priestly vocation: for these friars were bound neither to a parish like the secular clergy, nor to a monastery like monks, but were rather free to study and preach. The friars soon earned key positions in the universities - a rather novel idea and sacred place for learning as well - which became the chief means by which the clergy were educated. The tasks of the university weaved into a dreamcoat of natural and spiritual splendor. Up to the twelfth century, the tradition of knowledge in the Latin-speaking western world had been based mainly on the Scriptures and the commentaries of the Fathers upon them, using a philosophy that may be loosely called Platonic. At the same time, the world of Islam had assimilated the logic and philosophy of Aristotle and much of Greek science and mathematics. In the twelfth century, these scientific and philosophical works became available in Latin translations. Thus the west was confronted with a new body of knowledge, obviously valuable but alien to the Christian tradition, and accompanied by Moslem commentaries which were very acute yet clearly erroneous in part. This knowledge was all the more suspect when it was transmitted by interpreters that were at odds with Christianity.
Albert's response to the difficulties of his time combined heroic sanctity with an astonishing universality of mind. That he should humble his life and science with this newer mendicant order, despite the severe temptations of family pride, was already an indication of the apostolic fire for which he "let his lamp shine" throughout his long life. But great courage and intellectual honesty as well were needed to conceive and put into practice the policy of 'baptizing' the new learning. A lesser man might have either rejected it outright, or embraced it uncritically; Albert proposed to understand it, to make it known, and to accept whatever parts of it might be found, after critical examination, to be true. This program, begun by Albert and systematized by Thomas Aquinas of memory his great disciple, still remains to be "Universally Understood"!. Neither of the two was a slavish follower of Aristotle; both differed from him on important points. And St. Albert warned us, 'He who believes Aristotle to have been a god ought to suppose that he never made a mistake; but if he sees him to have been a man, doubtless he could make a mistake, just as we do.' Yet he accepted the main lines of Aristotle's realism, and showed that Christian Doctrine could be expressed in terms of it.
Such a position implied a recognition of the autonomy of reason in its own sphere, in contrast with those who wished to make philosophy entirely subservient to theology; and of sense-experience as the origin of human knowledge, as against the Platonic view that it cannot give true knowledge. Both these conclusions are obviously important for natural science; indeed the changes in the intellectual climate brought about by the Aristotelean revival in the thirteenth century were surely the "deeper causes" for the rapid development of science culminating in the sixteenth. Albert was a keen observer, with the interest of a supreme scientist in natural facts. He was not so reductively acquainted with scientific method and explanation as they are used today; since he had the grander vision that pierces through the scientific temper of mind. In natural history he broke new ground: from the study of insects, even to the breadth of spreading his noetic wings into lofty encylopedic works on the whole range of natural phenomena generally known to mankind. From astronomy and stars, to mineralogy and the "gemmed feautures" of analogous physiology, stardust shines through diamonds and grace illuminates souls - even outling the celestial paths to Heavenly Glory...
St. Albert is an especially apt patron for scientists because he made his faceted love of truth about nature into an instrument of macroscopic love for Christ. Moreover, with all his scientific interest, he was never a narrow specialist. He wrote universally on logic, philosophy, theology and exegesis, with a prismed and balanced outlook. Science itself is no danger to the Faith, but if a soul becomes obsessed with one scientific mode of reasoning he may become blind to the spheres of faith. St. Albert's life shows how to focus this light. If he appealed to observation in "natural" science, he knew that in theology Truth makes the mind's basis the "Divinizing Doctrines" of the One Holy and Universal Church of God The Revealer. That's just a Catholic Fact for "those who have eyes to see and ears to hear...". If he was critical of the inaccurate observations of others, he always remained delightfully submissive to the Teaching Authority of Christ through the Holy Father and His Collegial Bishops. If Bishop Albert perfected contemplative activity in body and mind, he based this upon eager passivity to Divine Grace. Balance, universality and integrity might be his testament to scientists. Scholar and administrator; naturalist, philosopher and theologian; an innovator, yet a conserver of Sacred Doctrine; a man with an eye for detail - but always pursuing the integration of Incarnational Knowledge - St. Albert is a mirror of the qualities that modern scientists seek...
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