Saint Albert the Great

Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(c. 1200–1280)

Saint Albert the Great, known in Latin as Albertus Magnus, was born around 1200 into a noble German family in Swabia. He studied at Padua, where he was received into the Dominican Order around 1223, and then pursued advanced theological and philosophical studies in various Dominican houses before becoming a master of theology at Paris, where he taught for several years. His most important student was Thomas Aquinas, who remained with him first in Paris and then at Cologne and whose genius Albert recognised and defended from the beginning against those who dismissed the taciturn young man as a dumb ox.

Albert's intellectual range was extraordinary, encompassing not only theology and philosophy but also natural science in virtually every branch: botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry, and geography. His scientific writings, which fill many volumes, represent one of the most ambitious attempts in medieval thought to synthesise Aristotelian natural philosophy with Christian theology and with the empirical observation of nature. He dissected animals, observed plants in great detail, and wrote about natural phenomena with a precision unusual for his era.

He served as Prior Provincial of the German Dominicans from 1254 to 1257 and as Bishop of Regensburg from 1260 to 1262, though episcopal administration did not suit him and he resigned the see to return to teaching and writing. He participated in the Council of Lyons in 1274 and travelled to Paris in 1277, at the age of over seventy, to defend the philosophy of his deceased student Aquinas against attacks by some Parisian theologians.

He died at Cologne on November 15, 1280, having outlived Thomas Aquinas by six years. He was beatified in 1622, canonised and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI in 1931, and declared patron of natural scientists and of all who study the natural world. His feast is celebrated on November 15th.