All-Seeing Naturalist and Theologian
[In the following excerpt, Schwertner describes the breadth and depth of Albert's erudition both as a scientist and a theologian.]
ALL SEEING NATURALIST
One of the inevitable results of the assiduous cultivation of the history of the various natural sciences, so characteristic of all scientific research today, is the rehabilitation of Albert's good name as a scientist. Scholars in goodly numbers are again thinking it worth their while to seek to evaluate his original contributions to the various sciences and to insist upon his towering position in the story of their development. While it is true that for centuries Albert did occupy a leading rank among the makers of science, it is also well known that he was ruthlessly pushed aside when the sciences had freed themselves from the influence of the Church and churchmen. An age which sought to establish a frank enmity between science and religion could not be expected to treat gently a man who was first and foremost a churchman to his finger tips without on that account feeling himself called upon or compelled to foreswear scientific research. And it was an easy matter to besmirch and belittle the scientific achievements of Albert because of the legends which a bedazzled age had attached to his name, in wonderment over his advanced ideas and novel experiments, as also because of the inevitable handicaps under which he worked and the prejudices against which he had to battle in order to accomplish as much as he did. If the first three centuries following Albert's death exaggerated most extravagantly his scientific attainments and achievements, then the next three hundred years unduly belittled them. Only since 1853 have scholars made a serious attempt to be fair and just to him. This is primarily due to F. A. Pouchet who turned the tide by his Histoire des sciences naturelles au moyen age, ou Albert le Grand et son epoque considéré comme point de depart de l'ecole experimentalle. While this important work has in the course of time been corrected in many respects and amplified with new historical data, while many of its secondary positions have been shown to be untenable the unassailable fact remains that its main contentions have not been set aside, even by so chronically prejudiced an authority as the anonymous author of the article on Albert in the Histoire Litteraire de la France. This writer had evidently been incensed by the extravagant claims of M. H. de Blainville, in his Histoire des sciences de l'organization, published from his notes, with additions, by F. L. M. Maupied. Subsequent scholars like Balss, Stadler, Wimmer, Jessen have supplemented and corroborated the main contentions of Pouchet. At the eightieth convention of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians at Cologne, on September 31, 1908, Herman Stadler held up Albert to modern investigators as a model of what a true and conscientious scholar should be. Father Eric Wassmann, S.J., whose name will be remembered forever in the history of entymology for his epochmaking discoveries in ant life, remarked that this was the first time on record to his knowledge that a medieval churchman had been proposed as a model scientist to modern savants of any and every or of no shade of religious thought and belief. Naturally, this tardy rehabilitation of a medieval monk and scientist aroused the vehement anger of men like White and Draper who, in challenging the claims put forward for Albert and other churchmen, only succeeded in betraying their own woeful lack of historical knowledge, erudition, and fair-mindedness.
It is worthy of remark in this connection that of all the scholars who in the past seventy-five years have studied the scientific attainments of Albert, Catholic students have been the most cautious, reserved, and modest in their claims and conclusions. They have taken nothing for granted. With laudable wisdom they have abstained from making panegyrics on Albert's character and from turning to apologetic uses his great achievements in the realm of medieval science. They have acted on the assumption that Albert is his own best justification and that, with all his scientific shortcoming, he was sufficiently in advance of his age to merit respectful consideration from all subsequent times. This admirable historical attitude is probably due in great measure to George von Hertling who, in his Albertus Magnus. Ein Beitrag zu seiner Würdigung, laid down historical norms to be followed in dealing with Albert's scientific labors which are a model of their kind for exacting criticism and rigorous scholarship. And the several scholars who have studied the philosophical and theological aspects of Albert's manysided activity have been ensouled with the principles which von Hertling demanded of all those who essayed to delve in this field where exaggeration seems almost inevitable. Much of the same fine critical spirit—despite occasional betrayals of ignorance of Catholic dogma and regrettable lapses into anti-Romanist terminology—pervades the latest and most erudite study on A Comprehensive History of Experimental Sciences by George Sarton, of the Carnegie Institute, where Albert appears with laudable and well-merited frequency in the large section devoted to medieval experimentation.
It must suffice to point out briefly, rapidly, and summarily, under special rubrics, the outstanding achievements of Albert in the various sciences he touched, and to indicate those points in which he outran his day and anticipated our own. In quoting the approving words of modern historical investigators we shall give the preference to those who, not being members of the Catholic Church, cannot be suspected of any undue sympathy for her attitude on the relations of science and faith and for Albert himself, who vindicated that attitude so magnificently.
BOTANY
In his De Vegetalibus Albert followed what he thought was a genuine work of Aristotle, but which, in 1857, was allocated to Nicholas of Damascus by Ernest Meyer. After following the pseudo-Aristotelian text for eight chapters Albert abandoned it because, as he said, he found it untrustworthy. Albert's first book, in six chapters, deals with the question of plant souls. The second book has to do with a classification of plants in which he comes very near modern times in the norms he lays down for distinguishing one plant from another. The third book discusses seeds and fruits. The fourth book follows the pseudo-Aristotelian text very closely. The fifth treats of the medicinal properties and effects of plants. The sixth describes trees in alphabetical order. The last book is a treatise on agriculture. Albert is the first European to mention and describe spinach, the relation of grapes to the vines and leaves, the distinction between buds and flowers, the influence of heat and sunlight on the bark of trees. He anticipates Knight by centuries in holding that sap is odorless in the root but fragrant in the trunk and branches. He is the first man to refer scientifically to the rarity of duplicate leaves. He established the difference between thorns and thistles. He had clear ideas on grafting—his remarks on the subject anticipate Luther Burbank. Ellison Hawks says [in Pioneers of Plant Study, 1928]: "His description of the apple, its three coats, the five-chambered core, the floral receptacle above the seed with testa and two hemispheral cotyledons is far superior to anything in any earlier writer." Ernest Meyer, as early as 1836 [in Leschicte der Bontanik], said: "We do not find a botanist before Albert's time who can be compared to him with the exception of Theophrastus whom he did not know; after his time no one investigated the nature of plants more intelligently and fully until Conrad Gessner and Cisalpin." Carl Jessen remarks [in De Vegetalibus]: "Albert was the first man to describe German flora in a scientific way." Remembering the ignorance about botanical studies in the Middle Ages, Hawks declares that "there was one man—Albertus Magnus—who did something to arrive at a scientific study of plants as living things. This had practically been at a standstill since the days of Aristotle."
ZOÖLOGY
George Sarton writes: "The best parts of Albert's works are the botanical and zoölogical books. The zoölogy was based on Michal Scot. It is divided into twenty-six books, of which the first nineteen are a paraphrase of Aristotle's treatises. Books twenty to twenty-six contain new matter, partly derived from personal observation or from direct information. Books twenty and twenty-one deal with generalities; book twenty with the nature of animals' bodies, their structure and forces; book twenty-one with perfect and imperfect animals and the causes of their perfection or imperfection (this is a kind of comparative psychology); books twenty-two and twenty-six are devoted to the description of individual animals, these being introduced in each chapter in the alphabetical order of their Latin names. These books were a sort of appendix to the De Natura Rerum of Thomas of Cantimpre, who had sat at his feet in Cologne. Book twenty-two, gressabilia (i.e., quadruples; our mammals, excepting bats, whales, and seals); book twenty-three, volatilia (i.e., birds and bats); book twenty-four, aquatica or natalilia (i.e., fishes, whales, seals, cephalopods, shellfishes, water snails, and other aquatic animals); book twenty-five, serpents (i.e., snakes, lizards, salamanders) including the varieties of snakes discussed in Ibn Sina's Quantum; book twenty-six, vermes (i.e., worms, insects, toads, frogs and snails). Many of the animals were here described for the first time."
In the introduction to the critical edition of the De Animalibus, Stadler pointed out that Albert knew and described one hundred and thirteen kinds of quadrupeds, one hundred and fourteen birds, one hundred and thirty-nine aquatic animals, sixty-one serpents and forty-nine worms. He was the first man to mention the weasel, two kinds of martens, and the arctic bear. He was also the first to give the German names to the chamois, the ermine, and the fitchen or polecat. He has the distinction of first insinuating that the peculiarities of cats are due in great part to climatic conditions. He discovered the similarity between the teeth and claws of cats and lions. His brief treatise on falcons was an improvement on the classic work on the same subject by Frederic II. His veterinary erudition was remarkable for the age, so much so, indeed, that several anonymous writers on the same subject, by appropriating Albert's name, obtained instant success for their books. Thus many of the chap-books on "the white and black art of man and beast," circulating to this day under the name of Albert, while not due to his pen are an out-come of the authority he enjoyed among simple hostlers and veterinary doctors. He set the fashion of departing from the custom of the "bestiaries" where moral reflections are made apropos the habits and peculiarities of animals. He was one of the first founders of the science of animal anatomy and animal psychology. Lynn Thorndike says [in A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923]: "Albert has not only observed animal life widely, he has also performed experiments with animals as he apparently did not do with plants. … Crude experiments these may be, but they are at least purposive." Stadler points out that from Albert's treatises one could reinhabit German forests with animals found therein. And Wassmann and Balss prove that his name cannot be overlooked in the history of evolution. Balss also insists that in his remarks about the various kinds of squirrels in various countries which he had visited, the foundations of comparative zoölogy were laid. George Sarton remarks:
"He had had and improved many opportunities of observing things in the course of his long travels as provincial of his Order (the Dominican rule obliged him to travel afoot). He observed animals in the Danube region, in the vicinity of Cologne, Augsburg, Worms, Treves in Friesland, Holland, Brabant, Italy. … He also collected information from the many people of all classes he came across in the course of his missions."
ENTYMOLOGY
Stadler remarks [in Albert von Cöln als Naturforscher, 1909] that "Albert showed an especially keen interest in insects," and this can be adequately proved from a study of his works, especially what he had to say about ants, spiders, and bees. No medieval man described so minutely and intelligently the life of these insects. What Fabre's classic descriptions are to our days, that Albert's pictures of insect life were to Europe for three hundred years. He studied the anatomy of bees as none of his predecessors had. Jessen declares that he was the first to point out the belly marrow and structure of their feet and proboscis. In his botanical works he added supplementary data on these points as also keen observations regarding crabs and scorpions. Stadler insists that Albert's researches into the life and habits of ants was the finest achievement in this field during the entire Middle Ages.
ICHTHYOLOGY
From his experience in Dominican refectories, where fish fare was almost perpetual, Albert could not remain indifferent about fish. From his youth he had been fascinated by their idiosyncrasies. He was the first to designate and describe the spolke; to call attention to the teeth of the carp; to reject the myths about griffins; to laugh at the common belief that pelicans feed their young with their own blood; to disprove the beaver's self-castration, the incombustibility of salamanders, and the birth of barnacle geese from trees. He was far ahead of his age in his knowledge of oysters and, probably, one of the first to suggest oyster beds, as we know them today. He knew the habitat of various kinds of fish, especially eels and salmon. No medieval man wrote more extensively on this point. He was one of the first men to point out the distinction between fish and amphibians and how to establish it from the peculiarities of their anatomical structure. No preceding writer had as much to say, nor said it so engagingly, on whales and whale hunting. He was the first to describe accurately the Greenland whale. From what he saw in Friesland, where he participated in a whale hunt, he knew the properties and uses of blubber. Even as a bishop in momentary retirement at his villa, Donaustauff, Albert did not lose interest in the denizens of the deep. Despite his many intellectual pursuits and social cares he found time to reveal himself a premature Isaak Walton.
ORNITHOLOGY
Since in Albert's time Germany was rather sparsley settled and since, as a consequence, the many large forests were alive with birds, we need not be surprised that he devoted much time to their study and to a description, in alphabetical enumeration, of their habits and peculiarities. Stadler says: "Now I could enumerate the entire German feathery kingdom which Albert knew: three (or rather four) species of swallows, five species of finches, three kinds of woodpeckers, besides the black, gray and green mocking birds, and two kinds of sparrows," But this enumeration is obviously incomplete, for he knew and described at least six species of eagles, three kinds of peacocks, five kinds of wild geese and three of wild ducks, four kinds of gold finches, two kinds of falcons besides three pure and three mixed species. It must be borne in mind that these are only the birds with whose habits Albert was familiar. Since, for some inexplicable reason, legends of a moralizing or symbolical purport have attached to birds more numerously than to any other category of the animal kingdom—for which reason, no doubt, birds are at home in the decorations of Gothic cathedrals, as the sketches in the notebook of Villard de Honnecort, the greatest medieval architect, bear witness—Albert, with his sharp eye for their characteristics and his critical sense, puts himself to great pains to reject the statements of the Ancients, especially Pliny. He rejects the fable of the one-eyed peacock, the peacock with one web foot, the peacock which weeps tears of blood. He will not admit that ostriches eat iron. He is the first German to mention the black stork, the best beloved of German birds. He discovered that swans sing in pain and not for the purpose of driving off pursuers. He knew more than any of his predecessors about eagles and none of his contemporaries were so uniformly correct in describing their habits. He loathes buzzards—probably he learned their rapacious ways on the hunt. With his love for the hunt he is a veritable mine of information on wild geese, ducks, and partridges. He sniggers at Hermes for holding that a rooster lays one egg before dying, from which the sun hatches a serpent, though this supposed prerogative of the rooster was stoutly maintained at Paris up to the late sixteenth century. He almost grows lyrical over the nightingale, which even then played a large part in the folk song along the Rhine. Albert's love of birds must have been generally known, for some of the earliest representations of him—even in Paris where birds have been proverbially rare—show him surrounded, like another Poverello of Assisi, with the most varied specimens of these songsters. He was familiar with the anatomical peculiarities of birds, from personal experimentation, as Vassalius suggested centuries later. Franz Strunz points out that Albert was the first to speak intelligently, with understanding wisdom and childlike simplicity, about the sex life of birds. And Balss suggests that what Albert says about the life of a brood of birdlings in the nest is one of the most incomparably beautiful pieces of writing of that epoch. There are echoes of Albert in so late a book as Thompson's Ten Commandments Amongst Animals. Emile Male, in his superb book, The Religious Art of the Thirteenth Century, does not forget to suggest how much the ornithological teachings of Albert contributed to the dazzling splendor of the medieval Cathedrals, while Louis Gillet, in his L'Art Religieuse et les Ordres Mendiants, gives even higher praise to the bird lore of Albert.
COSMOGRAPHY
The average medieval man knew intimately his own little patch of ground. He entertained the most fantastic ideas about the far-off lands, concerning which the returned crusader or warrior spoke freely and extravagantly on every street corner or in every wine shop. In answering the many questions about these unknown parts of the world and exploding the tales about the wonders to be found in them, Albert was not only meeting a very urgent need of his day but also keeping alive an interest in exploration. He adopted Aristotle's teaching, with many reservations, in his De Coelo et Mundo and De Natura Locorum, where are to be found jumbled together elements of physical geography, mineralogy, metallurgy, astronomy, and in fact of all the sciences that had to do with the earth and the sky. He accepts Aristotle's theory about the rotundity of the earth, adding a mathematical argument of his own which is stronger and more convincing than any alleged by the Greek. He also invoked the argument from gravitation for, he says, since all parts of the earth converge to the center, there can be no doubt about the world's sphericity. Contrary to the opinions of Lactantius and St. Augustine he holds that there is an inhabited, or at least an inhabitable, land at the antipodes. Answering those cocksure writers who flippantly said that, if such a continent existed, the position, motion, and action of the sun must necessarily be inverted, Albert boldly proclaimed that right and left, upper and lower, Orient and Occident, are relative terms and that, therefore, the order of the heavenly motion on the supposed continent would be identical with that in Europe. In answer to the second facile argument that, since there is four times more water than land, more than half of this continent would be submerged in water, Albert insisted upon the many causes which might diminish the volume of water or the facility with which the water can transform itself, as for instance, by evaporation. In reply to the third stock objection that the supposed continent would be useless, since no one could go to it or across over to Europe from it, Albert shrewdly parried that it would be illogical to hold that no one lives there or might possibly live in that torrid zone. "I believe," he says, "that it is difficult to cross to those regions but not impossible. The difficulty about the entire matter arises from the large sandy wastes bleached by the sun. It is for this reason that there is so little communication between men south of this region and ourselves who are in the north." This cosmographical teaching was traditional in Dominican schools for centuries and scarcely any otherwhere. Hence it comes that Albert's theories were taught to Dante by his Dominican professor, Fra Remigio de Girolami, and that they appear prominently in the tenth canto of the tenth Paradiso. This also accounts for the reverential mention of Albert by the great Florentine poet.
So, too, the man whose name was attached to the western hemisphere, Amerigo Vespucci, got his cosmographical ideals at San Marco, Florence, from his uncle, the Dominican George Anthony Vespucci. That these ideas were in the air when Columbus was seeking support for an expedition to the Indies is plain from the poem La Sfera of Leonardo Dati, which reproduced faithfully the teaching of Toscanelli, the friend and correspondent of Columbus. No wonder Diego Deza, the Dominican confessor of Isabella, faithful to the Albertinian tradition in the Dominican schools, took up the case of Columbus with the queen, about the year 1485. No wonder that Columbus whose set of Albert's works, annotated in his own handwriting, is still preserved in Seville, found a hearing, sympathy and shelter at St. Stephen's Convent, Salamanca, where the question of an expedition to the Indies was once more agitated after having been shelved for the seven years following the first junta of learned men at Santa Fe in Spain. And only a few months before his death the discoverer wrote to his son Ferdinand begging him to convey to the gracious queen the information that, but for the goodly offices, interest, and learning of Diego Deza, she would not have been able to add the jewel of the Indies to her crown. Mandonnet, who has written an exhaustive study on the subject, remarks with justice: "Thus it is a true title of glory for the two men who dowered the Middle Ages with the most solid speculations and the most positive teaching, that they were the first and most powerful patrons of those cosmographical ideals which conspired in preparing the milieu in which the genius of Columbus developed and in which would emerge the project of the discovery of the Indies." And, later on, repeating what Humboldt had suggested earlier in his Cosmos, he says: "Nearly everything true and fluid which fifteenth-century science possessed came from antiquity by passing through the Middle Ages by way of Albert the Great above all others, who was the first man to introduce the Latin world to the scientific riches of the Arabs. The Dominican school, faithful to peripatetic philosophy, preserved the traditional teaching without difficulty and at the time of the discovery of the Indies it had denied nothing elementary in its teaching." Perhaps there is something reminiscent of all this in the words of Pope Clement VIII who, in canonizing St. Rose of Lima, the first American saint, remarked that the Dominican Order seems to have received from God "the mission of watching over the two continents of the western hemisphere and the Phillippines."
Albert's curiosity about the physical constitution and conformation of this world extended in all directions and we find him speaking with originality on all phases of cosmography. In establishing the rotundity of the world he speaks in the plainest terms of the Suez Canal as it was built in our own age. Emil Michael sees in his cosmographical doctrine a very clear adumbration of Laplace's theory. As regards the movement of planets, he suggested theories that were put forth later on as practicable and workable. It is no wonder that Albert's influence on Copernicus has often been pointed out. There is still preserved a well-worn set of Albert's works, filled with original notes by that indomitable investigator. His influence on Keppler cannot be denied, and the researches of these two together cleared the way for Newton and his immortal laws. Nor is it unlikely that Newton harked back to Albert, for there are points of view and modes of expression in the great Englishman which sound like echoes of the medieval scientist. If another Englishman, Locke, spoke about the tabula rasa and primary and secondary qualities of things, it has been shown that this terminology had first been used with a fixed philosophical meaning and connotation by Albert.
Alexander Humboldt called attention to the fact that Albert had sketched a workable theory of zones in connection with, and growing out of, his treatise on climatology. Better than most of his contemporaries Albert indicated the effects of temperature on flowers, beast, and men. He was far in advance of his age in explaining rain, dew, and snow. His acquaintances, Konungo Skuggsja or Peter of Dacia, the Dominican, and Matthew Paris, for all their remarkable work which shows the influence of Albert, were resigned to follow him when speaking of winds, currents, tides and floods, and earthquakes. He stands alone in his day for his vivid and accurate description of volcanic eruptions.
CHEMISTRY
Though the knowledge of chemistry was very rudimentary in the Middle Ages and hampered by the most grotesque experiments, Albert was familiar with many chemical processes and their operations such as distillation and sublimation, purification of gold and silver by cementation and the use of lead. He knew that mercury may be successfully distilled without loss of weight. He recognized that wine, when heated, gives off a substance "supernatant" and "inflammable." He taught that cinnabar is produced by the union of mercury and sulphur; that sulphur attacks all metals but gold; that pure arsenic is produced by heating two parts of soap with one part of orpiment (arsenic trisulphide); that the nature of arsenic is metallic; that nut galls are a source of tannic acid; that the compounds which he called marchasita include iron, zinc and copper pyrites and other sulphides of metallic luster. According to Professor Florian Cajorie, of the University of California, he knew as early as 1250 that gunpowder could be prepared from sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal. He introduced the term vitroleum to designate sulphate of iron. In a recent issue of The Laboratory, published by the Fischer Chemical Company, of Pittsburgh, it was shown that Albert knew the color reaction between gall nuts and vitriol.
Professor John M. Stillman, of Stanford University, writes in The Story of Early Chemistry: "Of the great value of the work of Albertus Magnus in helping to spread the knowledge of chemistry of his time there can be no doubt. … He presents this knowledge with a clearness and directness that characterizes him as one of the ablest thinkers of his century—this very clarity of expression—free from intentional secrecy or mystification—must have given his works an important value in helping to lay the foundations for sane and sensible points of view, in a time when, according to the writers of the times, fraud, charlatanry and imposture in alchemy were very prevalent."
In order to show the style used by Albert in his descriptions and also to furnish examples of his general attitude to the subject of chemistry and to alchemy as well, we are quoting directly from Stillman's translations: "Those who operate much in copper in our region, namely in Paris or Cologne and in other places where I have seen them at work, convert copper into brass by powder of a stone called calamina. And when this stone evaporates there still remains a dark brilliancy turning slightly to the appearance of gold. But that it be rendered paler and thus more like the yellowness of gold, they mix with it a little tin by reason of which the brass loses much of the ductility of the copper. And those who wish to deceive and to produce a brilliancy like gold retain the stone (calamina) so that it remains longer in the brass in the fire (or furnace) not quickly vaporizing from the brass. It is thus retained by oleum vitri (liquefied glass), for fragments of glass are powdered and sprinkled in the pot (testa) upon the brass after calamina is introduced, and then the glass so added swims upon the brass and does not allow the stone and its virtue to evaporate, but turns the vapor of the stone back into the brass, and thus the brass is long and strongly purged and the feculent matters in it are burned away. Finally, the oleum vitri vaporizes the virtue of the stone, but the brass is made much more brilliant than it would be without it. He who desires to simulate gold still more completely repeats these operations of heating (optesim) and purging of the melted glass frequently and mixes with the brass, silver instead of tin, and thus it is made so red and yellow that many believe it to be gold itself when, in truth, it is still a kind of bronze (or brass, aes)."
"Besides we have never found an alchemist so-called, operating generally (in toto) but that he colors with a yellow elixir into an appearance of gold and with the white elixir colors to the resemblance of silver, seeking that the color may remain while in the fire and may penetrate the whole metal, just as the manner of working it is possible to produce a yellow color, the substance of the metal remaining. And here again it is not to be maintained that several kinds of metals are contained in one another. It is from this and similar things, that is demolished the dictum of those who say that any kind of metal you please is contained in another."
Albert's description of nitrum, which in his time, as also in that of the ancients, meant carbonate of sodium or potassium as contained in plant ash is here described by him: "Nitrum is thus called from the island of Nitrea where it was first found. The Arabs call it baurac. It is a kind of salt less known than sal gemma (rock salt) transparent but in thin plates. It is roasted in the fire, and then, all superfluous aqueous substance being given off, it is burned to a high degree of dryness ('efficiter siccum magis combustum') and the salt itself is rendered sharper. The varieties are distinguished according to the localities where it is formed."
Tuchia, a name applied to a more or less impure sublimate of zinc oxide is described by Albert in the following paragraph: "Tuchia, which has frequent use in the transmutation of metals, is an artificial and not a natural mixture, for tuchia is made from the smoke which rises and is solidified by adhering to hard bodies, when brass is purified from stones (minerals) and tin which are in it. But the best kind is that which is sublimed from that (that is, re-sublimed) and then that which in such sublimation remains at the bottom is climia, which is called by some succudus. There are many kinds of tuchia, as it occurs white, yellow, and turning red. When tuchia is washed, there remains at the bottom a sort of black sediment of tuchia. This is sometimes called Tuchia Irida. But the difference between succudus and tuchia is as we stated, namely because tuchia is sublimed and succudus is what remains at the bottom unsublimed. The best is volatile and white, then the yellow, then the red; the fresh is considered better than the old. All tuchia is cold and dry and that which is washed is considered better in those operations (that is, in above mentioned transmutation of metals)."
J. W. Mellor, in A Comprehensive Treatise on Inorganic and Theoretical Chemistry, accentuates not only the original contributions of Albert to chemistry but his undoubted influence on St. Thomas Aquinas.
"Albertus Magnus especially studied the union of sulphur and the metals; and like the Arabian Rhases, he considered the metals themselves to be compounds of different proportions of the three principles or elements: arsenic, mercury, and sulphur. Sulphur, said he, 'blackens silver and burns the metal on account of the affinity which it has for these substances.' The term affinity was thus used for the first time to designate the unknown cause of chemical action. Silver was supposed to be the metal most closely allied to gold, so that he considered the transmutation of silver into gold would be the easiest to realize. Albertus Magnus knew how to separate the noble from the base metals by fire, and how to separate gold from silver by aqua regia. Some suppose the treatise ascribed to Albertus Magnus to be spurious. The canonized scholar, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), was a pupil of Albertus Magnus. It has been said that while the master was a student of nature and philosophy, the pupil was a student of man and society. Both are considered to have excelled as exponents of theology rather than as students of natural science. From the little knowledge that is available concerning the alchemical labors of Thomas Aquinas he would appear to have been particularly attracted by the action of mercury on the metals—tin, lead, etc.—and he applied the term amalgam to the liquid or paste which is formed when these metals are opened up with mercury."
But not only on Thomas Aquinas did the powerful influence of Albert react. Besides Dietrich of Freiburg and Ulrich of Strasburg, who could not deny their dependence on Albert, there were John Glogan, Joachim de Gostnum, Michael of Breslau, and Stanislaus Rozycki, who gave Poland the best scientific books in their day, all filled with the audacious spirit of Albert and his suggestive and inventive temper. But before them there appeared in Germany Albert of Orlamund, whose Philosophia Pauperum was a favorite textbook with a frank bias for physical sciences; Conrad Summerhard, for whose book on science Wimpheling wrote some of his bombastic verses to serve as an introduction; Conrad of Halberstadt, an authority on gems and metallurgy; John Weiss, the best scientist of his day, and Konrad von Meyerberg, whose scientific attainments were the wonder of his age. These and scores of lesser students were outspoken advocates of Albert's scientific methods and devotion to the natural sciences.
By a strange paradox, when men began tiring of natural philosophy and sought peace of mind in the study of theology, it was John of Dambach who, in his Consolatio Theologiae, gave birth to a big literature known as the Trostbücher. And his favorite author was Albert, not Thomas Aquinas. In these books of consolation intended for wornout, jaded, or disappointed students and scholars, the last flickerings of Albert's scientific influence upon the ages must be sought. And just as in Albert's work there was always a preoccupation to lift man's mind to God through the natural sciences, so in these Trostbücher the knowledge of created things is made to subserve the purposes of theology. Albert could not have desired a finer consummation for his own study of nature nor the impetus he gave to the study of the natural sciences.
THEOLOGIAN
In proposing to himself to assimilate the wisdom of pagan antiquity to the wisdom of the Christian world and in leaving no stone unturned to achieve this colossal task, Albert was following the only course open to him as an honest thinker, a conscientious educator, and a loyal Christian. As an honest thinker he was obliged to select a system of philosophy which seemed to him best suited to satisfy the curiosity of his mind; as a conscientious educator he was bound to instruct in the best ways of thinking those disciples who would be called upon in the future to solve the difficulties which were agitating the world; as a loyal Christian he could not forswear his faith. Deliberately he chose Aristotle as his guide in the labyrinthine ways of thought. But in adopting the Stagirite Albert was painfully conscious of his false and truncated teaching on the question of the creation of the world, the origin and immortality of the soul, the creation of particular objects from no preëxisting matter, and the ordination of man to a supernatural destiny.
Would he follow the Averroistic school of Aristotelian interpreters by adhering to Aristotle despite the Church's positive teaching on these fundamental truths? Would he like them, pervert the minds of his students, and through their teaching subsequently muddy the stream of Catholic tradition, by advocating the eternity of the world; by denying the immortality of the soul, the providence of God, human liberty and responsibility; by championing a crude pantheistic monopsychism according to which there was a world-soul of which the souls of individual men were but parts or emanations? There were goodly numbers of Christian professors—and their ranks were growing apace every day— who in their exaggerated loyalty to what they considered genuine Aristotelianism, and in their desire to avoid breaking with the Church, elaborated the monstrous theory of a double category of truths, self-identical and independent, but in an open and irreconcilable opposition to one another. The conclusions of philosophy and theology could be true in their respective domains and a man owed loyalty to the body of truth he was investigating at the moment. Reason and faith, they held, were in conflict and their respective findings might be and frequently were in opposition, because both envisaged different objects, proceeded from different starting points, employed divergent principles, and operated by different methods. The academic world was threatened with intellectual anarchy, and there were many who, ensnared by the slippery sophisms of the Averroists, espoused a system which did violence not only to the psychological laws of man's being but entailed forfeiture of the Catholic tradition. As a keen philosopher Albert felt outraged to be called upon to subscribe to such an awkward system; as an educator he recoiled from polluting the minds of the intellectual leaders growing up around him; as a Christian he abhorred such a subtle assault upon and chronic injustice to the teaching prerogative of the Church and the educative value of her dogmas. He could not remain oblivious of the fact that though Aristotle stretched the reasoning powers of man further than any other philosopher he, without any fault of his own, had not been able to make them answer questions which pure reason alone, even at its best, could not supply. But he knew that as a Christian he had at his disposition unerring helps which solved the difficulties Aristotle could not explain, helps whose use and exercise would not invalidate Aristotle's arguments or processes of reasoning. To be a philosopher man needed not disregard theology or take refuge in the dishonest subterfuges of the doctrine of the dual truth.
Now Albert taught that philosophy and theology did really differ by reason of the different objects they were respectively minded to explore: philosophy was concerned about the problem of ens, or being, whereas theology focussed all its attention on God. They differed, too, by reason of the principles upon which they respectively proceeded: philosophy depended upon metaphysical or self-evident truths whereas theology relied upon the dogmas of the faith which, because they came into the possession of man by revelation, could obviously not be discovered by man's unaided reason alone. Both sciences had truth for their object, and inasmuch as they discovered truth they afforded revelations of the author of truth, the Primal Truth, God, though in different spheres. Hence, there could not be an irreconciliable opposition or contradiction between the two sciences, as there could not be ultimately any question about truth which must essentially be one and immutable. Each science in its own sphere vouchsafed man a revelation of God. But it did not follow that there was a harmony of identity or coördination between both sciences. The only possible union must necessarily be one of subordination since the higher presupposes the existence of a lower. Theology was undoubtedly the higher by reason of its object and the light of revelation in which it walked. Philosophy operating freely and in its own right needed not blush to take a secondary or subsidiary station, since it was not called upon to investigate problems which did not belong to its sphere of investigation. Hence, theology was not arrogant in claiming the right to utilize the findings of philosophy. Philosophy itself was really scientific only when it confined its operations to its own problems. It might rightfully look to theology for an answer to questions which only a science endowed with a superior light and assistance could presume and dare to resolve with anything like finality. In this wise Albert describes the nature, rights and functions of Christian philosophy, which walked arm in arm with theology without the blush of degradation or the suspicion of complete absorption. He vindicated for the philosophia perennis which he created the privilege of using the arguments excogitated and employed by the Fathers of the Church in their efforts to make faith a reasonable service. The philosophical uses to which the Fathers of the Church might be put in Christian philosophy were clearly demonstrated by Albert in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in his Summa de Creaturis, and in his Summa Theologica.
In Albert's delimitation of the respective provinces of these two sciences theology utilized philosophy without being called upon to make excuses or apologies, while philosophy looked to theology without blush or fear. It was the first really successful wedlock of the two sciences. Since the days of the great Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm of Aosta, thinkers had been trying to elaborate a verification of the definition of theology as fides quaerens intellectum: faith invoking reason in order to save reason from running amuck in regions where the light of revelation was needed to find the way. The many skeletons of heresies along the Roman Road of Dogma proved conclusively that men of the best intentions and the greatest intellectual powers were doomed if they forgot or disregarded the postulates and imperatives of each of the two sciences. In theology, man walked on dizzy heights, using the light of faith all the time, without on that account spurning the light of reason. Albert's success in assigning both sciences their respective fields, without allowing them to sink into the bogs of misunderstanding as to their proper functions and mutual helpfulness, was the most remarkable conciliation between the two sciences which had so far been effected. Thomas Aquinas would soon seal the pact definitively.
Now, Albert with his deeply mystic nature had a teleological preoccupation before his mind in all his diversified intellectual labor. He admitted it in the preface of practically every work he wrote. He was seeking the footprints of God's passage in nature as in the invisible fields of the mind. It is this search for God everywhere which made William Arendt write complainingly [in Die Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre Alberts des Grossen, 1929] that in all his scientific researches "Albert always speaks as a theologian." Balss and the Realenziklopädie für Protestantische Theologie concur in the same criticism. That Albert, however, did not permit his theological bias to run away with him is plain from the complaint of Henry of Ghent who said that Albert obfuscated theology by giving too much prominence in his work to philosophy and by Gerson who, in revamping the theology of St. Bonaventure, remarked that Albert's preferences for philosophy brought hurt to theological science. The genius of Albert was so all-inclusive that it is true to say that knowledge of all and every kind was precious in his sight. It has been said that by temperament he was a naturalist and scientist, by deliberate choice a philosopher, by mood a theologian. He seemed to verify in himself the full significance and implication of the Anselmian axiom: Credo ut intelligam. His piety and native theological bent or sense made him look upon the faith not as an imposing dumb sphinx but as a living voice giving luminous explanations of the manifold mysteries around him on all sides which, given his intellectual curiosity, aroused his passion for knowledge. In the light of dogma the mysteries of nature resolved themselves into concrete exhibitions of God's loving kindness which men were meant to explore for the purpose of extracting thence a deeper appreciation of God's goodness and beauty. The mysterious nature and processes of thought served but to allure him to a deeper investigation of the Primal Truth which cannot ever be fully grasped here below. Hence it came that Albert made a greater effort to understand St. Anselm's doctrine than most scholars of that epoch, that he treated him with more consideration and utilized him with greater finesse than any of his contemporaries. It is this intellectual sympathy for and affinity with the spirit of St. Anselm which prompted Joseph Schwane to write [in Dogmengeschicte, 1882] that "Albert rather than Anselm is the father of scholasticism if by that name we understand theological science impregnated with Aristotelianism."
We are prepared therefore, to find Albert interchanging arguments from philosophers and theologians in order to elucidate the dogmas of the faith. He does so consciously and consistently. Consciously: because he was always aware of the nature of the argumentation he was invoking at the moment and never in any doubt as to what was its validity and its compelling force; hence, he tried conscientiously to observe the distinction he had drawn between philosophical and theological reasoning. Consistently: because he never tried to make one set of arguments do service for the other—thus, for instance, when in philosophy he quoted the Fathers of the Church, it was not because of the authority their names carried in the eyes of believers but because of the validity of their arguments. Realizing that theology had run perilously near stereotyping into a cold formalism, by reason of the overobtrusion of the argument drawn from authority, he was at pains to introduce into the study of the sacred sciences the reasoning methods of Aristotle and the Peripatetics. Finding that Aristotle's natural theology was substantially conformable to the propositions of the faith on the nature and existence of God and the ways by which man could arrive at a knowledge of the First Cause, he did not hesitate to say that it would be possible to construct a true natural theology from the doctrines of the Stagirite without recourse to revelation but not in conflict with it. Yet he did not hesitate to reject Aristotle when he found him out of step with Catholic dogma, insisting that in such a case Augustine was to be preferred. And he made his position clear by maintaining that, though the soul had an impress of the Trinity, Aristotle could never help man to arrive at a knowledge of that august mystery. And it is worthy of note that precisely on the doctrine of the Most Blessed Trinity Albert wrote better than any man before him and was not surpassed subsequently even by St. Thomas. To forget this fact might lead scholars into looking upon Albert as a lop-sided theologian deserving the criticisms of Henry of Ghent and John Gerson.
Had Albert not been dowered with a markedly sharp theological sense he would never have succeeded so well in distinguishing between faith and reason, between theology and philosophy; he would never have formulated so clearly their separate domains; hence, he would never have been the first to consider theology a separate and distinct science. And it does not militate against this claim to find that Albert differed from Aquinas in describing the nature of theology and its end. However, his treatment and concept of theology as a sacred and supernatural science, using argumentation in the Aristotelian way, coincided with Thomas. Had Albert been less a philosopher, it is safe to assume that he would not have excelled in theology. If he cultivated philosophy so assiduously it was in the shrewd conviction that it would sharpen his theological sense. Certainly he did not Christianize Aristotle for mere intellectual pleasure or pastime. It was meant to develop his own appreciation of theology about whose superior claims and rights he discourses so lucidly and eloquently in the first part of the third treatise of his Summa Theologica. But in that same eulogy on the eminent rôle of theology he does not forget to write a bill of guarantees for philosophy, saying: "Whatever is known by two ways instead of one, is better grasped; hence what is known by faith and reason is better understood than that which is known only by faith." For all his love of the faith and its dogmas Albert could not be induced to prove traitor to reason.
Now Albert's merits as also his shortcomings as a philosopher determine to a greater degree than has generally been admitted his standing as a theologian. If he excelled in explaining so well the dogmas of religion it was because, aside from his erudition, he employed more generously and expertly than his predecessors every bit of philosophical data which would make faith a reasonable service.
The chief merits of Albert's philosophical labors are his critical evaluation of various past systems of thought, his astounding erudition, his critical utilization of the most disparate elements of knowledge, and his originality and geniality of outlook on many occasions. These characteristics of his philosophical contributions to the sum of knowledge in his day appear strikingly in what he added to the study and advancement of theological science.
It must be borne in mind, first, that theology in the Middle Ages was not as clearly divided up as in our own day. Hence, we cannot expect to find in Albert's works a systematic presentation and treatment of dogmatic, moral, pastoral, and ascetical theology in separate tracts, treatises, or courses. Since the medieval man looked upon the salvation of his own soul as his chief business in life, moral reflections were attached not only to dogmatic disquisitions but practically to every form of mental productivity whether in philosophy or the sciences. Knowledge in those ages of faith was looked upon as a rule of right living and not as an intellectual plaything, curio, or treasure. Secondly, since theology was rightfully considered the queen of all the sciences the remaining branches of learning were glad to recognize their dependence on it and, in case of a recalcitrant mood, were violently whipped into line. Modern science, without the logical justification of medieval theology, asserts as great a hegemony and dictatorship for itself without such favorable immediate results. Hence, we must be prepared to find a great deal of straining in the arguments of medieval theologians, especially when there is question of adducing reasons for their arguments and positions, or of compelling other branches of learning to do service for their peculiar form of argumentation. Hence, too, there is in most medieval theologians on occasion a sharpness of tone amounting sometimes to invective, a directness of dialectical argument which argues at least for the honesty of their convictions and their love of truth. In several instances Albert was a match for the most vitriolic of his contemporaries.
With these two preliminary observations constantly in mind it will appear from a study of Albert's theological labors that he was more critical in his attitude toward, and treatment and utilization of, the corpus of theological literature at his command than any of his predecessors. First, as regards the texts, whether of Aristotle and his commentators or the theologians whom he quoted, Albert displayed an unwonted and keenly incisive spirit and attitude of reserve. We know from his own words that he compared variant texts of the Stagirite in order to get at a correct reading; that he revealed in the commentators false ascriptions of authorities; that he rejected parts of Aristotle's text because of internal criticism of the text itself. In his Commentary on the Divine Names he used the translation of John Saracenus, abandoning it on occasion for one by John Scotus whom he went out of his way to compliment for his fine rendering of the original. It is true to say that, with the possible exception of Robert Grosseteste, no medieval scholar manipulated textual criticism so largely, easily, and with such amazing and happy results. If he did not always succeed in discovering the true author of a text, as in the case of the pseudo-Dionysius, it is well to remember the condition of criticism in that uncritical age.
In the next place, Albert discovered a really fine critical sense in evaluating the authentic thought of the authors he read and quoted. It is safe to say that with his sharp powers of perception he understood without much difficulty or long application everything he read. It is well known how benignly he interpreted St. Augustine when he seemed out of tune with the theological thought of the medieval world. On occasion he gave very ingenious reasons for his emendation of another's thought. Hence it comes that in recapitulating the thoughts of writers he is very fresh and concise. He selects with sure instinct the skeleton thought and cuts away ruthlessly the literary flesh. Hence, too, it follows that his books are not a mosaic of quotations which do not touch intimately the truth he is trying to establish. Albert quoted an unusually large number of authorities but he did not quote one authority profusely or exclusively. His quotations are always as brief as the thought demanded. And in this respect he was unique among medieval scholars.
Finally, he did not quote the disassociated thought of an author, separated from the context, but evaluated his entire process of argumentation or even his system. One feels in reading Albert that he knows the authors he is utilizing. He dissects systems mercilessly but fairly. He worked so rapidly that he did not always take the time or pains to give a minute criticism. But one feels that there was never any doubt in his mind as to what judgment should be passed eventually on a body of thought. One or two decisive blows sufficed him to dispatch a theory or point of view. In this summary adjudication—pointed, direct, sometimes violent—Albert differed from Thomas Aquinas, who worked more slowly and systematically. Albert overturned, Thomas demolished; Albert smothered, Thomas strangled; Albert tore up false theories by the root, Thomas tore the ground from the root so that there was no chance of life for the suspect doctrine. This, perhaps, is one reason why Albert's theology soon became outmoded, was soon superseded.
The second characteristic of Albert's philosophical spirit reflected in his theological work is the large part played by erudition. Albert was more widely conversant with theological literature than any of his contemporaries. He knew intimately the Fathers of the Church, ecclesiastical writers, pagan and recent authors as no other scholar of the epoch. He was not so much concerned about names but solely about ideas, as he himself avows. Hence it comes that he has more than one title to be looked upon as the first historian of dogma in the modern sense. He knew the heresiarchs, who seem to come to life in his pages. The errors they made in treating of the dogmas of the faith were a matter of such vital and personal concern to Albert that he writes as if they were still in the flesh, going about their unholy and nefarious business of poisoning the minds of the unwary and ignorant. This tone of actuality and immediacy saves his writings from becoming a dusty gallery of dead men's dead opinions. He often traces an error to its last lair and frequently establishes a hoary paternity for opinions which were looked upon in his day as up-to-date. This is particularly the case with the false Trinitarian doctrines he refuted and those, also, having reference to the existence of God. The historico-critical temper is highly developed in all of Albert's theological writings and, as heresy has a way of coming to life in successive ages under new names, his treatment of suspect doctrine gives a note of continuity to his discussions. In his Commentary on the Divine Names he returns no less than seventy times to the pantheism of Scotus Erigena which, from the consideration it received from a coterie of newfangled professors, he looked upon as highly insidious and menacing. He even grapples with anonymous authors, as when in his Mystical Theology he combats the semiagnosticism of a writer who has been identified as Thomas Gallus (d. 1246).
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in his Scripturistic works Albert gathered together elements and laid down norms for what centuries later came to be spoken of as the history of dogma or the evolution of belief. He makes it plain in scores of passages how the ages witnessed a fuller and more explicit uncovering of the meaning, content, significance, and beauty of individual points of faith. A treatise on ecclesiology has been pieced together from scattered passages in Albert's works and it has a distinctly modern ring. His Valiant Woman, which would have been impossible without a wide and intimate acquaintance with the theological thought of the past, presents astounding and highly suggestive elements of the new apologetic which deals with Catholicism as a whole and not as a loosely joined assemblage of parts, as a living thing and not as a system. Because the difficulties urged against the Church in the past were looked upon by Albert as a whole body of teaching he is not forced, by the very manner of his dealing with them, to take the roundabout way of dealing with individual doctrines. Because the Church is a living entity in Albert's conception he sees more in her wonderful life than can be said by logic-choppers about her orderly operation in the world. This kind of apologetic, so much in accord with the universalist temper of Albert, was entirely new in that age. If the hint he dropped in his manner of approach to his conception of the vital life of the Church as a living organism was not taken up by defenders of the Church for ages to come, it was due in great measure to the fact that Albert was inexplicably indifferent to ecclesiastical history—an indifference all the more strange in a man who lived at a time when the papacy was at its apogee of secular power and influence, when the inner life of the Church was not cribbed and confined by her exterior and secular activity, and when the successors upon the Fisherman's Throne seemed endowed with prophetic vision in laying down norms for the Church's dealings with the newly born democratic spirit which was testy and cocksure, if it was anything at all.
Had Albert kept history more consciously and consistently in the foreground in drawing up his map of the theological background of his apologetic, he undoubtedly would have achieved modernity in the best sense of the word. This does not mean that he was out of touch with his times or indifferent about the currents of thought which, filtering down from the professors, affected mightily the unthinking masses. He did give extended consideration to the lucubrations of recently deceased thinkers—thus from his elaborate refutation of David of Dinant's De Tomis. Father Thery has been able to reconstruct the essential body of this pernicious teaching. He did flay the social abuses of his age in many places, but especially in his Commentary on St. Luke, and from what he says we can gather how the secular affluence of the Church was planting stumbling stones for the feet of the simple faithful. But in the big and large Albert did not call into requisition the historical data with which he must have been familiar from his wide reading of the records of the past. And it is worthy of note that, of the large body of writers who have essayed to treat of various aspects of his universal interests, not a single scholar so far has deemed it worth his while to envisage this phase of his work. The reason for this may probably be that there is so little positive data to show that he exercised in historical erudition practically the same sound and sharp critical sense and instinct which he showed in dealing with the historical aspect of philosophical and theological doctrines.
The third merit of Albert's philosophical work, reappearing on the surface of his theological productiveness, is his successful utilization of elements of learning which no preceding theologian had dreamed of laying under contribution. First, it need not be insisted upon that Albert pilfered the pagan teachers freely. He performed the miracle of almost making a Father of the Church out of Aristotle. He knew and utilized Jewish and Muslim learning better than any medieval scholar. He did not forget or overlook his findings in the natural sciences when writing theology or preaching to the people. Thus when analyzing the act of contemplation he has an open eye to the effects of physical health, the condition of the blood, the state of digestion upon the mental processes. He is familiar with the idea and effects of what are called today dreads and tacks. He anticipates the moderns by insisting upon the need of taking into account the physical and psychical conditions of a man when trying to banish scruples or when seeking to get at the root cause of crime and repeated acts of abnormal practices, or when setting out to resolve cases of conscience. This is a very attractive side of his intellectual activity and one deserving of the fullest study. He was not the man to multiply sins by utterly disregarding the influence of the body on the soul, in many cases lessening the real gravity of delinquency. He was one of the first, if not the very first, to introduce medical and physical considerations in dealing with questions of moral theology. As a consequence of this sane and measured utilization of data of a scientific kind, which he had come by through personal experimentation or the conscientious reports of trustworthy witnesses, he gave an entirely new tone to the discussion of many moral problems—a direction which was to blossom forth in a most genial way in the Summa Confessorum of his pupil John of Freiburg. This aspect of his theological thought opens up a wide field for the most fascinating and fruitful investigation, especially if the study be pursued in the light of his teaching on phrenology in which he was a forerunner of Gall, on physiognomy in which he anticipated Lavater, and on the amore quodam voluntatis, "the certain love in the will," which is nothing else than a metaphysical adumbration of the modern superconscious.
Finally, Albert's exhibitions of originality in philosophical speculation are duplicated in the domain of theological research. For it appears from Albert's general tone of enthusiasm in lecturing on theological questions that he felt himself engaged on thoroughly congenial and supremely delightful work. Even in his declining years, when he was hopelessly broken in body, he was thrilled so deeply in speaking of the things of God that he undertook the composition of an elaborate Summa Theologica, intended for professors and experts, in which he gathered, as in a choice nosegay, what he considered best in the theological investigations and speculations of a lifetime. In all his formal theological writings his language is uncommonly rich and elastic, colorful, pulsing with life and feeling, bulging with figures of speech and comparisons drawn from all domains of knowledge and experience. He seems to have set himself the aim of divesting speculation of its coldness, remoteness, formalism. Herbert Doms has pointed out [in Der. sel. Albertus Magnus, 1930] that in some passages, where the sublimity of the subject swept him off his feet he seems to be thinking aloud, in German modes of thought, which surrendered themselves only haltingly and awkwardly to the fixed and precise literary forms of Latin. One needs little imagination to picture what an electrical effect such impassioned and inspired outbursts must have had upon the German, if not the foreign, youths gathered around his chair. This exuberance, this virtuosity, this immediacy of language, combined with his adept use of Aristotelian methods, helped to make Albert the idol of his pupils.
To his credit it must be said that this literary finesse was never employed by him for mere display or empty effect. It was but the vibration of a mind and heart stretching themselves consciously Godwards. This perfervid tone came naturally to Albert, for he was by bent a mystic and the mystical element was never far removed from his most rigid and coldest speculation. He was not only a professor of mystical theology, being the only man of the medieval period to write a commentary on the entire pseudo-Dionysian corpus, but he was a mystical professor of theology who did not hesitate to add the fire of divine charity to his most formal lectures, as anyone would be inclined to expect from a man who defined theology as the science which serves the purposes of piety: scientia quae secundum pietatem est. Without the least trace of egotism Albert introduced the recital of personal experiences in his theological writings in order to elucidate a point. And even where he does not directly speak of himself the sharp eye can discover in countless passages veiled references to what had transpired in his inner life or in his secret dealings with men.
He is original above all medieval authors in the literary form he gave his thoughts, in the personal touches and turns of thought, in the frankly direct, almost brusque, method of his approach to the core question of the subject he treated of. He was a poet, though we have scarcely anything in rime or meter from his pen. He sang because he loved and he loved because he insisted that theology helped man to a fuller vision of God, and the fuller the knowledge the deeper the love. Hence arose his unique power of giving fresh and suggestive outlooks, intimations, explanations, descriptions, and interpretations of theological questions and moods of which other theologians seemed not to have had an inkling. It explains why he marks a distinct advance and an almost unapproachable eminence in treating of the Most Blessed Trinity and, especially, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and Son through love; why he treated of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of Wisdom, as none of his predecessors; why his explanation of the progressive stages of union with God through contemplation made room for psychological data of which no theologian so far had stopped to take cognizance; why he wrote at greater length and with more feeling of the Most Blessed Sacrament than any earlier writer; why his treatment of all phases of Marian doctrine impelled Rudolf of Nijmegen to call him "the secretary of Mary" and Peter Labbe, S.J., Albertus Deiparae Philosophus: Albert, the philosopher of the Mother of God. On occasion he paused to draw pictures of inner experiences which are counted among the finest which a Christian pen has ever achieved, as, for instance, when he describes the banquet of the soul with the Godhead in the mansions of the blessed or when, again, he explains the powers of the Precious Blood to cleanse the human soul.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem (June 29, 1923), suggested that by providential disposition Thomas Aquinas was carefully shielded and screened from contact with the world so that, in the company of his own pure thoughts, he might be formed to become the Angelic Doctor with a sharp eye for an understanding of the mysteries of faith and the secrets of the soul united to God. Perhaps the same Providence was at work when Albert's ways were cast in the busy marts of men. For being by nature so strongly inclined to mysticism he was hindered, by the very circumstances of his life, from devoting himself exclusively to mystical subjects. As a professor Albert was called upon to discourse on the various questions of dogmatic theology without having an opportunity, ordinarily, to convert this knowledge to the uses of devotion. How difficult he must have felt this academic inhibition can be seen from his conduct in turning the propositions of Peter Lombard's Sentences into fervent prayers. As a citizen of the world, a prince of the Empire, and a bishop of souls, he was brought into active touch with the everyday life of men and communities of men. Now the ordinary life of the average man is frayed and seamy. Hence, this eager listener to the subdued whispers of the Divine Lover on the mountain peak of meditation must, perforce, attune his ear to the sad stories of human failure, frailty, and frustration. The mystic theologian is almost bested by the moral theologian; the moral theologian almost outstrips the dogmatic theologian. It is one more instance of that paradox in the history of mystical thought when we find the seer forced to turn sewer of the robes of conscience which sin had torn apart; when the dreamer becomes the doer; when the contemplative must needs act as chaplain of souls in crowded centers and adviser of the commercial-minded and practical man of affairs. With the exception of St. Theresa of Avila, Albert best exemplifies the practicality of the professional student and mystic.
He may justly be looked upon as an innovator in the method of teaching moral theology, not indeed as an independent ecclesiastical science, but as a department of clerical knowledge which could give a rational account of its own measures and prescriptions. For the space of forty years he touched upon most of the aspects, implications, and applications of three fundamental questions of moral theology: the reason and psychology of the human act; reason and the norms of morality; reason and the acquired moral virtues. These questions had scarcely been touched upon before Albert's day with the fullness, consistency, and consecutiveness which they deserved and demanded. The primary reason for the neglect and oversight of these basic problems in moral theology was due to the very nature of the method of teaching sacred science at the time. The Lombard's pupil, Peter of Poitiers, had provided a casuistic textbook which satisfied the professional needs of the clergy during a period when the theological schools were languishing and when learning was difficult to acquire except in university centers. Robert de Courcon, Stephen Langton, and Godefroid of Poitiers, following the lead of Peter the Chanter and Master Martin, produced casuistic works in which the canonical element was given a preponderating rôle and importance, largely as a result of the revival of interest in Canon Law at the University of Bologna, following upon the work of Gratian, a revival which reached its apogee in the codification of Canon Law by St. Raymond Penyafort at the command of Pope Gregory X. In the second place Albert's immediate predecessors, almost to a man, were in a high state of reaction against the philosophical element introduced into the study of moral questions by Abelard and his school, especially Gilbert de la Poirree. Thus the fundamental questions of natural ethics were scarcely ever touched upon in the schools when Albert appeared on the scene. With the exception of William of Auxerre, who wrote the first treatise on natural law, about 1220, no professor discussed the moral but only the theological virtues. Albert began in good earnest to treat of these neglected questions of moral theology in his Tractatus de Natura Boni (1235-1240), prosecuted his study with a clarification of his doctrine in the second part of his Summa de Creaturis, in the Summa de Homine, in the third part of his still unedited Summa de Bono, in his Commentary on the Sentences (1245-1248), in his unedited course on the Nicomachaean Ethics written down and edited by Thomas Aquinas, in the printed course on the Nicomachaean Ethic, and, finally, in his Summa Theologica, written after 1275.
In espousing Aristotle as a guide in the study of theology Albert was necessarily obliged from the very beginning of his scholastic career to treat of the basic questions of natural ethics which theologians had not treated of, with the exception of that metaphysical professor who hid his identity (was it in fear or shame?) under the name of Philip. Aristotle helped Albert in no small measure in analyzing the questions on the faculties of the soul, liberty and the analysis of the human act under the impulsion of the will as the efficient cause, and under the dictation of the reason as the formal cause. He almost created the idea of synderesis in moral theology, but not so completely or clearly that the finishing touches of Aquinas could be dispensed with. He was far in advance of his predecessors in his treatment of conscience, habits, the virtues (especially prudence), the distinction between mortal and venial sins. Though his fellow religious and friends, Roland of Cremona and Hugh of St. Cher, had essayed to place the study of moral theology on a rational basis, the chief merit for having done so belongs to Albert. That he did not neglect the tedious task of descending to particular and specific cases is clear from the fact that the great medieval Franciscan preacher, Berthold of Ratisbon, submitted cases of conscience to him for solution, especially in the matter of money lending; that he was called upon to quiet the fears or scruples of persons in high and low station; that he flayed the evils of the time in his sermons and commentaries on Scripture, especially on the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, not as a professional reformer or chronic critic but as an adviser who had a definite program of social reform and an unfailing method for the betterment of individuals. Arendt has shown that Albert's political doctrine was not divorced from his moral teaching. No man wrote more sanely on scandal and the sins of the flesh, and in dealing with the latter he betrayed an instinctive modesty, reserve, and restraint which were remarkable in that age of plain, often uncouth, speaking. His frequent dealings with nuns enabled him to treat of simple and solemn vows of religion in an epochmaking way. His development of the Church's teaching on the duty and blessedness of almsgiving is a genial presentation of a subject which in all ages lends itself easily to exaggeration. His important and cleancut teaching on usury, or interest taking, should prove especially illuminating in an age of economic problems like our own. It is abundantly plain that Albert not only opened the way but cleared it notably for the superb treatment of most of the questions of moral theology by Thomas Aquinas. It is not without significance that we possess Thomas's autograph of Albert's notes on Aristotle's Ethics—a sure proof of the eagerness with which the young Neapolitan gathered up the wisdom of his Suabian master. And the concern of Albert to have his thought accurately preserved is evidenced by the fact that he looked through the notes carefully—a trial to his eyes if not his patience on account of Thomas's miserable scrawl and intricate system of shorthand, second only to the craziness of Albert's own handwriting.
There are many other merits and excellencies in Albert's enormous mass of theological writing waiting to be discovered and brought out in all their brilliance by careful and conscientious scholars. Students of our own and coming ages, if only to refute the silly charges that the Church has been the implacable foe of intellectual and scientific progress, have the obligation—which is none the less a privilege—of making ever clearer Albert's prodigious industry, unrivaled erudition, adept utilization of the most disparate elements of learning. They can let in a breath of fresh air on the critical study of the sources of medieval theological tradition by accentuating Albert's personal note in many of his most abstract reasoning processes, his original method of approach to difficult problems and his expert handling of them, his frequent fresh outlook, his deep psychological insight into the workings of the human mind and heart, and his sage understanding of the variability of the social consciousness, of the half articulate masses of his age. They must show, often in contrast with other writers of that period, Albert's consistent sweet sanity and persistent reasonableness, his keen appreciation of the kind of teaching needed by his age and desiderated by its most farseeing educators. We are agreed today—though past ages have long since admitted it—that no single medieval theologian, with the exception of Thomas Aquinas, soared higher and nearer to God on the strong winds of scholastic philosophy and theology than Albert the Great, that none in his upward sweep remembered so lovingly the poor straggling thinkers on this planet who were trying painfully and laboriously but as best they could to fit together the wondrous patterns of God's oceanic love for humankind.
Lest students of Albert's theological labors be charged with blind enthusiasm when insisting upon his eminent gifts and achievements, they have been among the first to admit that, as in everything human, so, too, in Albert's work there are discoverable its own imperfections, such as the lack of a perfectly operating architectonic spirit, which might have succeeded in welding a bewildering mass of data into a tightly knit system and synthesis; that there is in him at times a bit of confusion when assigning things to their proper places and in their right proportions; that there is a sudden inexplicable hesitation to grasp the first implications and draw the last conclusions of an elaborate body of argumentation; that sometimes his divisions are not clear; that on occasion he divides up his matter too nicely thus losing sight of the central theme, the core question, the main contention; that at infrequent intervals his arguments get in another's way thus producing vagueness and confusion; that he does not always reject outright theories which fit ill into the general synthesis he was aiming at; that occasionally he fails to press out of a proposition all its rich savor. But these are the defects of a great man conscious every waking moment of his life that in the short span of a lifetime he had a gigantic task to perform in the face of great odds. For his tireless energy in collecting data he has been compared to Origen, and his stupendous work shows the minor blemishes of the great Alexandrine doctor without his major shortcomings. For having subjugated to Christian uses the proud, stubborn, and vagrant wisdom of the Greek and Jew and Moslem he has been compared to Godfrey de Bouillon—and like Godfrey's Kingdom of Jerusalem, Albert's hegemony in the schools did not long survive.
Had Albert been an isolated student or research worker, a selfish bookworm, shielded from the distractions of a busy and beneficent life in the mad swirl of the medieval world, perhaps he would have found time to eliminate these small blemishes from his written works. For these shortcomings are the inevitable result of the rapidity with which he perforce had to work in order to dispatch the many tasks which somehow found their way to his cell's door. They arise naturally out of the eagerness with which he followed up any new avenue of knowledge, made known to him by the discovery of a new manuscript, or by the appearance on the scene of a new teacher, that so, in his apostolic zeal, he might shield his students or the academic world against the danger of infection or pollution; out of the multiplicity of interests which solicited his mighty brain, that saw in every manifestation of life or activity a theater for the conquest of souls or an arena to maintain their possession; out of distractions incidental to the offices of trust he filled and the importunities of his friends and pupils which he in his big-heartedness always tried to satisfy in a regal fashion; and lastly out of the mystical bent of his heart which induced him often to stop in the very midst of an argument to paint engaging pictures of a devotional kind for the spiritual edification and benefit of his auditors. If our experience proves the truth of the poet's words that we love our friends mostly for their faults and foibles, then the very slight blemishes in Albert's theological writings, which show him to have been the willing victim of his own magnificent, magnanimous, and munificent nature, cannot but increase our admiration for a man who, despite his undeniable greatness, did not seek to disguise his inherited trends nor cover over his acquired outlooks; who did not blush to reveal his moods and methods, his prejudices and preferences; who did not disown his native loyalties, nor deny his congenital antipathies. His consistent striving to be a saint without ceasing on that account to be a man makes him one of those lovable men from whom we do not shrink to take advice because we sense that he has the understanding heart of charity. As the twenty-eighth Doctor of the Church he has been deemed big enough in heart and mind to take his place in that select and resplendent gallery of heaven where he stands with Augustine, from whom he was not afraid to differ for all his love of him, with Ambrose, from whom he borrowed his own understanding Romano-legal spirit; with Anselm, from whom he learned the utilities of psychology in explaining the mysteries going on within a human heart that is keeping high festival with its Guest and Lord. In a word, Albert the theologian has well merited the words which Dante, the theological master poet, has put into the mouth of the prince of theologians:
Questi che m'è a destro più vicino
frate e maestro fumni, ed esso Alberto
fu di Colonia, ed io Thomas d'Aquino.
(Paradiso, X, viv.)
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