IN A game where you set out to guess what object someone else has in mind, using only 20 questions, the traditional opening when I was a child was “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Over the course of his long life, St Albert the Great (c.1200-80) wrote a treatise on all three. De animalibus and De vegetabilibus are enormous works, running to three folio volumes between them in the Latin edition.
Albert’s irrepressible interest in the natural world, and his encyclopaedic knowledge, is admirably charted in this new intellectual biography of the man named as patron saint of scientists by Pope Pius XI in 1931. The late date of his canonisation is also discussed here: Albert’s all-encompassing interests were thought to have brought him a little too near to magic for the Church to be entirely comfortable with him.
Beyond science, Albert wrote extensive commentaries on biblical books, the works of Aristotle (between 1250 and 1270, one on all of Aristotle’s then known works on philosophy or science), and some Platonic texts. Where he thought Aristotle had missed a subject, he filled that in by writing a work of his own.
Albert was also an early and prominent Dominican friar, with responsibilities for that Order in the German-speaking world, and later a Bishop. The latter role, in particular, put him in contact with Jews, especially in Cologne, which is a significant theme in this book (Resnick’s chair being in Judaic studies). Despite his achievements, Albert is not that well-known or understood, even among people with an interest in his period, overshadowed as he is by his most famous student, St Thomas Aquinas (whose brilliance he is said to have spotted early).
the j. paul getty museumAdam naming the animals, miniature from the Northumberland Bestiary (c.1250-60). From the book
The breadth of information which Albert drew upon is astonishing, combined with a degree of caution, unusual for his time, over some of the more outlandish claims made about organisms familiar and unfamiliar. His powers of observation rivalled Aristotle’s, and with him we see something like the dawn of experiment (some rather grisly), including testing supposed remedies for scorpion stings on himself.
Rather magnificently, and sweeping aside the a priori approach otherwise still in vogue, he wrote that on empirical topics, only empirical verification would suffice: “experience alone provides certainty in such matters.”
Having translated both of Albert’s works on animals (the one mentioned above, and a shorter collection discussing disputed topics), Resnick and Kitchell were ideally placed as biographers, and their volume is both informative and readable.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Starbridge Associate Professor in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi College.
Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature
Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr
Reaktion £16.95
(978-1-78914-513-7)
Church Times Bookshop £15.25