(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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For those struggling with science

St. Albert the Great (c.1206-1280)

Feast day: November 15

In 1931 when {ln:Pope} Pius XI declared St. Albert the Great a Doctor of the Church, he also named him the patron of students of natural sciences. As a man with a active curiosity about the workings of nature, Albert, the {ln:Pope} said, is the ideal model for our time when the world is "so full of hope in its scientific discoveries."

Very few individuals gain within their lifetime the acclaim and respect St. Albert enjoyed. His colleagues and students referred to him as "Albertus Magnus,Albert the Great" and "doctor universalis,the universal teacher."

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Albert, the eldest son of the Count of Bollstadt, was born at Lauingen on the Danube, not far from the city of Ulm. We know nothing about Albert's childhood. but we do know that sometime before 1222 his family sent to him to the University of Padua for a liberal arts education. In Padua he heard the Master General of the Dominicans, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, preach. Jordan was a dynamic presence in the pulpit. It is said that by the force of his oratory he brought one thousand new members to the Dominican order over a period of fifteen years. In 1223, Albert was one of thirty-three men who joined the Dominicans, drawn to their vocation by the strength of Blessed Jordan's preaching. Albert's uncle, who lived in Padua, tried to dissuade him. Albert's father threatened to come to Padua and take his son home by force, but nothing came of the threat.

After he took his vows, Albert taught theology at a series of schools in Germany. Early in the 1240s he was assigned to teach at the University of Paris, the greatest school in medieval Europe. Albert arrived at a golden time: the theory that the works of Aristotle could be reconciled with Christianity and even help Christians better understand their faith had caused a sensation in the schools. The bookshops of Paris were flooded with new works by Jewish, Moslem, and Greek scholars who debated the value and influence of Aristotle in every branch of human learning. Albert immersed himself in the new scholarship and in 1245 began writing a detailed explanation of Aristotle's teaching on the natural sciences.

Albert's book became an encyclopedia of human knowledge that included discussions of logic, rhetoric, mathematics, Astronomy, economics, politics, even ethics and metaphysics. Albert's book was distinctive because he did not simply repeat the conclusions of Aristotle, he challenged and corrected Aristotle's statements if they contradicted what Albert had observed through his own study of science.

While many teachers in 13^th-century Europe were content to echo the conclusions of earlier authorities, Albert wanted to see and understand the workings of nature first hand. "The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others," he wrote, "but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature" The whole world was his laboratory. He wrote books on botany, Astronomy, physics, mineralogy, and chemistry, and asserted that "experiment is the only safe guide" in scientific inquiry. In his book on geography he taught how latitude affects climate. In his book on zoology disproved the colorful but wildly implausible fables about the animal kingdom that were current in his day, for instance, that beavers castrate themselves, and that barnacle geese are born from trees. Albert was the first man to accurately describe a Greenland whale,and to get first-hand information about the creature he joined a whale hunt in Friesland.

About the time Albert began his encyclopedia, a new student arrived in Paris,Thomas Aquinas, a quiet, obese, young Italian Dominican who possessed the finest mind Albert would ever know. In 1248, when Albert superiors sent him to Cologne to open a Dominican house of study, he took Thomas with him. It was in Cologne that a famous episode in Albert and Thomas' career together occurred. In the Cologne school Thomas' fellow students called him "the Dumb Ox" because he was large, silent presence who never joined in classroom discussions. One day Albert challenged two students to discuss a difficult point in scholastic theology. The first student would assert the position, Thomas Aquinas would respond. When it was his turn to speak, Thomas' response was so intelligent, clear, and original that Albert turned to his class and said, "You call him the Dumb Ox. The bellowing of that ox will be heard throughout the world."

All his life, Albert would be Thomas Aquinas' champion. After Thomas' death, when Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, and several theologians moved to proscribe Thomas' writings for being too heavily influenced by pagan philosophers, Albert journeyed to Paris to defend his friend's work. In spite of his best effort and his own impeccable reputation, the Paris theologians still condemned part of Aquinas' work.

The year after Thomas returned home to Italy, Albert was elected the head of the Dominican order's German Province. It was an enormous administrative headache that included visiting personally every Dominican monastery and convent in Germany. In the middle of his term of office, Albert had to interrupt his work to travel to Anagni in Italy to defend the Dominican order. William of St. Amour, a theologian, had written an outrageous diatribe against the Dominican and Franciscan orders, reviling their poverty as a sham and accusing them of being in league with Antichrist. William's invective could not stand up against Albert's learned defense of the Dominicans and St. Bonaventure ‘s defense of the Franciscans. At the end of the hearing, {ln:Pope} Alexander IV ruled in favor of the mendicant orders, and ordered William of St. Amour's book burned.

In 1260, Albert was appointed bishop of Regensburg. He resisted, but had to concede when {ln:Pope} Alexander IV commanded him to accept the appointment. It was a difficult assignment. The previous bishop had been so hopelessly corrupt he was removed from office. Drunkenness, sexual misconduct, and greed were so widespread among the clergy that the {ln:Pope} described the priests of Regensburg as "sacrilegious." The local gentry were just as bad. Under the old bishop, priests and barons had caroused together in the bishop's residence. The clergy resisted Albert's attempts to restore religious discipline. The nobility resented Albert's poor style of living,he had sold off the lavish furnishings in the bishop's house, as well as his predecessor's stable of fine horses, and distributed the money to the poor.

In the end, Albert's good intentions accomplished nothing. he was a saint and a scholar, not a reforming Administrator. After two unsuccessful years in office, he resigned as bishop of Regensburg and returned to Cologne.

In 1274 Albert was on his way to the Council of Lyons when word reached him that his friend, Thomas Aquinas, who had also been traveling to the council, had died suddenly at the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova. It was a painful blow. Albert told his friends that with Thomas' death, "the light of the Church has been extinguished."

Sometime in 1278, Albert was delivering a lecture when his memory failed. It was the onset of dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's. During the last two years of his life Albert's once-great mind became increasingly clouded. He died peacefully sitting in a large wooden chair, fully dressed his habit, a throw rug over his knees. His brother Dominicans gathered around to sing Salve Regina as Albert the Great slipped away to eternity.

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Prayer to the saints is a powerful thing.

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