One standard narrative of the latter part of the 20th century tells the story of the fracturing of a theological consensus built on the 19th-century resurgence of scholasticism under Leo XIII. For some this is a cause for celebration: a time for a returning to sources and breaking theological discourse out of the shackles of the manuals; the recognition that such a consensus was really not a consensus at all. For others it marks a profound loss, marking a period of scepticism and liberalism within theology.
The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Those who lean towards the pessimistic view are definitely wrong to see late-19th- and early-20th-century theology as a kind of return to a pristine, perennial theology of the Middle Ages. The turn to St Thomas Aquinas was really a turn towards a vision of Catholic theology that could answer the lurches between fideism and rationalism which had characterised post-Enlightenment theology in a Church weakened by the Reformation and then by the secularisation of the Enlightenment.
Even then, Aquinas could only answer the chaos of post-Enlightenment theology because he had had to answer the chaos of his own day. I say this by way of an introduction to a book on St Albert the Great, Aquinas’s own teacher, because we can only get some sense of Aquinas the Doctor communis and the Church’s perennial theologian when we really understand the immediate context in which he worked. In all of this, Albert is a somewhat underrated and understudied figure. His works are only just beginning to be published in modern editions; Irven Resnick and Kenneth Kitchell have contributed not only this volume, but also their translation of Albert’s Questions Concerning Aristotle’s “On Animals”.
Albert is often eclipsed by his student Aquinas; indeed it is the pupil who is renowned for putting Aristotle at the service of Catholic theology, and yet it was the teacher who played the greater role in commenting on Aristotle’s work. Albert’s ecclesiastical life was much more varied than Aquinas’s, and he managed to balance pastoral commitments – as prior provincial and later as bishop of Regensburg – with his academic work and interests. In this sense, then, he is a good patron of contemporary Dominicans (not least those who bear his name) who must necessarily juggle more pastoral, administrative and academic responsibilities than previous generations.
Extraordinary times produce extraordinary characters, and this is no less true of the 13th century. Albert would have seen the beginnings of the building of Notre Dame in Paris, and quite probably would have heard the very early forms of polyphony which were composed there. It’s likely that he and Aquinas were present at the laying of the foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral which, until the building of the Washington Monument in Washington DC, was the tallest building in the world. It may be that Albert was the last person to know everything that could be known; that by the time of his death the corpus of human knowledge had become too large to be mastered by a single person. He wrote prodigiously on a wide range of topics, from astronomy to alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy and science, all the way through to zoology.
Albert’s curiosity does not just give us a wealth of theology, it also gives us a real insight into the medieval world. In his zoology, Albert asked advice of people whose profession gave them particular expertise. He asked fisherman about fish, and miners and smiths about mineralogy and geology. Sometimes the results were rather improbable, such as his view that those who gulped down their food had a shorter life span; especially when he lived in a religious community where there is no lingering over meals, but frequent attainment of old age. Albert was a great tester of things, and so it is no wonder that he became the patron of students of the natural sciences.
Albert the Great is a model Dominican; he was the great teacher of Thomas Aquinas, whose fame eclipsed his own and consigned him to a curious obscurity from which he is only just emerging. For someone of whom we have relatively little knowledge of his character (there certainly aren’t the anecdotes of his life which we have of some of his contemporaries) what we do know of him offers us a remarkably humane and appealing character. This volume is an accessible and attractive work, and an excellent introduction to an extraordinary man who lived in extraordinary times.
Fr Albert Robertson is a member of the Order of Preachers, presently serving in Edinburgh at St Albert’s Chaplaincy
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