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Writings of St. Albert the Great


Albertus Magnus was born around 1200 in Lauingen, Bavaria, Germany. Magnus is the Latin form of his family name, de Groot or the Great. Most of his education was at Padua, Italy in Aristotle's writings. The major portion of Albertus Magnus's writings show his love and understanding of philosophy. Based on Aristotle's work, he prepared a philosophical encyclopedia that he worked on most of his life. He was the first person who applied Aristotle's work to the Christian world of Western Europe.

He believed that the natural order did not conflict with religion. Along with his famous student, Thomas Aquinas, he wrote that Aristotle's natural philosophy was no obstacle to a Christian philosophical ideal of the natural order. He studied Aristotle's method of elucidating natural philosophy. He used inductive and deductive logic and concluded that the two domains, the natural world and Christian theology, were totally distinct from each other and one could be pursued without compromising the other.

In 1899 his writings were collected into 38 volumes. They contain his knowledge which is based on logic and observation of theology, astronomy, geography, mineralogy, zoology, chemistry, phrenology, physiology and more. He was not only the most widely read writer of his time, today he is considered Germany's greatest philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. Of the works of Aristotle available to him, he produced paraphrases as well as filling any gaps he felt were left by Aristotle.

Albertus's studies in logic led him to try to distinguish between universals that exist in themselves and are free from contamination and change and universals that exist only in the mind. In Metaphysics he wrote that the Good is the final cause of the order of the beings in the universe. He wrote that beings exist because God is good and they are good because they exist. He believed in the angelic orders and the intelligences and that they move the cosmic spheres and enlighten the human soul.

He wrote that human souls were joined to bodies but did not depend on bodies for their existence. He believed that the intellect was at once individual and universal. The human intellect is dependant on the senses and the soul is the cause of the passions and animation of the body. Under the humans came animals, plants, minerals and the elements.

Albertus understood human freedom to be the expression of free will, and the ability to weigh options and make an informed choice that will have a desired outcome. This is the door to ethics which, based on Aristotle, could be considered a theoretical deductive science, because it involves necessary and universal principles. According to him, animals operate only on instinct without any choice.

Albertus Magnus took holy orders and became a member of the Dominican Order in 1223. He was canonized in 1931 by Pope Pius XI and is a Doctor of the Church of which there are only 33 men and women who have received that honor.


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It seems wonderful to everyone that sometimes stones are found that have figures of animals inside and outside. For outside they have an outline, and when they are broken open, the shapes of the internal organs are found inside. And Avicenna says that the cause of this is that animals, just as they are, are sometimes changed into stones, and especially [salty] stones. For he says that just as the Earth and Water are material for stones, so animals, too, are material for stones. And in places where a petrifying force is exhaling, they change into their elements and are attacked by the properties of the qualities [hot, cold, moist, dry] which are present in those places, and in the elements in the bodies of such animals are changed into the dominant element, namely Earth mixed with Water; and then the mineralizing power converts [the mixture] into stone, and the parts of the body retain their shape, inside and outside, just as they were before. There are also stones of this sort that are [salty] and frequently not hard; for it must be a strong power which thus transmutes the bodies of animals, and it slightly burns the Earth in the moisture, so it produces a taste of salt.

— Saint Magnus Albertus
De Mineralibus (On Minerals) [c.1261/63], Book I, tract 2, chapter 8, trans. D. Wyckoff (1967), 52-53.


my remark:
His understanding of ecology, paleontology, and paleo-limnology is wonderfully expressed. His understanding of molecular biology and biochemical pathways is unprecedented. Despite the time he lived in, despite the lack of modern spectroscopy machines that could have taught him this. God Is Great! Truly the Holy Spirit is unprecedented in His Gifts..

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