“Albert the Great had studied the ordinary courses in theology with the Dominicans, before going to Paris, but he had not taken a degree in the liberal arts. Yet Albert reached maturity at a time when many exciting works of foreign scientists and philosophers were being translated for the libraries of Latin scholars. He knew the traditional Christian authors, such as Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm.He read the new translations of the Arabic commentators on Aristotle: Al Kindi, Al Farabi, Avicenna, and eventually Averroës. Jewish authors, Isaac of Israel, Maimonides, and Avicebron, were grist to his encyclopedic mill. By the mid-1240’s, Albert had Robert Grosseteste’s translations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and of the writings of the mysterious Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Various anonymous writings, such as the Book of Causes and the Theology of the Pseudo-Aristotle, fascinated him.
“Albert valued all this knowledge and felt that he had to share it with all Christian scholars. His personal interests were very broad – much more extensive than those of his pupil, Aquinas. Albert’s writings show that not only was he a theologian and a philosopher but also a devotee of all the known areas of experimental and observational science. He assembled vast amounts of material in zoology, botany, geology, chemistry, and optics. Of course, much of his scientific writings consisted of paraphrases of information gleaned from dozens of earlier writers. As Roger [Bacon] says, he collected “many useful things from the infinite sea of authors.” Yet Albert tried to develop a general theory of natural science and endeavored to use his broad experience to test scientific reports.
“...He was the first Dominican scholar to attempt to utilize all the philosophy of Aristotle in the service of Christian theology. Granted that most of his knowledge of Aristotelianism came initially through secondary sources, it is still obvious that Albert was far ahead of his Dominican contemporaries. One evidence of this is found in his lectures on the Nicomachean Ethics, given at Cologne between 1248 and 1252. Thomas Aquinas, in fact, served as the recorder (reportator) of this course on Aristotelian ethics…. At least, we know that Albert did introduce Aquinas to one major work of Aristotle.”
~Vernon J. Bourke: Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom.
