Sant'Alberto Magno, Saint of the day for 15 November

Saint of the day for November 15
(1206-15 November 1280)

The story of Sant'Alberto Magno

Albert the Great was a thirteenth-century German Dominican who decisively influenced the position of the Church towards the Aristotelian philosophy brought to Europe by the spread of Islam.

Philosophy students know him as the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. Albert's attempt to understand Aristotle's writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves recognition for his merits as a curious, honest, and diligent scholar.

He was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank. He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite the fierce opposition of the family, he entered the Dominican novitiate.

His boundless interests led him to write a compendium of all knowledge: natural sciences, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics and metaphysics. His explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. "Our intention," he said, "is to make all the above parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins."

He achieved his goal while serving as an educator in Paris and Cologne, as a Dominican provincial and also as bishop of Regensburg for a short time. He defended the mendicant orders and preached the crusade in Germany and Bohemia.

Albert, a doctor of the Church, is the patron saint of scientists and philosophers.

Reflection

An excess of information must face us Christians today in all branches of knowledge. It is enough to read the current Catholic periodicals to experience the various reactions to the discoveries of the social sciences, for example, regarding Christian institutions, Christian lifestyles and Christian theology. Ultimately, in canonizing Albert, the Church seems to indicate his openness to the truth, wherever he is, as his claim to holiness. His characteristic curiosity prompted Albert to delve deeply for wisdom within a philosophy that his Church became passionate about with great difficulty.

Sant'Alberto Magno is the patron saint of:

Medical technicians
philosophy
scientists