Alberto Magno

Biography

The son of a noble family, he had a carefree youth, frequently dedicated to hunting on the banks of the Danube. He studied at the University of Padua. One day he heard Blessed Jordan of Saxony, General of the Dominicans, preach there, and a sudden light transformed him. When Jordán came down from the pulpit, Alberto asked him for the Dominican habit. He was then thirty years old. This event splits his life in two. A new stage now begins that can be summarized in three tasks that will fulfill his life: pray, study, teach. But these three tasks were not separate. He carried them out simultaneously, as complementary activities, which supported and nourished each other, as integral parts of his personality. Only a small parenthesis interrupted him: two years as Bishop of Regensburg, the provincialship, being a preacher of the Pontifical Court and of the 8th. Crusade, by order of Urban IV, and his attendance at the Second Council of Lyon. In addition to being a man of prayer, he was a man of study. The result was a GREAT TEACHER. He taught in Freiburg, Laussanne, Regensburg, Strasbourg, and especially in Paris and Cologne. He has been called the UNIVERSAL DOCTOR, for his encyclopedic knowledge, an expert in all branches of knowledge. The wise man, the philosopher, the theologian and the mystic appear in his works. He was a forger of great masters: Saint Bonaventure, Bacon, Hales, Duns Scotus and others. And the most illustrious, Sto. Thomas Aquinas. Alberto discovered it and encouraged it. When some of his classmates nicknamed Thomas "the dumb ox," Alberto corrected them, telling them: "yes, but his lowing will shake the world." Thomas collected the philosophical and theological tradition from Albert. And next to the wise man: the mystic and the saint. He lived the harmony that he knew how to find between science and faith in all aspects of life: righteousness, loyalty, charity. His favorite devotions, in which he took refuge to feed his spirit, were the mass, the passion of Christ and the Virgin Mary. He was a humble wise man, who knew that he received everything from God. And he was a charitable wise man who communicated everything to others. He always fought to defend the Truth, not to defend what he believed were only his opinions. He spent his last years in Cologne, on the banks of the Rhine, preparing for the final transit. He asks to know the place of his burial, and before him he prays the same service for the dead every day. Death surprised him praying and working, as he had always lived: Giving the finishing touches to a treatise on the Blessed Sacrament. He died in the year 1280.