654 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
is doubtful.1 One of his last acts was to go to Paris and de fend the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, after that theolo gian's death. He died at the age of eighty-seven, in Cologne, where he is buried in the St. Andreas Church.
Albert was small of stature and the story is told of his first appearance in the presence of the pope; that the pope, think ing he was kneeling, bade him stand on his feet. A few years before his death he became childish, and the story runs that the archbishop, Siegfried, knocking at the door of his cell, exclaimed, "Albert, are you here ? " and the reply came, " Albert is not here. He used to be here. He is not here any more." In early life, Albert was called the dumb ox on account of his slowness in learning, and the change of his in tellectual power was indicated by the bon mot, " Albert was turned from an ass to a philosopher and from a philosopher to an ass." In 1880, the six hundredth anniversary of his death, a statue was erected to his memory at his birthplace.
Albertus Magnus was a philosopher, naturalist, and theolo gian; a student of God, nature, and man. He knew no Greek, but was widely read in the Latin classics as well as in the Fathers. He used the complete works of Aristotle, and was familiar with the Arabic philosophers whom at points he con futed.2 He also used the works of the Hebrews, Isaac Israeli, Maimonides, and Gabirol.3 His large indebtedness to Aristotle won for him the title, Aristotle's ape, — simia Aristotelis. — but unjustly, for he often disagreed with his teacher.4
that the liver has in the body. For everybody has gall which collects in the liver and which dispenses itself and makes the whole body bitter. Thus in the domain of letters there are some bitter men filled with gall, who would fain make all other men bitter, and will not allow them to seek after truth in sweet company.
1 So Von Hertling. The records of the council do not mention his name. Peter of Prussia affirms Albert was present, and is followed by Sighart, p. 225.
2 Averrhoes, Avicenna, Algazel, etc. The honor of first mastering all the works of Aristotle and putting them into the service of Christian philosophy belongs to Albertus, says Schwane, p. 40.
3 This is brought out by J. Guttmarm, in Ins Die Scholastik des IStenJahrhnndertft in ihren Beziehunyen zum Judenthum und zur judischen Liter atur, JJreslau. 1002.
* IJc again and again says: " Aristotle erred," e.g. Borgnet's ed., III. 545,
§ 107. ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 655
He traversed the whole area of the physical sciences. No one for centuries had been such a student of nature. He wrote on the vegetable kingdom, geography, mineralogy, zo ology, astronomy, and the digestive organs. The writings on these themes are full of curious items of knowledge and explanations of natural phenomena. His treatise on meteors, De meteororibuS) for example, which in Borgnet's edition fills more than three hundred pages (IV. 477-808), takes up at length such subjects as the comets, the milky way, the cause of light in the lower strata of air, the origin of the rivers, the winds, lightning, thunder and cyclones, the rainbow, etc. In the course of his treatment of rivers, Albert speaks of great cavities in the earth and spongy regions under its flat surface. To the question, why the sun was made, if the prior light was sufficient to render it possible to speak of " morning and evening " on the first days of creation, he replied, " that as the earlier light amply illuminated the upper parts of the uni verse so the sun was fitted to illuminate the lower parts, or rather it was in order that the day might be made still more bright by the sun; and if it be asked what became of the prior light, the answer is that the body of the sun, corpus soils, was formed out of it, or at any rate that the prior light was in the same part of the heavens where the sun is located, not as though it were the sun but in the sense that it was so united with the sun as now no more to be specially distin guished from it." l
Albert saw into a new world. His knowledge is often at fault, but sometimes his statements are prophetic of modern discovery. For example, he said that the poles of the earth were too cold to be inhabited. He knew about the sleep of plants and many of the laws of the vegetable world. He was indefatigable in experimentation, the forerunner of the modern laboratory worker, and had much to do with arsenic, sulphur, and other chemical substances. He knew about
etc. He says : "He who believes Aristotle to have been a god, can believe he never erred. But if he was a man, then he could err like ourselves." Borgnet's ed., III. 553.
., II. xiii., F. Bor-nefs ed., XXVII. 210 s j.