RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Albert Albertus
Brothers of the Sword were forced in time to take their lands in Esthonia as a fief from Albert and from his brother Hermann, whom he had made bishop of southern Esthonia, with his seat at Dorpat. In 1227 the island of Oesel, the last stronghold of the heathen resistance and the refuge of pirates who held the eastern Baltic in terror, was overrun by a crusading army, and the conversion of the country was completed. Albert is a striking type of the militant ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages. In spite of his great services in the spread of Christianity in the Baltic lands, it is as the warrior, prince, and diplomat, rather than as bishop, that he stands out most prominently. (F Lezius.)
Bibliography: Heinricus de Lettis, Chronicon Livonia, 1125-1227, in MGH, Script, xxiii. (1874) 231-332; K. von Schlozer, Livland und die Anfange deutschen Lebens im Norden, Berlin, 1850; F. Winter, Die Pramonstratenser des zwolften Jahrhunderts, ib. 1865; idem, Die Cistercienser des nordostlichen Deutschlands, Gotha, 1868; R. Hausmann, Das Ringen der Deutschen und Danen um den Besitz Estlands, Leipsic, 1870; G. Dehio, Geschichte des Erzbistums Hamburg-Bremen, ii. 160 sqq., Berlin, 1877; T. Sehiemann, Russland, Polen und Livland, in Allgemeine Geschichte, ii. 1 sqq., ib. 1887.
ALBERTI, al-bar'-ti, VALENTIN: Lutheran; b. at Lahn (60 m. w.s.w. of Breslau), Silesia, Dec. 15, 1635; d. in Leipsic Sept. 19, 1697. He studied in the latter city and spent most of his life there, being professor extraordinary of theology from 1672. As a representative of the orthodoxy of his time he wrote against Pufendorf and Scheffling (qq.v.), but is noteworthy chiefly for his part in the Pietistic controversy. In Feb., 1687, he furnished a meeting-place in his house for the collegia philobiblica, which brought on the controversy in Leipsic (see Pietism). Nevertheless, in 1696 he published an Ausfiihrlicher Gegenantwort auf Speners sogenannte grundliche Vertheidigung seiner und der Pietisten Unschuld.
ALBERTINI, ol"ber-ti'ni, JOHANN BAPTIST VON: Moravian bishop; b. at Neuwied (on the Rhine; 8 m. n.n.w. of Coblenz) Feb. 17, 1769; d. at Berthelsdorf, near Herrnhut, Dec. 6, 1831. He was educated at Neuwied, at Niesky (1782-85), and at the theological seminary of Barby (1785-88). From 1788 to 1810 he taught in the school at Niesky; from 1810 to 1821 he was preacher and bishop in Niesky, Gnadenberg, and Gnadenfrei (Silesia); in 1821 he became a member, and in 1824 president, of the Elders' Conference in the department for Church and school. He published: Predigten (1805); Geistliche Lieder (1821); and Reden (1832). Some of his spiritual songs are of rare beauty. He was a fellow student and friend of Schleiermacher.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS ("Albert the Great"): Founder of the most flourishing period of scholasticism; b. at Lauingen (26 m. n.w. of Augsburg), Bavaria, 1193; d. at Cologne Nov. 15, 1280. He studied at Padua, entered the order of St. Dominic there in 1223, and served as lector in the various convent schools of the order in Germany, especially in Cologne. In 1245 he went to Paris to become master of theology. In 1248 he returned to Cologne as primarius lector and regens of the school in that C1ty. In 1254 a general chapter of the Dominican order at Worms chose him general for Germany,
in which capacity he traversed the country on foot from end to end, visiting the monasteries and enforcing discipline. In 1260 Alexander IV. made him bishop of Regensburg; but this office was so little in harmony with his character and habits as a teacher and writer that, after the lapse of two years, he was allowed to resign. He retired to his monastery in Cologne, where he spent the rest of his life, making many brief visits, however, to other places; as when he went to Paris after he had reached the age of 80 to vindicate the orthodoxy of his late pupil, Thomas Aquinas.
As an author Albert evinced a many-sidedness which procured for him the title of doctor universalis, while his knowledge of natural science and its practical applications made him a sorcerer in popular estimation. His works fill twenty-one folio volumes as published by P. Jammy (Lyons, 1651; reedited by A. Borgnet, 38 vols., Paris, 1890-1900). They embrace logic, physics, metaphysics and psychology, ethics, and theology. By the use of translations from the Arabic and Greco-Latin versions, he expounded the complete philosophical system of Aristotle, excepting the " Politics," modifying his interpretation in the interests of the Church. Thus the influence of Aristotle came to supersede Platonism and Neoplatonism in the later scholasticism. At a time when dialectic was in sore need of a new method, the introduction of the Aristotelian logic provided a subtle and searching instrument for investigation and discussion. For Albertus, logic was not properly a science, but an organon for reaching the unknown by means of the known. Following Avicenna whom he regards as the leading commentator of Aristotle, he affirms that universals exist in three modes: (1) Before the individuals, as ideas or types in the divine mind (Plato). (2) In the individuals, as that which is common to them (Aristotle). (3) After the individuals, as an abstraction of thought (conceptualists and nominalists). Thus he seeks to harmonize the rival teachings concerning universals. In expounding the physical theories of Aristotle, he showed that he partook of the rising scientific spirit of the age, especially in his criticism of alchemy and in De vegetabilibus et plantis, which abounds in brilliant observations.
The chief theological works of Albertus were a commentary (3 vols.) on the " Sentences " of Peter Lombard, and a Summum theologim^ in a more didactic strain. Already the " doctrine of the twofold truth " had been accepted by his contemporaries— what is truth in philosophy may not be truth in theology, and vice versa. Christian thinkers were, however, profoundly perplexed by the sharp opposition between ideas drawn from Greek scientific and philosophical sources and those derived from religious tradition. Albertus sought to soften this antinomy by establishing the distinction between natural and revealed religion, which became henceforth a postulate of medieval and later theology. Since the soul can know only that which is grounded in its own nature, it rises to the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other specifically Christian doctrines
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Albertus Alcuin