Saint Albert the Great lived between 1206 till 1280 and was born in Bavaria, Germany. His father was a powerful military count and Saint Albert was his first son. He studied in the University of Padua and entered the Dominican order as a mendicant friar. He gained a Master of Theology degree, the first Dominican to do so, and was sent to lecture in the University of Paris and launched a Dominican house of studies in Cologne. He taught the works of Aristotle which influenced St Thomas Aquinas, helping him to establish his philosophy. He was called by his contemporaries as “the teacher of everything there is to know,” as he wrote an encyclopedia of all human knowledge in that point in history. He was one of the most famous preachers in his day and was a papal theologian in Rome. In 1931 he was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Piux XI.
Image: Saint Albertus Magnus, a fresco by Tommaso da Modena (1352), Church of San Nicolò, Treviso, Italy |