Saint Albert the Great
Bishop and Doctor of the Church
- Feast Day
- November 15
- Life
- 1200–1280
- Canonized
- 1931
- Doctor of the Church
- 1931
- Order
- Order of Preachers (Dominicans)
- Born
- Lauingen, Swabia (modern Bavaria, Germany)
Albert was born around 1200 at Lauingen on the Danube into a family of the Swabian lower nobility. While studying liberal arts at Padua he encountered the new Order of Preachers founded by Saint Dominic and entered it in 1223. After theological studies he was sent to teach, holding successive chairs at Hildesheim, Freiburg, Regensburg, Strasbourg, and Cologne, before going to Paris where he became master of theology in 1245. Among his Parisian and Cologne students was a young Italian Dominican named Thomas of Aquino, whom Albert recognized as the greatest theological mind of the age and whom he formed and defended throughout his life.
Albert undertook nothing less than the assimilation of the entire newly available corpus of Aristotle into Catholic theology, paraphrasing and commenting on virtually every Aristotelian work alongside extensive original treatises in logic, metaphysics, the natural sciences (botany, zoology, mineralogy, astronomy), psychology, ethics, and biblical exegesis. He served as Provincial of the German Dominicans (1254-1257), as Bishop of Regensburg (1260-1262, resigning to return to study and teaching), and as a peripatetic preacher of the Crusade indulgence. He defended Saint Thomas's teaching at Paris after Aquinas's death in 1274. Albert died at Cologne on November 15, 1280. Pope Pius XI canonized him and declared him a Doctor of the Church on December 16, 1931, and Pope Pius XII named him patron of the natural sciences in 1941.
Albert is the patron of the harmony between faith and reason: convinced that the same God is the author of the book of Scripture and the book of nature, he insisted that to know creation is to know something true about its Creator. He is the doctor who shows that scientific inquiry is not a threat to faith but a service to it.
Patronages
natural scientists · philosophers · students
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Albert the Great
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint Albert the Great's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- Saint Albert The Great Catholic Church — Compton, CA
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — Burbank, IL
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — Alberton, MT
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — Knoxville, TN
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — Hammond, LA
- Saint Albert the Great Roman Catholic Church — Palo Alto, CA
- St. Albert the Great Catholic Church — Austin, TX
- Saint Albert the Great Newman Center — Las Cruces, NM
- St. Albert the Great — Louisville, KY
- St. Albert the Great — Kettering, OH
- St. Albert the Great Newman Catholic Center (New Mexico State University) — Las Cruces, NM
- St. Philip Neri and St. Albert the Great Parish — Alameda, CA
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — Houghton, MI
- St. Albert the Great Church — East Rancho Dominguez, CA
- St. Albert the Great — Minneapolis, MN
- St. Albert the Great — Reno, NV
- Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church — North Royalton, OH
- St. Albert the Great — Sun Prairie, WI
- St. Albert the Great Catholic Student Center — Hammond, LA
- St. Albert the Great Catholic Church — Dearborn Heights, MI
Sources