| Albert the Great by Sr. M. Albert Hughes, O.P.
11 Saint Albert the Great |
  Autumn 1987 Vol. 39 Supplement |
ALBERT died on 15th November 1280, and his "cultus" may be said to have begun immediately if it had not already done so even before his death. His funeral gave occasion for an imposing demonstration on the part of the crowds who attended the ceremony at which Siegfried von Westerburg, the Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Lower Rhine and the saints intimate friend, officiated. The body, clothed in full pontificals, had lain in state in the church and was interred first of all before the high altar, close to the relic of the true Cross which he had presented to the church. Over the tomb was a simple stone slab bearing the words:
In the year of our Lord 1280, on the 15th day of November, died the Venerable Brother Albert, former Bishop of the Church of Ratisbon of the Order of Preachers and Master in Theology. May he rest in peace.The tomb soon became the center of prayer and pilgrimage, and heavenly visions confirmed the instinct of the faithful who believed that Albert was already enjoying the happiness of the blessed. To Gottfried von Duisberg, his confessor, who was praying ardently for his happy repose, the saint appeared wearing his pontificals, his miter adorned with a wonderful brilliance which filled the whole church, while he was bathed in a dazzling light. In answer to an inquiry as to his state, he replied,
I am very happy. The sense of man cannot conceive the splendor with which the mercy of the Lord has deigned to surround me. What you see here can only give you a very faint idea of it. The rays from the top of the miter which shine on my brow signify the ineffable glory which I possess. The precious stones which cover my garments represent the works which with the help of God I have published on Holy Scripture, to defend the Faith and to teach divine Wisdom. And because during life I saved many sinners from the darkness of ignorance and led them to the light of Truth, God has delivered many souls from Purgatory at my prayer.Then he disappeared.
The writer of Année Dominicaine quotes the following story from the lives of the Brethren, and it is also reported by Rudolph of Nymegen (III, C. 5):
A Cistercian abbess who owed much to Albert prayed frequently for his soul. One morning, when she was feeling rather drowsy in choir, she saw the saint before the altar preparing to address the people. He was standing but his feet did not touch the ground. "Mercy me," she cried, "Brother Albert will fall. He has no foothold." Someone near her replied, "Brother Albert has nothing to fear: he can never fall now." Thus reassured she listened to the sermon. The saint began thus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God..." And he continued teaching the Gospel until he came to the words, "We have seen him...full of grace and truth." Whereupon he added, "These are the marvels which I now contemplate with my own eyes." Then he disappeared. (1)The vision of St. Mechtilde has already been recorded, and another was granted to Theodoric the Lector at Triers. The faithful soon began to report miracles due to the saint's intercession, and, when on the completion of the church the body was exhumed and removed to a more honorable resting-place, these increased in number. On this occasion the remains were found incorrupt and exhaling a sweet odor, but the body had turned face downwards in the posture which Albert frequently assumed at prayer.
Sometime before 1297 the archbishop presented to the church a window in which the saint appeared clothed in full pontificals with the donor kneeling at his feet. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, and possibly before, the title of Saint was already accorded to him, and he frequently appears in the art of the time with the halo of the Saint instead of the rays of the Beatus. About 1352 Thomas of Modena painted the portraits of a number of famous and saintly Dominicans. Most impressive of all is Albert, who appears as saint and doctor, while the inscription celebrates him as blessed, a most famous writer, a professor, and wonder-worker. He also appears in several of Blessed Angelico's paintings -- that done for the predella of the high altar of San Domenico in Fiesole, which is now in London, the more famous fresco below the great Crucifixion in St. Mark's, Florence; and "The School of St. Albert," in which he appears surrounded by his pupils.
Luis of Valladolid declares that Albert's was one of the three names submitted to Pope John XXII when he expressed the wish to canonize one of the Order of Preachers, the other two being Thomas Aquinas and Raymund of Pennafort. Thomas was chosen and canonized in July 1323. Why did Albert have to wait another six centuries before the supreme honors were accorded to him too? The traditional reticence of the Order of Preachers seems to have been largely responsible, coupled with unfavorable political circumstances which seemed to prevail whenever the cause was progressing, so that one cannot but see as the ultimate reason the divine dispensation which reserved Albert's glorification for the age which would most need the inspiration of his example.
Sometime in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century the lower part of the house in which Albert was born was converted into a chapel in which a specially appointed priest regularly conducted the liturgical services. This chapel was there in 1414 and may have been erected during the pontificate of John XXII when there was question of the saint's canonization. By the beginning of the seventeenth century the premises above the chapel were being used by a corn-merchant. It was the city of Cologne, however, which not unnaturally was the center of the cult, which was especially propagated by the students at the Rhenish University.
In 1480 their devotion was rewarded by the remarkable cure of a Dominican, attributed to St. Albert's intercession. This event, together with the canonization of St. Bonaventure by Sixtus IV in 1482, gave fresh impetus to the cause, and on 11th January 1483 the saint's relics were transferred to a more magnificent tomb. The body was found clothed in full pontificals with miter and ring, and the right hand held the crosier. The ribbon to which was attached the relic of the true Cross and other relics was still around the neck. Scarcely any traces of corruption were visible in either the body or the clothing. The Master of the Order, who presided at the ceremony by direct authority of the pope, removed the right arm, which he took to the Holy Father, who gave it to the Dominicans of Bologna.
The following year, 1484, Innocent VIII gave permission to the Priories of Cologne and Regensburg to erect altars in Albert's honor, and to observe his feast with mass and office. Such authorization was a Confirmatio Cultus equivalent to beatification, and one wonders why the order and Albert's clients did not bring the cause to its conclusion, especially as many wonderful cures were wrought at the new tomb.
Soon political circumstances were unfavorable, for Lauingen was under Protestant rule from 1542 to 1616, while on two occasions Cologne was on the verge of giving up the faith, and the whole of Germany was in a state of religious and social turmoil in consequence of the Reformation. But in 1601 the general chapter resolved to follow up the cause, and in 1616 Albert IV, Bishop of Regensburg, petitioned the Holy See for leave to introduce his namesake's feast into his cathedral.
Apparently owing to the opposition of St. Robert Bellarmine and his influence over Paul V, the Sacred Congregation of Rites refused permission on technical grounds. But it was granted viva voce by Gregory XV in 1622, while Urban VIII in 1631 gave leave for the celebration of the feast in the city of Lauingen, and in 1635, at the insistence of the emperor, extended the same privilege to all the Dominicans of Germany.
In 1664 Alexander VII granted this leave to the Dominicans in the province of Constance, and in 1570 Clement X authorized the celebration of the feast in perpetuity throughout the whole Order of Preachers. A collected edition of the saint's works which was necessary before his cult could be formally approved by the Church had been printed in 1651 by Peter Jammy, and the canonization seemed to be within sight.
Once again, however, the order allowed the cause to lapse, and although Albert's feast was celebrated, no further steps were taken to obtain for him the Church's supreme honors. Then came the revolutionary wars and the invasion of Germany by the French. On 17th June 1799 the Dominicans of Cologne were given two hours in which to evacuate their convent. In 1804 all religious houses on the left bank of the Rhine were closed. The destruction of the old Dominican church in Cologne followed and with it the saint s magnificent tomb. Fortunately the prior and the brethren had time to rescue the relics, which were given shelter in the church of St. Andrew, where they were placed in a simple shrine beside the altar on the north side of the choir.
Little was done to propagate the cult in Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century, but in 1837 Charles Albert of Sardinia built a church in Albert's honor in the Castle Park at Racconige and commissioned a life of the saint which appeared in 1847. Then Germany began to move again. From 1856 onwards the Archdiocese of Cologne celebrated the saint's feast annually. In 1857 Sighart's excellent Life appeared. In 1859 a new altar to the saint in the church of St. Andrew was dedicated, and on 15th November of the same year the relics were inspected and placed in a beautiful reliquary prepared for them above the altar. There they still rest, (2) being joined in 1860 by relics of Albert's spiritual father and spiritual son -- Saints Dominic and Thomas Aquinas. Meanwhile scientists, many of them non-Catholics, were beginning to appreciate the saint's true place among their ranks, and in 1867 a critical edition of his work De Vegetabilibus appeared.
At the First Vatican Council in 1870, the German bishops met and prepared a petition to lay before the Holy Father, praying that Albert might be declared a doctor of the Church. They were told that this could not be done until he had been canonized. Therefore at their Conference at Fulda in 1872 they signed a petition that his cause might be introduced. Much correspondence ensued, and it seems to have been considered that the Dominican Postulator General was the one who should pursue the matter. Political conditions in Italy and Germany once again caused delay, but the six hundredth anniversary of the saint's death in 1880 saw many demonstrations in his honor, societies placed under his protection, and a petition for him to be canonized and declared a doctor of the Church presented by the Germany colony in Rome. From 1890 to 1899 a new edition of Albert's works was published.
Then at last the Dominican Order began to take an interest in the cause of its illustrious son, not yet officially, but in the persons of individual Dominicans, such as Pére von Löe, whose researches will be the basis of every future biography; Cardinal Frühwirth, who had been Master from 1891 to 1904; and later Fr. Walz, Archivist of the Order. In 1927 the Council of the German Catholic Academic Association and the bishops in conference at Fulda and Freissing submitted a petition for canonization to the Pope. An Albert Society was formed in Germany, and the German provincial called for the prayers of the order for the success of the cause. In 1928 a new edition of Rudolph of Nymegen's Legenda beati Albertis Magni was brought out.
At last in 1930 the Postulator General of the order made his appearance in the cause. The Congregation of Rites began its inquiries, and on 22nd June 1931 declared in favor of the equipollent canonization of Albert to be coupled with his admission to the ranks of the Doctors of the Church. On 16 December 1931 Pope Pius XI issued the decretal letter In thesauris Sapientiae, which brought the affair to a happy conclusion. Pope Pius XII, who as a tertiary of the order took St. Albert; for his Patron, added still further to his glory by declaring him Patron of all the Natural Sciences on 16 December 1941, as the first truly global war spread into the eastern hemisphere. It would end there four and a half years later with the explosion of the most destructive weapon ever devised by science and technology.
The world thinks of peace as the cessation of physical strife, so that it can talk of an "armed peace," although St. Augustine told it over a thousand years ago that "peace is the tranquillity of order." It is that repose -- an image and foretaste of the eternal repose which is ultimately God himself ("He is Very Rest," says Julian of Norwich) -- which results when a thing is duly ordered to, and has in some measure attained, the end for which it was made. Man and woman are made for God. "Fecisti nos ad te Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescit in te -- You have made us ordered, tending towards you, and our heart knows no repose until it repose in you" (St. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. X). Peace between nations is only possible when individuals are at peace with each other, because they are first of all at peace within themselves and with their God. We have no room to condemn warmongers and war criminals, so long as we are guilty of ambition, greed, selfishness, cruelty, and uncharitableness of every kind in our own private lives. How can there be order between states when there is such disorder in the lives of the individuals who compose them and who direct their destinies?
Albert is a model to a peace-hungry world not so much because "in his lifetime he labored strenuously for peace between princes and peoples and individual men" (Pius XI), but because his whole life exhibits that order which must be the basis of any true peace. For he directed the numerous and varied activities of a long and crowded life to the "one thing necessary" -- the love and contemplation of divine truth, and proved by word and example, not only that every form of activity and knowledge can be pursued for the love of God, but that the most material things are only truly known and understood when seen in relation to divine things and as ordered to God.
Therefore St. Albert was given as particular patron to those who study the laws by which the universe is governed. He was great as a scientist, and as Pope Pius XII remarked, if his method and researches had been appreciated and followed by his successors, many of the glorious discoveries of our day might have been anticipated by several centuries. He was greater still because he saw so clearly that natural objects are only the lowest rung of the ladder that leads to God, and that their ultimate explanation is to be found not in science, but in theology. That is what modem science (popular science, at least) will not admit. Refusing to accept a position subordinate to theology and the supernatural, it turns against them, ignores or denies the existence of God, and "presuming upon its own all-sufficiency, leads to that deplorable state of materialism which is the cause of all those moral disorders and economic ills which have fallen as a bitter scourge on the people of the whole world" (Pius XI). Worse still, science has become the deciding factor in modern warfare, the greatest potential enemy of peace, for it is using its powers not for the glory of God and the welfare of the human race, but to bring all the horrors of war to civilian populations. Not only the future of peace, but the survival of our civilization depend on the use to which science will put the discoveries which still lie before it.
But although we can talk of "science" in the abstract, the ultimate responsibility rests with the men who study it. At times nothing short of heroism may be asked of them in refusing to prostitute their skill and learning to evil ends. In Albert, they have a heavenly intercessor who was probably no stranger to the temptations by which they are beset. (One of his prayers reads as follows: "Lord Jesus Christ, hear the voice of our wretchedness in the desert of penitents who cry to you, lest we be led astray by deceptive words with which we are tempted about nobility of race, religiosity, and excessive searching after knowledge.")
Today more than ever scientists need courage and initiative in their efforts to fathom the secrets which nature still holds, and to adapt their discoveries to humane needs. That requires magnanimity, which was Albert's most characteristic quality. They also need the humility to enable them to see their studies in true perspective, and to admit the limitations of science -- and here again Albert is their model. Above all they need the spirit of religion, which leads them, as it led him, to see in all the things of nature the God who made and guides them, and to bow in humble adoration.
"May St. Albert, who in difficult times proved by his wonderful labors that science and faith can flourish in harmony, may he by his intercession with God inspire the minds and hearts of scientists to a peaceful and ordered use of the things of nature, whose divinely ordained laws they study and investigate!" (Pius XII). And may he help each one of us to seek and to find, as he sought and found, that wisdom which intimately links the soul with God and far excels every other good, and which a man attains in proportion as he imitates the life and deeds of our Savior, the Prince of Peace, "in whom are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
1. All this sounds quite probable. But unfortunately the lives of the Brethren were compiled between 1251 and 1259. Their editor, Gerard de Frachet, died in 1271, nine years before St. Albert. The anecdote simply speaks of Albert of Germany, whom the writer of Année Dominicaine has identified with the saint. Albert appears only twice in these legends, and as the narrator, not the subject, of stories. On each occasion he is referred to as "Albert Provincial of Germany."
2. At the outbreak of the late war they were removed to a place of safety, and so escaped destruction when the church was bombed. They have now been restored to their former position in the rebuilt church which in 1947 was handed over to the Dominican Order.
| BACK | CONTENTS | INDEX |