COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARY
Albert attacked the task with painstaking deliberation. In page after page, book after book, he explained Aristotle, carefully mirroring the Philosopher's own works, such as the
Physics, De mineralibus, De Anima, De vegetabilibus, De animalibus
. He covered general principles and universals, changes in animate and inanimate objects, the human soul, the animal soul, the soul of plants, perception, imagination, instinct, memory. He paraphrased when necessary, often adding his own interpretations to the stickier problems and filling in gaps wherever he felt it necessary. Where Aristotle deviated from Christian dogma, Albert simply said that Aristotle was wrong.
It was this encyclopedic work on Aristotle that made Albertus Magnus famous across Europe. Because his books were intended for use in Dominican schools, they went everywhere. As a result, even though Albert's work lacked critical analysis or depth, it was he and not Roger Bacon who became known as the foremost expert on Aristotle in Christendom, the man most responsible for bringing the Philosopher's work into the classroom.
But Albert's commentary and analyses did more than promote his own fame. Unlike the work of Grosseteste, who had stayed in a provincial part of provincial England and who never got into the mainstream, Albert's work helped validate science as a legitimate branch of theological study.
Although both Albert and Bacon each believed that the other was engaged in a perversion of science, they were actually not that far apart in either method or outlook. Both undertook to explain the natural world by extrapolating from sensory observation to more general principles. Bacon was theoretic—more Newtonian—while Albert was a scrupulous observer—more Darwinian. If not for the politics at Paris and, later, rivalry between the orders, the two might have ended up as allies. As it was, the only real source of argument between them was the importance of mathematics to scientific theory. Bacon believed that mathematics underlay everything in nature, and Albert rejected this, although, as was true on many other occasions, he offered no proof or underlying reasoning for his conclusion:
[It is an] error of Plato [and of others, like Bacon] . . . who held that natural things are founded on mathematical and mathematical being formed on divine, just as the third cause is dependent on the second, and the second on the first; and so [Plato] said that the principles of natural being are mathematical, which is completely false.
Albertus Magnus would remain Bacon's enemy until the day he died, but it was Albert's protégé, Thomas Aquinas, and his rejection of experimental science that would bring about the ruin of Roger Bacon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Dumb Ox:
Thomas Aquinas
• • •
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, one of the most revered names in all of Catholic history, was born Tommaso d'Aquino in 1224 or 1225 in the ancestral castle of Roccasecca, about fifty miles north of Naples, in what was then the kingdom of Sicily. He was the youngest child and only son of his father's second wife, a member of a noble family allied closely to Frederick II. Many of Thomas's uncles and cousins had served the emperor, and his half brothers had been pages at Frederick's court and later soldiers in the imperial army. Although physically, temperamentally, and spiritually no two men could be more different than Frederick and Thomas, they are inexorably linked, both by fortune and coincidence.
In 1229, when Thomas was four or five years old, Frederick had pulled off the most dazzling coup of an astonishing life. He had long been in contact with al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt. The two had exchanged geometry problems and gifts, and over time they had become familiar with each other's political realities and ambitions. Frederick wanted Jerusalem, al-Kamil wanted Syria, and they worked out a deal of mutual support. The result was a ten-year
Albert attacked the task with painstaking deliberation. In page after page, book after book, he explained Aristotle, carefully mirroring the Philosopher's own works, such as the
Physics, De mineralibus, De Anima, De vegetabilibus, De animalibus
. He covered general principles and universals, changes in animate and inanimate objects, the human soul, the animal soul, the soul of plants, perception, imagination, instinct, memory. He paraphrased when necessary, often adding his own interpretations to the stickier problems and filling in gaps wherever he felt it necessary. Where Aristotle deviated from Christian dogma, Albert simply said that Aristotle was wrong.
It was this encyclopedic work on Aristotle that made Albertus Magnus famous across Europe. Because his books were intended for use in Dominican schools, they went everywhere. As a result, even though Albert's work lacked critical analysis or depth, it was he and not Roger Bacon who became known as the foremost expert on Aristotle in Christendom, the man most responsible for bringing the Philosopher's work into the classroom.
But Albert's commentary and analyses did more than promote his own fame. Unlike the work of Grosseteste, who had stayed in a provincial part of provincial England and who never got into the mainstream, Albert's work helped validate science as a legitimate branch of theological study.
Although both Albert and Bacon each believed that the other was engaged in a perversion of science, they were actually not that far apart in either method or outlook. Both undertook to explain the natural world by extrapolating from sensory observation to more general principles. Bacon was theoretic—more Newtonian—while Albert was a scrupulous observer—more Darwinian. If not for the politics at Paris and, later, rivalry between the orders, the two might have ended up as allies. As it was, the only real source of argument between them was the importance of mathematics to scientific theory. Bacon believed that mathematics underlay everything in nature, and Albert rejected this, although, as was true on many other occasions, he offered no proof or underlying reasoning for his conclusion:
[It is an] error of Plato [and of others, like Bacon] . . . who held that natural things are founded on mathematical and mathematical being formed on divine, just as the third cause is dependent on the second, and the second on the first; and so [Plato] said that the principles of natural being are mathematical, which is completely false.
Albertus Magnus would remain Bacon's enemy until the day he died, but it was Albert's protégé, Thomas Aquinas, and his rejection of experimental science that would bring about the ruin of Roger Bacon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Dumb Ox:
Thomas Aquinas
• • •
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, one of the most revered names in all of Catholic history, was born Tommaso d'Aquino in 1224 or 1225 in the ancestral castle of Roccasecca, about fifty miles north of Naples, in what was then the kingdom of Sicily. He was the youngest child and only son of his father's second wife, a member of a noble family allied closely to Frederick II. Many of Thomas's uncles and cousins had served the emperor, and his half brothers had been pages at Frederick's court and later soldiers in the imperial army. Although physically, temperamentally, and spiritually no two men could be more different than Frederick and Thomas, they are inexorably linked, both by fortune and coincidence.
In 1229, when Thomas was four or five years old, Frederick had pulled off the most dazzling coup of an astonishing life. He had long been in contact with al-Kamil, the sultan of Egypt. The two had exchanged geometry problems and gifts, and over time they had become familiar with each other's political realities and ambitions. Frederick wanted Jerusalem, al-Kamil wanted Syria, and they worked out a deal of mutual support. The result was a ten-year
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