Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature

by Irven M. Resnick, Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr.

Overview

The first comprehensive English-language biography of Albert the Great in a century.
 
As well as being an important medieval theologian, Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) also made significant contributions to the study of astronomy, geography, and natural philosophy, and his studies of the natural world led Pope Pius XII to declare Albert the patron saint of the natural sciences. Dante Alighieri acknowledged a substantial debt to Albert’s work, and in the Divine Comedy placed him equal with his celebrated student and brother Dominican, Thomas Aquinas.
 
In this book, the first full, scholarly biography in English for nearly a century, Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. narrate Albert’s key contributions to natural philosophy and the history of science, while also revealing the insights into medieval life and customs that his writings provide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789145137
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Series:	Medieval Lives
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Irven M. Resnick is professor and chair of excellence in philosophy and religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.


Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr is professor emeritus of classics at Louisiana State University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations 6

1 The Life and Works of Albertus Magnus 9

2 From Cologne to Paris 40

3 From Paris to Cologne 64

4 From Cologne to Regensburg and Back Again 81

5 Those Who Came Before 94

6 Albertus and the Encyclopedists 119

7 Albertus and the Experts 130

8 Albertus and Everyday Life 157

9 Human Sexuality, Gender and Race 180

10 Monsters 214

11 Albertus' Legend and Influence 230

Appendix 241

Chronology 247

References 249

Further Reading 264

Photo Acknowledgements 265

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

"Resnick and Kitchell, who have long toiled on the Albertian corpus, provide a lively, accessible introduction to his life and thought."

London Review of Books

"St. Albert the Great’s irrepressible interest in the natural world, and his encyclopaedic knowledge, is admirably charted in this new intellectual biography . . . Having translated both of Albert’s works on animals, Resnick and Kitchell were ideally placed as biographers, and their volume is both informative and readable.

Church Times (UK)

Resnick and Kitchell have done heroic work in sorting out both the career of Albertus and the world he struggled to understand.

Fortean Times

Resnick and Kitchells Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature is a truly worthy tribute to the life and work of the Doctor universalis. One of the first of its kind in the Anglo-American research community, this book offers a reliable general introduction to Albertus Magnus and presents his view of the natural world to a wide audience.

Henryk Anzulewicz

[A] compact and accessible work . . . if this is the culmination of Resnick and Kitchellʼs work on Albert, it is a worthy capstone. They have created a world of resources that should provide fodder for the next generation of scholarship. It is hoped that a book such as this, aimed toward the student, will whet the appetite of future scholars in the study of the great Albert.

Reading Religion

Another one of those solid and valuable pieces of scholarship that we have come to expect from Resnick and Kitchell—this time a book that manages to be both an accessible introduction and a useful companion to their heroic translation of Albertus Magnus’ colossal On Animals.

Bruno Tremblay

This study of the natural philosophy of Albert the Great is as illuminating as its subject, whom the fourteenth-century Dominican Henry of Herford described as ‘the brightest sun from among all of the philosophers of the whole of Christendom.’ Resnick and Kitchell have masterfully filled a significant lacuna in anglophone scholarship on Albertus Magnus. Highly recommended.

Franklin T. Harkins