Albert the Great

Albertus Magnus

1200–1280

Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus, c. 1200–1280) was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, bishop of Regensburg, and one of the most learned figures of the thirteenth century, known as the Doctor Universalis. He was among the first medieval scholars to integrate the newly translated Aristotelian corpus into Christian thought, producing extensive paraphrases and commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle's works, as well as a massive Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a Summa Theologiae, and treatises on natural philosophy, botany, and mineralogy. He taught at Paris and Cologne — where Thomas Aquinas was his most famous student — and shaped the Dominican intellectual tradition for generations. He was canonized in 1931 and declared a Doctor of the Church.

Works of Blessed Albert the Great, Bishop of Regensburg, of the Order of Preachers, Volume 30: Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences (Distinctions 23–50)

B. Alberti Magni Ratisbonensis Episcopi, Ordinis Prædicatorum, Opera Omnia, Volumen Trigesimum: Commentarii in IV Sententiarum (Dist. XXIII–L)

1894·828 pages

Distinction 25: On the Dispensation of the Sacrament of Orders

Distinctio Vigesima Quinta: De Dispensatione Sacramenti Ordinis

Albert the Great's commentary on Distinction 25 of Book IV of Peter Lombard's Sentences, which treats the dispensation of the sacrament of orders. Opening with the question whether heretics cut off from the Church can confer valid orders (and whether those they ordain must be reordained on return to Catholic unity), Albert surveys the conflicting patristic authorities and sides with the "moderns": so long as the minister is validly ordained and preserves the form and intention of the Church, the sacrament is effected, whether the minister is heretical or schismatic. He then turns to simony — defining it as the willing exchange of temporal price for spiritual gift in imitation of Simon Magus — and works through a series of articles on whether simoniacal ordinations are valid, whether an inferior can commit simony with a superior (and notably with the pope), the fourfold classification of "spiritual" things that can be made the object of simony, the three modes of simoniacal exchange (gift of hand, tongue, and service), the status of those knowingly and unknowingly ordained by simoniacs, and the canonical ages required for ordination.

Liber IV, Distinctio XXV·fol. 82a–96b