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·Latin·828 pages PDF (40MB) Source

Volume 30 of the Borgnet edition of Albert the Great's Opera Omnia, edited by Augustus Borgnet (a priest of the diocese of Reims) with the approval of Pope Leo XIII, and published in Paris by Ludovicus Vivès in 1894. This volume contains the second half of Albert's Commentary on Book IV of Peter Lombard's Sentences, covering Distinctions XXIII–L — treating the sacraments of extreme unction, orders, and matrimony, as well as the doctrine of the resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the final states of the blessed and the damned. The edition is drawn "ex editione lugdunensi religiose castigata" — carefully corrected from the older Lyon edition of Pierre Jammy (1651) — and supplemented from the editions of Peter of Prussia, Rodolph of Nymwegen, and others.

Author

Albert the Great

Albertus Magnus

1200–1280

Readings

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.

Albert the Great·1249·Latin·Liber IV, Distinctio XXV·p. 82a–96b