St. Albert the Great

Book excerpt: St. Albert the Great, though he was a medieval man, is strikingly modern. No branch of knowledge escaped his eye. His writings cover every field of knowledge. Albert, one of the Medieval period's greatest saints, is often in the shadow of his greatest student, St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet, just as we cannot speak of an Augustine without an Ambrose, we cannot see a St. Thomas without St. Albert. In Schwertner's biography, you can learn more about the why St. Albert, the Universal Doctor, is called the great. He pioneered science and the scientific method in an age suspicious of them. He was a brilliant philosopher and theologian, being one of the greatest scholastics of the medieval universities. A consummate teacher, he did much to aid the reform of the Dominican Order in Germany, and as Bishop of Regensburg, was a model shepherd.