Talk:Albertus Magnus

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Magnus studied at the University of Padua, a major scientific center at the time, and joined the Dominicans in 1223. After completing his studies he taught theology; about 1240, he went to Paris, and achieved the degree of master in sacred theology in 1245 or 1246. For the next thirty years he worked as teacher and administrator, as provincial of his order in Germany, and as bishop of Ratisbon, tramping across Europe. At Cologne and Paris he had Thomas Aquinas as his student.

He worked on logic, philosophy, theology and exegesis, studying nature in detail. He wrote down his unbiased views of his environment in a huge encyclopedia. He was also experienced in botany, chemistry, physics, and mechanics, which made some people think of him as a magician. Magnus also tried to introduce the thinkings of Aristoteles into the Catholic Church, a task that was later completed by his scholar Aquinas.

From 1270 on he stayed in Cologne; today, the University of Cologne carries his name. He was canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1931. He is the patron saint of natural science.

More text to integrate: The Dominican's house in Cologne is the St. Andreas Kloster. The house and church is still there and contains the shrine of Albertus Magnus.

I THINK HE'S HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! (left by User:170.76.22.10

He might be too old for you, but I don't doubt that his intellectual interests would have been significantly stimulating on a number of levels. Antandrus 19:32, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Occult Authors?

Why is Albert categorized as an "occult author"? I'm not even exactly sure what the category means. Does it merely mean he wrote about spiritual subjects? Or is it more specific? Mlouns 06:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The category of Occult authors refers to those whose work deals with magic, spell-craft, and religio-magical traditions. It includes such forms of writing as grimoires, wonder books, and spell books. It includes topics such as the kaballah, tarot, alchemy, astrology, and folk magic. In the case of Albertus Magnus we are presented with a complex situation: there are a number of wonder books and collections of folk magical spells and other grimoire-like material that are attributed to him -- but they were almost certainly not written by him. Among these, the most famous is Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus. I would be perfectly content to see those responsible for the page on Albertus Magnus create a page on "Pseudo Albertus Magnus" -- but until that is done and the links are properly reformatted, there is no other place to link the author of the books attribued to Albertus Magnus except to the Albertus Magnus page. I am working in the occult and folk magic sections, not the Catholic cleric sections, and i would be glad to collaborate on a compromise that would leave everyone happy. What say you? Catherineyronwode 06:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a good compromise would be to have an alternate entry for the works attributed to him that he did not actually do. But like you, I'm not sure how to work that in wikipedia. Perhaps you could add a few words in the main Albert entry explaining the situation, since right now, the categorization kind of comes from nowhere. Maybe later it would be expanded into a separate article. Mlouns 14:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

All right, i will attempt to create a short subsection on this topic for the Albertus Magnus page. I also agree that a new pge called Albertus Magnus (Spurious) be created. (The scholarly name for the unknown author(s) who wrote the occult books is "the Spurious Albertus Magnus" -- but if the word "Spurious" comes first in the Wiki name, rather than in a trailing parenthesis, the new page will fall out of alphabetical order in Wiki's auto-generated category pages, which would not be good, since occultists generally refer to the author(s) of these works as Albertus Magnus for short, even through we know they were not written by Albertus Magnus.) I do not have time to do the full writing this morning, as i have other tasks at hand, but i will try to get to this before the week is over. Please be patient with me, or, if you are so inclined and can get to it more quickly than i can, please take it on yourself. The plan is to (1) produce a short sub-head within the AM article, and then (2) create an AM(S) page. At that point there will be (3) a disambiguation link at the top of the AM page and (4) a disambiguation link on the AM(S) page, (5) retention of the short subhead on the AM page itself that describes the issue, with (6) a link in the AM subhead leading to the new AM(S) page. Does this accord with what you proposed? Catherineyronwode 18:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like you know what you're doing -- I will leave it in your capable hands. Mlouns 02:12, 2 May 2006 (UTC)