On November 15 the Church honors St. Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280), Dominican friar, Bishop of Regensburg, Doctor of the Church, and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas. Born around 1200 at Lauingen in Swabia, he entered the Order of Preachers and taught theology at Paris and Cologne, where his commentaries on Aristotle — which he was the first to make the basis of Christian philosophy — and his writings on natural science (botany, zoology, mineralogy) earned him the title "Universal Doctor." He was a polymath of the first rank, and his student Thomas Aquinas built on his work to create the synthesis of faith and reason that shaped Catholic theology for centuries.
He died on November 15, 1280, in Cologne, and his relics are enshrined in the crypt of St. Andrew's Church (Sankt Andreas) in Cologne — the Dominican church where he taught. He was canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pius XI in 1931. He is patron of natural scientists, philosophers, and medical technicians. St. Andrew's in Cologne, a short walk from the great cathedral, also holds the relics of Blessed John Duns Scotus — and the presence of both Albert and Scotus in the same church made it one of the intellectual pilgrimage sites of the scholastic tradition.
