He was born in Lauingen, Bavaria. While studying at the University of Padua, he received the habit of the Dominican friars from the hands of the Order’s Master General, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, in 1229. Jordan sent him to study in Cologne, the most important Dominican school at the time.
Albert was a natural-born researcher, with wide-ranging interests and a universal outlook, very much in tune with the height of scholasticism. In that golden age—when he and Thomas Aquinas stood out as the most original thinkers—Albert taught in Hildesheim, Freiburg, Regensburg, Strasbourg, Paris, and Cologne. In Cologne, one of his students was none other than Saint Thomas Aquinas.
He also served as provincial of the Dominicans in Germany and later as bishop of Regensburg, though after only two years he resigned from the episcopate and returned to ordinary religious life within his Order.
He died in Cologne on November 15, 1280. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV permitted his veneration as Blessed. Pope Pius XI canonized him in 1931, and Pope Pius XII later declared him patron of scientists and researchers in the natural sciences. He has rightly earned the titles the Great and Doctor Universalis—the “Universal Doctor”—in recognition of the vast scope of his knowledge.
