Species

The Medieval Bridge 41

as being a true peregrine, showing that identication marks were insufcient to act

as the definiens or essence of a species.^41

ALBERTUS MAGNUS ON BEASTS AND PLANTS

Albert of Lauingen, later known as “The Great,” is better known as Albertus
Magnus (1193–1280). He was a Dominican friar who, among other things, taught
Thomas Aquinas and was among the rst to comment upon the works of Aristotle
that were freshly coming out of the Arab tradition. Previously, much logical dis-
cussion in the European intellectual world was founded upon Peter of Lombard’s
Sentences, and the books of Boëthius. Now, works like Aristotle’s De motibus
animalium, which Albert found in Italy, and Historia animalium became com-
monplace (see above).
Albert also had a youthful interest in falconry, which was the proximate source
of the love of nature evidenced in several medieval authors, including, as we have
seen, Frederick II.^42 Unlike Frederick, though, he was and remained an orthodox
member of the Church, later being given the title “Doctor Universalis,” and his
ideas were taught in subsequent educational institutions. He was directly familiar
with Frederick’s work on falconry. Albert may also have learned personally from
Frederick’s falconers, to whom the emperor had given him access.
His major work on natural history is De animalibus, Books 22–26 of which cover
beasts and man. He also produced a long text, based more upon his own observations
than De animalibus had been, on plants, De vegetabilibus. In both, he relied a lot on
Pliny, but occasionally he corrects some of the more mythological accounts of Pliny.
Nevertheless, the Chimera, the Manticore, and other mythological beasts appear in
De animalibus along with some acute and accurate observations, recounted in James
Scanlon’s introduction to the cited edition and translation. Occasionally, he gave sev-
eral separate descriptions for the same animal (e.g., Alces alces, the European elk,
being named as “Alches,” “Aloy,” and “Equicervus”).
In De animalibus, Albert describes, species by species, various animals known,
after a short tract on man, “the most perfect of all animals,” reecting the consensus
of the period.^43 In this tract, he notes that human reproduction is due to sexual inter-
course “by which the potentialities of the two sexes are inextricably mingled.”^44 He
cites De coitu of Constantinus Africanus (c. 1010–1087), a Dominican monk who
translated Arabic medical works, who, he said, held that

the Creator unmistakenly wanted the animal kingdom to endure as a stable entity,

never to die out. To this end He ordained the class of animals to be continually

renewed by the coupling of the sexes and reproduction of the species so that none

would be lost.^45

(^41) Wood and Fyfe 1943, 122.
(^42) Stresemann 1975, chapter 1, Albertus Magnus 1987, 4, 19.
(^43) Books 22 to 26.
(^44) Book 22 [Albertus Magnus 1987, 59].
(^45) A modern translation of De coitu is Delany 1969.