A Re-Examination of Albert the Great’s Use of Thomas of Cantimpré’s De Natura Rerum

The first twenty-one books of Albert the Great’s massive paraphrastic commentary on Aristotle’s De animalibus (completed in the 1260s) were followed by something very different in books 22-26, namely brief narrative descriptions of various animals arranged alphabetically and relying extensively upon Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum. The result is a peculiar composite that first articulates the general or common principles of animals—e.g., the manner of their reproduction, their nutrition, growth, shared behaviors, etc.—but then provides brief, narrative descriptions of different animal species which are sourced primarily from Thomas of Cantimpré’s encyclopedia (ca. 1256). In the following pages I examine Albert’s use in his De animalibus of Thomas of Cantimpre’s narrative descriptions in De natura rerum. I will show that although Albert often criticized Thomas’s text, he utilized it nonetheless to satisfy the requirements for a natural science and to make that science accessible to a wider audience.