St. Albert the Great: Against the Ulpian and the Decretists

IN THE THIRD CENTURY, ULPIAN, THE ROMAN JURISCONSULT, had defined the natural law as what “nature teaches all animals,” quod natura omnia animalia docuit. That definition was assumed by the Emperor Justinian when the jurist Tribonian crafted the Digest of Roman laws sometime in the early 530s. (Digest, 1.1.3). Marriage and procreation were generally considered to be matters that humans shared with animals under this definition of the natural law. That definition had been carried over into the canonical or jurisprudential area, largely unthinkingly, by the Decretists, i.e., Canon lawyers. We have seen, however, that as a result of St. Albert's treatment of the natural law and practical reason, the role of reason was greatly emphasized in the determination of right. Building from the notion that there was a natural law (ius naturale) inscribed in man's very reasoning nature, attached in the power known as synderesis, and from which, based upon knowledge gained by the senses, practical reasoning could be applied through conscience in a syllogistic manner, the union between right and reason was sealed. Because he saw the the ius naturale as a habitus that was at the foundation of rational morality, St. Albert rejected Ulpian's definition of the natural law. As Crowe puts it: "There is no room in [Albert's] view for Ulpian's quod natura omnia animalia docuit--there can be no natural law common to man and brute." Crowe, 121; see also Crowe, 96 (citing In 4 Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a.1.)

Albert the Great by Joos (Justus) van Gent

As we observed in prior blog postings on St. Albert's doctrine of natural law, St. Albert starts his discussion in his Summa de bono by quoting Cicero: the natural law is a force innately inserted or implanted in us: quod non opinio genuit sed quaedam innata vis inseruit. This quaedam innata vis, something of an innate power, distinguishes man from the brute. "Non erit ius naturale," Albert makes clear, "nisi solius hominis. . . . Haec distinctio nec artem nec rationem habet, sicut est mos decretistarum ponere distinctiones." Summa de bono, V, De iust., q. 1, a. 1 (quoted in Crowe, 121, n. 31). "There is no natural right except for in man . . . This distinction they do not have neither in art or in reason, as is put foward in the distinctions of the decretists." "We do not accept," Albert the Great makes clear in another part of his Summa de bono, "in the distinctions which [the decretists] posit, that is that the natural right may be known in many modes, at that one mode is shared in common with the brute animals." Non enim consentimus in distinctionem quam quidem posuerunt, scilicet quod ius naturale multis modis dicatur, et uno modo sit commune nobis cum brutis. Summa de bono, V, De iust., q. 1, a. 2. (quoted in Crowe, 121, n.30).

Albert the Great by Gerda Laufenberg

This is true, St. Albert insists, even of those aspects of man that are most closely aligned with animals, such as coupling, and the procreation and education of children. In comparison to the brute, the procreation of children is not the product of mere sensuality, but is intrinsically bound up in "sense-inclination as found in man." Crowe, 121. Reason is overriding and overarching, so as to pale any sharedness between the brutes and man, even in the matter of procreation. In short, though in brute animals the sexual act may be subject to instinct, in man the sexual act is (or at least ought to be) governed by, and subject to reason or the natural moral law. Since in man the sexual act is subject to reason, it follows, at least for St. Albert, that it is altogether of a different order than the sexual act in brute animals. Albert the Great "appears to grudge the admission that the tendencies of man's animal nature, as regulated by reason, properly form part of the natural law; and he has little patience with the ingenuity of the doctors who made distinctions to accomodate Ulpian." Crowe, 121. This attitude of St. Albert's was maintained by him all his life. As Albert explained years later in his Commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics, only materially, and not in any formal sense, can one describe the act of sexual congress between a man and a woman as belonging to animal nature, and never can it be viewed as something independent of man's reason. Crowe, 122.

Woodcut of St. Albert the Great in his Laboratory