page_title: Dominican Order
section_title: Saint Albertus Magnus
hierarchical_section_title: Dominican Order / Dominican spirituality / Saint Albertus Magnus
context_page_description: The Dominican Order, formally known as the Order of Preachers, is a mendicant order of the Catholic Church founded in France by the Spanish priest Saint Dominic. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the Papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally carry the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and affiliated lay or secular Dominicans.
  Founded to preach the Gospel and to oppose heresy, the teaching activity of the order and its scholastic organisation placed the Preachers in the forefront of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers. In the year 2018 there were 5,747 Dominican friars, including 4,299 priests. The Dominican Order is headed by the Master of the Order, as of 2019, Gerard Timoner III. Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria are the co-patronesses of the Order.
  A number of other names have been used to refer to both the order and its members.
context_section_description: Another who contributed significantly to the spirituality of the order is Saint Albert the Great, whose influence on the brotherhood permeated nearly every aspect of Dominican life. One of Albert's greatest contributions was his study of Dionysius the Areopagite, a mystical theologian whose words left an indelible imprint in the medieval period. Magnus' writings made a significant contribution to German mysticism, which became vibrant in the minds of the Beguines and women such as Hildegard of Bingen and Mechthild of Magdeburg. Mysticism refers to the conviction that all believers have the capability to experience God's love. This love may manifest itself through brief ecstatic experiences, such that one may be engulfed by God and gain an immediate knowledge of Him, which is unknowable through the intellect alone.
  Albertus Magnus championed the idea, drawn from Dionysus, that positive knowledge of God is possible, but obscure. Thus, it is easier to state what God is not, than to state what God is:
  "... we affirm things of God only relatively, that is, casually, whereas we deny things of God absolutely, that is, with reference to what He is in Himself. And there is no contradiction between a relative affirmation and an absolute negation. It is not contradictory to say that someone is white-toothed and not white".
  Albert the Great wrote that wisdom and understanding enhance one's faith in God. According to him, these are the tools that God uses to commune with a contemplative. Love in the soul is both the cause and result of true understanding and judgement. It causes not only an intellectual knowledge of God, but a spiritual and emotional knowledge as well. Contemplation is the means whereby one can obtain this goal of understanding. Things that once seemed static and unchanging become full of possibility and perfection. The contemplative then knows that God is, but she does not know what God is. Thus, contemplation forever produces a mystified, imperfect knowledge of God. The soul is exalted beyond the rest of God's creation but it cannot see God Himself.
caption: Painting of Albertus Magnus (1206–1280) by Justus van Gent, ca. 1475
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