Albertus Magnus teaches Aquinas at Cologne

1250

The polymath German Dominican Albert the Great, alchemist, biologist, and theologian, instructed a quiet, heavyset student named Thomas at the new studium in Cologne. Albert reportedly told a jeering classmate that this silent ox would one day bellow loud enough to fill the world. Albert's own encyclopedic work on botany, zoology, and mineralogy made him the most versatile intellect in the Latin West before his pupil eclipsed him.