Amalia Cerrito

This essay is devoted to Albert the Great’s theoretical treatment of fatherhood and motherhood, male and female genders, in the generation of the vegetabilia. While animals reproduce by the mating of female and male individuals, plants do not display a sexual distinction through a male and female configuration. Moreover, in the generation of plants, the maternal and paternal functions are not performed by individuals of the same species as what is generated. To fulfill the generative process, plants require the external agency of the Sun and the ground, traditionally deemed as “pater et mater plantarum”. The question of the generation of plants is dealt with at length in Albert’s De vegetabilibus et plantis, where he gives an extensive treatment of plants’ life modeled after the epistemology of Aristotle’s works on animals. This theoretical approach is not confined to Albert’s natural philosophical works but extends also to his theological investigation. By adopting an interdisciplinary standpoint, this essay will show how Albert progressively develops an explicative model for plants generation that, through the comparison with animal generation, aims at identifying the respective domains of matter and form, fatherhood and motherhood, male and female genders, also in the generation of plants.

In his De vegetabilibus et plantis, Albert the Great reorganizes the entire botanical knowledge of his time, creatively resorting to Aristotelian epistemic principles. Plant complex physiology is theoretically relevant for the theological-philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, plant life is mostly hidden, preventing direct investigation. This is borne out by unclear and fragmentary arguments ascribed to the ‘philosophers’ in the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis. To rebut ‘those who treated the life of plants confusedly’, Albert explains the vegetative soul in a more rigorous way, exploring innovative themes such as sensitivity and the levels of touch. Going deeper into the reasons for the vegetative power, Albert also highlights the relationship between plant and matter to more general issues.

In the 13th century, the availability of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy encouraged forms of integration between libri naturales and sapientia biblica. Instead of diving into allegory and symbolism, several Dominican exegetes began to explore more realistic approaches. The foremost figure is Albert the Great. In his biblical commentaries, philosophy of nature and theology join forces as complementary forms of knowledge. By focusing on Albert’s De vegetabilibus, this paper is aimed at analyzing in which ways the Dominican master reuses his naturalistic and, especially, botanical knowledge as an exegetical tool to deepen both the historical and the allegorical sense, realism and spiritual interpretation.