commentary in three volumes on the Books of the Sentences
of Peter Lombard (Magister Sententiarum), and the Summa
Theologiae in two volumes. This last is in substance a
repetition of the first in a more didactic form. Albert's
knowledge of physical science was considerable and for
the age accurate. His industry in every department was
great, and though we find in his system many of those gaps
which are characteristic of scholastic philosophy, yet the
protracted study of Aristotle gave him a great power of
systematic thought and exposition, and the results of that
study, as left to us, by no means warrant the contemptuous
title sometimes given him--the ``Ape of Aristotle.'' They
rather lead us to appreciate the motives which caused his
contemporaries to bestow on him the honourable surnames
``The Great'' and ``Doctor Universahs.'' It must, however,
be admitted that much of his knowledge was ill digested;
it even appears that he regarded Plato and Speusippus as
Stoics. Albertus is frequently mentioned by Dante, who made
his doctrine of free-will the basis of his ethical system.
Dante places him with his pupil Aquinas among the great lovers
of wisdom (Spiriti Sapienti) in the Heaven of the Sun.
See Paget Toynbee, ``Some Obligations of Dante to Albertus
Magnus'' in Romania, xxiv. 400-412, and the Dante
Dictionary by the same author. For Albert's life see J.
Sighart, Albertus Magnus, sein Leben und seine Wissenschaft
(Regensburg, 1857; Eng. trans., Dixon, London, 1876); H. Finke,
Ungedruckte Dominikanerbriefe des 13. Jahrh. (Paderborn,
1891). For his philosophy A. Stockl, Geschichte d.
scholastischen Philosophie; J. E. Erdmann, Grundriss d. Ges.
d. Phil. vol. i. 8. The histories of Haureau, Ritter,
Prantl and Windelband may also be consulted. See also W.
Feiler, Die Moral d. A. M. (Leipzig, 1891); M. Weiss,
Ueber mariologische Schriften des A. M. (Paris, 1898); Jos.
Bach, Des A. M. Verhaltniss zu d. Erkenntnisslehre d.
Griechen, Romer, Araber u. Juden (Vienna, 1881); Herzog-Hauck,
Realencyk. (1897); Vacant, Dict. Theol. Cathol. (s.v.);
Ch. Jourdain in Dict. d. sciences philos. (s.v.); M. Joel,
Das Verhaltniss A. d. G. zu Moses Maimonides (Breslau, 1863).
ALBERUS, ERASMUS (c. 1500-1553), German humanist, reformer
and poet, was a native of the village of Sprendlingen near
Frankfort-on-Main, where he was born about the year 1500.
Although his father was a schoolmaster, his early education
was neglected. Ultimately in 1518 he found his way to the
university of Wittenberg, where he studied theology. He had
here the good fortune to attract the attention of Luther and
Melanchthon, and subsequently became one of Luther's most
active helpers in the Reformation. Not merely did he fight
for the Protestant cause as a preacher and theologian, but
he was almost the only member of Luther's party who was able
to confront the Roman Catholics with the weapon of literary
satire. In 1542 he published a prose satire to which Luther
wrote the preface, Der Barfusser Monche Eulenspiegel und
Alkoran, an adaptation of the Liber confermitatum of the
Franciscan Bartolommeo Albizzi of Pisa (Pisanus, d. 1401
), in which the Franciscan order is held up to ridicule. Of
higher literary value is the didactic and satirical Buch von
der Tugend und Weisheit (1550), a collection of forty-nine
fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of
Church and State. His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly
and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions
with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic
satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows. Several
of Alberus's hymns, all of which show the influence of his
master Luther, have been retained in the German Protestant
hymnal. After Luther's death, Alberus was for a time Diakonus
in Wittenberg; he became involved, however, in the political
conflicts of the time, and was in Magdeburg in 1550-1551,
while that town was besieged by Maurice of Saxony. In 1552
he was appointed Generalsuperintendent at Neubrandenburg
in Mecklenburg, where he died on the 5th of May 1553.
Das Buch von der Tugend und Weisheit has been edited by W.
Braune (1892); the sixteen Geistliche Lieder by C. W. Stromberger
(1857). Alberus' prose writings have not been reprinted in recent
times. See F. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Erasmus Alberus (1894).
ALBERY, JAMES (1838--1889), English dramatist, was born in
London on the 4th of May 1838. On leaving school he entered
an architect's office, and started to write plays. After many
failures he at last succeeded in getting an adaptation--Dr
Davy --Produced at the Lyceum (1866). His most successful
piece, Two Roses, a comedy, was produced at the Vaudeville in
1870, in which Sir Henry Irving made one of his earliest London
successes as Digby Grant. He was the author of a large number
of other plays and adaptations, including Jingle (a version
of Pickwick), produced at the Lyceum in 1878, and Pink
Dominoes, the latter being one of a series of adaptations
from the French which he made for the Criterion theatre. At
that house his wife, the well-known actress, Miss Mary Moore,
played the leading parts. He died on the 15th of August 1889.
ALBI, a city of south-western France, capital of the
department of Tarn, 48 m. N. E. of Toulouse, on a branch
line of the Southern railway. Pop. (1906) 14,956. Albi
occupies a commanding position on the left bank of the
Tarn; it is united to its suburb of La Madeleine on the
right bank by a medieval and a modern bridge. The old town
forms a nucleus of narrow, winding streets surrounded by
boulevards, beyond which lie modern quarters with regular
thoroughfares and public gardens. The cathedral of Sainte
Cecile, a fine fortress-church in the Gothic style, begun
in 1277, finished in 1512, rises high above the rest of the
town. The exterior, flanked at the western end by a lofty
tower and pierced by high, narrow windows, is devoid of
ornament. Its general plainness contrasts with the elaborate
carving of the stone canopy which shelters the southern
portal. In the interior, which is without transepts or aisles,
the roodscreen and the choir-enclosure, which date from about
1500, are masterpieces of delicate sculpture; the vaulting
and the walls are covered with paintings of the 15th and 16th
centuries. The archbishop's palace to the north-east of the
cathedral is a fortified building of the 14th century. St
Salvi, the chief of the other churches of Albi, belongs
to the 13th and 15th centuries. A statue of the sailor La
Perouse (1741-1788) stands in the square named after him.
Albi is the seat of an archbishop, a prefect and a court of
assizes. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce,
a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a lycee
and training colleges. The industrial establishments of the
town include dye-works, distilleries, tanneries, glass-works
and important flour-mills. It is also a centre for hat-making,
and produces cloth-fabrics, lace, umbrellas, casks, chairs,
wooden shoes, candles and pastries. Trade is in wine and anise.
Albi (Albiga) was, in the Gallo-Roman period, capital of
the Albigenses, and later of the viscounty of Albigeois,
which was a fief of the counts of Toulouse. From the 12th
century onwards, its bishops, the first of whom appears
to have lived about the 3rd century, began to encroach
on the authority of the viscounts; the latter, after the
Albigensian war, lost their estates, which passed to Simon
de Montfort and then to the crown of France. By a convention
concluded in 1264 the chief temporal power in the city was
granted to the bishops. The archbishopric dates from 1678.
ALBIAN (Fr. Albion, from Alba = Aube in France), in
geology the term proposed in 1842 by A. d'Orbigny for that
stage of the Cretaceous System which comes above the Aptian
and below the Cenomanian (Pal. France. Cret. ii.). The
precise limits of this stage are placed somewhat differently
by English and continental geologists. In England it is
usual to regard the Albian stage as equivalent to the Upper
Greensand plus Gault, that is, to the ``Selbornian'' of
Jukes-Browne. But A. de Lapparent would place most of the
UPper Greensand in the Cenomanian. The English practice
is to commence the upper Cretaceous with the Albian; on
the other hand, this stage closes the lower Cretaceous
according to continental usage. It is necessary therefore,
when using the term Albian, to bear these differences in
mind, and to ascertain the exact position of the strata by
reference to the zonal fossils. These are, in descending
order, Pecten asper and Cardiaster fossarius, Schloen
bachia rostrata, Hoplites lautus and H. interruptus,
Douvilleiceras mammillalum. In addition to the formations
mentioned above, the following representatives of the Albian
stage are worthy of notice: the gaize and phosphatic beds of
Argonne and Bray in France; the Flammenmergel of North Germany;
the lignites of Iltrillas in Spain; the Upper Sandstones
of Nubia, and the Fredericksburg beds of North America.
See GAULT, GREENSAND, and CRETACEOUS. (J. A. H.)
ALBIGENSES, the usual designation of the heretics---and
more especially the Catharist heretics--of the south of
France in the 12th and 13th centuries. This name appears to
have been given to them at the end of the 12th century, and
was used in 1181 by the chronicler Geoffroy de Vigeois. The
designation is hardly exact, for the heretical centre was
at Toulouse and in the neighbouring districts rather than at
Albi (the ancient Albiga.) The heresy, which had penetrated
into these regions probably by trade routes, came originally
from eastern Europe. The name of Bulgarians (Bougres)
was often applied to the Albigenses, and they always kept
up intercourse with the Bogomil sectaries of Thrace. Their
dualist doctrines, as described by controversialists, present
numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils, and still
more to those of the Paulicians, with whom they are sometimes
connected. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to form
any very precise idea of the Albigensian doctrines, as our
knowledge of them is derived from their opponents, and the
very rare texts emanating from the Albigenses which have
come down to us (e.g. the Rituel cathare de Lyon and the
Nouveau Testament en provencal) contain very inadequate
information concerning their metaphysical principles and moral
practice. What is certain is that, above all, they formed
an anti-sacerdotal party in permanent opposition to the Roman
church, and raised a continued protest against the corruption
of the clergy of their time. The Albigensian theologians and
ascetics, the Cathari or perfecti, known in the south of
France as bons hommes or bons chretiens, were few in
number; the mass of believers (credentes) were perhaps not
initiated into the Catharist doctrine; at all events, they were
free from all moral prohibition and all religious obligation,
on condition that they promised by an act called convenenza
to become ``hereticized'' by receiving the consolamentum, the
baptism of the Spirit, before their death or even in extremis.
The first Catharist heretics appeared in Limousin between
1012 and 1020. Several were discovered and put to death
at Toulouse in 1022; and the synod of Charroux (dep. of
Vienne) in 1028, and that of Toulouse in 1056, condemned
the growing sect. The preachers Raoul Ardent in 1101 and
Robert of Arbrissel in 1114 were summoned to the districts
of the Agenais and the Toulousain to combat the heretical
