According to the near-contemporary testimony of Tolomeo of Lucca (Historia Ecclesiastica [1317], 22.19) and confirmed by other, later sources, Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) was more than 80 years old when he died on November 15, 1280, establishing the turn of the thirteenth century as the terminus ante quem of his birth. He was born in the town of Lauingen in Schwaben in the diocese of Augsburg, at the time a part of Bavaria, the son of a knight in the service of the counts of Bollestadt. He was already a student in the studium litterarum at Padua when, in 1223, Jordan of Saxony came in search of recruits to the Dominican Order among the young men in residence at the new university. Albert received the habit from Jordan sometime around Easter of 1223 and was sent to Cologne for his novitiate. By 1228 he had become a...