Homo est animal civile as melius est duos esse simul quam unum. An overview on the biblical quotations in Albert the Great’s Commentary on the Politics

The present paper intends to conduct a pilot study on the source of Albert the Great’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, by focusing on the function played by the biblical references. In general, the Dominican theologian is reluctant to use quotations from the Holy Scriptures to comment on Aristotelian treatises and, as is well known, this particular approach is a declared methodological choice. The Commentarium in octo libros Politicorum Aristotelis, however, is a significant exception. After providing a preliminary overview of the explicit and implicit quotations from the Old and New Testament contained in this commentary, the study attempts to circumscribe some uses of biblical quotations within the historical examples and the moral teachings provided by Aristotle.