Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/299

ALBERT power was broken at the battle of Bouvines (1214). Albert is said to have died in 1232 during an interval of peace between the Empire and the Papacy.

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Albert,, Patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the conspicuous ecclesiastics in the troubles between the Holy See and Frederick Barbarossa; date of birth uncertain; d. 14 September, 1215. He was in fact asked by both Pope and Emperor to act as umpire in their dispute and, as a reward, was made Prince of the Empire. He was born in the diocese of Parma, became a canon regular in the Monastery of Mortara (not Mortura, as Butler has it) in the Milanese, and after being Bishop of Bobbio, for a short time, was translated to the see of Vercelli. This was about 1184. At that time the Latins occupied Jerusalem and, the Patriarchate falling vacant, Albert was implored by the Christians of Palestine to accept the see. As it implied persecution and a prospect of martyrdom, he accepted, and was appointed by Innocent III, who at the same time made him Papal Legate. His sanctity procured him the veneration of even the Muslims. It was while here that he undertook a work with which his name is particularly and peculiarly associated. In Paslestine, at that time, the hermits of Mount Carmel lived in separate cells. One of their number gathered them into a community, and in 1209 their superior, Brocard, requested the Patriarch, though not a Carmelite, to draw up a rule for them. He assented, and legislated in the most rigorous fashion, prescribing perpetual abstinence from flesh, protracted fasts, long silence, and extreme seclusion. It was so severe that mitigations had to be introduced by Innocent IV in 1246.

The end of this great prelate was most tragic. Summoned by Innocent III to take part in the General Council of the Lateran, in 1215, he was assassinated before he left Palestine, while taking part in a procession, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. He is honoured among the saints by the Carmelites, on 8 April. The Bollandists call attention to this curious anomaly, that not at Vercelli, where he was Patriarch, not among the Canons Regular, to whom he properly belonged, but in the Order of the Carmelites, of which he was not a member, does he receive the honour of a saint. "That holy Order could not and ought not to lose the memory of him by whom it was ranked among the Orders approved by the Roman Church; in saying which", adds the writer, "I in no way wish to impugn the Carmelite claim of descent from Elias." At Vercelli Albert does not even figure as Blessed, and the Canons Regular honour him as a saint, but pay him no public cult.

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Albert, See.

Albert,, Cardinal, Bishop of Liège, d. 1192 or 1193. He was a son of Godfrey III, Count of Louvain, and brother of Henry I, Duke of Lorraine and Brabant, and was chosen Bishop of Liège in 1191 by the suffrages of both people and chapter. The Emperor Henry VI violently intruded his own venal choice into the see, and Albert journeyed to Rome to appeal to Celestine III, who ordained him deacon, created him cardinal, and sent him away with gifts of great value and a letter of recommendation to the Archbishop of Rheims, where he was ordained priest and consecrated bishop. Outside that city, soon after, he was set upon by eight German knights of the Emperor's following, who took advantage of the confiding kindness of the saintly bishop, and stabbed him to death. The date of his martyrdom is given variously as 24 November, 1193 (Moroni), 23 November, 1192 (Hoefer), while the Bollandists, placing it in the latter year, give 21 November as its precise date, this being also the day on which the saint's feast is kept. His body reposed at Rheims until 1612, when it was transferred by the Archduke Albert of Austria to the church of the Carmelite convent, which he had just founded at Brussels. The relics of this strenuous defender of ecclesiastical liberty were, by permission of the Holy See, shared with the cathedral of Liège, in 1822.

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Albert Berdini of Sarteano,, Franciscan Friar and missionary, b. at Sarteano, in Tuscany, 1385; d. at Milan, 15 August, 1450. He entered the order of Minor Conventuals in 1405, but later, attracted by the apostolic life and remarkable virtues of St. Bernardine of Sienna, the fame of whose sanctity was spread throughout Italy, and desirous of following more strictly the rule of St. Francis, he passed over to the Friars Minor and became one of the devout disciples and faithful companions of the great Apostle of the Holy Name. Under the masterful guidance of St. Bernardine his fame as an orator became so renowned that he was commonly known as the "King of Preachers" (Rex Prædicatorum); and it is recorded of the famous rhetorician, Guerimus of Ferrara, that when Blessed Albert was announced to preach at Ferrara, the preceptor anticipated the hour for his lecture and, the lecture finished, took his students to hear the sermon of the missionary, saying to them: "You have heard the theory, let us now go and see it put into practice." Pope Eugenius IV commissioned him as one of his legates to negotiate with the Greek Schismatics and induce them to be present at the council held in Bologna in 1453. Though the title of Blessed has always been accorded to Albert of Sarteano, principally on account of the fact, as one of the earlier chroniclers of the order tell us, of the numerous miracles he worked after his death at Milan, his cultus has never been explicitly approved by the Church. Active steps have, however, lately been taken for his formal beatification.

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Albert of Aachen, a chronicler of the First Crusade. His "Chronicon Hierosolymitanum de bello sacro", in twelve books, from 1095 to 1121, printed in Bongars (Gesta Dei per Francos, I, 184–381), is also found in the fourth volume of the "Recueil des historiens des croisades". It is now usually accepted that he was a canon of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), though Wattenbach asserts (Deutsch. Gesch. II, 179) that it is yet doubtful whether the earlier locating of him at the church of Aix-en-Provence be not correct. His narrative is written with little order and less critical skill, his chronology in inexact, and his topographical references are often greatly disfigured. But the work is to be looked on as the outpouring of a deeply religious and poetic heart, which saw in the contemporary Christian knighthood the salvation of the civilization of Christendom. From this point of view, says Dr. Pastor, "the severe criticism of von Sybel, in his 'Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs' (Düsseldorf, 1841), 72–108, loses much of its point." Wattenbach