Abstract

The theory of an intuitive knowledge of God and the separate substances, without any conversion to material phantasms, is a doctrine of Albert the Great, which was received by the Cologne Albertists in the fifteenth century as a hallmark of their school in contrast to the Thomistic view. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it aims to present the most popular Albertist texts of the second half of the fifteenth century, which deal with the explanation of the third book of Aristotle’s De anima: a short commentary and three examples of Reparationes, a new literary genre. Secondly, the paper focuses on the way the Albertists read and interpreted Albert’s theory of the intellect: despite the deference to their master, the Albertists changed some important aspects of his doctrine.