Spiritus and Plant Formation: Albert the Great’s Restatement of the Pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis

Spirit is a key term in the technical vocabulary of Albert the Great’s botanical investigation. However, spirit is usually ascribed only to animal faculties, and even the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis – the source Albert ascribes directly to Aristotle and aims at commenting on and explaining in his own work on plants – denies its existence in plants1, as will be shown below. It is indeed noteworthy that Albert’s position regarding the presence of spirit in plants contradicts its reference source. Thus, the aim of this contribution is to understand this theoretical difference and the discrepancy between the Aristotelian tradition (including the pseudo- Aristotelian text) and Albert himself. One of the key elements is the semantic field of the term spiritus in Albert the Great as well as in the reference tradition: as will be shown, it needs to be determined which doctrinal accounts are described by the same term. Thus, in order to reconstruct the role that this notion plays in Albert’s botanical account, it is necessary to briefly analyze the tradition that he draws on. In this way, it is possible to delineate elements of continuity and discontinuity in his elaboration, to investigate the precise meanings that the term spiritus assumes in Albert the Great’s De vegetabilibus, and to elucidate the conjunctive and disjunctive elements with regard to his sources and, more generally, the botanical reference tradition.