ULRIC OF STRASBOURG. - Dominican theologian and philosopher, b. at Strasbourg at the beginning of the 13th century, d. at Paris in 1278.
A pupil of St. Albert the Great in Cologne, he taught philosophy and theology at Strasbourg, was provincial of Teutonia (1272-77), then professor at Paris.
He wrote a commentary on Aristotle's Liber metheorum and De anima. He also commented in part on the Sentences. But of these and of other works, which are attributed to him with less probability, no trace whatsoever remains. There are preserved, on the other hand, 25 letters from the period of his provincialate (ed. by H. Finke, Ungedruckte Dominikanerbriefe des 13. Jahrhunderts, Paderborn 1891, nos. 47-59, 66-78, 81), a sermon written in Old German (ed. by J. Daguillon, U. de S. prédicateur, in La vie spirituelle, suppl., 17 [1927], pp. 90-94), and the Liber de Summo Bono. Written at the same time as the Sum. Theol. of St. Thomas, the Liber does not have the unity and systematic character of the works of the Aquinate; nevertheless it represents a notable advance over the earlier Summae for the organic quality of the matter treated and the originality of the plan of composition. Evident is the Neoplatonic orientation that U. inherits from St. Albert the Great, whose commentary on the De Divinis nominibus he especially exploits. U. also depends on other Neoplatonic works, such as the Liber de Causis and the Metaphysica of Avicenna. God, according to U., is the formal esse of all beings, not in a pantheistic sense, but because who already wore the episcopal insignia without having been consecrated, were violently attacked at the Synod of Ingelheim (20 Sept. 972). Adalbero, forestalled by death, could not succeed his uncle, who followed him to the grave a short distance behind. He was buried in the collegiate church of St. Afra, later a Benedictine church under the title of Sts. Ulrich and Afra. He was solemnly inscribed in the catalogue of the saints by John XV (31 Jan. 993); the bull of canonization of 3 Feb. of that same year is the first ever issued for such an occasion (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 3848). He is the principal patron of the city and diocese of Augsburg, and his feast is celebrated on 4 July.
Wrongly attributed to him are a Sermo synodalis (PL 135, 1071-74) and an Epi-
he is the efficient and exemplary cause and because he is the light of all intellects. Divine action reaches lower beings through the concurrence of the intelligences, informed by the uncreated light, which regulate the movement of the celestial bodies. The possible intellect has by nature a habitual and confused knowledge of God, which upon contact with things becomes immediately, sine probatione, actual and determinate. Esse is the first emanatio of the first Being. The communication of this esse, which God confers on all creatures, is a diffusion of light: God is pure formal and intellectual light and, since he causes by suam essentiam, the effects are necessarily a diffusion of that light. U. is the connecting link between the Neoplatonism of St. Albert the Great and the theologians and especially the German Dominican mystics of the following centuries, from Tauler to John Nider.
Bibliography10 works
Alfonso D'Amato