Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, theologian, and philosopher. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Catholic theology and Western philosophy.
Thomas was a proponent of natural theology and the father of a school of thought known as Thomism. He argued that God is the source of the light of natural reason and the light of faith. He embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity. He has been described as "the most influential thinker of the medieval period" and "the greatest of the medieval philosopher-theologians". Thomas Aquinas's philosophy influenced modern virtue ethics, aesthetics, and cognitive theory. He has been criticized, notably by Bertrand Russell, for seeking to justify conclusions already dictated by faith rather than follow reason independently.
Thomas's best-known works are the unfinished Summa Theologica, or Summa Theologiae, the Disputed Questions on Truth and the Summa contra Gentiles. His commentaries on Christian Scripture and on Aristotle also form an important part of his body of work. He is also notable for his Eucharistic hymns, which form a part of the Church's liturgy.
As a Doctor of the Church, Thomas is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. He is known in Catholic theology as the Doctor Angelicus, and the Doctor Communis. In 1999, Pope John Paul II added a new title to these traditional ones: Doctor Humanitatis.
Biography
Early life (1225–1244)
Thomas Aquinas was most likely born in the family castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino, controlled at that time by the Kingdom of Sicily,. He was born to the most powerful branch of the family, and his father, Landulf VI of Aquino, Lord of Roccasecca, was a man of means. As a knight in the service of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Landulf of Aquino held the title miles. Thomas's mother, Theodora Galluccio, Countess of Teano, belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family. Landulf's brother Sinibald was abbot of Monte Cassino, the oldest Benedictine monastery. He was the youngest of his family, which included nine children altogether. While the rest of the family's sons pursued military careers, the family intended for Thomas to follow his uncle into the abbacy; this would have been a normal career path for a younger son of Southern Italian nobility.At the age of five, Thomas began his early education at Monte Cassino. After the military conflict between Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX spilt into the abbey in early 1239, Landulf and Theodora had Thomas enrolled at the studium generale established by Frederick in Naples. There, his teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia. According to his biographer Guglielmo Tocco, Martin of Dacia was his teacher of grammar and logic. It was at this university that Thomas was presumably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would influence his theological philosophy. Peter of Ireland was teaching the recently translated works of Aristotle as commented on by the Spanish - Arabic philosopher Averroes. During his study at Naples, Thomas also came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in Naples, who was part of the active effort by the Dominican Order to recruit devout followers.
At the age of nineteen, Thomas resolved to join the Dominican Order. His change of heart, however, did not please his family. In an attempt to prevent Theodora's interference in Thomas's choice, the Dominicans arranged to move Thomas to Rome, and from Rome, to Paris. However, while on his journey to Rome, per Theodora's instructions, his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and brought him back to his parents at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano.
Thomas was held prisoner for almost one year in the family castles at Monte San Giovanni and Roccasecca in an attempt to prevent him from assuming the Dominican habit and to push him into renouncing his new aspiration. Political concerns prevented the Pope from ordering Thomas's release, which had the effect of extending Thomas's detention. Thomas passed this time of trial tutoring his sisters and communicating with members of the Dominican Order.
Family members became desperate to dissuade Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans. At one point, two of his brothers resorted to hiring a prostitute to seduce him, presumably because sexual temptation might dissuade him from a life of celibacy. According to the official records for his canonization, Thomas drove her away wielding a burning log—with which he inscribed a cross onto the wall—and fell into a mystical ecstasy; two angels appeared to him as he slept and said, "Behold, we gird thee by the command of God with the girdle of chastity, which henceforth will never be imperilled. What human strength can not obtain, is now bestowed upon thee as a celestial gift." From then onwards, Thomas was given the grace of perfect chastity by Christ, a girdle he wore till the end of his life. The girdle was given to the ancient monastery of Vercelli in Piedmont, and is now at Chieri, near Turin.
File:Saint Thomas Aquinas Diego Velázquez.jpg|right|thumb|Thomas is girded by angels with a mystical belt of purity after his proof of chastity. Painting by Diego Velázquez.
By 1244, seeing that all her attempts to dissuade Thomas had failed, Theodora sought to save the family's dignity, arranging for Thomas to escape at night through a window. In her mind, a secret escape from detention was less damaging than an open surrender to the Dominicans. Thomas was sent first to Naples and then to Rome to meet Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General of the Dominican Order.
Paris, Cologne, Albert Magnus, and first Paris regency (1245–1259)
In 1245 Thomas was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, where he most likely met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then the holder of the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne, in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV's offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. Because Thomas was quiet and did not speak much, some of his fellow students thought he was slow. But Albertus prophetically exclaimed: "You call him the dumb ox , but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world".Thomas taught in Cologne as an apprentice professor, instructing students on the books of the Old Testament and writing Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram, Postilla super Ieremiam, and Postilla super Threnos. In 1252, he returned to Paris to study for a master's degree in theology. He lectured on the Bible as an apprentice professor, and upon becoming a baccalaureus Sententiarum he devoted his final three years of study to commenting on Peter Lombard's Sentences. In the first of his four theological syntheses, Thomas composed a massive commentary on the Sentences entitled Scriptum super libros Sententiarium. In addition to his master's writings, he wrote De ente et essentia for his fellow Dominicans in Paris.
In early 1256, Thomas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris and one of his first works upon assuming this office was Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, a defense of the mendicant orders, which had come under attack by William of Saint-Amour. During his tenure from 1256 to 1259, Thomas wrote numerous works, including: Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, a collection of twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition prepared for the public university debates he presided over during Lent and Advent; Quaestiones quodlibetales, a collection of his responses to questions de quodlibet posed to him by the academic audience; and both Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate and Expositio super librum Boethii De hebdomadibus, commentaries on the works of 6th-century Roman philosopher Boethius. By the end of his regency, Thomas was working on one of his most famous works, Summa contra Gentiles.
From 1252 to 1257, Thomas lived and worked with saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, of whom he became a fraternal friend. Both of them were teaching theology at the University of Paris. They disagreed about the role of faith and theology in relation to natural reason.
During this period, Thomas wrote the De ente et essentia and the Scriptum super sententias, his first summa. Together with saint Bonaventure, he was also personal advisor to Saint Louis IX of France. According to Angelus Walzde, O.P., it was during this period that Thomas met the future Pope Clement IV, who was also an advisor to the king and French, like Pope Urban IV.
Naples, Orvieto, Rome (1259–1268)
In 1259 Thomas completed his first regency at the studium generale and left Paris so that others in his order could gain this teaching experience. He returned to Naples where he was appointed as general preacher by the provincial chapter of 29 September 1260. In September 1261 he was called to Orvieto as conventual lector, where he was responsible for the pastoral formation of the friars unable to attend a studium generale. In Orvieto, Thomas completed his Summa contra Gentiles, wrote the Catena aurea, and produced works for Pope Urban IV such as the liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and the Contra errores graecorum. Some of the hymns that Thomas wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi are still sung today, such as the Pange lingua, and Panis angelicus. Modern scholarship has confirmed that Thomas was indeed the author of these texts, a point that some had contested.In February 1265 the newly elected Pope Clement IV summoned Thomas to Rome to serve as papal theologian. This same year, he was ordered by the Dominican Chapter of Anagni to teach at the studium ''conventuale at the Roman convent of Santa Sabina, founded in 1222. The studium at Santa Sabina now became an experiment for the Dominicans, the Order's first studium provinciale, an intermediate school between the studium conventuale and the studium generale. Prior to this time, the Roman Province had offered no specialized education of any sort, no arts, no philosophy; only simple convent schools, with their basic courses in theology for resident friars, were functioning in Tuscany and the meridionale during the first several decades of the order's life. The new studium provinciale at Santa Sabina was to be a more advanced school for the province. Tolomeo da Lucca, an associate and early biographer of Thomas, tells us that at the Santa Sabina studium Thomas taught the full range of philosophical subjects, both moral and natural.
While at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale, Thomas began his most famous work, the Summa Theologiae, which he conceived specifically suited to beginner students: "Because a doctor of Catholic truth ought not only to teach the proficient, but to him pertains also to instruct beginners. As the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 3:1–2, as to infants in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat, our proposed intention in this work is to convey those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a way that is fitting to the instruction of beginners." While there he also wrote a variety of other works like his unfinished Compendium Theologiae and Responsio ad fr. Ioannem Vercellensem de articulis 108 sumptis ex opere Petri de Tarentasia.
In his position as head of the studium, Thomas conducted a series of important disputations on the power of God, which he compiled into his De potentia. Nicholas Brunacci was among Thomas's students at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale and later at the Paris studium generale. In November 1268, he was with Thomas and his associate and secretary Reginald of Piperno as they left Viterbo on their way to Paris to begin the academic year. Another student of Thomas's at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale was Blessed Tommasello da Perugia.
Thomas remained at the studium at Santa Sabina from 1265 until he was called back to Paris in 1268 for a second teaching regency. With his departure for Paris in 1268 and the passage of time, the pedagogical activities of the studium provinciale at Santa Sabina were divided between two campuses. A new convent of the Order at the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva began in 1255 as a community for women converts but grew rapidly in size and importance after being given over to the Dominicans friars in 1275. In 1288 the theology component of the provincial curriculum for the education of the friars was relocated from the Santa Sabina studium provinciale to the studium conventuale at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which was redesignated as a studium particularis theologiae. This studium'' was transformed in the 16th century into the College of Saint Thomas. In the 20th century, the college was relocated to the convent of Saints Dominic and Sixtus and was transformed into the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas,.