Blessedness

Blessedness

Blessedness

In many of Aquinas’s works, we find him maintaining that human beings are born in sin, that they frequently sin, that they depend on God’s grace for ultimate salvation, and that some of them end up enjoying everlasting union with God (blessedness) in heaven while others endure everlasting punishment in hell. All these conclusions feature in the quodlibetals, sometimes coming with various reflections on our human nature and abilities.

Hence, for example, Quodlibet VIII, q.9, a.1, assumes the reality of blessedness (beatitudo) and asks what it is to be blessed or completely happy. Aquinas replies that we obtain blessedness as we obtain what we ultimately desire while also knowing it for what it is, and he says that what we ultimately desire is God. He observes: “The end of our desire is God. Hence, the act that first unites us to God is the origin and substance of our blessedness. But we are first united to God by an act of our intellect. Hence, the vision of God, which is an act of intellect, is the origin and substance of our blessedness.” In Quodlibet VIII, q.9, a.2, which lacks parallels in other writings of Aquinas, we find him concluding that the blessed contemplate Christ’s divinity before his humanity, but delight in the contemplation of each. Again, in Quodlibet IX, q.8, which also lacks parallels elsewhere, we find Aquinas firmly insisting that all the saints canonized by the Church are indeed enjoying blessedness in heaven; none of them is in hell. The objections to this conclusion note (a) that nobody in this life can know that they are finally saved; and (b) that canonization based on reports of miracles and the lives of those canonized might be grounded on errors. But Aquinas strongly maintains that the Church cannot err about something as important as canonization. “Since the honor that we give to the saints is a sort of profession of our faith in the glory of the saints,” he says, “we should devoutly believe that the Church cannot err in judgments about them either.”

So, the quodlibetals are clear about the certainty of some people enjoying blessedness. But they are equally clear about the reality of the damned. Indeed, they have rather more to say about the damned than the blessed, as we can see from Quodlibet VII, q.5; Quodlibet VIII, q.7 and q.8; Quodlibet II, q.7; and Quodlibet III, q.10.

Damnation

Quodlibet VII, q.5, contains three questions: (1) Will the bodies of the damned be incorruptible? (2) Will they rise with their deformities? (3) Will they be punished in hell with bodily weeping and bodily worms? To (1), Aquinas replies that the bodies of the damned will certainly be incorruptible and that “the primary and principal cause of their incorruptibility is divine justice, which will preserve the bodies of the damned in their everlasting punishments.” In response to (2), Aquinas argues that the bodies of the damned will be raised with all their limbs “so that the whole body of the reprobate may be punished.” But he expresses agnosticism about whether or not God will have the damned deformed in other ways. With respect to (3), Aquinas’s answer is that “the worm will be spiritual: the gnawing of conscience eating away at the soul.” He adds: “The weeping will be spiritual as well: such suffering can be called weeping.”

Questions about bodily punishment for the damned surface again in Quodlibets VIII, II, and III. Will the damned be punished by water as well as fire? In Quodlibet VIII, q.8, a.1, Aquinas concludes that “fire and water and the like will affect the bodies of the damned by a spiritual action. That is, they will impart their qualities to the bodies of the damned with a spiritual existence, in the way that the species of colors exist in the air and in the eye without making them colored. Hence, the bodies of the damned will feel the pain of fire without being turned into fire.” In Quodlibet II, q.7, a.1, Aquinas argues that the soul of someone damned and existing prior to the person’s resurrection can be “affected” by bodily fire in the sense of being “kept from following its own impulse or inclination.” And in Quodlibet III, q.10, a.1, he says that the soul of such a person “suffers the punishment of being somehow bound by bodily fire.”

Grace

The reality of divine grace is presumed throughout the quodlibetals. But grace is only treated directly in itself in a few places—Quodlibet IX, q.6, a.1, and Quodlibet I, q.4, a.2—both of which have parallels in other works of Aquinas. In the first of these texts, Aquinas considers whether the grace of charity is increased in essence. Having reflected on different senses of the word “in” as it might relate to an increase in essence, Aquinas answers that the amount of a person’s charity can increase without its essence being destroyed. In the second text, he deals with the question of whether people without grace can prepare themselves for grace by their free will alone. In his earlier commentary on the Sentences Aquinas’s answer was “Yes,”⁷¹ but here in the quodlibets, as elsewhere, his answer is “No.”⁷² With an eye on what he takes to be the heretical teaching of Pelagius (c. 360–418) and his followers, Aquinas argues that “human beings need the help of grace, not only to merit reward but also to prepare themselves for grace.” In this connection, he appeals to the absurdity of supposing that all our deliberations depend on prior deliberations. “If we ask how people begin deliberating,” he notes, “we cannot say that their deliberation results from deliberation, since that would go on forever. Hence, there must be an external source that moves people’s minds to deliberate about things to do; and it must be something better than the human mind” (i.e., God).

Sin

The quodlibetals contain many verdicts from Aquinas about sin, in general and in particular. These verdicts are too numerous to go through here, but some of them are worth flagging. The first thing to note is that Aquinas spends time in the quodlibets dealing with “original sin,” which he takes to be sin in which all the descendants of Adam are born, sin which cannot be removed or forgiven without Christian baptism.⁷³ So, in Quodlibet VI, q.9, a.1, we find him discussing whether baptized people transmit original sin to their offspring. His verdict is that “just as spiritual generation (being born again through the gospel) produces children in Christ without sin, bodily generation produces children in the old Adam with original sin.” Again, in Quodlibet V, q.5, a.1, Aquinas deals with the question, “If Adam had not sinned, would all the same people that are saved now still have been saved?” Aquinas’s answer, which he presents as disagreeing with that of St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033/4–1109), is that “many people who are saved now would not have been born and thus would not have been saved if the first man had not sinned.” Aquinas defends this answer by appeal to the essential role that he thinks parents play in the generation of their offspring: “As with other animals, in the generation of a human being the father’s seed is the agent, while the mother provides the matter for the seed to act on and form into a human body.”⁷⁴ If their parents had not had intercourse, then certain people who are saved now would never have been born, and thus would not have been saved. The reference to “seed” (semen) here recurs in Quodlibet XII, q.20, a.1, where Aquinas considers whether original sin is “transmitted by the transmission of seed.” He argues that it is.

That Aquinas takes sin to be a grave matter is obvious from Quodlibet I, q.5, a.1, where the question is whether a contrite person should prefer being in hell to sinning. Aquinas’s answer is that such a person “ought to prefer suffering any sort of punishment since contrition is impossible without charity, which rejects all sin.” Sinning, says Aquinas, “involves acting against God, while being punished involves suffering something against oneself. Hence, charity requires a contrite person to choose any punishment over the guilt of sin.”

What examples of sin does Aquinas cite in the quodlibets? In Quodlibet X, q.6 and q.7, he tries to deal with what he calls “sins opposed to right action” and “sins opposed to right faith.” The questions about sins opposed to right action are: (1) Is honoring rich people because of their wealth a sin? (2) Is not fending off a bad reputation a sin? and (3) Is wearing expensive clothing always a sin? The questions about sins opposed to right faith are: (1) Should we consort with heretics? and (2) Should heretics who return to the Church be readmitted? Aquinas’s replies to all five questions read like somewhat cautious “catch-all” determinations.

In response to the question about honoring rich people, Aquinas says that if their wealth is a relevant reason for honoring them, then it is permissible to honor rich people because of their wealth; otherwise it is a matter of preferential treatment, which is not permissible. Moreover, it is appropriate to honor rich people, who have a “higher status in the earthly state,” if doing so does not conflict with God’s law, and given that “the state is honored through the people,” since “we have to maintain the world’s customs in matters required by our common life in the world,” and wealth can enable people to do much good.

In response to the question about disregarding one’s own reputation, Aquinas says:

Both, namely disregarding one’s reputation and taking an interest in it, can be praiseworthy or vicious. . . . Taking an interest in one’s own reputation for the sake of one’s neighbor is charitable, while interest in it for one’s own sake is vain. On the other hand, disregarding one’s own reputation as far as oneself is concerned is humble, while doing so where one’s neighbor is concerned is lazy and cruel. . . . Those whose position or state of perfection obligates them to see to other people’s salvation commit a sin by not fending off a bad reputation as much as possible. But those with a greater responsibility for their own salvation can look to their humility and disregard their own reputation, whether good or bad. . . . There are two ways to fend off a bad reputation: either by avoiding what gives rise to it, or by checking the talk of one’s detractors. Everyone is bound to avoid a bad reputation in the first way, since not doing so would cause active scandal, which is always a sin. But not everyone is bound to avoid a bad reputation in the second way; only those with an obligation to see to the salvation of their neighbors are bound to do so.

In response to the question about wearing expensive clothing, Aquinas says that we must distinguish between “public” and “private” people. Public people can wear expensive clothing “to encourage respect for their rank,” and they can wear cheap clothing “for the sake of their own humility, as long as what they do to safeguard their authority does not degenerate into pride.” About “private people,” Aquinas remarks:

It is virtuous for them to wear even worse clothing than their status requires for the sake of their own humility. . . . Even so, it is permissible for such people to wear expensive clothing in keeping with their own station, although it is a sin to do so beyond their station. Yet “expensive” is a relative term like “large.” What is expensive for one person is not expensive for another. Hence, expensive clothing is always clothing beyond one’s own station. In that sense, wearing expensive clothing is always a sin.

In response to the questions about heretics, Aquinas argues against consorting with heretics, but for readmitting them into the Church should they truly repent of their errors concerning matters of faith or morals. His reasons for the first judgment here are fourfold: First, heretics are people who have been excommunicated, and it is wrong to consort with those who are excommunicated. Second, talking with heretics could lead to us being corrupted by them. Third, we should not appear to be agreeing with their “perverse doctrines.” Fourth, we do not want our dealing with them to lead others into error. On the other hand, Aquinas says that there is nothing wrong with speaking with heretics “for the sake of their own salvation.” As for heretics who return to the Church, Aquinas says that such people should be readmitted into the Church if they have truly repented, although he adds that it might be proper to refuse them some position in the Church that they previously enjoyed. But “merciful exceptions can be made for certain people, especially for the good of peace or for some other benefit sought thereby.”

Sin comes in for particular attention again in Quodlibet VIII, q.6, and Quodlibet I, q.9. In Quodlibet VIII, q.6, the questions are: (1) Is it a sin for a man to go to church for the stipends, when he would not go otherwise, even if he initially accepted the prebend in order to serve God? (2) Is it a sin not to give to a poor beggar if one has a surplus? (3) When opinions differ about an action, as they do about having more than one prebend, is it a sin to follow the riskier opinion? (4) Is lying always a sin? and (5) Does one sin as much as one intends to sin? In Quodlibet I, q.9, the questions are: (1) Is sin some sort of entity? (2) Is swearing falsely by God a more serious sin than murder? (3) Is it a sin to violate a papal decree out of ignorance? and (4) Is it a mortal sin for a monk to eat meat?⁷⁵

Aquinas’s response to the question about going to church for the stipends is:

If receiving the stipends is the principal end the man intends for the activity, then he commits simony, and thus mortal sin. But suppose God is the principal end of the man’s action, and the stipends are only secondary. If he receives the stipend not as an end, but as something needed to survive, then he does not sell the spiritual action, and thus does not commit simony or sin. For in that case receiving the stipend is not why he goes to church; it just determines why he goes right now rather than some other time.

Aquinas’s response to the question about giving to the poor is that those with a surplus have a general obligation to give to the poor, and they sin if they neglect to give to someone whom they can clearly see to be in dire need. But, he adds: “even though one is obligated to give one’s surplus to the poor, one is not obligated to give to every poor person or to this particular person. Rather, one is obligated to distribute one’s surplus in the way that seems best. Nor is one obligated to ask a poor person anything. It would be too burdensome to have to ask every poor person, especially since it is the responsibility of those in need to explain their situation.”

Aquinas’s main reply to the question about following the riskier of two opinions is measured and is better quoted in full than summarized. It runs:

Now, when there are two contrary opinions about the same thing, one of them has to be true and the other has to be false. Hence, when one does something against the opinion of some masters (e.g., having more than one prebend), their opinion is either true or false. If their opinion is true, then one is not excused from sin, even if one acts in accord with one’s conscience. For in that case one does something against God’s law. But if their opinion is false, and the contrary opinion one follows is true (i.e., if having more than one prebend is truly permissible), then we need to make a distinction. If one’s conscience says the opposite, then again one sins. For in that case one does something against one’s conscience, though not against the law. But suppose one’s conscience does not say the opposite with certainty, and the difference of opinions has made one somewhat doubtful. If one has more than one prebend while still in doubt, then one puts oneself at risk, and so certainly sins. For then one loves temporal gain more than one’s salvation. But if the differing opinions have not made one doubtful, then one does not put oneself at risk or sin.⁷⁶

Aquinas’s response to the question about whether lying is always a sin squares with what we find him saying in Summa Theologiae II-II, q.110, a.3. He argues that lying is always a sin, though his treatment of lying in the quodlibets is much briefer than his treatment in the Summa Theologiae. As for the question about intending to sin mortally, Aquinas interprets it as asking whether it is a mortal sin to do what one believes to be a mortal sin. And he says that it is, since acting against one’s conscience is a mortal sin, even when one’s conscience is mistaken about what one is doing, and even when one is to blame for the mistake.

The question about whether sin is an entity is clearly a philosophical or metaphysical one, and Aquinas answers it as readers of his other works might expect him to do. He says that sin is something that admits of degrees, as our actions lack goodness in different ways; thus it is not a “pure privation” (a “nothing at all,” as it were), although it is still a privation (a “lacking”). Its existence amounts to a disorder in an action committed—the action here being perfectly real. So, he says: “As an act, therefore, sin is some sort of entity, but its disorder is a privation, which is why sin is called nothing.” He means that sin is always a matter of goodness not being there because something that ought to be there is not.

In response to the question about the seriousness of false oaths, Aquinas insists that swearing falsely by God is a more serious sin than murder.⁷⁷ Contemporary judges in places like Britain and America might not think so. But Aquinas argues that it would not make sense for the testimony in murder trials to be confirmed by oath, unless swearing falsely by God were more serious than murder: someone who was willing to commit the more serious sin of murder would not hesitate, presumably, to commit the lesser sin of perjury. “Hence,” he concludes, “the very fact that oaths are taken in every case involving sin shows clearly that swearing falsely by God ought to be considered the greatest sin—and for good reason, since swearing falsely in God’s name is like a denial of God’s name. Hence, the sin of swearing falsely by God comes second after idolatry.”⁷⁸

As for Aquinas’s response to the third and fourth questions in Quodlibet I, q.9, he argues that one sins if one knows about a papal decree and disobeys it, and that one sins if one violates a papal decree that one can and should know about, even if one did not know about it, but that one does not sin if one disobeys a papal decree that one cannot possibly have known about. When it comes to monks committing mortal sin by eating meat, Aquinas is obviously thinking about monks living under the Rule of St. Benedict. He starts by saying that, where mortal sin is concerned, all of us—monks or not—are in the same boat: mortal sin is mortal sin. But Aquinas agrees that monks might do something that “contradicts an obligation they took on with the vows they professed,” leading them to sin mortally when someone in another state of life might not sin mortally by doing the same thing. It then occurs to Aquinas that, if that is so, becoming a monk should be something that no sane person should do for fear of committing many mortal sins on a daily basis because of a religious “rule” to which they have committed themselves. With that worry raised, Aquinas shows his hand as a Dominican by his approach to sin and religious observance. He says:

The order of preaching friars, for instance, has the safest and securest form of profession, which is not a promise to keep the rule but, rather, obedience according to the rule.⁷⁹ Hence, their vow binds them to do the things commanded in the rule, and to do what their superior commands them to do according to the tenor of the rule. But other things that are not commanded in the rule do not fall directly under their vow, and hence not doing them is not a mortal sin.

So, Aquinas ends up saying that “abstaining from meat is not set down in blessed Benedict’s rule as a command but, rather, as a custom. Hence, a monk who eats meat is not for that reason guilty of mortal sin unless he does so out of disobedience or contempt.”

For just a few more examples of treatments of sin, we might note Quodlibet IV, q.11, a.1, and Quodlibet XII, q.21, a.1, where we find Aquinas addressing the questions: (1) Are impulses always sins? and (2) Is it a mortal sin to consent to pleasure?⁸⁰

In response to the question about impulses, Aquinas makes it clear that he is discussing whether or not “appetites” or the movements of desire always amount to sins. He notes that people have three kinds of appetite: “The first is natural, since our appetitive power relates to the vegetative soul, as does our power to digest, eliminate, and assimilate. The second appetite is sensual and is moved by the apprehension of our senses. The third appetite is voluntary and is moved by the judgment of reason.” He then argues that sin (implying guilt) “only applies to voluntary acts that are in some way under the sinner’s control,” while “acts of our natural appetite” are “are not subject to the rule of reason,” which is why “no one is guilty for being hungry or thirsty, for instance.” On the other hand, Aquinas argues, the “acts of our sense-appetite are subject to the rule of reason, since reason anticipates them, and can command or forbid them.” Hence, “such movements can have the character of guilt” and “if they follow the judgment of reason, they can even be mortal sins, like the movements of our external members controlled by reason.” Yet, Aquinas adds, if they precede the judgment of reason, such movements are still sins “if they aim at something impermissible, since the person could have repressed them,” though in such cases “the sins are venial and very slight” and can be referred to as “sinful impulses.” Aquinas then concludes by saying that “the movements of our higher—i.e., voluntary—appetite follow the judgment of reason and can thus be mortal sins.”

Aquinas’s response to the question about consenting to pleasure needs to be quoted in full rather than paraphrased. It runs as follows:

This question is not about consenting to the pleasure of a sinful action, since that is obviously a mortal sin; it is about consenting to the pleasure of a mere act of thought, as when one thinks of the pleasure of fornication, and enjoys it, and is pleased by the thought. Now there are two ways to be pleased by a thought: either because of the thinking itself, or because of the object of thought. The first way would be when someone enjoys thinking about a triangle or the wars of a king, not because of the king, but because of the thinking itself. The second way would be when I enjoy thinking about a friend because of the friend, who becomes present to me in and by thought. Hence, a thought can be pleasant precisely because of the thinking involved, which is not a sin. For instance, I might need to explain fornication to someone, and might think of a nice way to explain it, which I enjoy. But if such a thought is pleasant because of its object, that can only come from a love of fornication. Hence, consenting to it would mean consenting to the love and enjoyment of something impermissible, which is a mortal sin.

Human Nature

Aquinas’s various quodlibetal discussions of sin and, of course, what he says about blessedness and damnation all have connections with what he says elsewhere in his quodlibets concerning human nature. Under the present heading, however, it is worth noting some of the points he makes about human knowing and the human soul. Here are some samples we might flag: Quodlibet VIII, q.2, a.1, asks, “Does the soul receive the species by which it knows from things outside the soul?” Quodlibet X, q.3, a.2, asks, “Is the substance of the soul incorruptible?” Quodlibet X, q.4, a.2, asks, “Does the soul perform acts with its sensitive powers while separated from the body?” Quodlibet XII, q.8, a.1, asks, “Does all the knowledge we acquire and possess remain after this life?”

The answer to the first question about the soul’s reception of species can be found in other texts of Aquinas, but here it is presented with particular clarity and neatly contains some of the basic elements in Aquinas’s thinking about cognition. In this text we find Aquinas paying attention to the way in which he thinks that human knowledge takes its start from sense experience. He stresses the idea that understanding can arise as forms that exist materially in things come to be received in our intellect in a nonmaterial way (the idea that we can have in ourselves what a dog is, say, without actually being a dog). He also draws attention to the notion that imagination (imaginatio) can be viewed as arising from sense experience of some sort (as when we imagine things we have never encountered, like a golden mountain, by combining images of things we have encountered, like gold and mountains). Aquinas also draws attention to his understanding of what it is for us to have an “agent” intellect (roughly, an ability to form concepts on the basis of sense experience) and a “possible” intellect (roughly, an ability to retain concepts formed on this basis).⁸¹

Quodlibet X, q.3, a.2’s discussion of the human soul’s incorruptibility, while containing arguments with parallels to be found elsewhere in Aquinas’s writings (e.g., Summa Theologiae I, q.75, a.2 & a.6), also packs a lot into a small space. Aquinas’s discussions of the human soul always proceed from the thought that people are living things and, therefore, animate (having a soul) as opposed to inanimate (lacking a soul). For him, anything animate is a kind of automobile: it has a source of movement within itself and is not something whose movement depends on something in the world acting on it. On his account, for example, dogs and cats and plants are alive while stones and tables are not. He regularly holds that what sets people apart from other living things in the world is their capacity to understand and make choices. So, he thinks that people have an intellective soul which is to be distinguished from whatever they possess that allows them to develop and function in nonintellectual ways. Aquinas does not identify this soul with the human being who has it, for he thinks that human beings are essentially material, rather than essentially spiritual or immaterial beings somehow attached to bodies. For Aquinas, for me to exist as a human being after my death requires my intellective soul to be reunited to my body. But he thinks that the intellective soul of a human being can continue to exist even though the human being whose soul it is has perished. In Quodlibet X, q.3, a.2, he tries to explain how that can be so while emphatically asserting “We have to hold that the substance of the rational soul is incorruptible.”⁸²

What, though, of the human soul after the death of the human being whose soul it is—i.e., the “separated soul,” as Aquinas calls it? Can it still acquire knowledge by means of sensation? The main point made in Aquinas’s determination of this question in Quodlibet X, q.4, a.2, is that it cannot, since each act of the sensitive power of a human being “is performed by the composite of body and soul, and hence cannot be performed by the separated soul.” Yet, Aquinas argues in Quodlibet XII, q.8, a.1, that the knowledge we acquire and possess remains after this life in the souls of both the blessed and the damned, although it will not be accessed in the same way. Why not? Because “What is destroyed is the way of thinking about the knowledge possessed. In this life we always think by turning to mental images because of the body. . . . But that will not be the way of thinking after this life, since there will be no turning to mental images.”⁸³

Clerics and Members of Religious Orders

Aquinas’s quodlibets contain a significant number of articles concerning clerics (meaning, for the most part, priests, bishops, and popes). In Quodlibet VII, q.4, we find his discussions of the questions “Is it always necessary to choose the best man to be a prelate or is it sufficient to choose a good one?” and “Should evil prelates be honored or not?” Quodlibet XI, q.7, a.1, deals with the question “Should only a bishop confer the sacrament of confirmation, or should someone else do so as well?” Quodlibet I contains replies to the questions “Should a parish priest believe his parishioners who claim to have confessed to another priest and give them the Eucharist, or not?” and “If a cleric has prebends in two churches with different offices on the same day, is he bound to say each office?” The quodlibets contain many other comparable questions. Quodlibet III, q.4, a.1, asks, “Is it permissible for a man to seek his own license to teach theology?” Quodlibet III, q.13, a.1, asks, “If a man fails to say the divine office when he is obligated to do so, can another penance be imposed on him for such an omission, or should he be required to redo what he failed to do?” Quodlibet VI, q.5, a.2, asks, “If a cleric at a school has a benefice with or without the responsibility to care for souls, is he bound to say the office of the dead?” Quodlibet VI, q.5, a.3, asks, “Is a bishop bound to give a benefice to the better man?” Quodlibet VI, q.7, asks, “Is it a mortal sin for clerics not to generously give away their superfluous things as alms?” Quodlibet IV, q.8, a.2, asks, “Can the pope grant a dispensation for bigamy?”⁸⁴ Quodlibet IV, q.8, a.4, asks, “Is a prelate of the Church allowed to give a benefice to his own suitable relative if a more suitable man occurs to him just as easily?” Quodlibet V, q.11, a.2, asks, “If a man is canonically elected to the episcopacy, is it better for him to accept his election or to decline it?” Quodlibet V, q.11, a.3, asks, “If a prelate gives an ecclesiastical benefice to one of his relatives in hopes of elevating and enriching his family, does he commit simony?” Quodlibet V, q.14, asks, “Is it permissible for a cleric bound to say the canonical hours to say matins for the next day late at night?” Quodlibet XII, q.12, a.1, asks, “Can a priest without the responsibility to care for souls give absolution in confession?” And Quodlibet XII, q.12, a.3, asks, “Is it permissible to desire to be a bishop?”

Here we have a long list of questions about clerics, some of which might seem irrelevant today, given developments in Roman Catholic canon law and moral theology since the time of Aquinas. But they were questions that people were debating when Aquinas taught at Paris. None of them, however, was as controversial then as the questions that we find Aquinas discussing in Quodlibet VII, q.7, a.1 and a.2; Quodlibet III, q.5; Quodlibet III, q.6, a.1 and a.3; Quodlibet IV, q.12, a.1; and Quodlibet V, q.13, a.1. In dealing with these questions, Aquinas was effectively defending the very existence of the Dominican Order to which he belonged.

When Aquinas began teaching in Paris, the Dominican Order was, as Simon Tugwell puts it, “passing through the worst crisis in its history.”⁸⁵ Because it attracted people looking for what was then a new way of pursuing what is now referred to as a “religious vocation,” it had from its inception attracted a degree of suspicion. Dominicans were not parish priests, and they were not monks. Like the Franciscans, founded a few years before them, Dominicans were mendicant friars living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They also enjoyed papal patronage, which conferred on them an autonomous right to preach and hear confessions.⁸⁶ But they were encountering a serious degree of opposition at the University of Paris during both periods when Aquinas was teaching there.

The opposition to the Dominicans came from secular masters of theology teaching at the university (masters of theology who were priests, but not members of any religious order).⁸⁷ When the Dominicans first set up house in Paris, they were welcomed by the university, and a Parisian master of theology agreed to teach their students. As time passed, however, the Dominicans ended up having two theological magisterial positions assigned to them at the university. And they had the right to have Dominicans continuing to fill these positions when one master left and was replaced by another, an arrangement which left secular masters of theology in Paris feeling threatened by an intrusion of mendicants into their ranks. Some of these secular masters were also highly skeptical about the legitimacy of mendicant friars.

One such skeptic was William of Saint-Amour (born c. 1200), who embarked on a vitriolic attack against all mendicants. He persuaded Pope Innocent IV that the friars were a danger to the Church, and in 1254 Innocent rescinded Dominican and Franciscan privileges to preach and hear confessions without authorization from local bishops. But Innocent IV died in December of 1254, and his successor, Alexander IV, restored to the mendicants what Innocent had rescinded. In the wake of this event, William of Saint-Amour embarked on a sustained anti-mendicant campaign in which the Dominicans were a special target. In 1256, a month or so before Aquinas became a master of theology, William published De Periculis Novissimorum Temporum (On the Dangers of the Last Times).⁸⁸ This work argued that members of religious orders should not be teaching, preaching, or hearing confessions. It also argued that they are bound to do manual labor, rather than begging, in order to support themselves.

Later that year, replies to William appeared from St. Bonaventure and from Aquinas; Alexander IV condemned De Periculis, and William was removed from the University of Paris. Yet renewed hostility to the mendicants flared up again in Paris when Aquinas was back there for his second time as a master.⁸⁹ By then, William of Saint-Amour had revisited his opposition to the mendicants, and one of his friends, the Parisian secular master Gérard of Abbeville (1220–1272), continued William’s line of attack. By that time another practice of the mendicants had become the object of criticism: their reception of boys under the age of eighteen. In 1271, Aquinas wrote against Gérard in Contra Doctrinam Retrahentium a Religione, which attempts to refute arguments used to deter young men from embarking on the life of a religious. It is this anti-mendicant controversy that lies behind Quodlibet VII, q.7, a.1 and a.2; Quodlibet III, q.5; Quodlibet III, q.6, a.1 and a.3; Quodlibet IV, q.12, a.1; and Quodlibet V, q.13, a.1.⁹⁰

The first two articles of Quodlibet VII, q.7 (noticeably long ones when set beside the majority of articles in the quodlibets) deal with the questions “Is working with your hands a commandment?” and “Are people who keep their time free for spiritual works excused from this commandment?” These questions are clearly coming from people who think that true religious should, like monks, be earning their living by manual labor. So, they amount to a challenge to Aquinas as a Dominican who thinks that it is permissible for someone to live as a religious without engaging in manual labor. Aquinas’s responses to these questions, which introduce a number of distinctions, are both nuanced and emphatic. Basically, he concedes that manual labor can be useful for various reasons and obligatory in some contexts. But he denies that there is a command binding on everyone to live by manual labor. He argues that “the commandment to do manual labor does not oblige every single person insofar as it aims to meet some common need, nor insofar as it aims to meet the individual’s own needs, unless such needs exist. Hence, those who have some other permissible means of survival are not bound to work with their hands. But those who lack such means, or who can only make a living by engaging in some impermissible activity, are bound to work with their hands.” Among other things, Aquinas also argues that “manual labor covers any activity that people are permitted to engage in to make a living” and that “the only people obligated to keep the commandment to do manual labor are those who do not have some other permissible means of survival,” meaning that “people engaged in spiritual works who have some permissible means of survival other than manual labor are not required to work with their hands.” Also, he says, “People engaged in spiritual works for the common good should be supported by those who benefit from their service.” In this connection he ranks preaching, contemplation, and exposition of the Bible among spiritual works.

Quodlibet III, q.5, is concerned with receiving people into the religious life. In a.1, Aquinas concedes that circumstances can differ and that it might be “impermissible for certain young people to obligate themselves to enter the religious life, or for them to be received into it.” But he then firmly contends that “once children are capable of using reason, their free will gives them control over themselves in matters bearing on the salvation of their souls. Hence, they can then be baptized and led into the religious life.”

When it comes to young people taking religious vows, Aquinas thinks that much depends on the characters of the young people in question. Some who enter religious life as youngsters should not be obligated by taking a vow to persevere in it, but others can benefit by doing just this. He also argues (a.2) that such a vow binds on pain of sin, (a.3) that even sinners can benefit by becoming religious, and (a.4) that “if a person wanted to enter the religious life, and it was the right time to do so, and all the other circumstances were appropriate, then it would be a grave sin to prevent the person from entering the religious life.”

This is the note struck in Quodlibet IV, q.12, a.1, another lengthy text, where Aquinas returns to the business of receiving young people into religious orders. Here the question is “Should children without experience keeping the commandments be received into the religious life, or obligated to enter it by taking an oath or vow, or encouraged to enter it by means of benefits?” Aquinas begins his response on what is for him an unusually acerbic note. He writes: “The answer to this question is only in doubt because some contentious people have been trying to obscure the truth. . . . So, this is what we shall do to show the truth clearly and palpably (so to speak). Any groundless claims to the contrary should be dismissed, so that we do not have to repeat ourselves endlessly for no reason. And if anyone wants to contradict us, they should write down what they have to say, so that other knowledgeable people can judge whether they teach the truth.” In what follows, Aquinas then argues: First, it can be beneficial for children even before puberty to enter religious life. Second, parents have the right to offer their children to the religious life, and children can offer themselves with their parents’ consent, though “once children have reached the age of puberty, they can enter the religious life even against their parents’ will, and may not be excluded. Indeed, they should be encouraged all the more.” Third, becoming a religious can aid one in keeping the commandments of God. Fourth, “It is good for children to enter the religious life. Hence, it is much better for their will to be set on doing so, which is done by taking an oath or vow.” Fifth, it is plainly wrong to induce people to enter religious life by paying them to do so, but there is nothing wrong with providing financial assistance to someone in order to enable them to become a religious (e.g., by removing some financial impediment, or by funding their education so they can prepare to become a religious).

In Quodlibet III, q.6, a.1, Aquinas deals with a question that might seem to modern readers to be innocent enough, but it is not. It runs: “Can religious (who ought not to have anything of their own either alone or together) give alms from the things that other people give them as alms?” The lack of innocence in the question lies in the fact that it presupposes that religious should not have anything of their own either alone or together. Though all religious at the time of the quodlibets agreed that they owned nothing individually, the Dominicans were happy to speak of themselves as owning things collectively, which some Franciscans denied of themselves on the understanding that all their communal goods belonged to the pope. For this reason, Quodlibet III, q.6, a.1, looks like a kind of “trick” question. Yet, Aquinas refuses to get into a discussion of who actually owns what when it comes to the things that religious have at their disposal. He settles for saying that they can distribute alms to those in need (this being an act of charity) “whether they make such distributions on their own order’s authority or on the authority of a higher superior.”⁹¹

Quodlibet III, q.6, a.3, deals with whether parish priests and archdeacons are more perfect than religious, which puts us right at the heart of the anti-mendicant opposition and Aquinas’s response to it. Opposition to the mendicants coming from secular masters at Paris rested on the idea that the mendicants had no place in the Church and were, therefore, imperfect. Quodlibet III, q.6. a.3, makes it clear that Aquinas disputes this, insisting that religious are indeed perfect. But he is clearly not saying that all religious are better people than nonreligious people, whether clerics or lay. He is making a point about the status of religious in the Church. He is concerned with what he took to be “the state of perfection” entered into by those who become religious, this state being, in his view, recognized as a way of life sanctioned by God’s law and by the Church. As Aquinas notes: “There is a difference between being perfect and being in the state of perfection.” There are, he says, “some people in a state of perfection who are not yet perfect; indeed, some are even sinners. And there are some people who are perfect but are not in a state of perfection.” So, he argues, archdeacons and parish priests take on a certain office when they are ordained, but they do not enter into a state of perfection. As Aquinas says: “Archdeacons and parish priests are like bishops as their servants and assistants, whereas religious are like bishops in their perpetual obligation, which constitutes the state of perfection.”

So, should religious tolerate attacks against them? In Quodlibet V, q.13, a.1, Aquinas offers a yes-and-no answer to this question. Yes, they should bear personal attacks with patience, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 5 about “turning the other cheek.” But “they do not have to put up with their state in life being attacked, if they can counter it, since that amounts to insulting God.”

Pastoral Concerns

Though he regarded preaching and teaching highly, Aquinas was also seriously concerned to comment on practical questions about the behavior and guidance of Christians in general. That is to say, he was strongly concerned with what he would have called cura animarum (“care for souls”). Like many of those raising questions when he conducted his quodlibetal disputations, Aquinas was much interested in matters of pastoral care, moral theology, and practical morals.⁹² This fact is clear from his quodlibets. Hardly any of them come without discussion of something to do with cura animarum. Indeed, it was Aquinas’s quodlibetal dealings with matters concerning cura animarum that had the greatest impact on readers in the years immediately following their publication, largely due to the industry of John of Freiburg.⁹³

A German Dominican, John was a contemporary of Aquinas and may have attended some of his 1269–1272 quodlibetal disputations. By around 1298, John had produced a final edition of a long manual or textbook for confessors known as the Summa Confessorum. This work contained a large number of excerpts from Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae II-II, but it also included the replies from at least twenty-two of Aquinas’s quodlibetals. John’s Summa Confessorum proved to be a much used and very influential text, one which made sections of Aquinas’s quodlibets known to a relatively large readership. In Leonard Boyle’s words, their pastoral teaching “was known and quoted all over Europe from about 1300, finding its way into all sorts of small pastoral manuals, from the Oculus sacerdotis of William of Pagula in England about 1320 to the Manipulus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rocherii in Spain about the same time and into more authoritative works such as the Confessionale of Antoninus of Florence in the middle of the 15th century and the Summa of Sylvester Prierias at the beginning of the 15th.”⁹⁴

Cura animarum issues feature most prominently in the quodlibets deriving from Aquinas’s second time as a master in Paris. Here we find him discussing, for example, questions about the sacrament of penance (Quodlibet I, q.6), prebends (Quodlibet I, q.7, a.1), usury (Quodlibet III, q.7, a.2), bigamy (Quodlibet IV, q.8, a.2), penance (Quodlibet III, q.13, a.1 and a.2), alms (Quodlibet VI, q. 7 and q.8), marriage (Quodlibet V, q.8, a.1 and a.2), ownership and property (Quodlibet XII, q.15), buying and selling (Quodlibet II, q.2, a.2), what is permissible for priests to do (Quodlibet XII, q.10, aa. 1–3), fasting (Quodlibet V, q.9, a.2), and taking oaths (Quodlibet IX, q.9, a.2). In these texts we have Aquinas explicitly concerned with cura animarum, though things that he says about sin throughout his quodlibetals clearly have a bearing on such matters, as well.

Motley Questions

Under this heading we have in mind questions discussed in Aquinas’s quodlibets that are not easily classified. Some of them are questions which Aquinas does not address in any of his other works. For example, Quodlibet II, q.8, a.2, asks “Does a vowed crusader who dies before going on crusade still receive the full forgiveness of sins?”⁹⁵ Aquinas’s answer is that he does if he has been given a plenary indulgence which specifies that it is for vowing to go on crusade, but he does not if the indulgence is given for going on crusade. Other motley questions only dealt with in Aquinas’s quodlibets include “Is a rainbow in the clouds a sign that there will not be a flood?” (Quodlibet III, q.14, a.1) and “Is truth stronger than wine, kings, and women?” (Quodlibet XII, q.14, a.1). Aquinas’s answer to the first question holds that “a rainbow is a sign that there will not be a flood, since it results from a cause that is incompatible with a flood.” In dealing with the second question Aquinas asks which of the things mentioned affect the human heart the most, and he settles on truth. As he explains in his own words:

Human beings can be affected either in body or in soul, and then either through their senses or their intellect, which is either practical or speculative. So, of all the things that can naturally affect the state of the body, the greatest is wine, which makes everyone talk too much. Of all that can affect the sense-appetites, the greatest is pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, and thus women are strongest. In practical matters and things that human beings can do, kings have the most power. But in speculative matters, the greatest and most powerful thing is truth. Now, the body’s powers are below those of the soul, and the powers of sense are below those of the intellect, and the practical intellect is below the speculative. Absolutely speaking, therefore, truth is the best, greatest, and strongest.

Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions differ from all his other writings in ways explained earlier in this introduction. Anyone concerned with his thinking will therefore be interested in them. In addition to being unique among his works as a whole, Aquinas’s quodlibetals are unique in another sense as well, for they are the only quodlibetal questions we know of written by someone who ended up canonized as a saint. If we had no works from Aquinas other than his quodlibets, we would get little sense of his thinking by comparison with what we can derive from reading the other texts of his that we have. But the quodlibets certainly present us with Aquinas doing something that he was not doing in his other writings, and they allow us to see what he could quickly make of questions that were not of his choosing. Sometimes they allow us to see him discussing questions that he deals with nowhere else. Sometimes they provide us with supplements to what he says elsewhere (Quodlibet VIII, q.1, a.1, not mentioned earlier, is a case in point). We also find in his quodlibets passages in which Aquinas seems to take a line that arguably differs from the line he takes in other works (e.g., Quodlibet II, q.2, a.2, and Quodlibet IV, q.3, a.2, both mentioned earlier). At one point, indeed, he explicitly draws attention to a change of mind on his part (Quodlibet VI, q.11, which asks “Does the empyrean heaven have an influence on other bodies?”⁹⁶). In short, Aquinas’s quodlibets contain much to engage students of Aquinas. But they also contain much of interest to anyone concerned with medieval theology and philosophy in general. The present introduction has provided only a sketch of their contents, but readers who work through the whole of Aquinas’s quodlibets will see how this sketch can be filled out and how it can be maintained that each of them “is a genetic sample, so to speak, of the whole of theology as Aquinas and his audience understood it.”⁹⁷

¹ There is a previously published translation of two of these questions, though it was not based on the critical edition of the Latin text, which was not yet available. See Sandra Edwards, ed. and trans., Saint Thomas Aquinas: Quodlibetal Questions 1 and 2, with introduction and notes by Edwards (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983).

² The present volume contains a list of passages in Aquinas’s other works that parallel the articles of his quodlibets. This list, however, should not be taken to indicate that Aquinas says exactly the same thing in the parallel passages as he says in his quodlibets. To see how they relate to each other, one needs to compare and contrast them in detail.

³ When Aquinas was teaching at Paris, only masters were allowed to preside over disputations.

⁴ For an English edition of Aquinas’s commentary on Job (his Expositio in Job ad Litteram, to be dated 1261–1264), see Anthony Damico, trans., Thomas Aquinas: The Literal Exposition on Job, with essays and notes by Martin D. Yaffe (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989).

⁵ Pierre Mandonnet mistakenly claimed that Aquinas invented the quodlibetal disputation as a distinct genre. See P. Mandonnet, “Thomas d’Aquin, créateur de la dispute quodlibétique,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 15 (1926). For criticism of Mandonnet on the origin of quodlibetal disputations, see P. Glorieux, “Aux Origines du Quodlibet,” Divus Thomas 38 (1935). For the rise of disputations among study houses of religious orders such as those of the Dominicans, see L. Meier, “Les Disputes Quodlibétiques en dehors des Universités,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 53 (1958).

⁶ For a scholarly discussion of quodlibetal disputations in medieval theology faculties, see John F. Wippel, “Quodlibetal Questions Chiefly in Theology Faculties,” in Bernardo C. Bazàn, John F. Wippel, Gérard Fransen, and Dale Jacquart, Les Questions Disputées et Les Questions Quodlibétiques dans les Facultés de Théologie, de Droit et de Médecine (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985). Wippel’s contribution to this volume also contains copious reference to other literature on the origin and nature of quodlibetal disputations. Note that the author who pioneered study of quodlibetal disputations among contemporary scholars was Palémon Glorieux (1892–1979), to whom Wippel frequently, and with reason, alludes. Literature in English on quodlibetal disputations, especially those of Aquinas, is currently in short supply. But readers should note the following important studies: Leonard Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” The Thomist 38 (1974); Jacqueline Hamesse, “Theological Quaestiones Quodlibetales,” in Christopher Schabel, ed., Theological Quodlibets in the Middle Ages: The Thirteenth Century (Boston: Brill Academic, 2006); and Kevin White, “The Quodlibeta of Thomas Aquinas in the Context of his Work” (in Schabel, Theological Quodlibets in the Middle Ages, ).

⁷ Research on the rise and practice of quodlibetal disputations is still somewhat in its infancy. There is much that we do not know and need to learn about them. As Hamesse 2006 notes in its first sentence: “Quaestiones quodlibetales have yet to reveal many of their secrets.”

⁸ We cannot rule out the suggestion that masters might sometimes have arranged for some people attending their quodlibetal disputations to raise questions of the master’s choosing. But their doing so would have been exceptional, given the whole idea of a quodlibetal disputation.

⁹ Brian Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio Disputata” (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), p. 16. It was not assumed that, for example, drunken people in the streets of Paris, should they choose to do so, would be attending quodlibetal disputations conducted by Aquinas, and it is highly unlikely that any women were present at them. The expected audience for Aquinas’s quodlibetal disputations would have been mostly students and masters at the University of Paris (all male), people preparing to become masters of theology (all male), and maybe one or more ecclesiastical superiors of various kinds (all male).

¹⁰ The so-called bachelors working under a master were people preparing to become masters themselves.

¹¹ For a discussion of the role played by masters during the course of Parisian quodlibetal disputations, see Wippel, “Quodlibetal Questions Chiefly in Theology Faculties,” pp. 184–185. Quodlibetal disputations generally comprised two days of meetings, with the determination being given on the second day. But a quodlibetal disputation’s general discussion and determination sometimes occurred on the same day.

¹² On this point, see Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” p. 235.

¹³ A notable exception is Quodlibet XII, which clearly seems to be unfinished and unrefined. Quodlibet XI seems to have material missing as well. For more on this, see later in this introduction.

¹⁴ In Quodlibet IV, q.9, a.3, Aquinas has things to say about what teachers should be doing.

¹⁵ Cf. White, “The Quodlibeta of Thomas Aquinas in the Context of his Work,” p. 51. Note, however, that “occasions of academic debate” here could refer to disputations of any kind.

¹⁶ The “Aquinas” in “Thomas Aquinas” (Tommaso de Aquino) seems to flag the name of his family, not the place of his birth. The family was an aristocratic one going back many years before Aquinas was born in one of the castles that it owned. The name of Aquinas’s mother was Theodora. His father’s name was Landulph. For information about Aquinas’s family, see F. Scandone, “La Vita, La Famiglia e la Patria di S. Tommaso de Aquino,” in Innocenzo Taurisano, ed., S. Tommaso d’Aquino OP, Miscellanea Storico-Artistico (Rome: A. Manuzio, 1924).

¹⁷ The best recent scholarly biographies of Aquinas are as follows: James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought and Works (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974); Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 201–351; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). The volume by Torrell originally appeared in French as Jean-Pierre Torrell, L’Initiation á Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa Personne et son Oeuvre (Paris: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse and Editions Cerf, 1993). A third edition has now appeared: Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin. Sa personne et son œuvre, Nouvelle édition profondément remaniée et enrichie d’une bibliographie mise à jour (Paris: Cerf, 2015). See also Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016). Anyone interested in the details of Aquinas’s life should realize that historians frequently find themselves at a loss when trying to determine what Aquinas might have been doing or where he might have been at various times. The biographies noted here all differ to some extent on matters of dating and location. What follows in this introduction sticks to what can be said about Aquinas’s life with a reasonable degree of certainty. For early sources on Aquinas’s life, see D. Prümer and M. H. Laurent, eds., Fontes Vitae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis (published as fascicles attached to Revue Thomiste, 1911–1937). For a less complete selection of sources, see A. Ferrua, Thomae Aquinatis Vitae Fontes Praecipuae (Alba: Edizione Domenicane, 1968). Some of the early sources on Aquinas’s life appear in English in Kenelm Foster, ed. and trans., The Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Biographical Documents, with an introduction by Foster (London: Longmans Green; and Baltimore, MD: Helican Press, 1959).

¹⁸ For a reliable brief account of the life of St. Dominic, see Simon Tugwell, “Schéma chronologique de la vie de Saint Dominique,” in Simon Tugwell et al., Domenico di Caleruega e la nascita dell’Ordine dei Frati Predicatori (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2005). Also see a series of articles by Tugwell, coming out under the title “Notes on the Life of St. Dominic,” which appeared in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum between 1995 and 2003 (volumes 65–68 and 73). For a sense of the thinking of the early Dominicans, see Simon Tugwell, Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982).

¹⁹ Though the expression studium generale is not easily translatable into terms that contemporary readers will understand, the word “university” is not an unreasonable rendition of it. For a studium generale welcomed students coming from anywhere, not just a place near to which some center of studies existed under the auspices of one or another authority. For Aquinas’s possible age when clothed in the habit of the Dominicans, see Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, p. 204. Here Tugwell also speculates about when Aquinas made profession as a Dominican. For discussion of Aquinas’s teachers in Naples, see A. Robiglio, “Neapolitan Gold,” Bulletin de Philosophie Médievale (2002). Michael W. Dunne has replied to Robiglio in his “Concerning ‘Neapolitan Gold’: William of Tocco and Peter of Ireland,” Bulletin de Philosophie Médieval 45 (2003). For a consequent reply to Dunne by Robiglio, see A. Robiglio, “In Petrum in insulam deportatur: Concerning Michael Dunne’s opinion on Peter of Ireland,” Bulletin de Philosophie Médieval 46 (2004).

²⁰ Aquinas first studied at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino. His Dominican brethren formed the impression that his family had hopes of him becoming Abbot of Monte Cassino. See Ferrua, Thomae Aquinatis Vitae Fontes Praecipua, p. 313. If that impression was correct, it might do something to explain the hostility of Aquinas’s family toward his decision to join the Dominicans. Another possible reason for this hostility might have had to do with the fact that the Dominicans were then a new religious order. Aquinas was born only five years or so after the death of its founder. The Dominicans were also committed to a way of religious life that was considered suspect in some quarters in his lifetime.

²¹ Basically, Aquinas’s family compelled him to come home to rethink his decision. It is not certain which members of the family were most strongly opposed to his being a Dominican, and there is some reason to think that his mother, who made numerous efforts to visit him before his family detention, came to be instrumental in securing his return to the Dominicans.

²² For an account of ways in which Aquinas’s writings give us some sense of his preference for the Dominican Order, see Ulrich Horst, “Christ, Exemplar Ordinis Fratrum Praedicantium, According to Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Kent Emery Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).

²³ A Dominican house of studies must have existed in Cologne before Albert moved there in 1248. Albert’s mandate when moving to Germany was to establish something catering to a wider student body of Dominicans than did the existing house of studies in Cologne when he arrived there.

²⁴ For much more on this matter, see William J. Courtenay, “The Donation of St. Jacques to the ‘Dominicans,’” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 83 (2013). Also see Henri Dominique Saffrey, “Fondation du Couvent des Frères Prêcheurs à Paris. L’hospice devient le couvent Saint-Jacques,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 101 (2017): 109–123.

²⁵ The medieval priory of Saint-Jacques no longer exists. There is a contemporary Parisian Dominican priory of Saint-Jacques (Couvent des Dominicains Saint-Jacques), but it is a modern building some distance away from where the medieval priory stood.

²⁶ For an English translation of Aquinas’s inaugural lecture, see Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, pp. 355–360.

²⁷ For an introduction to Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, see Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum, Aquinas on Scripture (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2005).

²⁸ See Mark-Robin Hoogland, trans., Thomas Aquinas: The Academic Sermons (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010). This English edition has, however, been superseded on certain historical matters by the 2014 Leonine edition of Aquinas’s sermons published under the direction of Louis Bataillon.

²⁹ For a study of the genesis and contents of the Summa Contra Gentiles, see Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

³⁰ Dominicans have always functioned with friars coming under the jurisdiction of one or another Dominican provincial. All their priories belong to “provinces” governed by a “provincial” and his elected councilors.

³¹ For more on the genesis and progress of the Summa Theologiae, see Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), ch. 1.

³² It seems that Leo XIII (1810–1903) had only moderate hopes for editing texts of Aquinas. But Dominican scholars working for the Leonine Commission turned it into a serious source of reclamation and authentication. For more on this matter, see Adriano Oliva, “The Leonine Commission, 125 Years After Its Founding, Settles in Paris,” Anuario Filosófico 34 (2006).

³³ What follows is not intended to note all the writings of Aquinas that can be placed into kinds. For example, it makes no reference to texts cited by Torrell in his 1996 volume (Saint Thomas Aquinas) as “Letters and Requests for Expert Opinions” (cf. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino, pp. 389–403). Nor does it refer to liturgical works and prayers sometimes attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Aquinas.

³⁴ The usual Latin titles for these commentaries of Aquinas are: Expositio super Isaiam (1251–1252), Expositio super Jeremiam (1251–1252), Expositio Super Job ad Litteram (1261–1264), Expositio super Psalmos (1273), Lectura super Matthaeum (1269–1270), Lectura super Johannem (1270–1271), and Lectura super Epistolas Pauli Apostoli (1263–1265, 1271–1273).

³⁵ Since Aquinas was never formally required to lecture on Aristotle, we may wonder why he devoted the time that he did to commenting on his works. Here we must rely on guesswork, but a possible explanation is that, to some extent, Aquinas “read and commented on Aristotle’s work to prepare himself adequately for the drafting of certain parts of his own theological works, and above all (or almost exclusively) for the Summa Theologiae” (Porro, Thomas Aquinas, p. 340). The usual Latin titles for the commentaries on Aristotle mentioned here (written c. 1269–1273) are: Sententia Libri De Anima, Sententia Libri De Sensu et Sensato, Sententia Libri De Memoria et Reminiscentia, Sententia in Libros Physicorum, Sententia super Meteora, Sententia super Peri Hermenias, Sententia super Posterior Analytica, Sententia Libri Ethicorum, Sententia Libri Politicorum, Sententia Libri Metaphysicae, Sententia in Libros De Caelo et Mundo, and Sententia Super Libros De Generatione et Corruptione.

³⁶ The usual Latin titles for these commentaries are Expositio Super Librum Boethii De Trinitate (1258–1259) and Expositio Super Librum Boethii De Hebdomadibus (1271–1272).

³⁷ The usual Latin titles for these commentaries are Expositio Super Librum Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus and Expositio Super Librum De Causis.

³⁸ Scholars today favor the view that these “Dionysian” writings derive from the sixth century. For a good introduction to them, see Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

³⁹ For much more on this matter, see Vincent A. Guagliardo, Charles R. Hess, and Richard C. Taylor, trans., St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Book of Causes (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).

⁴⁰ The usual Latin titles for these works are Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem, De Perfectione Spiritualis Vitae, and Contra Doctrinam Retrahentium a Religione.

⁴¹ The usual Latin titles for these works are De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas and De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Murmurantes.

⁴² The usual Latin titles for these treatises are De Principiis Naturae, De Ente et Essentia, and Compendium Theologiae.

⁴³ For a reliable English translation of the Compendium, see Richard J. Regan, trans., Compendium of Theology by Thomas Aquinas (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

⁴⁴ When did Aquinas debate the questions found in his published disputed questions? And when did he end up providing his record of them? Scholars have offered various answers to these questions. See Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino; and Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas.

⁴⁵ The usual Latin titles of these disputed questions are Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate, De Potentia Dei, De Malo, De Spiritualibus Creaturis, De Anima, De Virtutibus in Communi, and De Unione Verbi Incarnati.

⁴⁶ For an English edition of these dialogues, see Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., Plato: The Collected Dialogues (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).

⁴⁷ For a detailed elaboration of this point, see Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and Alex J. Novikoff, “Toward a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation,” American Historical Review 117 (April 2012): 331–364. For an English edition of Anselm’s writings, including his dialogues, see Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, eds., Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

⁴⁸ For more on this, see Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio Disputata,” pp. 10–12.

⁴⁹ Cf. P. Mandonnet’s introduction to his edition of Aquinas’s Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. 1 (Paris, 1925); and P. Glorieux, “Les Questions Disputés de Saint Thomas et leur Suite Chronologique,” Récherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 4 (1932).

⁵⁰ This is the view advanced by A. Dondaine, Secrétaires de Saint Thomas (Rome, 1956), pp. 209–216.

⁵¹ Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino, p. 124.

⁵² As noted earlier, the same possibility was open to a master who presided over quodlibetal disputations.

⁵³ Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 62.

⁵⁴ That verdict can stand, although some of Aquinas’s disputations (for example, the Quaestiones de Anima) may be purely literary creations of Aquinas, deriving from no conducted disputation. Cf. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 63.

⁵⁵ Leonard Boyle speculates that what we have now of Quodlibet XII is mostly a draft of the determination that Aquinas delivered before he had time to revise and polish it for publication. See Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” p. 236. On the incompleteness of Quodlibet XII, see also White, “The Quodlibeta of Thomas Aquinas in the Context of his Work,” p. 103.

⁵⁶ Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 208.

⁵⁷ Some of Aquinas’s quodlibets have only one article under a question title. See, for example, Quodlibet IV, q.1, in which the only question discussed is whether God has many ideas. With texts such as this, we have adopted the convention of referencing all questions with article numbers, even if there is only one article in the question.

⁵⁸ For whatever reason, Aquinas’s introduction to Quodlibet VII fails to note that it also contains questions on the senses of sacred scripture and on manual labor. Leonard Boyle suggests that the question on manual labor derives from other material by Aquinas that was added to Quodlibet VII after his death; see Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” p. 246. In his introduction to the critical edition of the quodlibets, Gauthier strongly resists this suggestion, arguing that both questions are original to Quodlibet VII, but that Aquinas might have wanted them left out of the published version; see Sancti Thomae de Aquino Quaestiones de quolibet, opera omnia tom. 25, vol. 1 (Rome and Paris: Commissio Leonina-Les Éditions du Cerf, 1996), pp. 58*–60* and 79*–81*.

⁵⁹ The quodlibetals tend to proceed from what Aquinas takes to be the higher to the lower. So, we tend to find questions on God (highest above all) preceding questions on angels, and so on down to people who are neither clerics nor members of religious orders.

⁶⁰ Cf. Adam Wood, Mind the Gap? The Principle of Non-repeatability and Aquinas’s Account of the Resurrection, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Turner C. Nevitt, Don’t Mind the Gap: A Reply to Adam Wood, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Turner C. Nevitt, “Annihilation, Re-creation, and Intermittent Existence in Aquinas,” in Alexander W. Hall, Gyula Klima, and Stephen Ogden, eds., The Metaphysics of Personal Identity (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016); Gyula Klima, “The Problem of ‘Gappy Existence’ in Aquinas’ Metaphysics and Theology,” in Hall, Klima, and Ogden, The Metaphysics of Personal Identity..

⁶¹ For more on this question, see Pasquale Porro, “Le Nombre Six Est-il Créateur ou Créature? Indifférence des Essences et Exemplarisme dans la Doctrine Thomasienne de la Création” (forthcoming); and Kevin White, “Creation, Numbers, and Nature,” in Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of Msgr. E. A. Synan, ed. R. E. Houser (Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1999), pp. 179–90.

⁶² After the time that Aquinas conducted quodlibetal disputations, the questions raised at them, at least in the Parisian Faculty of Arts, often became what we might take to be totally trivial or frivolous, such as “Should monks be fatter than other people?” This was one of the causes of the decline in the occurrence of quodlibetal disputations in general. For elaboration on this, see Lawn, The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic “Quaestio Disputata,” pp. 126–128. For biblical and philosophical reasons, however, Aquinas would have taken the question about the number six to be worthy of a serious reply.

⁶³ Cf. also Quodlibet VIII, q.1, a.2.

⁶⁴ Cf. Mark Jordan, “The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in Aquinas,” Review of Metaphysics 38 (September 1984): 17–32.

⁶⁵ John Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), p. 166. For book-length discussions of Aquinas on divine ideas, see Vivian Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: E.J. Brill, 1996); and Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).

⁶⁶ Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, p. 103.

⁶⁷ This point is stressed by Carl A. Vater, in “Divine Ideas: 1250–1325,” PhD diss., Catholic University of America (2017). As Vater also notes, it is possible that Bonaventure himself might have attended the event lying behind Quodlibet IV.

⁶⁸ See, for example, Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, qq.27–32.

⁶⁹ See Gregory Doolan, “Aquinas on the Demonstrability of the Angels,” in Tobias Hoffmann, ed., A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

⁷⁰ For a discussion of this matter, see John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), pp. 238–253.

⁷¹ Cf. Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentence II, d.28, a.4.

⁷² Cf. Aquinas, De veritate, q.24, a.15; Summa Theologiae I-II, q.109, a.6.

⁷³ Aquinas always assumes that Adam (as in the Old Testament book of Genesis) was a historical individual whose sin had disastrous consequences for all of his human descendants.

⁷⁴ Readers of the present volume will be aware that current scientific views about human conception are at odds with those of Aquinas. For an overview of Aquinas on conception and related matters, see Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

⁷⁵ By “mortal sin” here, Aquinas means a grievous offense against God worthy of damnation if not repented of and absolved by a priest as representing the Church.

⁷⁶ Quodlibet VIII, q.6, a.3, is not the only quodlibetal text where Aquinas considers what to do when specialists of some kind disagree. See also Quodlibet III, q.4, a.2 (“When people hear different masters of theology with contrary opinions, are they excused from sin if they follow the false opinions of their masters?”), and Quodlibet IV, q.8, a.3 (“Are we bound to avoid excommunicated people if opinions on their excommunication differ even among experts, some of whom say that they are excommunicated and others that they are not?”). The question of what to think when experts disagree is not just one raised by medieval philosophers like Aquinas. It has also been much pressed by some recent philosophers. See, for example, Bryan Frances, Skepticism Comes Alive (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

⁷⁷ Aquinas often argues that to affront God is always worse than to affront a creature.

⁷⁸ Here, Aquinas is thinking that, in the Ten Commandments, as found in the book of Exodus, the prohibition on murder comes after the prohibition on idolatry.

⁷⁹ Dominicans, of course, were not monks, and they adopted a religious rule drafted by St. Augustine of Hippo.

⁸⁰ Quodlibet XII, q.22, a.3, says that it is going to be about the intriguing question “Is it possible to be left with no permissible options?” Unfortunately, the Latin text is incomplete here, though there are texts elsewhere in Aquinas’s writings relevant to this question. See the list of parallel passages in this volume.

⁸¹ For a philosophically appreciative, though also critical, exposition and discussion of all these matters, see Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). See also Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

⁸² For what is, perhaps, one of the best philosophical accounts of Aquinas on the survival of the human soul, see Herbert McCabe, “The Immortality of the Soul,” in Anthony Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976).

⁸³ Aquinas’s views on the natural knowledge available to the separated soul is a little more complicated than we indicate in the present paragraph, since he allows for intellectual memory and therefore for the separated soul to recall certain knowledge from its life in the body owing to this, and he appeals to what he calls “infused intelligible species” to account for new knowledge on its part. For a fuller discussion of this, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on the Separated Soul’s Natural Knowledge,” in James McEvoy and Michael Dunne, eds., Thomas Aquinas: Approaches to Truth: The Aquinas Lectures at Maynooth (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), pp.114–140.

⁸⁴ Aquinas’s answer to this question is “Yes.”

⁸⁵ Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, p. 213.

⁸⁶ When, in 1216, Pope Honorius III confirmed the Dominicans as an “Order of Preachers” (Ordo Praedicatorum), it was generally assumed that bishops were the ordinary ex officio preachers. For more on this, and the origins of the Dominican order, see Tugwell, Early Dominicans.

⁸⁷ One should note that the theology faculty at Paris was effectively founded by secular priests.

⁸⁸ For an English translation of this work, see G. Geltner, William of Saint-Amour: De periculis novissimorum temporum, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 8 (Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 2007).

⁸⁹ It has been argued that the Dominicans returned Aquinas to Paris precisely to engage with anti-mendicant sentiments there. For this conclusion, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino, pp. 236–238. For a different conclusion, see Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, pp. 225–226.

⁹⁰ For accounts of the anti-mendicant controversy and Aquinas’s involvement in it, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino, pp. 80–92 and 263–272. See also Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, pp. 75–95.

⁹¹ The question of owning things in common is a bit tricky. The Franciscans were certainly proud of owning nothing, even in common. But by comparison with traditional orders, the Dominicans could be regarded as owning nothing in common, and in Contra Impugnantes, Aquinas seems to make common cause with the Franciscans on precisely this issue. However, in Summa Theologiae II-II, q.188, a.7, he argues against the Franciscan position in support of the opinion that having things in common does not detract from perfection, and he seems to relate this to the Dominicans. So, the date of Quodlibet III suggests that Franciscans were perhaps on his mind, even though he does not say anything polemical about them there.

⁹² The raising of questions to do with cura animarum at Aquinas’s quodlibetal disputations is not surprising. For, as Boyle observes, “a large proportion of the students in the theological faculties of Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere, was engaged in or destined for pastoral care at one level or another” (Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” p. 243).

⁹³ The catalogus mortuorum (list of the dead) of the Freiburg Dominican house states that John was buried in the church of that house in 1314, which would seem to place his death in that year.

⁹⁴ Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” p. 252. Boyle also turns at some length to John of Freiburg, in his “The Summa Confessorum of John of Freiburg and the Popularization of the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas and of some of his Contemporaries,” in A. A. Maurer, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974), pp. 2:245–268). See also John A. Lorenc, “John of Freiburg and the Usury Prohibition in the Late Middle Ages: A Study in the Popularization of Medieval Canon Law,” PhD thesis, University of Toronto (2013).

⁹⁵ Cf. Quodlibet V, q.7, a.2, which asks, “Does a man who dies going on crusade die in a better state than a man who dies coming back?”

⁹⁶ Medieval cosmological views come to the surface in more than one article in Aquinas’s quodlibets. For help understanding these views, see Thomas Litt, Les Corps Célestes dans l’Univers de Saint Thomas D’Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1963). See also Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). At many points in this latter book, Grant aims to explain some of Aquinas’s cosmological theories in their medieval context.

⁹⁷ White, “The Quodlibeta of Thomas Aquinas in the Context of his Work,” p. 52.

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