The Bible and Spirituality: The Super Isaiam
Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Volume 1
Page iii
Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Volume 1
The Person and His Work
translated by
Robert Royal
JEANPIERRE TORRELL, O.P.
Page iv
Originally published as L'Initiation à Saint Thomas d'Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre by Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse and Editions Cerf, Paris.
Copyright © 1993 Editions Cerf Paris.
Copyright © 1996
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Torrell, JeanPierre.
[Initiation à Saint Thomas d'Aquin. English]
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 1 : the person and his work/ JeanPierre
Torrell ; translated by Robert Royal.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. 2. Christian saints—Italy—
Biography. 3. Theology, Doctrinal—History—Middle Ages. 600–1500.
4. Catholic Church—Doctrines—History. I. Title.
BX4700.T6T5713 1996
230'.2'092—dc20
9542079
ISBN 0813208521 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 081320853X (pbk. : alk. paper)
Contents
Foreword
ix
Translator's Preface
xii
Preface
xv
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works
xxii
I. An Eventful Youth
1
The D'Aquino Family
1
Oblate at Cassino—Studies in Naples
4
Taking the Habit and Its Consequences
8
First Sketch for a Portrait
12
II. Disciple of Albertus Magnus (1245–1252)
18
Paris (1245–1248)
19
Cologne (1248–1252)
24
The Bible and Spirituality: The Super Isaiam
27
III. First Teaching Years in Paris (1252–1256)
36
The Bachelor of the Sentences
39
Alia Lectura Fratris Thome
45
Two Opuscula
47
The Inaugural Lecture
50
IV. Magister in Sacra Pagina (1256–1259)
54
Legere: To Comment on the Bible
55
Disputare: The De ueritate
59
Praedicare: Theology and Pastoral Practice
69
V. Defender of Mendicant Religious Life
75
History of a Quarrel
76
The Contra impugnantes
79
The Deperfectione and the Contra retrahentes
84
The Polemicist
90
VI. Return to Italy: The Summa contra Gentiles
96
To Promote Study
96
The Uncertainties of 1259–1261
98
The Date of the Summa contra Gentiles
101
The Purpose of the Contra Gentiles
104
The Summa contra Gentiles: Method and Plan
107
The Contents of the Summa contra Gentiles
111
VII. The Stay in Orvieto (1261–1265)
117
Conventual Lector in Orvieto
118
Commentary on the Book of Job
120
A Theologian Much in Demand
122
De divinis nominibus
127
The Office of Corpus Christi
129
The Catena aurea
136
VIII. The Roman Years (1265–1268): The Beginning of the Summa
142
The Studium at Rome
142
The Summa theologiae
145
The Contents of the Summa
148
The Plan of the Summa theologiae
150
The Place of the Mystery of the Incarnation
153
Theology, Life, and Prayer
156
IX. The Other Writings from the Roman Period
160
The De potentia "cum annexis"
161
The Compendium theologiae
164
Expert Opinions on Some Contemporary Questions
167
The De regno ad regem Cypri
169
The Sententia Libri De anima
171
William of Moerbeke
174
X. The New Sojourn in Paris: Doctrinal Confrontations
179
Date and Place of Thomas's Departure for Paris
179
The Motives for Thomas's Return to Paris
182
The De aeternitate mundi
184
The Unicity of Substantial Form
187
The De unitate intellectus
191
XI. The Second Period of Teaching at Paris (1268–1272)
197
I. Scriptural Commentaries and Disputed Questions
197
The Lectura super Ioannem
198
Disputed Questions: De malo and Others
201
The Quodlibetal Disputes
207
II. Consultations and Diverse Works
212
De Mixtione elementorum; De motu cordis
213
De operationibus occultis naturae
214
De iudiciis astrorum
215
De sortibus
215
De secreto
217
The Letter to the Countess of Flanders
218
The De substantiis separatis
220
The Super Librum De causis
222
XII. The Commentator on Aristotle
224
The Expositio Libri Peryermenias
224
The Expositio Libri Posteriorum
226
The Sententia Libri Ethicorum
227
The Tabula Libri Ethicorum
229
Commentaries on the Physics and the Metaphysics
231
Uncompleted Works
233
Thomas and Aristotle
236
Thomas and His Secretaries
239
XIII. Last Period of Teaching: Naples (1272–1273)
247
The Course on the Pauline Letters
250
The Course on the Psalms
257
The "Life of Jesus"
261
XIV. The Last Months and Death
267
The People Who Knew Thomas
267
Reginald of Piperno
272
Thomas and His Family
275
A Preliminary Portrait
278
A Man of Great Contemplation
283
The Final Illness and Death
289
XV. Difficult Sequels: Cult, Process, Disputes
296
The Beginnings of the Cult
296
March 1277 in Paris
298
Dominicans and Franciscans
303
Defense of Thomas by the Dominican Order
308
Disciples and Confreres
310
XVI. Epilogue: The Canonization in Avignon
317
A WellConducted Development
317
The Canonization and Its Consequences
321
Doctor Ecclesiae
324
Brief Chronology
327
Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas
330
Abbreviations
362
Bibliography
364
Index of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas
397
Index of Names
399
Index of Subjects
405
Foreword
In preparing a study of Thomas Aquinas for the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, JeanPierre Torrell found it necessary to review and summarize the most recent data about Aquinas's life and works, because continuing research, including his own and that by members of the Leonine Commission, has modified many points since the major work of James Weisheipl.1 The present volume greatly expands the first section of the article, leaving for another volume, now being prepared, a similar expansion of the second part of the article, which presents Aquinas's spiritual doctrine.
Not that Thomas's spirituality is absent from this first volume. On the contrary: as the subtitle and introduction make clear, Torrell's aim is to do more than discuss dating of Aquinas's life and works or summarize his works and doctrine. While presenting the person of Thomas Aquinas in his complete family, social, and intellectual context, Torrell goes considerably beyond Weisheipl's study by ably bringing out the spiritual dimension of Aquinas's life as a Dominican religious dedicated to handing on to others what he had experienced in his faithrooted contemplation, mystical as well as intellectual. That is, he gives us a picture of Thomas's own lived spirituality together with insights into his spiritual doctrine, which will be presented more fully in the second volume. Thus he follows Thomas's numerous journeys about France and Italy on his Dominican apostolate
1. See J.P. Torrell, "Thomas d'Aquin," Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 15 (1991) cols. 718–73. Compare J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works, 2d ed.
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983). The second edition did not alter the main text of the original 1974 volume but provided some new material in a brief appendix. Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New YorkMahwah: Paulist Press, 1988), trans., ed., introd. Simon Tugwell, is a more recent discussion of questions concerning the dating of Thomas's life and writings. Torrell takes account of these as well as of earlier works in his own study. As will be indicated, his work has a much wider scope than either of these.
of intellectual ministry, portraying him as a dedicated religious and scholar nearly overwhelmed by his zealous devotion to this calling, yet vigorous and lively in defense of the faith and of the legitimate role of reason. Through Torrell's eyes we see Thomas as a man of prayer, a warm friend to many confreres and others, a loyal and sometimes deeply involved member of his family.
JeanPierre Torrell's own intellectual and spiritual apostolate has prepared him well for this. A Dominican of the Toulouse province, his search for a theology flowing from and reflecting a deeply experienced life of faith led him to prepare a thesis for the lectorate in philosophy and theology on the nature and method of theology, a study that incorporated his vision of how theologians should proceed.2 He then went to Le Saulchoir, the studium of the Dominican province of Paris, where he received the doctorate after completing his dissertation on the theology of the episcopate at the First Vatican Council.3 Returning to his province to teach fundamental theology for the next twenty years, he also regularly examined in the Revue Thomiste books and articles on theology and its methodology, adding his own critiques and enriching his reviews with his own insights. A number of his personal writings reveal his deep concern that the theological endeavor should not be restricted to purely intellectual inquiry but should begin with and terminate in a life of living faith and holiness.4
Wishing to pursue the historical background of Thomas Aquinas's theology, Torrell undertook a second doctorate at the Université de Montréal. His dissertation dealt with earlier thirteenthcentury discussions of the theology of prophecy, a topic that led him to examine the philosophy of knowledge at that time and eventually helped him to develop important new views about Christ's human knowledge.5 It also led to his fruitful col2. La notion intégrale de Sacra Doctrina chez S. Thomas d'Aquin (Toulouse: Studium Dominicain de la Province de Toulouse, 1959).
3. It has been published as La théologie de l'épiscopat au premier concile du Vatican ("Unam Sanctam," 37; Paris: Cerf, 1961).
4. Too numerous to be listed here, these writings may be found in the bibliography of his publications given in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris: Image et message de saint Thomas d'Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneutiques et doctrinales: Hommage au Professeur JeanPierre Torrell OP à l'occasion de son 65e anniversaire, ed. CarlosJosaphat Pinto de Oliveira, O.P., Studia Friburgensia: Nouvelle Série, 78 (Fribourg, Suisse: Editions Universitaires, 1993).
5. This dissertation was published as Théorie de la prophétie et philosophie de la connaissanee aux environs de 1230, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 40 (Louvain, 1977). The important article on Christ's human knowledge, which appeared after publication of the French edition of the present volume, is "S. Thomas d'Aquin et la science du Christ: Une relecture des questions 9–12 de la <<Tertia Pars>> de la Somme de Théologie," in Saint Thomas au XXe siècle: Actes du (footnote continued on next page)
laboration with Dr. Denise Bouthillier, from which issued several studies of Peter the Venerable and other matters.6 Because his Montréal thesis involved a great deal of text editing, he was asked to become a member of the Leonine Commission and collaborate with its research on and editing of Aquinas's works; this he did while also teaching a graduate course in theology for eight years at the Gregorian University in Rome. His experience on the Leonine Commission until he was called to be professor of theology at the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland and his continuing close association with members of the commission have given him a unique opportunity to give us the most thorough and critical study of Aquinas's person, life and works that we have at present.
Torrell's many new conclusions concerning the life and works of Aquinas will greatly help the endeavor of those concerned to view the works in their historical context and to follow the Angelic Doctor's personal and intellectual development.7 Torrell's method of situating and describing each work should help to offset the tendency of some scholars who still treat the entire corpus of Thomas's writings as an undifferentiated whole, with no concern for nuances or for outright changes in his continuously developing teaching.
Readers will appreciate Torrell's careful analysis of the sources, historical and legendary, about Aquinas, and his judgment about their reliability. Among the many fine, frequently new insights he gives to the person of St. Thomas the following may be mentioned: his "first sketch of a portrait," derived from Thomas's childhood, early studies, and Dominican vocation; Aquinas's personal spirituality as seen from his early commentary on Isaiah; his lifelong devotion to his duties, as a master of theology, of commenting on Scripture and of preaching, as well as holding disputations; his passionate defense of mendicant religious life; his own personal views of the vocation of the theologian; the link of his theology with his prayer, including his Eucharistic piety; his devotion to the Fathers; his patient humility combined with energetic defense of his sometimes unique tenets in debates during his second Parisian regency.
(footnote continued from previous page)
colloque du Centenaire de la "Revue thomiste," 25–28 mars 1993—Toulouse, ed. SergeThomas Bonino (Paris: SaintPaul, 1994) 394–409.
6. Some of the fruits of these studies and research are indicated in this volume's bibliography under Torrell's name. Others can be found in the bibliography indicated in the previous note.
7. His new conclusions about the place and dating of Thomas's works, with attention to his movements about Italy, France, and Germany, have been summarized, together with a few critical remarks, in my article, "An Important New Study of Thomas Aquinas: JeanPierre Torrell's Initiation à saint Thomas d'Aquin," The Thomist 58/3 (July 1994) 489–99.
Of great interest are Torrell's description of Aquinas's work habits, including the way he used secretaries, and his pointing out Thomas's greater emphasis, in his teaching in his later years, on the role of affectivity. Thomas's last months of life and his death receive a fresh review based on careful examination of many witnesses about the events, about his relations with his family, and about his personal holiness. Thomas's daring originality is brought out clearly in the final two chapters as they follow the controversies about his teachings, the condemnations of a few of his positions, and the canonization process some years later.
Because Torrell is himself a theologian and because he looks at the whole person and life of Aquinas, he is able to present an accurate picture of the Angelic Doctor as the theologian he was and intended to be—a scholar who, while more philosophically innovative than is immediately evident (his abundant use of Aristotelian vocabulary masks both his profoundly new doctrine of esse and his appropriation of elements of Neoplatonism), nevertheless advanced these philosophical insights for the sake of theology. This was true even of his commentaries on Aristotle, which he developed in order to offset the inroads against the Christian faith that he felt bound to oppose as a Christian theologian. Some professed followers of Aquinas tend to confine their interest to a ''thomistic" philosophy amputated from its theological setting and intent, an operation that often deprives his thought of its vitality and interest. It is to be hoped that Torrell's more comprehensive view will help them to establish a better equilibrium in their approach to his work, will help them appreciate the living faith and deep mystical and theological experience within which Aquinas developed his most important insights.
For those wishing a quick view of Torrell's conclusions on individual works of Aquinas, the catalogue at the end will be useful. But it would be a great loss to restrict oneself to that, for then one would fail to experience the lucidity of Torrell's presentation of the context of Thomas Aquinas's works as well as his richly colored portrait of the person of the Angelic Doctor.
WALTER PRINCIPE, C.S.B.
FELLOW EMERITUS, PONTIFICAL INSTITUTE OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
Translator's Preface
"While safeguarding the meaning of the truths that he translates, [the good translator] ought to adapt his style to the genius of the language in which he is expressing it."
Contra errores graecorum, Prologue
Saint Thomas's advice, quoted above, states the cardinal principle of all translation: translation is concerned with the expression of truth. But having acknowledged that lucid ideal, the translator finds that other factors immediately intervene. The relationship between truth and the language in which it is expressed is neither neat nor constant. At times, two languages may permit an almost algebraic equivalence of thought. At others, literal equivalence will be misleading. At still others, it almost appears that reality itself is slightly different depending on the language we are using to describe it. A good translation can only attempt to be as faithful, in every sense of the word, to the original as is humanly possible. I have tried, therefore, in this text to present what I think Father Torrell would have said were he a native English speaker.
Nora bene: In almost every instance, I have translated Father Torrell's quotations of works by Saint Thomas and others from the French as it appeared in his text rather than give the standard English translation. This seemed advisable for several reasons. Aquinas's Latin is notoriously spare, and most translations into the modern languages amplify it somewhat to convey its meaning better. Clearly, these amplifications may differ quite a bit from one language to the next. Torrell often develops arguments on the basis of expressions that appear in the French, but not, or not so clearly, in the standard English translation. If this creates some confusion on the part of those who turn from Torrell's penetrating analyses to the various English versions of Saint Thomas, they might do well to consult Thomas's
Latin or to appraise Torrell's comments in the larger context of the works he discusses. As someone who has had to examine these questions carefully for the sake of accuracy, I am convinced of the remarkable precision and depth he brings to bear at every point.
A final point: Working closely with another person's words enables one to appreciate something about their spirit. Father Torrell speculates at times about Thomas's motives and affections in writing certain works. In most authors, such speculations often have an air of unreality. In Torrell, the reflections on Thomas the man illuminate the complex and muchneglected questions in a convincing way. This has something to do with Torrell's similarity to Thomas in his search for the entire truth on the basis of all the evidence we have available to us. Like Thomas, Torrell wears his scholarship lightly and draws new meaning from the massive material he examines. He is the perfect author for the companion volume that he indicates in the Preface he is preparing and that will explore Thomas's teaching on the spiritual life.
I wish to thank Russell Hittinger, who first suggested this project to me. Bartholomew de la Torre, O.P., carefully went over the translation and, as he has done in various ways over many years of friendship, saved me from many errors. Romanus Cessario, O.P., provided several useful suggestions. David McGonagle of The Catholic University of America Press made the inevitable practical difficulties in producing this manuscript far less problematic than they might have been. Susan Needham, also of the CUA Press, has contributed an editor's sense of good English along with an appreciation for nuances in the French.
ROBERT ROYAL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Preface
The main sources for Saint Thomas's life have been conveniently assembled in the Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, thanks to the labors of two Dominicans: Dominique Prümmer and MarieHyacinthe Laurent. To the former, who began this undertaking at the start of the twentieth century, we owe the edition of the three oldest biographies: William of Tocco, Bernard Gui, and Peter Calo. To the latter, who finished the job before World War II, we owe the publication of the depositions by the witnesses at the canonization proceedings in Naples and Fossanova, in addition to a bunch of documents that gather together extracts from ancient chronicles or charters having to do with Thomas or the Aquinas family.
Though not all these texts meet the requirements of a critical edition as we understand that term today, the collection is one of the most useful, particularly if you do not have at hand the original documents, which are in many cases hard to find. More recently, Angelo Ferrua has reprinted some of these texts (Tocco, Gui, and Naples primarily), and there also exists a French translation of Tocco's biography and of the depositions from the proceedings at Naples.1
In addition to the major documents, we have a certain number of "episodic anecdotes," thanks to Thomas of Cantimpré, Gérard de Frachet, and Tolomeo degli Fiadoni, better known by the name Tolomeo of Lucca. Cantimpré and Frachet were Thomas's contemporaries, but the first is hardly trustworthy and the second is more interested in Thomas's visions than in his life. As to the third, Tolomeo was Thomas's student in Naples l272–74; a historian by profession, he finished his Historia ecclesiastica before Thomas's canonization and, though we must always verify his assertions, he still represents an original source.2
1. All bibliographical references can be found in the list of abbreviations.
2. For a fuller presentation of these authors and the earlier ones, we can still consult with
(footnote continued on next page)
With their usual critical sureness, the Bollandists had already ascribed to William of Tocco first place among the saint's biographers. In spite of an attempt at the beginning of this century to give priority to Bernard Gui or Peter Calo,3 Tocco must be preferred. Our approach to this question has been newly stimulated by Claire Le BrunGouanvic who has published, under the direction of HuguesVincent Shooner, a new critical edition of William's Ystoria sancti Thorne.4 One of the author's most interesting results is establishing the evidence, on the basis of late but trustworthy manuscripts, for four successive versions of this text, which William reworked up to the last moment, i.e., until Thomas's canonization, 18 July 1323, since "he lived at least until the month of August 1323." The third version was the one published by the Bollandists and Prümmer, but "the fourth version carries numerous additions that have remained unpublished until the present." This new edition offers a notably enlarged text and provides "precious information on the unfolding of the canonization process." It also allows us to see that the original features in Bernard Gui, which had earlier earned him special consideration from the historians, in reality come from the fourth version of Tocco. Gui was the first to use that version. His own first version goes back to 1324, his second to 1325–26. As to Calo, he is still later by a few years.5
This does not mean that Tocco's work is without blemishes. It does not suffice to say that he did not intend to write a biography in the modern sense of the term; he quite consciously decided to write the life of a saint—a hagiography, if you will, as long as that term does not entirely disqualify the text—where the birth, life, and death of his hero are accompanied by supernatural signs that attest to his greatness. It follows that factual and (footnote continued from previous page)
profit E. Janssens, "Les premiers historiens de la vie de Saint Thomas d'Aquin," Revue néoscol. de Phil. de Louvain 26 (1924) 201–14; 325–52; 452–76.
3. J. A. Endres, "Studien zur Biographie des hi. Thomas v. Aquin," Historisches Jahrbuch 29 (1908) 537–58, 774–89; see also the controversy between P. Mandonnet, "Pierre Calo et la légende de S. Thomas," and D. Prümmer, "Quelques observations à propos de la légende de S. Thomas, par Pierre Calo," in RT 20 (1912) 508–16, 517–23. Endres's theses have been methodically refuted by F. Pelster, "Die älteren Biographen des hi. Thomas von Aquino. Eine kritische Studie," ZKT 44 (1920) 242–74; 366–97. See E. Janssens's article, above note 2, for a similar argument.
4. C. Le BrunGouanvic, Edition critique de l' "Ystoria sancti Thorne de Aquino" de Guillaume de Tocco (dissertation, University of Montreal, 1987), 2 vols.; we will cite this text in what follows, but for the reader's convenience we shall also refer to the edition of Tocco in the Fontes.
5. His Vita of Saint Thomas is inserted into a book of legends that was not finished until some time after 1330. Cf. A. Poncelet, "Le légendier de Pierre Calo," Anal. Boll. 29 (1910) 5–
116.
chronological data are often neglected or, at best, diluted into vague anecdotes mainly intended to edify. Tocco adds to these three classical elements of ancient and medieval biography a fourth, more original element as he tries to show that this saint was also a teacher. But he allows the thinness of his evidence to show through here. He was hardly well informed about the stays in Paris and Cologne; he was also not intellectually prepared to deal with the subject. Here too, it is less what properly belongs to Thomas's teaching that makes him great for Tocco than it is a comparison with the greatest biblical figures: Jacob, Joseph, and Moses in the Old Testament, Christ Himself or the apostle Thomas in the New Testament. Even without dwelling upon the various stories that can also be found in numerous other saints' lives, modern scholars have had an easy time demonstrating all these inadequacies.6
And yet Tocco remains a preferred witness. He knew Thomas at the priory in Naples, where the latter lived from 1272 to 1274. Tocco was then thirty and already a priest, but he must have taken the courses on the Bible that Thomas gave for all the friars of the priory. Tocco naturally also knew several Dominican friars who, like himself, had dealings with Thomas, and he collected their testimony. Among them we find Reginald of Piperno, the socius continuus who accompanied Thomas—
perhaps from his beginnings in Paris—until his death. It is from Reginald, sometimes directly, sometimes through third parties, that Tocco gets certain intimate details.
He also got data from members of the Aquinas family: it was thus that he obtained testimony from Thomas's nephew, Thomas of San Severino—son of Theodora, Thomas's second sister—and from Thomas's niece, Catherine de Morra—daughter of Mary, the saint's third sister. It is to Catherine, already quite old at the time of the canonization process, that Tocco was especially indebted for the stories about the saint's childhood, which Catherine herself claimed to have heard from her grandmother, Dame Theodora.
If we add to all this that, as a promoter of the cause, Tocco was able to meet, both before and after their depositions, all the witnesses at the canonization process (including the monks at Fossanova who were present during Thomas's last moments) we have to admit that, in spite of his failings, Tocco was the most qualified person to write this biography. But we
6. Cf. for example, W. P. Eckert, "Stilisierung und Umdeutung der Persönlichkeit des hi. Thomas von Aquino dutch die frühen Biographen," FZPT 18 (1971) 7–28; E. Coiledge, "The Legend of St. Thomas Aquinas," in Commemorative Studies, 1, 13–28.
also understand that he was not the only one responsible for the hagiographic halo around this Vita. To all appearances, his informers gave him not raw material but alreadyinterpreted information. It remains for today's historians, therefore, to carry out the hermeneutical task. They at least already know both how Thomas's contemporaries saw him and the idea they held of his sanctity.
Except for the work by Walz/Novarina, French readers until now were rather deprived in regard to biographies of Saint Thomas. In spite of its undeniable scholarly value, Walz/Novarina, which appeared in 1962, itself an adapted translation published from a 1953 German text, has become seriously dated.7 We note with appreciation the more recent work by James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino,8 though the first edition is now more than twenty years old and the second edition, despite numerous corrections, still contains many inaccuracies. In a more succinct way, Simon Tugwell's introduction to selected passages from Thomas and Albert is remarkable for its information and penetration and is very satisfying among the essays of its kind.9 We cannot say as much for Otto Hermann Pesch's Thomas von Aquin, whose historical documentation needs to be updated and which, despite its subtitle, is not an introduction properly speaking, for his point of view on Kontroverstheologie somewhat obscures the image of the author whom Pesch wishes to make better known.10
7. A. Walz, O.P., Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Adaptation française par P. Novarina, Philosophes médiévaux 5 (LouvainParis, 1962). The German text was translated with revisions from the original Italian edition ( San Tommaso d'Aquino, Studi biografici sul Dottore Angelico, Rome, 1945). [Note to English edition: We have cited WalzNovarina rather than the English translation made by Sebastian Bullough, O.P. ( Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Biographical Study [Westminster, Md., 195l]) because Father Torrell's arguments are based on WalzNovarina, which often differs materially from the English translation.]
We purposely limit this historical account to the most recent works: going back further into the past, we should mention the highly valuable work by Father Antoine Touron, La vie de S. Thomas d'Aquin, de l'Ordre des Frères prêcheurs, docteur de l'Eglise, avec un exposé de sa doctrine et de ses oeuvres (Paris, 1740), and especially the fundamental study by J. Quetif and J. Echard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, vol. I (Paris, 1719), fols. 271–347, which remains a point of reference.
8. J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and Works, with Corrigenda and Addenda (Washington, 1974, 1983); the French translation of this work integrated the corrections from the second edition, but the bibliography was not brought up to date: Frère Thomas d'Aquin, Sa vie, sa pensée, ses oeuvres * (Paris, 1993). From that point of view, the Italian edition is preferable: Tommaso d'Aquino. Vita, Pensiero, Opera, ed. I. Biffi and C. Marabelli (Milan, 1988). So far as we know, the German translation follows the first edition and has not included the improvements.
9. Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings, translated, edited, and introduced by S. Tugwell, O.P. (New York, 1988).
10. O. H. Pesch, Thomas von Aquin. Grenze und Grösse mittelalterlicher Theologie. Eine
(footnote continued on next page)
These two last titles, written respectively in English and German, are not accessible to everyone. The same is true for the invaluable data assembled in the prefaces to the various volumes of the Leonine edition. My own contribution to the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité is usually available only in special libraries, and it suffers from having been highly condensed for editorial reasons.11 It is time, therefore, to make available to the French reading public the latest research in this field.
Our ambition is not, however, solely to write another biography limited to a strict presentation of dates and places. For a person like Thomas—more than for many others—the life cannot be understood without the work. We cannot conceive of Saint Thomas without the Summa theologiae! This is true, but it remains a banality if we do not see the way he invested himself in the work, or if we do not know that his writings cannot be reduced to his greatest and universally known work. Far from it!
We would not know how to introduce Thomas's work without mentioning Father MarieDominique Chenu's Toward Understanding Saint Thomas. Truly "without equal," this book, translated into several languages, has influenced generations of medievalists and renewed their approach to Saint Thomas, whether they be historians, philosophers, or theologians.12 We may sometimes wonder if Chenu has always been read carefully enough, but his was an unprecedented effort, so far as we know, to reinsert the Master into the concrete milieu in which he lived—not only the historical and theological, but the "evangelical and theologal" milieu. He showed the "spirituality" in which Thomas was rooted and the contemplation he pursued, while fervently trying to share them with others.13
It would be wrong to think that Chenu was the only force for renewal. We could not properly ignore the work of Mandonnet, Grabmann, Glorieux, Lottin, and many others whose names will be mentioned in the following pages. But Chenu's work will long remain the primary witness (footnote continued from previous page)
Einführung (Mayence, 1988). See our review: FZPT 36 (1989) 493–98. It is proper to add that the third edition (1995) has taken account of most of our remarks; see the appendix, pp. 653–56.
11. J.P. Torrell, "Thomas d'Aquin (saint)," DS 15 (1991) 718–73.
12. We refer to the heartfelt praise addressed to Chenu by Alain de Libera, Penser au Moyen Age (Paris, 1991), 42–45. See also, Hommage au Père M.D. Chenu, special issue, RSPT 75
(July 1991) 351–504.
13. To better understand this project, we should also add the other master work by Chenu: La théologie comme science au XIIe siècle, Bibliothèque thomiste 33 (3d ed., Paris, 1957), and for a more general public: St. Thomas d'Aquin et la thoélogie, Maîtres spirituels 17 (Paris 1959), whose importance should not be judged by its brevity.
to the rediscovery of the Middle Ages that our time has enjoyed. What we present to the reader here would not even have been thinkable without Chenu, and we are happy to acknowledge the debt. But his book appeared fifty years ago, and we also have to say that while Toward Understanding "remains the best guide for beginning a serious reading of Saint Thomas . . . it is, however, the book that seems to me to have aged most among Chenu's volumes."14 It is only fair to add that the aging is in large part thanks to Chenu's disciples and to the works that he inspired—and that he would have been the first to welcome. But whether it is the incomparable contribution of the twenty or so volumes of the Leonine edition and of the volumes of the Aristoteles latinus, of many other volumes of previously unpublished texts or of historical studies on thirteenthcentury figures and their ideas, a multitude of achievements in many fields has deeply enriched and changed our knowledge of the period and, more specifically, of the man Thomas—who paradoxically was the great absence in Toward Understanding.
We must therefore try to make a new beginning, benefitting from the most recent scholarly research, if we wish—as Chenu desired—to read Thomas's works in their true context and to discover something of his face. He has too often been presented as a timeless thinker; but in fact he was situated in a specific time and place, marked by precise historical contingencies. Travelling the roads of Europe under religious obedience—from Naples to Cologne by way of Paris, then Cologne to Rome after another stay in Paris and one in Orvieto, back to Paris for a third time, finally Naples for several months—he died on the road while travelling to the Council of Lyon. He had to travel in haste, plagued by a thousand different tasks, leaving many of them unfinished. His search for eternal Truth, among almost all the philosophers and theologians known in his time (whose works he tirelessly scrutinized and commented on) was thus carried out under conditions of urgency and precariousness.
This new approach to Thomas's biography will not only lead us to discover something about his tumultuous existence; it will also allow us to restore the context to his works; for several of those works, context is indispensable to an exact understanding. This will become clearer as we introduce those works. In the present volume, we would like to give at least a brief summary of the contents of each them, and a relatively detailed 14. L.J. Bataillon, "Le Père Chenu et la théologie du Moyen Age," RSPT 75 (1991) 449–56 (cf. p. 454).
summary for the main works. Also, to the degree possible, we shall provide precise indications about their dates. Current historical research allows us to correct many approximations that have continued into even the most recent studies. The catalogue at the end of this volume will concisely gather all this together.
Along the way, we will also come to know another part of Thomas's physiognomy, something a little surprising to find so resolutely ignored by faithful Thomists, who seem to reserve it for edifying literature or for panegyrics. Like Tocco perhaps, but at a distance from his subject that he could not provide, we would like to show not only that the saint is inseparable from the philosopher or the theologian, but that these three figures are also accompanied by a "spiritual master." Growing reflection on the faith was a path to sanctity for Thomas and it shows in his works. There is in this an entire dimension of his teaching that is certainly familiar to those who closely study it over time, but that generally escapes those who have only a sketchy acquaintance with Thomas. This leads to a considerable loss and it suffices to point it out to experience the benefit of a different reading of Thomas. For that reason, we shall quote at greater length here and there to give an idea of how the theology overflows into the spiritual life or, if one wishes, into mysticism. We will return amply to this subject in our second volume.
We also hope to shed some new light on the man Thomas was; it has long been thought it was difficult, if not impossible, to discover his personality, which was said to be hidden behind his writings. This is less true than is usually thought, and though the undertaking is arduous, it is worth the attempt.
It is a pleasant obligation to thank here my friends on the Leonine Commission, Father LouisJacques Bataillon and, in particular, Father RenéAntoine Gauthier, who agreed to review my text, chapter by chapter. They suggested numerous corrections and improvements, bestowing their immense learning on my readers. I also heartily thank my assistant, Father Gilles Emery, who helped me in many ways in the course of composition and assembled the bibliography, the catalogue, and the index of St. Thomas's works.
Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works
Calo
Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis auctore Petro Calo in Fontes, fasc. 1 (p. 17–55).
Cantimpré
Thomae Cantipratani, . . . Miraculorum et exemplorum memorabilium sui temporis
Libri duo ( = Bonum universale de apibus), Douai, 1597.
Chartul.
Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed., H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, vol. 1, Paris,
1889 (when the number of the volume is not given, it refers to volume 1; the rares references
to volume 2 will be indicated).
Chenu, Toward
M.D. Chenu, Introduction à l'étude de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Publications de l'Institut
d'études médiévales 11, MontrealParis, 21954.
Commemorative
St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974 Commemorative Studies, ed. A. Maurer, 2 vols.,
Studies
Toronto, 1974.
Documenta
Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis. Documenta, ed., M.H. Laurent, in Fontes, fasc. 6
(p. 531[!]–677).
Ferrua
S. Thomae Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipuae (read: praecipui), ed. A. Ferrua, Alba 1968 (reproduces Tocco's Vita, Gui's, and the Naples process, as well as some fragments
of Tolomeo, Frachet, and Cantimpré).
Fontes
Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis notis historicis et criticis illustrati, ed. D. Prümmer
and M.H. Laurent, Toulouse, n.d. (6 fase., originally published in the Revue thomiste from 1911 to 1937; we cite these sources according to the abbreviations indicated, followed by
their internal numbering and the pagination, which is continuous for the six fascicles.
Fossanova
Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Fossae Novae, ed. M.H. Laurent, in Fontes, fasc.
5 (pp. 409–532).
Frachet
Fratris Gerardi de Fracheto O.P., Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum . . . , ed., B.
M. Reichert ( MOPH, vol. 1), Louvain, 1896.
Grabmann, Werke
M. Grabmann, Die Werke des hl. Thomas von Aquin. Eine literarhistorische
Untersuchung und Einführung ''BGPTMA 22, 1–2," Münster Westf., 31949.
Gui
Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis auctore Bernardo Guidonis, in Fontes, fasc. 3 (pp. 161–
263).
Käppeli
Thomas Käppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, 3 vols. appeared
(through letter S), Rome, 1970–80.
Leonine
Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Rome, 1882.
Mittelalterliches
M. Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der
Geistesleben
Scholastik und Mystik, 3 vols., Munich, 1926, 1936, 1956.
MOPH
Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, vols. 3–4: Acta Capitulorum
Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 1 (1220–1303); vol. 2 (1304–1378), ed. B. M.
Reichert, Rome, 1898 and 1899; vol. 20: Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae
Romanae (1243–1344), ed. T. Käppeli and A. Dondaine, Rome, 1941.
Naples
Processus canonizationis S. Thomae, Neapoli, ed. M.H. Laurent, in Fontes, fasc. 4 (pp.
265–407).
Scandone
F. Scandone, "La vita, la famiglia e la patria di S. Tommaso de Aquino," in San Tommaso d'Aquino, Miscellanea storicoartistica, Rome, 1924, pp. 1–110.
Tocco
Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis auctore Guillelmo de Tocco, in Fontes, fasc. 2 (pp. 59–
160).
Tolomeo
Ptolomaei Lucensis Historia ecclesiastica nova, Lib. XXII 17–XXIII 16, in L. A.
Muratori, Rerum italicarum scriptores, vol. 11, Milan, 1724 (partial critical edition by A.
Dondaine, "Les Opuscula fratris Thomae chez Ptolémée de Lucques," AFP 31 (1961) 142–203.
Tugwell
Albert & Thomas Selected Writings, translated, edited, and introduced by Simon Tugwell, O.P.; preface by Leonard E. Boyle, O.P., New York, Mahwah, 1988.
WN
A. Walz, Saint Thomas d'Aquin, French adaptation by P. Novarina, Philosophes
médiévaux 5, LouvainParis, 1962.
Weisheipl
J. A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works,
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 21983.
Xenia thomistica
Xenia thomistica a plurimis . . . praeparata . . . , ed., S. Szabo, 3 vols. Rome, 1925.
Ystoria
C. Le BrunGouanvic, Edition critique de l'Ystoia sancti Thome de Aquino de
Guillaume de Tocco, Diss. dactyl., Université de Montréal, 2 vols., 1987.
Chapter I—
An Eventful Youth
The date of Thomas's birth has been calculated approximately on the basis of the date of his death. His first biographer informs us that he died the morning of 7 March 1274, in his fortyninth year.1 This may mean that Thomas had already lived more than fortyeight years, but had not reached his fortyninth birthday. But the same author also adds: "Having finished the forthninth year of his life, he began in his fiftieth the jubilee of eternal glory." His birth, therefore, should be placed in 1225.
Bernard Gui, who wrote several years later, gives parallel confirmation that Thomas died when he had completed fortynine years and begun his fiftieth year.2 In a slightly earlier text, Tolomeo of Lucca echoes an uncertainty: "He died at the age of fifty, but some say fortyeight."3 There seems to be agreement today on 1224/25, but other secondary sources do not allow the complete exclusion of 1226 or even 1227.4
The D'Aquino Family
Identifying Thomas's birthplace once raised some difficulties—several locations contended for that honor. Today, however, historians agree that 1. Ystoria 65, p. 395 (Tocco 65, p. 138).
2. Gui 39, p. 205. It may nevertheless be asked if Gui does not take too seriously the mystical speculations of Tocco, for whom, after seven sabbatical years (7x7 = 49), Thomas would finally have entered into eternal rest for his fiftieth year.
3. Tolomeo XXIII 10: "Obiit autem L vitae suae; alii vero dicunt XLVIII."
4. Thus Tugwell (p. 201) chooses 1226 (C. Vansteenkiste, RLT 24 [1991] 11, points out the problems with this position); Scandone (pp. 8–9) presents the different source data; cf. WN, p. 16, and P. Mandonnet's research, which is still sound in its conclusions if not always in its details, "Date de naissance de S. Thomas d'Aquin," RT 22 (1914) 652–64.
the site was the family castle at Roccasecca in southern Italy.5 Located in what was then the county of Aquino and in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Roccasecca is found on the border of Latium and the Campagna almost midway between Rome and Naples, an equal distance from Frosinone in the north and Cassino in the south, slightly east of the interior route (the ancient Via Latina) that leads from Rome to Naples. This geographical location is far from insignificant, and was even the cause of a serious political difficulty: the familial domain of the Aquino family lay at the limit of the states of both the pope and the emperor, who, with others, contended for power over the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino. The local situation thus forced Thomas's family to oscillate between pope and emperor, and the family felt the effects sharply.
Originally from Lombardy, the family made its first historical appearance in 887. Since the end of the tenth century they had owned the castle of Roccasecca.6 An earlier branch of the family held the county of Aquino until 1137; it was from that branch that Thomas got his surname, not from the town of Aquino, which was not his birthplace. Another branch later inherited the county of Acerra, whose titleholder in 1221 was the first Thomas Aquinas; he possessed a viceroy's powers over the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Landolfo, the later Thomas's father, did not belong to the most powerful branch of the family and simply held the title miles.7 A follower of Emperor Frederick II since 1210, he was named by the latter "judge" of the "Tillage Land" (Terra di Lavoro), his region, in 1220,8 and in that role he was under the jurisdiction of the count of Acerra.
In spite of the labors of scholars, we are far from perfect clarity about Thomas's father and his family. For some, Landolfo would have been born about 1160/70 and married twice; for others, the name refers to two different people. The source materials are not unequivocal and lend them5. We need not spend time on the question here. Scandone (pp. 88–103) presents a detailed account of the arguments for Naples and Aquino, and finally (pp. 103–10) the demonstration of the birth at Roccasecca. Some additional information is in WN, p. 9, and more recently and completely in W. Pocino, Roccasecca patria di San Tommaso d'Aquino, Documentazione storicobibliografica (Rome, 1974).
6. Cf. Scandone, pp. 42–46; WN, pp. 10–12.
7. Documenta 9, p. 541 (cf. T. Leccisotti, San Tommaso e Montecassino (Montecassino, 1965): Table VIII; cf. also Documenta 4, p. 535: vir nobilis.
8. Documenta 1, p. 532. These ties with Frederick II need to be clarified. According to Kantorowicz ( Ergänzungsband, p. 45), the Aquinas family was among the principal supporters of the emperor, but it cannot be concluded that Thomas was related to him by blood. At most, we can establish family relations through alliances, though rather distant ones (ibid., p. 282, no. 35; cf. Weisheipl, p. 17).
selves to diverse interpretations, particularly with regard to determining the number of the saint's brothers. Weisheipl, accepting a hypothesis of Mandonnet's, presents it as certain that Landolfo married twice and that he had by his first wife, of whom we know nothing otherwise, three children: James, Phillip, and Adenolpho.9 Walz
Novarina attributes the same opinion to Scandone, but the latter does not breathe a word about it and regards these three names as referring to brothers by Thomas's own mother.10 Pelster suggests rather that the three names belong to the sons of Thomas I, count of Acerra, and therefore they would be more or less distant cousins of Thomas.11 Though it cannot be established definitively, this last view seems correct.
In any case, it is certain that Landolfo married, at an unknown date, Dame Theodora, who belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family.12 He had at least nine children with her, four boys and five girls. Aimo, the eldest son, doubtless named in honor of his grandfather, took part in an expedition to the Holy Land on behalf of Frederick II. He was taken prisoner, however, by a vassal of Hugh, king of Cyprus. Ransomed by the intervention of Pope Gregory IX in 1233, he remained faithful to the papal party for the rest of his life.13 Rinaldo, the second son, was at first a partisan of Frederick II, but joined the pope when Innocent IV
deposed the emperor in 1245. The emperor, however, put him to death in 1246 for conspiring against him.14 The family considered him a martyr for the cause of the Church. Thomas, too, seems to have believed the same, since in a dream vision his sister Marotta, recently deceased, informed him of the eternal destiny of his two brothers: Rinaldo was in heaven, while Landolfo was in purgatory, the only thing we know about the latter.15
9. Weisheipl, p. 17.
10. Scandone, pp. 46–51 and 76ff.
11. F. Pelster, "I parenti," p. 305. Kantorowicz maintains a similar position: Ergänzungsband, p. 276, no. 14, and p. 282, no. 35.
12. Ystoria 37, p. 317: "nomine Theodora, de prosapia Caraculorum dictorum Rubeorum Neapolis." Cf., ibid., p. 160. This datum, unknown to historians until the critical edition of the Ystoria, evidently weakens the speculations of Scandone (pp. 51–55), and others who followed him, on the origins of Dame Theodora.
13. Documenta 5, pp. 536–37; 10, pp. 541 and 543; Scandone, pp. 76–77.
14. Tolomeo XXII 20; Tocco 44, p. 118; Pelster, "I parenti," pp. 300–305; Mandonnet, "Novice," pp. 528–31; Kantorowicz, Ergänzungsband, p. 279, no. 25, has assembled the sources that refer to him.
15. Ystoria 44, p. 339 (Tocco 44, p. 118). Cf. Naples 78, p. 375, where Bartholomew of Capua alludes to Thomas's belief in the injustice committed in his brother's execution.
By contrast, we know Thomas's five sisters relatively well. Marotta, the eldest, became abbess of the convent of Saint Mary of Capua and died around 1259.16 The second sister, Theodora, became the wife of Roger of San Severino, count of Marsico.17 Thomas would go to her home to rest during his final illness. Her son, Thomas, who later worked for the canonization of his uncle, died wearing a Dominican habit.18 The third daughter, Mary, married William, the eldest of the San Severinos. Tocco got many details from their daughter, Catherine de Morra, about Thomas's family. Catherine heard them from her grandmother, Theodora.19 The fourth daughter, Adelasia, married Roger of Aquila; Thomas was the executor of Roger's will in 1272.20 As to the fifth sister, we do not know her name. She died in early infancy, struck by lightning while the young Thomas, who was sleeping nearby alongside his nurse, was spared.21
Oblate at Cassino—
Studies in Naples
Since Thomas was the youngest of the sons, he was destined, according to the custom of the time, for the Church. The nearness of Monte Cassino hardly left room for any alternative. Landolfo therefore offered his son as an oblate to the monastery, probably with the thought in the back of his mind that some day he might become abbot.22 The abbey was in a period of decadence and was prey to both pope and emperor. Nevertheless, the treaty of San Germano, signed by both parties 23 July 1230, inaugurated a period of relative peace. And it is then, between that date and 3 May 1231, that we may place Thomas's entry into the monastery under the abbot Landolfo Sinibaldi.
16. Ystoria 10, p. 217 (Tocco 9, p. 74).
17. Ystoria 47, p. 347 (Tocco 47, p. 120). Cf. Naples 20 and 46, pp. 291 and 326. Theodora is identified by name as having obtained from the abbot of Fossanova a hand from Thomas's body as a relic (cf. Ystoria 68, p. 402; Tocco 69, p. 142). This fits rather well with the portrait Tocco draws of her as a person of great piety ( Ystoria 37, p. 317; Tocco, 37, p. 111). Cf.
Scandone, pp. 57–61.
18. Ystoria 37, p. 318; cf. Introduction, pp. 160–161.
19. Naples 62, p. 350; cf., Scandone, pp. 61–67.
20. Scandone, pp. 67–69; WN, pp. a 15–16, who believes in a twicemarried Landolfo, thinks that Adelasia was only Thomas's halfsister. Today there is no reason to hold this hypothesis.
21. Ystoria 3, p. 197 (Tocco 2, p. 67).
22. Ystoria, 2 and 5, pp. 194–95 and 301 (Tocco 1 and 4, pp. 66–67 and 69–70); Naples 76, p. 371. If we were to follow Scandone, pp. 77–79, and accept with him that Giacomo de Aquino was a brother of Thomas's, this would be the second attempt by Landolfo to put one of his sons into a rich ecclesiastical benefice. We know that this Giacomo had been elected head of the collegiate church of San Pietro de Canetto, before the election was invalidated because of irregularities. Cf. Documenta 2 and 3, pp. 532–35 (dated 11 February 1217).
The latter date is marked by a charter through which Landolfo, Thomas's father, makes the abbey the generous gift of twenty ounces of gold "for the remission of his sins."23 It is not certain, but it at least appears that this donation constitutes the alms accompanying the oblature of noble children that Saint Benedict mentions in his Rule (Chapter 59). Thomas would have been five or six at the time, and, like Benedict himself, he was accompanied to the monastery by his nurse. Clearly, he received elementary training in reading and writing there and a first introduction to the Benedictine religious life of which traces may be found in his works. From 1236
on, however, the calm that the monastery had enjoyed was disturbed, and Landolfo, on the advice of the new abbot, Stephen de Corbario, had to shield his son from easily foreseeable troubles. After conferring together, therefore, his parents sent the adolescent Thomas to Naples to do more advanced study.24
Thomas probably left the monastery in the spring of 1239. He would have been fourteen or fifteen, and therefore could have made profession in the ordo monasticus.
But no document mentions such a step. This does not mean that Thomas had never been a monk. According to Leccisotti's25 nuanced account (and whatever the juridical vagaries of the period), being an oblate had the value of a true monastic profession, but it was conditional and temporary, similar to simple profession in a religious order today. Since it was not a personal decision, it required later ratification by the person himself at the proper age; he remained free to accept the commitment established by his parents or to embrace another form of life.
This peculiarity explains both how the Cassino necrology can mention Thomas as " primo Casinensis monachus factus" and how this link ceased without any formal process the day Thomas entered the Order of Preachers. Furthermore, the fact that the abbot "counseled" Landolfo to send his son to Naples for his studies shows clearly that he did not have the power to send Thomas there himself. Had Thomas been professed, the abbot could evidently have done so. But it is highly likely that, upon his arrival
23. Documenta 4, pp. 535–36; cf. T. Leccisotti, S. Tommaso, Table II.
24. Ystoria 6, p. 204 (Tocco 5, p. 70): "Abbas . . . prouide ei (patti) consuluit ut puer mitteretur Neapolim ad studendum. . . . Unde puer de utriusque parentis consilio Neapolim mittitur." The reference to both parents in this passage is worth noting. It explains something about the future role of Theodora. For a brief account of the preceding events: Leccisotti, S. Tommaso. pp. 48ff; cf. idem., "Il Dottore angelico a Montecassino," RFNS 32 (1940) 519–47, cf. p. 540.
25. Leccisotti, S. Tommaso, pp. 34–37 and pp. 18–25; cf. id., Il Dottore, pp. 533–40 and 523–28.
in Naples, Thomas spent some time at the monastery of San Demetrio, a lodging place for the Cassino monks in the city. And it is even more sure that his parents had not changed their plans for him.26
Thomas, therefore, was able to enroll in the young studium generale in Naples in the fall of 1239. Founded in 1224 by Frederick II with the aim of forming men for the emperor's service, it was destined to become part of the University of Bologna. The emperor's subjects were not authorized to study anywhere else.27 Thomas would have begun by studying the liberal arts and philosophy, the obligatory prerequisites for approaching theology.
Even if Frederick II's influence has been a little overestimated, the fascination of historians with him is one of the reasons why we know rather well the intellectual ambience at Thomas's arrival. Michael Scot, for instance, had launched into the business of translations on his own (we now know that he was already at work in Toledo in 1215).28 But Scot entered the emperor's service beginning in September 1220 and must have remained in Palermo until his death in 1235. It is in part thanks to the translations he and his school made from Arabic and Greek that Sicily and southern Italy experienced an intense cultural life at the time. Aristotelian science, Arabic astronomy, and Greek medicine all were flourishing in Palermo, Salerno, and Naples.29
It would be wrong to conclude, as was often done not long ago, that northern Europe was a stranger to this movement. Beginning in 1225, knowledge of Averroes is found in an anonymous Master of Arts,30 and a
26. Leccisotti, S. Tommaso, p. 53 ( Il Dottore, p. 543); see the reproduction of the necrology in Table VIII, which indicates that Thomas had in fact become a monk of Monte Cassino.
27. The original documents are in J.L.A. HuillardBréholles, Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi (Paris, 1854–59), vol. 2, part 1, pp. 450–53; vol. 4, part 1, pp. 497–99; vol. 5, part 1, pp. 493–96. Cf. H. Denifle, Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400 (Berlin, 1885), pp. 11–14 (for the foundation of Naples, pp. 452–61) E. Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1928), pp. 124–26; id., Ergänzungsband (Berlin, 1931), pp. 51–52. See also Weisheipl, pp. 13–15; WN, pp. 33–34.
28. Cf. R.A. Gauthier, "Note sur les débuts (1225–1240) du 'premier averroïsme,' " RSPT 66 (1982) 321–74, cf. pp. 332–34.
29. Keeping in mind the precise details provided by Gauthier (see previous note), it is also worthwile to consult J.L.A. HuillardBréholles, Historia diplomatica, Préface et introduction, pp. dxix–dlv: "De l'influence de Frédéric II sur le mouvement scientifique et littéraireBeaux arts"; cf. Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 272–98: "Michael Scot"; id., Studies in Medieval Culture (Oxford, 1929), pp. 124–47: ''Latin Literature under Frederick II"; see also M. Grabmann, "Kaiser Friedrich II und sein Verhältnis zur aristotelischen und arabischen Philosophie," in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben II (1936), pp. 103–37.
30. R.A. Gauthier, "Le traité De anima et de potenciis eius d'un maître arts (vets 1224).
little later in William of Auxerre, and in Robert Grosseteste, who cites Averroes several times in his scientific work.31 In any case, Thomas could have become familiar very early with Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics, at a time when studying them was still officially forbidden in Paris—only officially, though, because the repetition of the interdictions shows that they were scarcely respected. And, like the study of Averroes, the study of Aristotle was already flourishing in Paris around 1230.
Tocco has preserved for us the names of two masters who would have instructed Thomas: Master Martin, who would have taught him grammar and logic; and Master Peter of Ireland, who would have instructed him in the naturalia.32 These were only names for a long time, so much so that it was possible to regard them as a pure invention by Tocco. In this century, however, certain writings of the latter were identified, and he has been discovered a little later in the history: around 1250, in a group of Jewish and Christian scholars devoting themselves to studying Maimonides, and between 1258 and 1266, when he settles a disputed question in the presence of King Manfred.33
It has often been said that the writings of Peter of Ireland exhibit great admiration for Averroes and that it was from him that Thomas got his taste for the literal commentary on Aristotle. In fact, the role of the literal commentary in Peter is weak and the first assertion is totally without foundation. From the first lines of his commentary on the Peryermenias, Peter
(footnote continued on next page)
Introduction et texte critique," RSPT 66 (1982) 3–55, for the explicit use of the name Aueroist (or Aueneroist), cf. lines 41 and 49, p. 29; see also, lines 56–57, p. 30, together with the critical apparatus.
31. R.A. Gauthier, Note sur les débuts, pp. 337–40 for Robert; pp. 340–44 for William. Gauthier mentions numerous other authors of that period.
32. Ystoria 6, p. 204 (Tocco 5, p. 70); Calo 4, p. 20. It seems rather that logic would also have been taught to him by Peter (cf. Crowe in the following note). Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben II, p. 124, proposed identifying Master Martin with Martin of Dacia, but what we know of the latter now would place him at a much later date, toward the end of the thirteenth century. Cf. J. Pinborg, Die Entwicklung der Sprachtheorie im Mittelalter, "BGPTMA 42/2" (Munster, 1967), pp. 67–68; Gauthier, Leonine, vol. I*1, pp. 72*–73*.
33. Cf. C. Baeumker, Petrus von Hibernia der Jugendlehrer des Thomas von Aquin und seine Disputation vor König Manfred, Sitzungsberichte d. Bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos. u. hist. Klasse, Munich, 1920, and the presentation of it by Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben I, pp. 249–65. A. Pelzer, "Le cours inédit d'Albert le Grand sur la morale à Nicomaque recueilli et rédigé pas S. Thomas d'Aquin," Revue néoscolastique de Phil. 14 (1922) 333–61, 478–520; (for Peter of Ireland, pp. 355–57). See also the most recent work of M. B. Crowe, "Peter of Ireland: Aquinas' Teacher of the Artes Liberales" in Arts libéraux et Philosophie au Moyen Age, (MontréalParis, 1969) pp. 617–26; "Peter of Ireland's Approach to Metaphysics," MM 2 (1963) 154–60. These alreadyaging works should be completed and brought up to date in light of the research by R.A. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. I*1 (1989), pp. 67*–68*.
shows himself completely up to date on the "Averroist" error, and he denounces it in clear terms as sophistical. Given that such an interpretation of Averroes was hardly widespread until after 1252 (the date of St. Bonaventure's denunciation of Averroes' error), there is little chance that we have here the course taken by the young Thomas between 1240 and 1244. But since one may notice "several coincidences, some of them rather remarkable" between his text and Peter's,34 it might be asked if Thomas did not have at hand some account of the course—unless he used his own notes from one of Peter's courses prior to the denunciation of Averroes. It is necessary to conclude that we do not know anything precise about these years of study in Naples.
Taking the Habit and Its Consequences
It was also at Naples that Thomas became acquainted with the Dominicans. A priory had been founded there in 1231, and Jordan of Saxony, Saint Dominic's successor, had preached to the students in 1236.35 In 1239, only two religious were there. Frederick II had authorized them to stay in service to their church, although he had expelled the mendicants from his realm. One who remained Was John of San Giuliano, the inspiration for Thomas's vocation, who sustained him with visits during his imprisonment, and to whom Bartholomew of Capua pays heartfelt hommage.36 The other was the prior, Thomas of Lentini, a rather wellknown figure since he became bishop of Bethlehem, papal legate, and patriarch of Jerusalem, who interests us here because he gave the habit to Thomas.37 This fact, which formerly was believed to be attested only by Bernard Gui, is repeated in the fourth version of Tocco. The repetition no longer permits us to hold Mandonnet's hypothesis that Thomas received the habit at the hands of the master of the order, John the Teuton.38 The event took place, 34. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. I*1, p. 68*b, where Peter's text, also denouncing Averroes's error, may be found.
35. For the founding, see the two letters of Gregory IX to the archbishop and the chapter of Naples on the one hand, and to the people of the city on the other hand, dated 20 October 1231 ( Bullarium ordinis fratrum praedicatorum, vol. 1 (Rome, 1729), pp. 36–37); the local tradition claims the first arrival of the friars with Thomas Agni da Lentini goes back to 1227.
Cf. several remarks on this subject in Tugwell, p. 295, n. 39.
36. Ystoria 7, p. 207; 12, p. 224 (Tocco 6, p. 71; 11, p. 76); Bartholomew: "Frater Iohannes de sancto Iuliano, antiquus frater valde, homo magne vite et humilitatis, qui dicebatur notorie dictum fratrem Thomam de Aquino recepisse in ordine Predicatorum" ( Naples 76, p. 371).
37. Cf. A. Redigonda, art. "Agni, Tommaso," Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 1 (1960) 445–47.
38. Ystoria 7, p. 208; Gui 5, p. 171. Cf., Mandonnet, "Novice," pp. 372–75.
it appears, in April 1244 or slightly earlier that year, as the following events allow us to establish.39
Thomas's entrance into the Order of Preachers definitively compromised his parents' plans for him to become the abbot of Monte Cassino. If he thought that presenting them with a fait accompli would make things easier, he did not reckon on their obstinacy, particularly his mother's.40 The Neapolitan friars had seen their priory sacked in 1235 after a young nobleman, whose family wanted him back, took the habit. Taught by this unhappy precedent, the friars were no longer naive, and they hastily made Thomas leave the city.41 Thus when Theodora went to Naples, hoping to dissuade Thomas, she arrived too late; she pursued him all the way to Rome, where, again, she was too late. Thomas had already left in the retinue of the master general, John the Teuton,42 who was on the way to Bologna for the general chapter of the order scheduled for the feast of Pentecost, 22 May 1244. Theodora sent a rapid courier to her sons who were making war in the company of Frederick II in the region of Acquapendente, a little northwest of Orvieto (north of Rome, but outside the Papal States), asking them to intercept their brother and bring him back.43 All
39. Tugwell, p. 204, leans more toward 1242 or 1243. This would place Thomas's entrance at an age of 16 or 17. In itself, this does not appear to be impossible, but it seems to fit less well with all the other data.
40. My article in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (col. 721) and following Mandonnet, Leccisotti, WN, Weisheipl, etc., puts Landolfo Aquinas's death on 24 December 1243. There is no basis for this in the manuscript sources. The date is found only in a later printed edition (Venice, 1588), and it is hard to understand why Tocco omitted it. Since in subsequent events Dame Theodora moves sharply into the foreground ( Ystoria 8–9, pp. 210–14; Tocco 7–8, pp. 71–73), Mandonnet logically deduced that Landolfo was no longer in this world ("Novice," pp. 387–90). However the testimony of Bartholomew of Capua ( Naples 76, p. 372) supposes that Thomas's father was still alive when he took the habit and that it was his father whom the Dominicans of Naples feared when they moved Thomas away. During the forced residence at Roccasecca, it is again the father who pressures the son to change his religious allegiance; finally, it is he who, won over by the prayers of his wife, frees Thomas. Tocco implicitly recognizes this in his testimony at the canonization process: " tandem victi parentes et fratres sui ejus (Thomae) constantia restituerent ipsum ordini" ( Naples 62, p, 351). It is therefore preferable to follow Scandone's reconstruction of events here (pp. 50–51) echoed by Laurent ( Documenta 9, p. 541) and Tugwell (p. 297, n. 54), and admit that the 24 December date of death for Landolfo came in 1245, or later. Why didn't he take charge himself of the attempts to capture Thomas? We might conjecture that various troubles at the time did not allow him to leave his castles without supervision, but we might also recall that Theodora knew how to assume his responsibilities (cf. above, note 24).
41. Bull. O.P. I, pp. 74–75, dated 15 May 1235; other examples are in the Vitae Fratrum. Cf. Tugwell, p. 297, n. 53.
42. John of Wildeshausen, having been provincial of Hungary and then of Lombardy, was master general from 1241 to 1252. He died at Strasbourg 3/4 November 1252, Cf. Th. Käppeli, Scriptores III, pp. 47–48.
43. Tocco ( Ystoria 8–9, pp. 210–14; Tocco 7–8, pp. 71–73) echoes here the tradition of the (footnote continued on next page)
the sources agree on Acquapendente, and we also know that Frederick II was in the region at that time with his men. This had to be in the first two weeks of May, a sure reference point that allows us to put Thomas's taking of the habit a few weeks earlier, in April.44
In the small force that seized Thomas, two people are named:45 Rinaldo, his own brother, who was still a faithful follower of Frederick II; and Pier delle Vigne, the allpowerful counselor to the emperor.46 The latter's presence allows us to suppose that Frederick II had agreed to this operation, just as the sources say. With a small squad, it was easy for them to lay hands on the young monk, from whom they tried in vain to remove his habit. Putting him on a horse, they led him to Montesangiovanni, a family castle north of Roccasecca (the muchtalkedof episode of the prostitute sent in to tempt him may have occurred there).47 But this was only a stopover, and Thomas was quickly led to Roccasecca itself.48 Tocco adds that the Dominicans complained to Innocent IV about the use of force. According to him, the pope intervened with the emperor, who punished those involved. Fearing scandal, the Dominicans did not dare bring the Aquinas family to justice, knowing in any case that, even in prison, Thomas would continue in his intention.49
There, the entire family tried to make him change his mind, but it would be wrong to imagine that he was mistreated or relegated to some dungeon.50 It was more a kind of house arrest than imprisonment. Thomas could come and go, receive visits (repeated ones by John of San Giuliano (footnote continued from previous page)
Aquinas family and tries to persuade his readers of Dame Theodora's good intentions, according to which she wanted only to embrace her son and help him in his decision. But subsequent events render this hardly credible.
44. On Frederick II's presence in the Acquapendente region at the time, cf. Scandone, p. 14; Mandonnet, "Novice" (1924) pp. 535–47; (1925), pp. 3–24. Contrary to Tugwell (p. 297, n.
55) we believe it not very plausible that the family waited a year, maybe more, to react to Thomas's taking the habit.
45. Tolomeo XXII 20; cf. A. HuillardBréholles, Vie et correspondance de Pierre de la Vigne, ministre de l'empereur Frédéric II (Paris 1865), pp. 39–40.
46. In addition to HuillardBréholles's work mentioned in the previous note, cf. Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in Medieval Culture, pp. 133–34.
47. This is Mandonnet's hypothesis, "Novice" (1925), pp. 222–36, which Weisheipl accepts, pp. 30–31; Le BrunGouanvic, p. 215, who discusses it, also inclines to the view that Montesangiovanni was the final place where Thomas was held, and not Roccasecca. Given what we know about subsequent events, this appears difficult to maintain.
48. Ystoria 9, p. 213 (Tocco 8, p. 73).
49. According to Cantimpré I 20, pp. 67–68, John the Teuton complained directly to Frederick II.
50. Contrary to what the fanciful description of Cantimpré leads us to believe.
most notably, who brought him a new habit to replace his torn one).51 He conversed with his sisters and convinced his sister Marotta during this period to become a religious. Tocco reports that he took advantage of the time to pray, to read the entire Bible (perlegit), and to begin to study (didicit) the book of Sentences. His sisters even benefitted from his early learning—a clear sign of his future mastery.52
A summary of logic for beginners, the Tractatus fallaciarum, has also been attributed to him during this period, but this is less certain (ut dicitur). In fact, two small treatises, De fallaciis and De propositionibus modalibus, have been preserved that, up until the beginning of this century, were considered works from Thomas's youth. Today they are regarded as spurious. Without wanting to speak too absolutely on the subject, Father H.F. Dondaine, who edited them in the Leonine edition, printed them in small letters, to signify the "uncertain position of the two opuscula in the literary legacy of Saint Thomas."53 Taking up the question several years later, Father Gauthier shows with an abundance of detail that there can be no doubt: based on several works, notably Peter of Spain's Tractatus VII, these little treatises are necessarily from a date later than this period. Diverse other reasons militate against an attribution to Thomas. Given that the Fallacie entered the collections of Thomas's opuscula in Avignon around 1310–20, Gauthier suggests looking for their author among the masters of arts from the south of France toward the end of the thirteenth century.54
According to some sources,55 Thomas succeeded in escaping after a while (with his mother's complicity), by climbing down a wall with a rope, like Saint Paul. The truth is no doubt more prosaic. Seeing that his resolve could not be shaken, his family delivered him to the priory at Naples after the lapse of a little more than a year.56
If, as we might think, Innocent IV's deposing of Frederick II at the Council of Lyon (17 July 1245) was per51. Ystoria 12, p. 224 (Tocco 11, p. 76).
52. Ystoria 10. p. 217 (Tooco 9, p. 74); the terms used should be understood in the strongest sense. Calo is hardly exaggerating when he writes: " totam bibliam legit . . . et textum sentenciamm memorie commendavit" ( Vita no. 6, p. 23, variant n. 1).
53. Leonine, vol. 43 (1976), p. 388.
54. Leonine, vol. I*1 (1989) pp. 56*–64*.
55. Tolomeo XXII 21; Ystoria 12, p. 224 (Tocco 11, p. 77), but Tocco contradicts here his deposition at the canonization process ( Naples 62, p. 351): "parentes et fratres . . . restituerunt ipsum ordini"; Tugwell, p. 207, seems to give some credit to this account.
56. Besides Tocco (see above, note 47), Frachet IV 17,3: dimiserunt eum; Cantimpré I 20: fratres fratrem solverunt.
ceived as a sign that the political situation was beginning to change, Thomas's release may have come slightly thereafter.57
Before we conclude this chapter, we must not omit what may seem a paradox: despite these vicissitudes, Thomas's bond to his family milieu remained strong and deep. Many biographical details allow us to see this. Very quickly, when the political situation reversed itself and his family encountered difficulties because of its defection from the imperial cause, Thomas knew how to find ecclesiastical funds, with the permission of Clement IV, in order to come to his family's aid.58 Afterward, in the course of his travels, he regularly stayed in the family castles: in San Severino, where his sister Theodora, countess of Marsico, lived,59 and at Maenza, where his niece Francesca, countess of Ceccano, resided.60 It is said that he went frequently to the latter's home. He stopped there during his final illness, and it was from there that he had himself transported to Fossanova, saying that if the Lord had to visit him, it was better he should find him in a religious house rather than in a secular home.61 Furthermore, Thomas was selected as executor for Roger of Aquila, count of Traiecto, husband of his sister Adelasia, and he carried out that task to everyone's satisfaction.62 We should not believe that Thomas broke with his family over the early disagreements. He remained feudally tied to his milieu and his time, and his language constantly reminds us of that, as when he borrows the vocabulary and metaphors of chivalry and the military profession—something often overlooked.63
First Sketch for a Portrait
At the end of this first part of Thomas's biography, some of the features of his spiritual profile begin to emerge. The ancient biographers liked to 57. He would thus have been detained about fifteen months, perhaps more, if we follow the biographers: fere per duos annos ( Ystoria 12, p. 224; Tocco 11, p. 76): plus quam per annum (Bartholomew: Naples 76, p. 372); annis duobus vel tribus (Cantimpré I 20).
58. Ystoria 42, pp. 232–33 (Tocco 42, pp. 115–16); the Ystoria is more complete here; it might also be remarked with Le BrunGouanvic that it was in this context that the pope offered Thomas the archbishopric of Naples, hoping in this way to ally the Aquinas family more closely to the house of Anjou.
59. Ystoria 37, p. 317 (Tocco 37, p. 111); Naples 79, pp. 376–78.
60. Ystoria 56, p. 371 (Tocco 56, pp. 129–50).
61. Naples 15 and 8, pp. 286 and 276.
62. Documenta 25–27, pp. 575–79; Thomas's ties with his family have been emphasized with humor, but also with considerable penetration, by E. A. Synan, "Aquinas and His Age," in A. Parel, ed., Calgary Aquinas Studies (Toronto, 1978), pp. 1–25, cf. especially pp. 10–14.
63. We might refer here to the learned and fascinating article by E. A. Synan, "Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Profession of Arms," MS 50 (1988) 404–37.
emphasize the Marian devotion of the child who would not for anything leave the piece of parchment on which he had written the Hail Mary. They have also insisted on the young Benedictine oblate's zeal in seeking God and the Neapolitan student's enthusiasm for study.64 We can believe them, but many saints' lives provide similar facts. We will come closer to the historical truth by clarifiying certain episodes that we have just examined, this time in light of the theologian that Thomas would become.
To what extent were the overlapping of the religious figure and the political member of the Aquinas family, and the reversals of alliance with pope and emperor, the source of some of Thomas's positions about the relationship of the spiritual and the temporal? In fact, he was almost twenty when he was detained at Roccasecca, and he had complete leisure to think about these things. It would not be impermissible to see a reflection of his experience in a celebrated text written ten years later, in which he draws a very clear distinction between the domain of the temporal power and that of the spiritual power: The spiritual power and the secular power both derive from the divine power. That is why the secular power is not subordinated to the spiritual power, except to the extent that it has been subordinated by God, which is to say, inasmuch as concerns the salvation of souls. In this realm it is better to obey the spiritual power than the temporal. But in what concerns political goods, it is better to obey the secular power rather than the spiritual, as it is said in Matthew 22:21, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." At least this is so unless the secular power is joined to the spiritual power, as it is in the case of the pope, who possesses eminence in both powers, spiritual and secular, such that he disposes of them as both priest and king: a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek; king of kings and lord of lords, whose power will never be taken away and whose kingdom will never be destroyed, forever and ever.65
Unlike his contemporaries Saint Bonaventure and even Saint Albertus Magnus, who were still captive to the equation ecclesia = christianitas, 64. Ystoria 4–6, pp. 198–205 (Tocco 3–5, pp. 68–70).
65. Sent. II d. 44, expositio textus, ad. 4 See I. T. Eschmann, "Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Two Powers," MS 20 (1958) 177–205, for the sources and parallels to this doctrine. Its distant origin is Gelasius I's decree, Duo quippe sunt, but the immediate source would be a gloss by Huguccio on the Decretals of Gratian (c. 6, D. 96), cf. p. 184. One cannot follow Eschmann, however, in his basic thesis that this is an isolated text in Saint Thomas's teaching and that the position in De regno is the opposite (thus he doubts the authenticity of De regno). Better to adopt the relevant critique of L. E. Boyle, "The De regno and the Two Powers," in Pastoral Care, study XIII, which shows that this text defends the same dual position as the text in the Sentences, cited above.
which they inherited from the High Middle Ages with its perpetual temptation to hierocracy or, at the other extreme, Caesaropapism,66 Thomas has a clearly dualistic conception of the connections between Church and society, and he never wavers on this subject.67
Weisheipl (p. 8), who recalls this text from the Sentences, also sees in it the affirmation that the pope's temporal power is only an accident connected with his spiritual mission. This is to go too far, for Thomas never reaches that point. If he always remains faithful to his youthful intuition about the distinction between the two powers and their mutual subordination in their respective spheres, he also admits without discussion their de facto union in the pope, and he even allows the subordination of the ends of political society to the final end of the Church.68 Though not always easy to interpret, Thomas's political thought is not without coherence. This could be demonstrated without having to consider De regno as inauthentic (as Eschmann would suggest with some precautions). Weisheipl is better: he suggests that the doctrinal position reflects a personal attitude in Thomas. He always stubbornly refused ecclesial honors that would inevitably have involved him in temporal affairs, whether it was a matter of the abbacy of Monte Cassino,69 the archbishopric of Naples,70 or a cardinal's hat.71 Tocco confirms that he even prayed that he would be spared such involvements.72
The other telling event in Thomas's spiritual physiognomy is clearly his choice of the Dominican order. We can only guess at his reasons, though it seems easy to imagine what they must have been. Benedictine life in Monte Cassino at the time would not have much attracted a young man taken with the absolute. Nevertheless, Thomas would all his life retain a deep esteem for the Benedictine ideal. In his last known writing, a letter to Bernard Ayglier, abbot of Monte Cassino in 1274, he spontaneously
66. Cf. the texts quoted by Eschmann, pp. 192–93.
67. Besides Eschmann and Boyle (cf. n. 57), see L. P. Fitzgerald, "Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Two Powers," Angelicum 56 (1979) 515–56, who is also quite firm about the coherence of Thomas's thought on this point throughout his career, and about the authenticity of De regno. On the last point, the decisive contribution of the Leonine editors in their introduction to the critical edition of this opusculum (vol. 42, pp. 421–24) should be examined. We will also have occasion to return to the labors of B. Montagnes, "Les activités séculières et le mépris du monde chez S. Thomas d'Aquin. Les emplois du qualificatif 'saecularis,'" RSPT 55 (1971) 231–49.
68. Cf., also De regno II 3 (formerly I 14), Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 465–67.
69. Cantimpré I 20,; Tolomeo XXIII 21; WN, pp. 72–73.
70. Ystoria 42, p. 332 (Tocco 42, p. 116).
71. Ystoria 63, p. 391 (Tocco 63, p. 137); Naples 78, p. 375.
72. Ystoria 32, p. 306 (Tocco 32, p. 107).
reverts to the language of a young monk and presents himself as a "devoted son always prepared for prompt obedience."73 It is likely that Thomas's knowledge of St.
Gregory the Great, with its particular attention to the Dialogues (whose authenticity he evidently did not doubt)74 stems from this period.75 We might say the same about his habit of regularly reading Cassian's Collationes, which he kept to his whole life.76 In this, he may have been inspired by the example of Saint Dominic, who
"read and cherished" this book. Jordan of Saxony says that it helped Dominic achieve "a high peak of perfection."77
Meanwhile, Thomas surely perceived very quickly that his inclination toward study would be better satisfied in the new order and that, according to the theory he developed later, if it is good to contemplate divine things, it is even better to contemplate and transmit them to others.78 To this we must add a point rarely seen in the lists of possible motives: Thomas's desire to live a life of poverty. This has been strikingly formulated: "The refusal of Monte Cassino is, for Thomas, the same gesture 73. "Reuerendo in Christo patri Domino Bernardo . . . frater Thomas de Aquino suus deuotus filius se fatetur ubique ad obedientiam promtum"(!) This text may be read in the edition by A. Dondaine, either in the Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 413–15, or in the preparatory work that he published for Thomas's seventh centenary: "La lettre de saint Thomas à l'abbé du Montcassin," in Commemorative Studies I, pp. 87–108. Although today we do not regard this piece as in Thomas's own handwriting, its authenticity is no longer in doubt.
There is a translation in P. Renaudin, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et saint Benoît," RT 17 (1909) 513–37, cf. pp. 533–35.
74. The controversy about the Gregorian authorship of the Dialogues has hardly ceased since the Renaissance. It resurfaced forcefully with the publication of F. Clark's The Pseudo
Gregorian Dialogues, vol. 2, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 37 (Leiden, 1987). For a response: P. Meyvaert, "The Enigma of Gregory the Great's 'Dialogues': A Response to Francis Clark," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1988) 335–81.
75. See E. Portalupi, "Gregorio Magno nell' Index Thomisticus," Bull. de la SIEPM 31 (1989) 112–46. While the author refrains from drawing conclusions, he has to state that the 2470
occurrences of Gregory in Thomas's works make him "one of the privileged patristic sources of Thomas's output" (p. 127). He makes another significant remark: "our author [i.e., Gregory] carries a certain weight in the writings that defend the religious life" (ibid.). See also Studi sulla presenza di Gregorio Magno in Tommaso d'Aquino, Dokimion 10 (Fribourg, 1991), where the same author studies in greater detail Thomas's use of Gregory in the Questions De ueritate and De malo.
76. Ystoria 22, p. 274 (Tocco 21, p. 95). in addition to these two specific points, it is probable that Thomas got a very serious basic education at Monte Cassino (cf. Leccisotti, S.
Tommaso, pp. 26–33). Tolomeo XXII 20 assures us: "in logicalibus et naturalibus optime profecit." It is not impossible that he benefitted from the teaching of the monk Erasmus, whom we find again in 1240 at the University of Naples (cf. T. Leccisotti, "Magister Erasmus," Bulletino dell'lstituto storico italiano per il medioevo e Archivio Muratoriano 47 [1932] 209–
16. C. Le BrunGouvanic ( Ystoria, p. 205) suggests that there may even have been a connection between Thomas's departure to study at Naples and Erasmus's presence at the university.
77. Libellus 13, trans. M.H. Vicaire, Saint Dominique et ses frères (Paris, 1967), p. 55.
78.IIa IIae q. 188 a. 6; cf. IIIa q. 40 a. 1 ad 2; a. 2.
made by Francis of Assisi.''79 The liveliness and evangelical depth with which he later defends the ideal of mendicant poverty against William of SaintAmour may well find its origins in this period, hardly more than a dozen years earlier:
Of all that Christ did or suffered during his mortal existence, His venerable Cross is offered to us as the prime example that we must imitate. . . . Now, of all that he teaches us, absolutely first is poverty [ omnimoda paupertas]; Christ was deprived of every exterior good, even to the point of bodily nakedness. . . . It is that nakedness on the Cross that those who embrace voluntary poverty wish to follow, particularly those who give up all gain. . . . Clearly, therefore, the enemies of poverty are also the enemies of Christ's Cross.
The wisdom of the world thinks that earthly possessions belong to Christian perfection, while refusing them will lead only to a lesser perfection.80
We might bring to light a third trait about the stubborness with which Thomas resisted family pressure. The placidity and moderation that we usually link to his genius are legendary and will have to be examined further. Supposing these traits to have been real, we should not overlook the radicalism of which Thomas was capable.
Here, the mature man theorizes about the adolescent's intuitions:
When parents are not in a situation of serious need for help from their children, the latter may leave parental service and enter the religious life, even against parental wishes.
Having passed the age of puberty, whoever is free has the right to dispose of himself in the choice of a state of life, especially if it concerns serving God. Better to obey the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9) through whom we live than to obey the generators of our flesh.81
The emotional tremor that runs through this fierce declaration takes us back directly to the attitude of the novice sequestered by his family. It is still that young man who, speaking of the right of the pueri (i.e., adolescents) to enter the religious life, assures us that they may do it "even against 79. M.D. Ghenu, Saint Thomas d'Aquin et la théologie, Maîtres spirituels 17 (Paris, 1959), p. 11.
80. Contra Retrahentes 15, Leonine, vol. 41, p. C 69. We will return to this subject a little later, but as bizarre as it may seem, William of SaintAmour made a complete apology for clerical wealth. Cf. M.M. Dufeil, Saint Thomas et l'histoire, Senefiance 29 (AixenProvence, 1991), pp. 445–56: "Un universitaire réactionnaire vets 1250: Guillaume de SaintAmour";
we refer provisionally to these few pages while waiting to return to the more considerable works of which they are the echo.
81. IIa IIae q. 189 a. 6.
the wishes of their parents."82 And he adds: "In this domain, our relatives according to the flesh are more enemies than friends."83
It's a great pity for him, but even more for us, that we generally know only Thomas's most abstract philosophical and theological writings. This imbalance often leads to a misconception about him further aggravated by commentators more concerned about logic than was Thomas himself. Whoever seeks Thomas's personality in his writings will soon discover it to be quite different than he may think.
82. Quodlibet IV q. 12 a. 1 [23]: etiam invitis parentibus.
83. Contra Retrahentes 9, Leonine, vol. 41, p. C 57: Propinqui autem carnis in hoc proposito amici non sunt, sed potius inimici. If we are alert to this type of personal note, we may find it elsewhere, even in the fragments of Super Matthaeum recently edited by J. P. Renard (50, 1983, p. 179, lines 754–756): si aliquis propter introitum religionis sustinet plura dampna a parentibus, consilium est ut non pretermittat quod melius est. H.D. Saffrey, "Un panégyrique inédit de S. Thomas d'Aquin par Josse Clichtove," in Ordo sapientiae et amoris, pp. 539–53 (cf. p. 540), notes a very curious detail that has all the marks of a personal confidence: repeating a passage where Saint Jerome recommends to "trample under foot,"
if necessary, your own father (per calcatum perge patrem), Thomas adds on his own: per calcatam perge matrem (IIa IIae q. 101 a. 4).
Chapter II—
Disciple of Albertus Magnus (1245—1252)
Thomas was returned, then, to the Dominican order by his family in the summer of 1245. If, as seems to have been the case, Innocent IV's deposing of Frederick II played a role in that decision, it would have been made after 17 July 1245. The Aquinas family, partly detached from the emperor and obligated to good will toward the Church, would thus have released Thomas.1
The Dominicans in Naples, little reassured by this happy development, thought it unsafe to keep the new recruit among them and sent him to Rome. There, ad capitulum generale, they could provide for his future and direct him to some university to pursue his studies.2 In fact, there was no general chapter held at Rome that year, and we must understand Thomas to have been sent to Rome, where the master of the order, John the Teuton, was to be found on the point of departing for Paris, where the general chapter of 1246 was to be held. Thus, Tocco continues by explaining that John "received Thomas like a dear son in Christ, sending him first to Paris, then to Cologne, where a studium generale was in full bloom under the leadership of Brother Albert, master of theology, and reputed to be accomplished in all realms of knowledge."3
1. The historians seem to have reached a consensus on this date (cf. Scandone, p. 15; WN, p. 56; Weisheipl, p. 35; Ystoria, p. 225, n. 18). Tugwell (p. 207) is the only exception; he prefers, in harmony with his other judgments, to put Thomas's release in the first few months of 1246.
2. Ystoria 13, P. 226, corrects Tocco 12, p. 77, who instead of ad capitulum generale wrote ad magistrum ordinis.
3. Ystoria 13, p. 226 (Tocco 12, p. 77): "Quem (Thomam) cum frater Johannes Theutonicus, (footnote continued on next page)
Paris (1245–1248)
Until quite recently, historians hesitated to credit Thomas's stay in Paris after he was returned to the order by his family. Our oldest sources, Frachet and Cantimpré, are nevertheless quite clear: he was sent to Paris by the master of the order.4 Tocco describes two distinct stages: duxit eum Parisius et deinde Coloniam.5
Following him, Bernard Gui and Peter Calo mention this trip to Paris, then to Cologne. Tolomeo of Lucca says only that he went from Italy to Cologne.6 After a painstaking examination of the sources, WalzNovarina conclude that the journey to Paris in the company of John the Teuton "without being certain can be considered probable," but they are more reserved on the question of studies at Paris: "The historical sources do not provide . . . proof that Thomas was a student in Paris."7
Many distinguished scholars (Denifle, De Groot, Pelster, Eschmann) take the same view, but many others (Mandonnet, Grabmann, Chenu, Glorieux) observe that the Paris trip would have had no point if Thomas did not study there. The latter group also notes in particular that the studium generale at Cologne was not in operation before 1248, the date of its opening by Albertus Magnus upon his return to that city.8 Until then, the young Dominican would have been wasting his time there. In fact, the stay in Paris, which might have remained a hypothesis, is presented as a certainty by the most recent historians who have examined it.9 Some new research has brought forward decisive arguments. These converging proofs, independently arrived at by different researchers, are of two kinds.
(footnote continued from previous page)
magister ordinis, in carissimum in Christo filium suscepisset duxit ipsum Parisius et deinde Coloniam: ubi sub fratre Alberto magistro in theologia eiusdem ordinis florebat studium generale, qui reputabatur in omni scientia singularis."
4. Frachet IV 17, 3: missus est Parisius; Cantimpré I 20: transmissus est Parisios a magistro ordinis.
5. Cf. note 3 above.
6. Gui, p. 176: "Quem (Thomam) . . . Johannes theutonicus . . . duxit parisius. Deinde mittitur in Coloniam . . . " Cf. Calo 8, p. 25, with Prümmer's notes. Tolomeo XXII 21 has Thomas leave for Rome at his colorful liberation (horses are ready under the walls of the castle when he escapes secretly): "Inde vadit Coloniam ad Fratrem Albertum ubi multo tempore fuit."
7. WN, pp. 62 and 64.
8. The organization of studies in the Dominican order distinguished between studium solemne and studium generale. The first operated at the provincial level for the philosophical and theological formation of ordinary students. The second was interprovincial, at the university level, and only the most capable students were sent there. For a long time, only the priory of SaintJacques in Paris enjoyed the latter status, which it first obtained in 1229 (Cf. C. Douais, Essai sur l'organisation des études . . . , pp. 15–140; Glorieux, Répertoire I, pp. 34–38).
9. Weisheipl, pp. 36–38. See the same author's "The Life and Works of St. Albert the Great," in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, 1980, pp. 25–26. Tugwell (p. 208) also allies himself with this position.
The first type is based on internal evidence. R.A. Gauthier10 has noted that Thomas's works, particularly his commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bears deep traces of ideas circulating in Paris between 1240 and 1250. This may be observed in three different realms: (l) Thomas often quotes from memory the text of the Ethica uetus, the oldest translation and the only one then in use (he seems never to have recalled the Ethica noua in his work); (2) His commentary "attests a good knowledge of the exegesis that the Parisian masters of arts had performed on these [old] translations" from Aristotle. Thomas is so "deeply impregnated" with them that he continues to repeat their faulty interpretations even after Albert seems to have given him good ones;11 (3) Thomas could not have gotten this at Naples (1239–
43) because there is no record of the teaching of the Ethics there at this time, while such teaching was in full bloom at Paris between 1240 and 1250. And it seems hardly plausible that he would have returned later to a commentary on the Ethica uetus when Albert had already introduced him to the translatio lincolniensis.
Effectively, after 1250 the commentaries on the Ethica uetus were out of date and were no longer circulated.
For all these reasons, it is more than probable that Thomas studied at Paris. But Gauthier takes a further step in saying that it was still not theology he studied with Albert in that period. He attended the faculty of arts instead of the faculty of theology, and thus finished the introduction to learning he had begun at Naples between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Gauthier even hazards a guess about the names of the two masters he might have had: Alexander, who may be the same Alexander whose work was used to edit a Sentencia super nouam et ueterem ethicam mentioned in a catalog dated 1338;12 and Arnoul de Provence, whose introduction to philosophy attracted interest for its treatment of moral questions. In support of this hypothesis, it might be added that the relations between Thomas and the arts faculty will show themselves more than once afterwards. These may reflect the continuation of acquaintances made during this Parisian period.
10. Cf. "S. Thomas et l'Ethique à Nicomaque," Leonine, vol. 48, pp. xv–xvii, which we summarize here and to which we refer the reader for a brief survey of the Latin translations of the Ethics from that period. Cf. preface to Leonine edition, vol. 47/1, pp. 236–37.
11. For example, on Eth. I 5, 44–47 and I 12, 188–92.
12. Cf. R.A. Gauthier, "Le cours sur l' Ethica nova d'un maître ès arts de Paris (1235–1240)," AHDLMA 42 (1975) 71–141; cf. p. 93, where the author engages in some speculations about this figure.
Converging arguments on the basis of external evidence have been advanced by Paul Simon in the Prolegomena to his edition of Albertus Magnus's Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus.13 This text was transmitted, along with other commentaries by Albert on Dionysius, in a Neapolitan manuscript ( Biblioteca Nazionale I. B.
54),14 one of whose claims to interest is that it was written in Thomas's own handwriting; for several years, Thomas served as secretary to Saint Albert. The text of the first commentary in this volume, the commentary on De caelesti hierarchia, and only this commentary, presents the added distinction of being divided into
"pieces" (peciae).
For anyone unfamiliar with the techniques of university book production before the invention of printing, it is necessary to realize that the pieces are the separate notebooks of a given manuscript volume. They could be given separately to different copyists without having to tie up the whole book at any time. This had the valuable advantage of considerably speeding up the copying of the volume. If twenty copyists worked simultaneously on each of the twenty pieces of a book, the whole book could then be copied in the time it would take to copy a single piece.15
This practice was, before 1250, already widely used in Paris, where there was a large student demand for books but it was still unknown at Cologne at this time because the university had not yet been founded there. The way the pieces are identified (capital letters in the upper margin on the first page of each piece) is typical of Paris. According to Simon (Shooner16 agrees with him), what the young Thomas did in his service to Albert was to prepare the edition of Albert's commentary for its reproduction by the copying system, which is to say that he was the first practitioner
13. P. Simon, Prolegomena, in S. Alberti Magni Opera omnia, ed. Coloniensis, vol. 37/1: Super Dyonisium de divinis nominibus (Bonn, 1972), pp. vi–vii.
14. Cf. G. Théry, "L'autographe de S. Thomas conservé à la Biblioteca Nazionale de Naples," AFP 1 (1931) 15–86; P. M. Gils, "Le MS. Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale I. B. 54 estil de la main de S. Thomas?" RSPT 49 (1965) 37–59; H.F. Dondaine and H.V. Shooner, Codices Manuscripti Operum Thomae de Aquino I (Rome, 1967), p. 8.
15. Since J. Destrez's work, Etudes critiques sur les oeuvres de saint Thomas d'Aquin d'après la tradition manuscrite, Bibliothèque thomiste 18 (Paris, 1933), p. 5–31, researchers have made considerable progress in studying and understanding the system of book circulation and have also become more aware of the problems that system poses for critical editions.
Among the most recent works, see: L.J. Bataillon, B. G. Guyot, R. H. Rouse, eds., La production du livre universitaire au MoyenAge, 'exemplar' et 'pecia' (Paris, 1988) L.J. Bataillon,
"Exemplar, Pecia, Quaternus," in O. Weijers, ed., Vocabulaire du livre et de l'écriture au Moyen âge, CIVICIMA 2 (Turnhout, 1989), pp. 206–19.
16. H.V. Shooner, "La production du livre par la pecia," in La production du livre, pp. 17–37.
of it. This conclusion seemed excessive to Leonard Boyle. Without questioning Thomas's handwriting or his copying of the text during the first visit to Paris, he strongly doubts that the text Thomas copied could have been used as an "exemplar" for university copying. The distinctive handwriting of the young monk and a series of other arguments, according to Boyle, work against this hypothesis. If his copy is already divided into pieces, that means he copied a manuscript already in that form. Thomas was, therefore, the first known witness to the system, not its first practitioner.17
Without delving further into this scholarly controversy, we might retain from this discussion the fact that a new researcher of high standing has joined with those who accept a prolonged stay by Thomas in Paris at this time. The manuscript mentioned above presents other oddities that P. Simon has analyzed with penetration, but the following points suffice for understanding his double conclusion. First, Albert composed his commentary on De caelesti hierarchia while he was in Paris, therefore before 1248. If Thomas, who copied it in his own handwriting according to the Parisian fashion, was one of its first beneficiaries, that was because he too was in Paris at the time. Returning to the text of Tocco with which we began, Simon properly remarks that deinde does not have the same meaning as statim, and that deinde permits us to suppose a rather long interval between the arrival in Paris and the departure for Cologne. In Cologne, Thomas would later retranscribe some of Albert's courses on Dionysius, but he was no longer obliged to present the manuscript in the same manner as he had in Paris.
Weisheipl agrees with Simon's and Gauthier's conclusions that the stay in Paris to study occurred, but he differs from Gauthier, who sees Thomas as a student in the faculty of arts. Normally, religious studied in their priories, Weisheipl recalls, and, according to the constitutions of the order, they could not attend courses outside without a dispensation. For Weisheipl, Thomas must therefore have acquired the knowledge he displays through private study.18 This is certainly possible, but we have to ask whether Weisheipl has taken into account all the available data on this point.
17. L. E. Boyle, "An Autograph of St. Thomas at Salerno," in A. Lobato, ed., Littera, Sensus, Sententia, Studi in onore del Prof. Clemente J. Vansteenkiste (Milan, 1991), pp. 117–
34.
18. Weisheipl, pp. 37–38; see also by the same author, Thomas d'Aquino and Albert His Teacher (Toronto, 1980), pp. 5–6.
In a text that dates without question from 1220, the early Dominican constitutions restore, in effect, the earlier prohibitions against clerics "studying the books of the pagans." They even extend that interdiction further to the philosophers and the liberal arts, but the very same text provides that the authorities of the order may dispense from the interdiction.19 It is entirely believable that Thomas obtained this dispensation, since it was precisely one of the particular features of the Dominican order to grant dispensations from various obligations for reasons of study.20 For a gifted person like Thomas, this would be at least plausible. But it would also not be impossible, as L.J. Bataillon suggests, that qualified religious or friendly secular masters could have taught liberal arts within the priory. Such teaching was indispensable for the study of theology, but we still do not know how it was provided to the mendicant orders.21
For the young Thomas in particular, it is also necessary to take into account the amount of time we can see he had at Paris—too short a period for a complete course of study. In all likelihood, he left Monte Cassino with a good basic formation, but the four or five years in Naples (1239–44) were not enough for Thomas to have finished the full cycle of liberal arts (it usually took six or seven years).22 We must therefore admit with Gauthier that he completed his philosophy course in Paris or at least that
19. De Oudste Constituties van de Dominicanen, ed. A. H. Thomas, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 42 (Leuven, 1965), p. 361: "In libris gentilium et philosophorum non studeant, etsi ad horam inspiciant. Saeculares scientias non addiscant nec etiam artes quas liberales vocant, nisi aliquando circa aliquos magister ordinis vel capitulum generale voluerit aliter dispensare . . . "; that same interdiction is repeated in the Constitutions of Raymond of Peñafort in 1241, cf. AFP 18 (1948), pp. 65–66. The text may be found in Constitutions primitives of the Dominican order, translated into French, in M.H. Vicaire, Saint Dominique de Caleruega d'après les documents du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1955), pp. 136–84, or in the same author's Saint Dominique, La vie apostolique (Paris, 1965), pp. 161–97.
20. Cf. the Constitutiones Antique, Prol. , in A. H. Thomas, ed., De Oudste Constituties, p. 311; G. Meersseman, " In libris gentilium non studeant. L'étude des classiques interdite aux clercs au moyen âge?" in Italia medioevale e classica I (Padua, 1958), pp. 1–13, who has given a nuanced exegesis of the modifications to this point in the ancient Dominican constitutions. He emphasizes that the closing clause on exemptions (reproduced in italics in the preceding note) was introduced in 1228 and it moderated noticeably the original rigidity; the Dominican superiors knew how to apply this clause widely.
21. L.J. Bataillon, Status quaestionis, p. 647–57, cf. p. 650.
22. The information we have on the length and contents of these studies does not always agree. Cf. J. A. Weisheipl, "Curriculum of the Faculty of Arts at Oxford in the Early Fourteenth Century," MS 26 (1964), 143–85. Cf. the article "Artes Liberales" (several authors) in Lexikon des Mittelalters 1 (1980), 1058–1063. For the place of the liberal arts in the formation of a future theologian, cf. L. Hödl, ibid., cols. 1061–1062; G. Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: An Institutional and Intellectual History (New York, 1968), pp. 164–65. See also F. Van Steenberghen, La philosphie au XIIIe, siècle, pp. 50–81 [2d ed. (1991), pp. 45–75].
he attended certain courses there, since the level was doubtless superior to what could be found in Naples. But we must also immediately add that he simultaneously began the theological course at Paris, too. It took at least five years of study to get the baccalaureate that would have allowed him to teach as a theologian. If, as we shall see, Thomas began commenting on the Sentences in 1252, we have to place his teaching on Isaiah in 1251–52. This would indicate a shortening of the five years of theology usually prescribed. A solution suggests itself: the period of study in Paris was a time of varied formation, during which Thomas's superiors, recognizing his intellectual gifts, allowed him to begin theology while he was finishing his philosophical formation.
We may thus sum up what we know about these first years as a Dominican: in the autumn of 1245, Thomas set out for Paris in the company of John the Teuton. He spent 1246, 1247, and the first part of 1248 there—three academic years. It is not impossible that the first of these years was the novitiate year, which Thomas had still not been able to make since taking the habit in April of 1244.23 During the next two years, he could have studied the liberal arts either at the faculty of arts or in the priory. But nothing would have prevented him from studying theology in some courses with Albert at SaintJacques during the same time. He recopied Albert's De caelesti hierarchia in a manuscript that gives testimony to the Parisian system of "pieces." In 1248, he departed for Cologne with Albert, with whom he will continue his studies in theology and his work as an assistant.
Cologne (1248–1252)
Unlike the stay in Paris, Thomas's time in Cologne has never been questioned, because it is well documented. The only problem has to do with its length. We know that it lasts until 1252, but the scholars who would like to eliminate the stay in Paris make it begin in 1246, forgetting that Albert was not yet in Cologne. According to the timetable we have just proposed, there is no longer any difficulty.
On 7 June 1248 (Pentecost), the general chapter of the Dominicans, meeting in Paris, decided to create a studium generale in Cologne.24 In 23. This is Weisheipl's suggestion, p. 38. According to Tugwell's chronology, things went differently: Thomas did his novitiate and made profession before his family captured him (cf. p. 204).
24. This step, confirmed by three successive chapters according to the Rule, in fact dealt with four provinces: Provence, Lombardy, Germany, and England. Cf. MOPH 3, P. 41.
the latter city, a Dominican priory had been founded in 1221/22 by Brother Henry, a companion of Jordan of Saxony.25 Albert, whose reputation was already great, was asked to teach there.26 He left Paris at the end of the academic year (the masters ended lessons on June 29) and took Thomas with him to begin the new academic year in the fall at Cologne. If they kept to the Parisian custom, they began teaching on September 14th, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.27 They had already arrived by the Assumption, and it is highly likely that Thomas was present at the laying of the first stone for the cathedral, an event that took place that day.
Albert speaks in his works about the excavations undertaken at the time, which brought to light some superb ancient mosaics.28
The stay in Cologne constituted a decisive phase in Thomas's life. In all likelihood, this was the period of his priestly ordination, but we do not have any precise information on this question. We do know, however, that Saint Albert had a considerable influence on him. During these four years, between the ages of twentythree and twentyseven, Thomas was deeply impregnated with Albert's thought; he continued the work for him already begun in Paris. He was putting in order his notes from Albert's courses on Dionysius's Divine Names and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This was heavy work, and Gauthier (following Pelzer) estimates that it took up one third of Thomas's working time during this period.29
It has never been disputed that Thomas took Albert's course on the Divine Names, but it is astonishing that, already a theologian, Thomas also took the course on the Ethics, which normally was part of the philosophy program. Gauthier's investigations have shown in Thomas's own commentary on the Ethics some 350 passages in which "Albert's influence is evident." In that light, we cannot doubt any longer the assertions of the ancient biographers. These recollections from Albert's work do not refer to the later commentary by Albert, produced when Thomas was no longer
25. On this foundation, see Weisheipl, Life and Works, p. 38, or WN, p. 66.
26. Henri de Herford, Liber de rebus memorabilioribus sive Cronicon, ed. A. Potthast (Göttingen, 1859), p. 201: "Post tres annos magisterii sui Coloniam mittitur ad legendum."
27. Cf. P. Glorieux, "L'enseignement," p. 103.
28. Albert, De causis et proprietatibus elementorum I, tr. 2, cap. 3, Borgnet 9, 605b: "et nos in Colonia vidimus altissimas fieri foveas, et in fundo illarum inventa sunt paramenta mirabilis schematis et decoris, quae constat ibi homines antiquitus fecisse, et congestam fuisse terram super ea post ruinas aedificiorum."
29. R.A. Gauthier, Leonine, vol. 48, p. xvii, with reference to A. Pelzer, Etudes d'histoire littéraire sur la scolastique médiévale, Philosophes médiévaux VIII (LouvainParis, 1964), p.
282. Thomas's autograph of the Divine Names is preserved in the Naples manuscript of which we have spoken above.
his student. Rather, they refer to the older course, of which Thomas displays ''a profound knowledge (the mass of his recollections proves it), but a distant knowledge (the number of his slips of memory shows this)."
If, as appears, Albert did not bother to follow Thomas's later theological output, we know with certainty that Thomas, by contrast, continued to pay attention to the publications of his former master, even having Albert's commentary on the Ethics put on note cards to be able to gain access to it more easily. This labor gave birth to the work known as the Tabula libri Ethicorum, which presents itself as a lexicon whose definitions are most often almost literal quotations from Albert. Gauthier, who has carefully examined this work and edited it for publication, suggests that Thomas may have begun compiling it while he was working on his own Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae. He may have left the Tabula unfinished because his own maturation (he had not delayed the start of his own commentary on the Ethics) allowed him to see imperfections in the work of his former master.30
Several anecdotes have come down to us from the Cologne period. These cannot be entirely ignored. Even if they are not historically accurate, they at least tell us how Thomas was perceived by his contemporaries. Take, for instance, the "dumb ox from Sicily." We imagine that Thomas's taciturnity earned him that nickname. But he could also on occasion show that he was capable of expressing himself in a magisterial way. It was about this time that Albert is supposed to have said prophetically:
"We call him the dumb ox, but he will make resound in his doctrine such a bellowing that it will echo throughout the entire world."31 It is difficult to avoid this little story about Thomas, but perhaps it should be added that the nickname was less pejorative than we think. An old legend that brings onto the scene the mother of Reginald, his socius (about whom we shall speak later), gives a probable reason for the epithet: "He was so big that because of his body's massiveness he was called the Sicilian ox. The mother of Brother Reginald, his socius, recounts that when he was passing, the peasants in the fields left their labors and came near to look at him, full of admiration for a man of such corpulence and beauty."32
Whatever the exact meaning of the expression, this anecdote (to which
30. R.A. Gauthier, preface to the edition of the Tabula libri Ethicorum, Leonine, vol. 48, p. B5–B55; Weisheipl, Thomas d'Aquino and Albert His Teacher, p. 13–14.
31. Ystoria 13, p. 229 (Tocco 12, p. 79).
32. M.H. Laurent, "Un légendier dominicain peu connu," Analecta Bollandiana 58 (1940) 28–47, cf. p. 43.
we must clearly join the story of the tutor who wanted to help Thomas, the latter finally having to help the tutor out of difficulties) is at least a sign that Thomas's intellectual stature was beginning to be recognized and even to become legendary. In truth, it is doubtful that Albert would have had to wait so long to be persuaded of this. It is more likely that such stories reflect something of Thomas's true position with Albertas not a simple student, but rather as an assistant who, at the same time he completed his own formation, could already be trusted with some teaching duties.33 We can appreciate the high quality of this teaching by looking at his first known commentary on Scripture.
The Bible and Spirituality:
The Super Isaiam
Upon his arrival in Cologne, after Naples and Paris (and whatever may have been the details about his years of study), Thomas already had seven or eight years of formation behind him, even without counting what he learned on his own during the imprisonment by his family. Some scholars (De Groot, Berthier, Pelster) even think that he was already a lecturer in theology and probably the biblical bachelor for Albert (Scheeben, Eschmann).
Weisheipl takes up this hypothesis and suggests that Thomas taught cursorie on Jeremiah, Lamentations, and a part of Isaiah at Cologne.34 These "cursory" lectures, we know, fell to the biblical bachelor during the first two years, when he was winning his spurs as a future master. Rapid by definition, "they do not enter into the details of all the different interpretations. . . . The lecturer's, that is to say the teacher's, aim is to make the literal sense of the text understood."35 The commentaries on Jeremiah and Lamentations exactly correspond to that definition. Ironically, Sixtus of Siena in the sixteenth century denied the authenticity of these commentaries precisely because of their doctrinal poverty (sterilitas doctrinae). It is hardly worth lingering on this; but by contrast, the exposition of Isaiah, even if it sometimes leaves us a little hungry for more, possesses great riches on certain points.
33. We may imagine the fraternal climate in which this collaboration may have developed, since Albert himself speaks rather often of the socii who worked with him. Cf. Y. Congar,
" In dulcedine societatis quaerere veritatem. Note sur le travail en équipe chez S. Albert et chez les Prêcheurs au XIIIe siècle," in G. Meyer and A. Zimmermann, eds., Albertus Magnus—Doctor Universalis 1280/1980 (Mainz, 1980), pp. 47–57.
34. Weisheipl, pp. 45 and 369–70.
35. P. Glorieux, "L'enseignement," p. 119; cf. M.D. Chenu, Toward, p. 242.
The Leonine editors of the Super Isaiam (who did not know at the time Weisheipl's suggestion) put its composition during Thomas's first year of teaching in Paris, 1252–53.36 But Weisheipl's arguments are not without weight. On the one hand, he reminds us that Thomas was sent to Paris to lecture on the Sentences, not the Bible.37 Besides, he emphasizes that, if he had begun by reading the Bible, Thomas would have been an exception, since none of the masters who had occupied the second Dominican chair up until then had begun their teaching as bachelors with a cursory reading of the Bible. All had begun with the Sentences. Furthermore, by the middle of the thirteenth century it was no longer an absolute rule that the bachelor of the Sentences would earlier have been a biblical bachelor.38
Weisheipl's suggestion is, therefore, well founded and it has been well received by accomplished scholars.39 It remains within the generally accepted chronological framework for Thomas's first commentaries on Scripture, even if it slightly moves up the dates. Thus these commentaries, more than ever, may be regarded as "the first theological work by Saint Thomas."40
As such, this first text deserves more attention than it usually gets. Among its other characteristics, it confirms Thomas's early taste for exegesis that gives preference to the literal sense. Curiously, this characteristic was even at the origin of a dispute over the work's authenticity. We know that in his interpretation of Isaiah 8:4, Thomas thinks that the puer announced there was the son of the prophet and his wife. This explanation, because of its closeness to the Jewish reading, which refused to see in this verse a prediction of Christ's birth, was enough to make Nicholas de Lyre doubt in 1326 the Thomist authorship of the commentary. Sixtus of Siena found it, in addition, unworthy of Thomas for its lack of erudition (ob eruditionis inopiam).41 Now, there is no doubt at all about the authenticity of this work. Not only is it listed in the catalogues of Thomas's work dating back to the end of the thirteenth century, but we have a large part of the manuscript in his wellknown illegibilis handwriting.42
36. Leonine, vol. 28 (1974), pp. 19–20. Cf. Weisheipl's review in The Thomist 43 (1979) 331–37.
37. Ystoria 15, p. 235 (Tocco 14, p. 81). See the following chapter, where we return to this subject.
38. WN, p. 80, n. 29.
39. Cf. L.J. Bataillon, RSPT 64 (1980), p. 119; C. Vansteenkiste, RLT 9 (1977), no. 1, p. 12; M.V. Leroy, RT 78 (1978), p. 666.
40. Leonine, vol. 28, p. 20*, in regard to the Super Isaiam.
41. Cf. Leonine, vol. 28, "Introduction," pp. 3–4.
42. This consists of the commentary on chapters 34–50, which is found in the manuscript
(footnote continued on next page)
Writings in Thomas's own hand are too rare for them not to pique our interest. It is always valuable to see a genius at work, to discover his hesitations, his erasures, his second attempts, and, ultimately, the final form of his thought. The manuscript of the Super Isaiam presents the additional interest of allowing us to glimpse Thomas preparing, not a book that he would have had time to perfect, but his course lectures. Exactly the opposite of the reportationes, which represent a more or less carefully corrected clean copy of a course of lectures heard by a student, or taken in shorthand by a secretary (as Reginald frequently did for Thomas), the notes for the Super Isaiam were set down on parchment, day after day, by the young bachelor. He did this with an eye to the lectures that he had to give in a few hours. They bear all the marks of hasty work. This should explain, at least in part, the roughness of style, which seems to increase after the first few chapters. If he had a little time to prepare the first lectures, he had soon used up his prepared texts and was obliged to speak from later texts that were not completely written out.
All this was long ago described by P.M. Gils with great precision,43 but beyond these generalizations, Gils also drew attention to a unique feature of this handwritten manuscript. There are short, marginal annotations in a telegraphic form that accompany the text proper. We do not know what Thomas himself called them, but Jacobinus of Asti, the first transcriber in a clear hand of the autograph, called them collationes. They appear in the form of outlines, in the illegibilis hand like the rest of the text, and they are linked, assembled, by fanlike lines. Starting with a word from the text of Isaiah, Thomas hastily notes suggestions that he has about it for a spiritual or pastoral expansion of his literal commentary. (There are similar annotations in the Super Ieremiam, but the autograph manuscript has been lost.) The word collationes makes us think immediately of notes for preaching. We know that the term collatio, which at the time already had a long history, had come to be used of sermons given at vespers.44 But it also
(footnote continued from previous page)
Vaticanus latinus 9850, cf. Leonine edition, vol. 28, pp. 14*–15*. We should rectify here an error that the late Hugues Shooner mentioned to us a few days before his death. Owing to a transcription error of a badly written original, Thomas's handwriting is often described as a littera inintelligibilis—something that is barely "intelligible." In fact, we should read littera illegibilis—which is much more understandable (cf. H.F. Dondaine, H.V. Shooner, above, note 14, notice 3, P. 7). Bad habits are tenacious, as we will see in our quotations from other authors.
43. P.M. Gils, "Les Collationes marginales dans l'autographe du commentaire de S. Thomas sur Isaïe," RSPT 42 (1958) 253–64.
44. Cf. J.P. Tottell, "La pratique pastorale d'un théologien du XIIIe siècle. Thomas d'Aquin (footnote continued on next page)
refers, and perhaps did originally, to the primary sense of collatio, things put together, or as Gils says, "assemblies": "The collationes of the Super Isaiam are assemblies of scriptural quotations, connections that a given word in Isaiah suggested, that do not find a place in a strictly literal commentary, but that inspire spiritual or moral applications of the text." Their placement in the margins should not, however, lead us into error. They "belong essentially to the commentary, and constitute its spiritual dimension, or 'mystical' part as the ancients said." We might, therefore, consider them as "the most authentic collection of 'spiritual works' by Saint Thomas."45
They are therefore as important as the commentary itself for grasping how, from the beginning of his career, Thomas allowed the main traits of his style as a commentator on Scripture to emerge decisively. If the commentary gives the primacy to literal exegesis, the collationes show—and simultaneously confirm—the spiritual concern that animates the literal analysis.
We have examined elsewhere at length the twentyfour collationes of the part of the commentary on Isaiah in Thomas's handwriting.46 It would be worth the trouble to devote a similar study to the annotations that were inserted into the body of the text by Jacobinus of Asti. These are easily recognizable by the nota or notandum that introduce them and that are intended to draw the attention of the reader as much as to announce that the author is changing registers, passing from the literal to the spiritual sense. Though we cannot perform such a task here, it is necessary at least to present one of these collationes in order to make clear both how Thomas proceeded and the richness of these little, ignored texts. For enriching our notion of Thomistic spirituality, they are of an entirely unique interest.47
For instance, Thomas comments on, "I teach you some useful things" (Isaiah 48:17): (footnote continued from previous page)
prédicateur," RT 82 (1982) 218–19. J. Hamesse, " Collatio et reportatio: deux vocables spécifiques de la vie intellectuelle au Moyen Age," in O. Weijers, ed., Terminologie de la vie intellectuelle au Moyen Age, CIVICIMA 1 (Turnhout, 1988), pp. 78–87, cf. pp. 78–82.
45. P.M. Gils, "Les Collationes," pp. 255, 262, 264.
46. J.P. Tortell and D. Bouthillier, "Quand saint Thomas méditait sur le prophète Isaïe," RT 90 (1990) 5–47, from which we reproduce some portions here. We would like to rectify the clumsy expression (pp. 8–9) that gives the impression that only the part in Thomas's hand was provided with these annotations. In fact, they are spread throughout the entire text, from which they are inseparable. Furthermore, such a practice was not unique to Thomas. Other good examples of such annotated texts may be found in his contemporary, Peter of Tarentaise, and earlier in Hugh of SaintCher (cf. Leonine, vol. 28, p. 16* and n. 7).
47. It is even more astonishing that, prior to our article (see note 46), only H.D. Saffrey had devoted a few words to these collationes, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et l'héritage des anciens," in VIIe Centenaire de saint Thomas d'Aquin et restauration de l'église des Jacobins, Chronique de L'lnstitut catholique de Toulouse (1975), no. 4, PP. 73–90, cf. pp. 76–77.
The word of God is useful for
—illuminating the intelligence: "the teaching is a light" (Proverbs 6:23);
—making glad the senses: "How sweet on my palate is your promise" (Psalm 119:103);
—inflaming the heart: "It was in my heart like a devouring flame" (Jeremiah 20:9); "The word of the Lord inflamed them" (Psalm 106:19);
—rectifying our labors: "Direct me in your truth, teach me" (Psalm 25:5);
—obtaining glory: "Observe counsel and prudence" (Proverbs 3:21);
—instructing others: "All scripture inspired by God is useful for teaching, reproof . . . " (2 Timothy 3:16) This last collation is a highly structured meditation on the place of the Word of God in theology and preaching. From the outset, it is a light for the intelligence. But affectivity also finds a place there: to meditate on the Word is joy. It also inflames the heart. Theological emotion—the charity that supernaturalizes our power of loving—is necessary in theology. Thomas does not forget this. In fact, his whole anthropology appears in this sequence: intelligence, affectivity, heart. When immediately afterwards he speaks of "rectifying our labors," we must understand him to be speaking not simply of material labor, but also of the moral action of man who, thus made straight, is destined to "obtain glory." These two last points cannot, any more than the earlier ones, be read in isolation. We see in this development the practical goal that Thomas assigns to theology.48
As to the "instructing others," we can see here, without deceiving ourselves, the signature of the young member of the Order of Preachers. The rumination on the Word does not find its end in itself. That Word is destined by God for His People. Theological reflection as well as meditation for the sake of preaching are only the early stages of the whole process. The preparatory stages fulfill a true need because neither theologians nor preachers are pure instruments. They are properly secondary causes. That is precisely why they must be formed over time themselves by study and meditation. If it is not too much out of place here to cite a passage from Nietzsche, we might say along with him: "He who wishes one day to preach / should ruminate a long time in silence. He who wishes to bear lightning / should remain a long time as a cloud."49
Praise of the Word of God is not rare in Thomas. We might refer to the manner in which he comments on the second article of the Creed. He 48. Cf. ST Ia q. 1 a. 4.
49. Cf. Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra (Livre de poche), Paris, 1963, p. 264 (my translation from the original German).
enumerates five attitudes toward the Word of God: (1) We must first listen willingly to it: "One of the signs that we love God is listening willingly to his Word." (2) We must next believe in it, "for it is thus that the Word of God, that is to say Christ, lives in us." (3) We must also meditate on it constantly, "because it is not enough to believe it, we must also ruminate on it, otherwise it will not be of any use; but if we do it, this meditation is very useful against sin." (4) We must further communicate it to others "by exhortation, preaching, and enkindling" (commonendo, praedicando, et inflammando). (5) We must finally complete it by being, as Saint James says,
"realizers of the Word and not forgetful hearers.'' Thomas concludes with the beautiful observation that these five attitudes were observed by the Virgin Mary in this very order when she gave birth to the Word of God: "She first heard it . . . then she adhered to it by faith . . . she also kept it and bore it in her heart . . . then she brought it into the world, and finally she nourished and nursed it."50 Brief as it is, this laus Mariae says much in few words.
For Thomas, the attentive listening to the Word of God (diligens verbi divini auditio) is a privileged way of acquiring the love of God, because the story of the favors God has done us is eminently suited to awaken in us that love. The example of the disciples at Emmaus is there to confirm it for us: their hearts were entirely burning with love when Jesus explained the Scripture to them along the way.51 But it is also the surest means to remain faithful in that love, as Thomas explains in his comment on the precept to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest. This precept is not a pretext for laziness but an admonition to devote ourselves to God in religious exercises, the celebration of spiritual sacrifices, and meditation on the Word of God. On the last point, Thomas, who is sometimes hard on the Jews, is not afraid to offer them as an example for Christians. Jews spend their Sabbath meditating on the prophets: "Christians, whose justice should be more perfect, ought therefore on that day go to church to hear the preaching: 'Whoever is of God listens to the Word of God.' They should also speak of things useful (to salvation): 'Let no evil wish come from your mouth, but only what edifies.' These two things are in effect useful to the preacher as well, for his heart is changed by them for the better. . . . This is the opposite of what happens even to the best if they do not hear or speak
50. Sur le Credo, nos. 895–896.
51. Collationes in decem precepta IV, ed. J.P. Torrell, RSPT 69 (1985), pp. 30–31 (hereafter: Collationes).