Disputed Questions
but it is here that we must seek some chance of approaching reality. We cannot go over all the other witnesses here; we will encounter them as we go along and we will learn something from their depositions. But it is necessary to introduce two to whom we owe a considerable debt.
We already know William of Tocco and we will soon see him at work in the process of canonization. He lived with Thomas during the last period; he does not appear to have been formally his student, given his age (he was around thirty). He may have attended lectures that Thomas may have given for the friars at the Naples priory (remember that all the brothers were obliged to follow the course on the Bible that was given there). Originally from Benevento, preacher general in 1288, Tocco would later fill various posts,14 but the thing for which he is best known to us is the biography of Thomas, which, despite its weaknesses, still remains an unrivaled source. We shall return to it soon.
Even more illustrious than William was Bartholomew of Capua (born in 1248 in Capua, died in 1328 at Naples). He was a doctor of law in 1278 and seems to have been a professor until 1289 (this professorial activity is only well established for 1282–84). A favorite of the Sicilian king, Charles I and his successors, Bartholomew was named by Charles II protonotary of the kingdom in 1290 and logothete (the equivalent of a prime minister) in 1296. He was given various diplomatic missions in the following years; he also played an important role in recasting the constitutions of the kingdom, when he tried to harmonize the centralizing traditions of the Angevin kings and the feudal structure in southern Italy.15
Bartholomew was therefore quite a considerable figure, but it is not any of this that gives value to his long deposition at the canonization process. Neither does his list of Saint Thomas's works; we have known for some time that this list has no right to the title "official catalogue," which it was given by Mandonnet. If his testimony remains precious, it is because he frequented the priory at Naples as a very young man (multum iuuenis) while Thomas was still alive and he claims to have seen him several times (quite strangely he does not say that he heard him); he therefore conveys several points that he assembled from people who knew Thomas well, notably: John of Caiazzo, who was Thomas's student in Paris; John of San
14. He will be prior in Naples in 1289, in Benevento (two times: 1287, 1319); he was also inquisitor for the kingdom of Naples and he is mentioned several times in this position between 1292 and 1300. Cf. Käppeli, Scriptores, vol. 2, pp. 135–67; Le BrunGouanvic, Introduction to Ystoria, passim.
15. Cf. G. Di Renzo Villata, "6. B. v. Capua," Lexikon des Mittelalters 1 (1980) 1493–1494.
Giuliano, a venerable old man who had once been Thomas's spiritual father; but especially Reginald of Piperno and John del Giudice, who was Thomas's confessor.
Bartholomew thus knows things at times that Tocco does not, and sometimes the latter reports on things he has learned from Bartholomew.16
Among the people who were not able to testify at the process who are important figures for our research, we must mention Tolomeo degli Fiadoni, better known under his name Tolomeo of Lucca—as we will understand shortly. He may have been Thomas's student during the Orvieto or Roman period, but we have no certainty about this. We know only that he was Thomas's travel companion during a portion of the return trip from Paris to Naples—doubtless beginning in Rome, for he himself recounts a miracle performed at the castle of La Molara where they had stopped. By means of the relics of Saint Agnes that he carried with him, Thomas had cured his companion Reginald, who was in the grip of a strong fever. To celebrate the memory of this event, Thomas declared that he wanted to give his students a good dinner each year for the saint's feast. He hardly had the time to do it once, remarks the storyteller, for he died the following year.17
Tolomeo says that he knew Thomas well, that he had lived long with him—at Naples evidently over some eighteen months—that he had been Thomas's auditor and frequently heard his confession.18 According to A. Dondaine, Tolomeo may also have been one of the young teaching colleagues of whose collaboration Thomas would have been assured upon his return.19 He would have been about twentyeight at that time; we find him, among the diverse offices that he later filled, four times the prior at Santo Romano of Lucca in 1285 (the fourth time after a period as prior in Florence); he also was a professor and lived there for about thirty years.
Elevated to a bishop's seat in 1318, he became the bishop of Torcello, and there he finished his life in some agitation (he died in the spring of 1327).20 He was then about ninety years old and his contemporaries thought him senile;
16. Naples 76–86, pp. 370–391.
17. Tolomeo XXIII 10; the miracle therefore is situated in the spring or in early summer 1272; the feast day dinner on 21 January 1273; the next year Thomas was ill and already on the way to Lyon.
18. Tolomeo XXIII 8: " . . . quem ego probavi . . . qui suam confessionem sepe audivi et cum ipso multo tempore conversatus sum familiari ministerio ac ipsius auditor fui."
19. This does not agree with what Tocco says at the process of canonization. He speaks of Tolomeo only as a studens of Thomas's ( Naples 60, pp. 347–48).
20. Cf. A. Dondaine, Les Opuscula, pp. 143–45.
his Historia ecclesiastica, written several years earlier, between 1312 and 1317, at a time when he was 75 or 80 years old, perhaps already betrays his advanced age, and that would excuse "numerous chronological errors and inexactitudes . . . lapses that escaped a memory in its decline."21 His memories are certainly precious and his list of Thomas's works is not without value, but this little biographical summary suffices to explain that, even though We have used his testimony several times, we also frequently have had to reject it.
We will pause here on only two other names, quite modest and different from all the other well known figures who were in Thomas's service. They were already dead at the time of the Neopolitan process and we cannot reach back to them except indirectly. First, Bonofilio Coppa, probably a lay brother in the order, who was a witness, with his visiting young brother John, to the miracle of the star resting above the sick Thomas's bed. It is John, become notarius in the meantime, who will later recount the fact to the inquirers at the process.22 Then, in the very last days, we meet up with Friar James of Salerno who, in Reginald's company, escorted Thomas on his journey first to San Severino, then in the final journey to Lyon.23 Both of them, Bonofilio and James, are called "friars," but the texts also say famulus or servitor, which can only be translated "domestic servant."24 Must we understand that the ill Thomas had received special favor in being thus accompanied? It seems more probable that, Reginald having assumed the labors of a secretary, another friar was put in charge of material needs. Of these two, we know only their names and their devotion to the man they served (they hid themselves in order to watch him pray). Small or great, it is because of them that we know the man as well as the author a little better.
Reginald of Piperno
Among all these more or less close witnesses, Reginald (or Raynald) of Piperno (a corruption of Privernum—currently Priverno—in southern Latium) warrants special mention. Numerous witnesses at the process in
21. A. Dondaine, "Les Opuscula," pp. 158–64; the same author reports (p. 169) the judgment by the doge of Venice, John Soranzo: "tunc ipse episcopus non erat in statu sensati hominis sed alieni a mente et in intellectu tanquam puer."
22. Ystoria 54, pp. 367–68 (Tocco 54, P. 127); Naples 87, pp. 391–92.
23. Ystoria 33, pp. 307–308; Naples 50, p. 334: Peter of Montesangiovanni mentions "quidam famulus dicti fratris Thome qui vocabatur Iacobus de Salerno."
24. Famulus, cf. preceding note; servitoris, cf. Ystoria 54.
Naples introduce him as Thomas's socius continuus.25 According to Humbert of Romans, these "companions" whom the order put at the service of its lecturers and masters in theology followed them everywhere, on trips as well as in the priory, and helped them personally in the preparation of their lessons. They served not as domestics (we have just seen that Thomas had someone else for that task) but as assistants and secretaries.26 In the present case, things went even further than that for, if we can believe Reginald, he exercised the role of Thomas's "nurse" (quasi nutricis officium), even to the point of watching over his diet and making him eat so that his distraction (abstractio mentis) would not be harmful to his health.27
This continual closeness created some links of friendship between a master and his socius; we easily detect them between Thomas and Reginald. At the request of the latter, Thomas wrote and dedicated to him the Compendium theologiae, which is very explicit about the person for whom it was written, and describes him as "a very dear son." According to the catalogues of the opuscula, the De substantiis separatis and the De iudiciis astrorum were also written for him.28 Reginald was not the only secretary to Thomas, but he was his only permanent socius and we see him at Thomas's disposition even in the middle of the night; some people even think that their collaboration goes back to the time when Thomas was still in Paris.29 There is the celebrated anecdote about the difficult passage of the Super Isaiam, when Saints Peter and Paul explained the meaning to Thomas; the Leonine editors, following A. Dondaine, prudently infer from this that Reginald could have been with Thomas when he was composing the Super Isaiam.30 But this matter becomes problematic if we accept the proposition, described earlier, that would put the composition of
25. Naples 89, p. 394; cf. chaps. 27, 45, 53, 75, 78, 79, 81; cf. on him A. Dondaine, "Sermons de Réginald de Piperno," Mélanges Eugène Tisserant VI, Studi e Testi 236 (Vatican City, 1964), pp. 357–94, PP. 369–379 for the biographical data.
26. Opera II, p. 255.
27. Cf. the moving discourse that Tocco has him give to the monks at Fossanova at the moment of his master's death: Ystoria 63, p. 391 (Tocco 63, p. 136).
28. Compendium theologiae, Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 1–205 (the work was never finished, as we have said); De substantiis separatis, Leonine, vol. 40, pp. D 1–87; De iudiciis astrorum, Leonine, vol. 43, pp. 187–201; in truth, these last two works are not dedicated explicitly to Reginald, but he is the person for whom they are most probably intended. See in earlier chapters what we have said about these works.
29. Naples 59, PP. 346–47; repeated by Tocco: Ystoria 31, p. 302 (Tocco 31, pp. 105–6).
30. Leonine, vol. 28, p. 18*; A. Dondaine, Secrétaires, pp. 198–202; however calling him "son" in place of "brother" suggests that Reginald was younger than Thomas, and this would make it difficult for him to have been present in Paris during the first period of teaching.
the Super Isaiam during the Cologne period. It is not plausible that someone who was then a young friar would already have a socius at his disposal.
This detail takes nothing away from the strong friendship between Thomas and Reginald, and we recall that Thomas performed a miracle by healing Reginald from a high fever by the imposition of a relic of Saint Agnes that he always carried with him.31 It was Reginald, while they were both at the home of Thomas's sister, who was worried about his condition, and who received the poignant confidence of Thomas's last days: "omnia quae scripsi videntur michi palee."32 He also heard Thomas's last confession.33 According to a manuscript that has disappeared, Reginald was, finally, Thomas's "heir," since he preserved all the manuscripts in Thomas's own handwritten copies (habuit omnia scripta sua),34 and after Thomas's death he filled the office of lecturer in the priory at Naples. In 1275, he would be elected bishop of Marsico by the chapter of the cathedral, but his election was not confirmed, perhaps because John of Vercelli, the master of the order, did not want to free him for that task. In fact, we find him again a little later as the socius of the definitor of his province at the general chapter of Milan in 1278, but we do not know the exact date of his death (sometime between 1285 and 1295).
In addition to his invaluable memories, Reginald has also given us several reportationes on Thomas's work. First, the Super Paulum ab XI capitulo prime Ad Corinthios usque in finem, which is to say, practically all of Saint Paul, up to and including the epistle to the Hebrews.35 Then, the Lectura super Iohannem, of which it is said that a better cannot be found (qua non invenitur alia melior); Bartholomew adds that it was revised by 31. Tolomeo XXIII 10; cf. Naples 60, p. 348.
32. Naples 79, p. 377; Ystoria 47, p. 347 (Tocco 47, p. 120).
33. Ystoria 63, p. 390 (Tocco 63, p. 136); cf. Ystoria 27, pp. 287–88 (Tocco 27, pp. 100–101); we cannot conclude from this, as Weisheipl does (p. 320) that this mention of a confession in ultimis means Reginald was Thomas's habitual confessor.
34. Cf. Leonine, vol. 28, p. 18*, n. 3, with the commentary by Father Gauthier, p. 14*; given that Dominican legislation on poverty was opposed to all personal possessions, we must understand that if Reginald used these manuscripts in Thomas's handwriting, they were in fact the property of the Naples monastery.
35. We follow here the catalog of the Prague manuscript, Metr. kap. A 17/1, which is the oldest that we possess (probably before 1293; cf. on this subject R.A. Gauthier, Quelques questions, pp. 454ff., or J.P. Torrell, Collationes, p. 6; a complete list may be found in Grabmann, Werke, pp. 92–93). Despite Mandonnet's remarks about the "official" nature of Bartholomew of Capua's list ( Naples 85, p. 389), it is from almost twenty years later and far from carrying the same weight. Tolomeo (XXIII 15, p. 155) believes that all the reportationes on Saint Paul were revised by Thomas with the exception of the one on the epistle to the Romans quam ipsc notavit; we have seen the meaning that should be given to this remark.
Thomas himself (correxit eam frater Thomas), and Tolomeo of Lucca even believes that Thomas annotated five chapters in his own hand (de qua ipse super quinque capitula proprio stylo notavit), but their assertions present difficulties that we have already mentioned. Reginald also reported on the Lectura super tres nocturnos "Psalterii," the collationes on the Pater and the Credo and some collations for the Sundays and feasts of Lent. It was generally thought that the catalogues (including here the one in Prague also) mentioned a Lectura super primum de anima, but R.A. Gauthier has shown that this is an error on the part of the compiler.36
Even though Reginald has left several sermons and we perhaps owe to him the completion of the Summa theologiae by the addition of a supplement,37 it goes without saying that the Master's celebrity had to eclipse his companion's. But it is only fair to remember that Thomas could not have done everything that he did, perhaps not even to have been all that he was, without this collaborator and confidant in all his various activities.
Thomas and His Family
We can settle here several matters that are historically well attested.38 On 10 September 1272, King Charles I informed the administrator of the goods of the Crown that Friar Thomas Aquinas had been designated by his brotherinlaw, Roger of Aquila, count of Traetto, as the executor of his will. Another document, dated 20
September, says that in this role he was to divide among the heirs, according to the instructions of the deceased, different types of goods: mules, mares, colts, saddles, tunics, robes, grain, etc. Several days later, on 2 October, the king wrote again to the administrator that the instructions left by Roger provided that Thomas should restore some lands that the deceased had unjustly appropriated and that, for some other restitutions, he could use the revenues of the Scauri mills. He is therefore authorized to keep control over that money until these operations are completed, and the officers of the Crown should not put obstacles in his way.
36. R.A. Gauthier, Quelques questions, pp. 454–63; we may also ask with the author (cf. Leonine, vol. 45/1, pp. 279*–81*) whether Reginald would have been capable of reporting on something in addition to the scriptural commentaries or the spiritual conferences; the parts of the commentary on the Metaphysics that were copied by him (an easier task than reportatio) bear witness to some "serious blunders."
37. On the question of the authorship of the Supplement, see chapter VIII, n. 14; Reginald's sermons testify in particular to his knowledge of his master's work. Cf. A. Dondaine,
"Sermons," PP. 379–94.
38. Cf. Documenta 25–27, pp. 575–79.
One is a little surprised at first to see Thomas involved in this type of business, which requires a practical sense that we hardly expect from him. To satisfy everyone under these conditions requires dexterity, and if we know how to read the documents properly, we can see that Thomas knew how to use a certain diplomacy. He had to carry out some delicate negotiations over a trustworthy tutor for the children. Since he was dealing with a noble of the kingdom, the king had already entrusted the tutoring of the four children to the "master procurator of the tillage lands [Terra di Lavoro]," but for some understandable reasons, Friar Thomas preferred that this responsibility remain in the family. He therefore went to meet the king at Capua and obtained his agreement that the tutoring would be assigned to Roger of San Severino, count of Marsico, his other brotherinlaw, who would exercise it jointly with Adelasia, the children's mother.39
The king therefore had given in to the reasoning of the executor of the will, and that with rather good grace, if we can judge from the terms used about him (dilectus amicus noster). Did Thomas take advantage of this occasion to state his own case—or rather that of his priory of mendicants? We can only pose the question, but several days after this visit to the king, Thomas received from him a salary of an ounce of gold per month for teaching theology.40 As Walz justly remarks, this sum was nothing extraordinary: "To appreciate this treatment we should know that King Conrad had already given 12 ounces of gold per year to a professor, and that Charles II, in the course of the years from 1302 to 1306, spent 150 ounces of gold annually for the teaching of theology in the three conventual schools in Naples."41 It would furthermore be wrong to imagine this salary as directly disbursed to Thomas himself who would then have used it in private life (miles from that poverty for which he had once fought); the text is very clear on this matter: the money would be disbursed to the prior of the Naples priory or to his representative (ad requisitionem prioris fratrum . . . in Neapoli, vel certi nuncii eius).
There is here, however, a strong and interesting parallel in the life of James of Viterbo. Some twenty years later, in 1294, the provincial chapter 39. We find the royal document, dated 25 November 1272, in Scandone, "La vita," p. 67; see also the following pages; cf. pp. 21–26 for the other texts on this succession.
Bartholomew, who was then a minor officer in the royal court, says that he saw Thomas at Capua only one time: he was told that Thomas went there to deal with the affairs of his nephew, the count of Fondi ( Naples 77, P. 374).
40. Documenta 28, pp. 579–80.
41. WN, p. 180.
of the Hermits of Saint Augustine granted him in his role as new master (magistro nostro novo) an annual provision of eight gold florins—to which it added a sum of twentyfive gold florins for the occasional expenses owing to his promotion to mastership. The annual provision was renewed the two following years, and the general chapter of 1295, taking a similar step, justified it in the following way: "Given that our intention and our will is that Friar James of Viterbo, master in sacra theologia, should write and make books (debeat scribere et facere opera in sacra pagina), we declare that he should receive each year a gold florin from each province of the order, for his secretaries, parchments, and other necessities."42 To our knowledge, we have no similar document concerning Friar Thomas Aquinas, but it is not implausible that he, too, would have received an allocation permitting him to defray the costs of his secular secretaries and also to offer the celebration on the Feast of Saint Agnes.
To return to the other affairs that occupied Thomas, the texts in their dryness do not say everything, but we can guess without difficulty the conversations that must have occurred over dividing the inheritance, the discussions about the tutoring of the children, the various trips to put these affairs in order. He had to go to Capua to see the king; he also had to go to Marsico to appraise things more precisely on the spot. We realize that all this had to cut deeply into his time for study and teaching.
But the family did not hesitate to use this new relationship to obtain a passport from the king, through Thomas's intervention, so that his niece Francesca could go to take the cure at the waters of Pozzuoli.43 Originally from the kingdom of Naples, she would not have needed this authorization, but she was the wife of Annibald of Ceccano who, having joined Conradin's party several years earlier, had been declared a traitor to the Angevin cause.44 Her uncle's influence was useful to her then, but she fully repaid this service: during his illness several months later, it is at the home of the Ceccanos, in Maenza, that Thomas was sheltered. It was Francesca who first came to Fossanova upon learning of his death.45 Were there other interventions of this kind? We do not know, but it is clear that we find here a man strongly linked to his familial milieu, as we have already found at the beginning of this book.
42. Chartul. II, no. 585, p. 68.
43. Documenta 29, p. 581; the document is dated 3 April 1273 and the beneficiary designated as neptis venerabilis fratris Thomasii de Aquino, which is her recommendation.
44.Cf. Scandone, "La vita," p. 81.
45. Ystoria 62, p. 388 (Tocco 62, p. 135).
A Preliminary Portrait
If we may leave for a few moments the solid terrain of these texts and dates, we would now like to try assembling, from those who knew Thomas, some indications of him, both as a man and a saint. The task is not easy. We have long known the limits of hagiography and it has been justly emphasized that stories of that type have not been absent from the biography Tocco composed.46 The same is true for the canonization process where, as we have said, the proportion of historically "useful"
witnesses is weak compared with the stereotypical data. In many cases, we can only arrive at the idea that Thomas's contemporaries had of him, and the image was filtered through their conception of sanctity. But it would be wrong, we believe, to sin through excess of skepticism in refusing to examine systematically everything that we may learn along this path. Certain personal details, which do not at all harmonize with modern ideas of Aquinas, have perhaps some chance of being true.
First let us consider his physical portrait. The witnesses are in agreement: he was large and heavy and had a bald forehead: " fuit magne stature et pinguis et calvus supra frontem," says a Cistercian from Fossanova.47 Thomas doubtless got his height from his Norman ancestors; his height, as well as his stoutness, were mentioned by a second witness who repeats: fuit magne stature et calvus et quod fuit etiam grossus et brunus.48 Remigio of Florence, who was his student in Paris, does not balk at emphasizing that he was very fat: pinguissimus.49
Tocco, delicately suggesting a certain corpulence, expresses himself more fully: "As to the natural disposition of his body and mind, it is said that he was large in body (magnus in corpore), tall and straight in stature, which corresponded to the rectitude of his soul; he was blond as the color of wheat (coloris triticei), an indication of his wellbalanced temperament; he had a large head as the perfections of the sensory faculties in service to reason require. His hair was thin (aliquantulum caluus)."50
46.W. P. Eckert, "Stilisierung und Umdeutung"; E. Colledge, "The Legend"; Le BrunGouanvic, Introduction to Ystoria, pp. 72–97.
47.Octaviano of Babuco, a priest: Naples 15, p. 287; cf. Naples 42, p. 319; 45, P. 323.
48.Nicolas de Piperno, lay brother, Naples 19, p. 291.
49.In a sermon on Saint Jerome: "aliqui enim sunt pingues naturaliter, unde pinguissimus frater Thomas sapientissimus fuit," in E. Panella, "Note di biografia domenicana tra XIII e XIV
secolo," AFP 54 (1984) 231–80, cf. p. 268.
50. Ystoria 38, p. 321 (Tocco 38, pp. 111–12): "Fuit magnus in corpore, procere et recte (footnote continued on next page)
This noble portrait basically agrees with the more summary declarations by two monks,51 but Tocco also wishes to show that these physical traits are related to a spiritual physiognomy in that there is an ideal connection between moral perfection and beauty.52 We can recall here the annecdote already quoted and reported by Reginald's mother: ''When Thomas was passing through the countryside, the people who were working in the fields left their labors and ran to meet him, admiring the imposing stature of his body and the beauty of his human features. They went before him more indeed because of his beauty than on account of his sanctity or noble origin."53
In Tocco's text as well there is another episode in support of this ideal portrait. The biographer continues by emphasizing that Thomas's flesh, of a delicate complexion, revealed the capacity of his intellect.54 And his soul, full of virile force, was capable of making this body obey it and to fear absolutely nothing. To illustrate this, Tocco reports the episode of a terrible storm at sea during a voyage to Paris, when the sailors themselves feared for their lives. Thomas trusted in providence and was not troubled in any way.
So far as we can grasp Thomas's portrait by means of these notations, he seems a man at once robust and delicate. His sensibility to pain struck his contemporaries: he asked that they warn him before proceeding with a cauterization or a bleeding, so that he might ward off the pain by concentrating on some elevated subject.55 As to his robustness, we can deduce this from the rareness of any health problems. The bleeding just mentioned does not contradict this; bleeding was part of the regular health regime in the Middle Ages; the cauterization of his leg may make us think by contrast about a varicose ulcer. One episode shows him prey to the onset of a tertian
(footnote continued from previous page)
stature, que rectitudini anime responderet; coloris triticei, ad temperate eius complexionis indicium; magnum habens caput sicut perfectiones uirtutum animalium que rationi deseruiunt organa perfecta requirunt."
51. With the exception of his coloring! We may suppose, with Gauthier, that one speaks about hair and the other of skin color . . .
52. A. Vauchez, La Sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du MoyenAge d'après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome, 1981), pp. 509–11.
53. M.H. Laurent, "Un légendier dominicain peu connu," p. 43.
54. Father Gauthier, who gives an excellent commentary on this portrait (Leonine, vol 45/1, p. 287*), refers here to Aristotle ( De Anima II 19, 421a25–26) for whom the softness of the flesh was a sign of intelligence.
55. Ystoria 47, p. 349 (Tocco 47, P. 121): miro modo passibilis et ideo subito lesiuo corporis turbabatur; we might compare this notation with that of the portrait: fuit tenerrime complexionis in carne.
fever (a form of malaria?);56 another more comical incident shows him bothered by a superfluous tooth that had suddenly sprouted and hindered his speech. Since he was afraid of extraction, he obtained liberation from it through prayer.57 We are told elsewhere that he celebrated Mass every day, "if some infirmity did not prevent him."58 Apart from the last week's of Thomas's life, when reports of this kind multiplied, they were rather rare.
His travels and especially the long walks he undertook to arrive at the places of his meetings argue for his robustness. If he had to cover on foot the distance from Naples to Paris, then to Cologne and back, then from Paris to Rome and back, and again from Paris to Naples, in addition to the various trips to go to provincial chapters, one would calculate that he must have covered 15,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) on foot.59 This ignores the possibility—almost a certainty—that several of these trips could have been made at least in part by sea or by river. The storm he confronted (probably on the return to Paris in 1268) is a proof of this; an anecdote from the fourth version of Tocco, and plausibly from the same period, even shows him towing a boat by himself and against the current, when the sailors had great trouble pulling. This at least is a remembrance of a river voyage and an echo of Thomas's physical power.60
If we could open a path through the accumulation of the usual commonplaces that claim to describe the sacred person in these passages, we might perceive something of Thomas the man here and there. Bartholomew reports this as the common opinion among everyone he had been able to question: "They believed that the Holy Spirit was truly with him, for he always had a happy countenance, sweet and affable. . . . "61 Tocco reflects the infectious quality of this trait: he inspired joy in all those who looked upon him.62 In support of this supernatural joy, we can add an
56. Tolomeo XXIII 10 (Ferrua, p. 363).
57. Ystoria 51, pp. 358–59 (Tocco 51, pp. 124–25).
58. Ystoria 29, p. 293 (Tocco 29, p. 103): nisi eum infirmitas impedisset.
59. Vicaire, "L'homme que fut S. Thomas," p. 25 and n. 75.
60. Ystoria 38, pp. 321–22 (not in Tocco); this episode immediately follows the story about the storm: Thomas and his companions are on the river and, the force of oars not sufficing against the current, some of the sailors pull the boat from the bank; seeing them weary, Thomas proposes to his companions that they help them.
61. Naples 77, p. 372: "Ipsi vere credebant Spiritum Sanctum esse cum eo, quia semper videbant ipsum habere alacrem vultum, mitem et suavem. . . . "
62. Ystoria 36, p. 315 (Tocco 36, p. 110); "quotiens predictum doctorem cum affectu deuotionis aspiceret, totiens ex eius aspectu et locutione gratiam letitie spiritualis auriret, quod sine Spiritus sancti presentia esse non poterat, de quo fanta gratia procedebat"; it may be that Tocco's source is the same as Bartholomew's, Eufranon of Salerno, who was the prior at Naples in 1269.
unusual detail (the only concrete echo, to our knowledge, that has come down to us from Thomas's courses!), which shows that he was not without a sense of humor.
Remigio of Florence recounts that he made joking allusion to the exceptional solemnity of the liturgical celebrations of Saint Martin, when the peasants were so devoted they put Saint Martin above Saint Peter, since the harvest that autumn left them swimming in abundance.63
We have no indication of the frequency of such sallies, but what we know from other sources about the vivacity of Thomas's reactions inclines us to think that they were not rare. However, it has also been said that he possessed a rare humility and patience and that he never hurt anyone through injurious words.64 Bartholomew emphasizes that, even in disputes, where it is common to go too far, he was always sweet and humble, never using large, affected words.65 During the difference of opinion with Pecham, the story happily contrasts the difference in the two protagonists' attitudes and justly attributes to Thomas's humble magnanimity a concern not to spoil the new master's principium.66
This last episode permits us to return to a more familiar Thomas, the master whom his students trusted and who never forbade them to speak frankly or to joke with him. It also shows him to us among his young friars, out for a walk or coming from a solemn session at the university.67 Sometimes these stories date from the first Parisian period: the episodes from Naples show Thomas more grudging of his time and not hesitating to leave common recreations if time would be lost there in frivolous conversa63.This is from the sermon on Saint Martin: "Et quomodo rustici propter beneficia pretulerunt beatum Martinum beato Petro apostolo, ut lusorie referebat magister meus frater Thomas de Aquino; in festo enim beati Petri omnia bona videntur deficere que in festo beati Martini inveniuntur habundare," quoted by E. Panella, "Note di biografia domenicana,"
p. 266. We refer here to M. Hubert, "L'humour de S. Thomas d'Aquin en face de la scolastique," in 1274 Année charnière, pp. 727–39, but not without remarking along with the author that "the humor in question has nothing humorous about it"; it is a case rather of an attitude of critical detachment.
64.Peter of San Felice, Naples 45, p. 322: "Thomas fuit homo . . . mire humilitatis et patientie, adeo quod nunquam aliquem corruscavit aliquo verbo ampulloso aut contumelioso."
65. Naples 77 P. 373: "immo in disputationibus, in quibus consueverunt homines aliquando modum excedere, semper inveniebatur mitis et humilis, nullis verbis gloriosis et ampullosis utens."
66. Ystoria 26, p. 284 (Tocco 26, p. 99): "uir ille patientissimus . . . quasi uere humilis, qui sui contemptum ut magnanimus contempnebat. . . . "
67. Ystoria 26, p. 284 (Tocco 26, p. 99: Thomas's students urged him to intervene against Pecham); Ystoria 42, p. 332 (Tocco 42, p. 115: returning from a walk with him at SaintDenis, the students showed him Paris, which could be seen from afar and, being carried away about its richness, asked him if he would like to be the lord of such a city).
tions.68 He much preferred walking alone in the cloisters or in the garden and returning there to his habitual reflections after he had expedited the business for which he was drawn into the parlor.69
At this same time (and it had probably already been like this for a long period), he led a very retired life. He spent the least possible time in eating and sleeping; it even seems that he did not eat more than once a day.70 At the awakening during the night (Matins), he was in the church before anyone else, but withdrew when he heard the others arrive;71 with few exceptions, we do not see him present at any other office than Compline.72 Though he celebrated Mass every day and heard a second Mass just as often, he returned immediately to his room to work.73
This means that he did not attend the conventual Mass with the community, but we do not see here the sign of an asocial temperament; in this period the Dominican constitutions already provided for dispensation from the choir (as well as from various other normal obligations) for teachers—with the exception of Compline.
Thomas was thus following the norm for his fellow lecturers.74 We have seen that he did not refuse joyful communal celebrations such as the Saint Agnes Day dinner that he offered to his students to commemorate Reginald's recovery.
We should be cautious about judging Thomas's social life, as a religious of the thirteenth century, according to the model of our contemporary worldly relationships.
We do not know of any relationships with women that help us see his emotions more fully (such as we can in the case of Jordan of Saxony and Diane d'Andalo75). We think, nevertheless, that he knew what a deep friendship was and he had friends, including some of his relatives. Everything that we know of his family relations indicates that they were affectionate. As to his friends, it is enough to think of Reginald or Annibaldo d'Annibaldi, his former student and successor, later to be68. Ystoria 29, p. 295 (Tocco 29, p. 104); 48, p. 351 (48, p. 122); Naples 77, p. 373; cf. BouthillierTorrell, "Quand S. Thomas," p. 46.
69. Ystoria 29, p. 295 (Tocco 29, p. 104): " . . . reliquum si superfuisset tempus, priusquam ad cameram suam completa locutione redisset, sicut non aduertens diuinis intentus, discurrens per claustrum uel ortum, consuetis suis meditationibus et speculationibus expendebat."
70. Naples 48, p. 328; Naples 70, p. 362: "semper commedebat in refectorio fratrum et semel in die tantum" (although this comes from John Blasio, this last trait is not very surprising).
71. Naples 77, p. 573; Ystoria 34, p. 309 (Tocco 34, p. 108).
72. Ystoria 29, p. 294 (Tocco 29, p. 103); 33, P. 307 (Tocco 33, p. 107).
73. Naples 77, P. 373.
74. Humbert of Romans, Opera II, pp. 29–30; p. 255.
75. Cf. G. Emery, "Amitié et vie spirituelle: Jourdain de Saxe et Diane d'Andalo," Sources 18 (1992) 97–108.
come cardinal, to whom he speaks explicitly of the old friendship (antiqua dilectio) he feels for him. We must above all recall the fineness with which he commented on Books VIII and IX of the Ethics, where Aristotle explains his idea of friendship; we know that Thomas made friendship the key notion in his treatise on charity. His preaching itself refers with a delicate sensibility to the experience that we have of friendship to suggest the demanding quality of our links with God.76 It is difficult to think that the man who spoke in this way had nothing but a literary knowledge of affection.
A Man of Great Contemplation
This southern Italian, with strong links to his family, had a very concrete, incarnate piety. We have just recalled the episode when he cured Reginald by the imposition of a relic of Saint Agnes, which he carried with him out of devotion.77 We may have a hard time believing it, but he would have done the same thing about the extra tooth that was miraculously removed.78 Except for Saint Paul, nothing is said about particular reverence for other saints; if the Virgin Mary is not absent, she is surely less present than in numerous other saints' lives. Thomas was without doubt committed to the Marian devotion of the Dominican Order (the sequence Salve, Magnificat, and office De Beata), but the witnesses at the process of canonization do not mention anything in particular in this regard.79
76. ST IIa IIae q.23 a. 1: Utrum caritas sit amicitia; for the preaching, cf. Torrell, "La pratique," p. 226.
77. Ystoria 50, p. 356 (Tocco 50, p. 124; Tolomeo XXIII 10): " reliquias dicte sancte, quas ad poctus suspensas ex deuotione portabat." Weisheipl (p. 297) maintains that we should not see here a sign of Thomas's personal devotion; this is perhaps too much to claim, for it is surely not by chance that Thomas was carrying his relics with him; of Italian origin, Agnes was the object of a popular cult dating from the fourth century, which Thomas doubtless had known since childhood. We find in his work at least two mentions of Saint Agnes as an example of purity to the point of martyrdom (IV Sent. , d.49 q.5 qc.3 ad 9; Quodl. III q.6 a.3 [17] ad 3).
78. Ystoria 51, p. 358 (Tocco 51, p. 124): " Quem dentem, ad recolendum diuine beneficium pietatis, magno tempore secure detulit."
79. For Saint Paul, it is enough to think about the stories already mentioned of apparitions linked to difficulties in exegesis; Ystoria 32, p. 306 (Tocco 32, p. 107), mentions an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who assures Thomas that everything he asked deliberate through her intervention has been granted him (this lets us suppose a spontaneous and more frequent kind of prayer); we might also recall here the preaching on the Ave Maria ( Naples 70, p. 362; cf. Torrell, "La pratique," p. 216), but there is no lingering over the scene of a baby fiercely holding on to a piece of parchment on which Ave Maria was written: even among those who report it, the story is not at all interpreted as a Marian event (cf. Ystoria 4, P. 198; Tocco 3, P. 68; Naples 90, p. 395). We are not obliged to follow Colledge ("The Legend," pp. 20–21) who sees here a borrowing from the legend of Saint Nicholas of Bari.
Remembering, no doubt, the episode when his young sister had been killed by lightning as he slept by her side, he had the habit of making the sign of the cross during storms and repeating "God came in the flesh, God suffered for us."80 If we remember that this occurred during the terrible tempest that he endured and that only he remained tranquil, while the sailors themselves were frightened, we will see here not a sign of fear but indeed the expression of a faith that did not refrain from showing itself in visible gestures.
The witnesses enjoy repeating that Thomas was a man of contemplation and prayer.81 There is scarcely a saint who is not described in this way; it is more enlightening for us to say that, most frequently, we see him praying in direct relation to his intellectual work: "Every time that he wished to study, to undertake a dispute, to teach, to write or dictate, he first withdrew into secret prayer and prayed pouring out tears, in order to obtain understanding of the divine mysteries."82 This might still be nothing but a pious banality, if the insistent repetition in the text did not assure us that we have here a constant practice, fleshed out in specific acts that allow us to grasp the incarnate reality in a sometimes striking way.
The most telling thing, without doubt, is the following—even if the occasion, the way Tocco reports it, seems quite implausible. The masters of Paris, having noticed disagreements in their way of speaking about the permanence of the eucharistic accidents sine subiecto, asked Thomas, according to the story, to pronounce sententialiter on this subject, promising to hold afterward whatever he would say on the subject. This special circumstance (otherwise unknown), would thus have led Thomas to reflect on the metaphysical difficulties presented by the subject. But before daring to speak about it to an audience, he wanted to consult the principal person involved; he therefore put himself before the cross and, placing in front of himself, and before his Master, the open notebook in which he had written, he prayed with his arms in a cross.83
The historical reality of the episode, in precisely these circumstances,
80. Ystoria 38, p. 321 (Tocco 38, p. 112).
81. Naples 40, p. 317 (Homo magnae contemplationis et orationis); 42, p. 319 (hominem contemplativum); 45, P. 322.
82. Ystoria 30, p. 300 (Tocco 30, p. 105); the fourth edition of Tocco places here the recollection of a revelation obtained from Saint Paul through prayer on the meaning of one difficulty (cf. above chap. 13). See some similar notes in Naples 58, p. 346 (Tocco); 81, p. 381 (Bartholomew, who refers here directly to Reginald, speaks of praying prostrate in front of the altar).
83. Tocco 52, pp. 125–26.
is at least doubtful. The climate of sharp rivalry that reigned at Paris between mendicants and seculars renders quite implausible this consultation by colleagues supposedly full of veneration for Thomas's knowledge. It would be more believable if some Dominican brothers had taken the initiative in this event. We would retain from this anecdote at least the expressive simplicity of the gesture—sublime in its naïveté—and the deep intention of the saint's attempt at "verifying" in prayer the solidity of his intellectual construction. It will not be without precedents.
This way of praying prostrate before the altar with the arms outstretched in a cross irresistably evokes the Nine Ways of Praying of Saint Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers.84 We should doubtless look at miniatures like those that we find in this manuscript if we wish to know what the image was like before which Thomas prayed. Not Grünwald's tortured man, but majesty suffering in dignity, which had not yet entirely disappeared from the pantocrators of Byzantine mosaic;
highly stylized, the expresssion of sorrow resides almost solely in the facial features, the blood that gushes from the side being rather the symbolic expression of the sacraments that gave birth to the Church.
It is precisely to this context that the following story refers, which is situated at Naples, during the time when Thomas was writing the questions on the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord.85 As was his habit, he prayed quite early in the morning in the chapel of Saint Nicholas; Dominic of Caserta, the sacristan who observed him, saw him in levitation and heard a voice coming from the crucifix: "You have spoken well of me, Thomas, what should be your reward?"—"Nothing other than Thee, Lord." This episode is better known than the preceding one; certain scholars even think it rings truer because it is more sober; we cannot, however, guarantee its 84. We know that a short Latin text was designated by this title, accompanied with miniatures, contained in the manuscript Rossianus 3, in the Vatican Library. A very faulty edition was once prepared by I. Taurisano, "Quomodo sanctus Patriarcha Dominicus orabat," Analecta S. O. P. 30 (1922) 93–106 (although it was corrected the following year, 1923, the faulty edition regrettably has been used in modern translations); unfortunately, the miniatures are reproduced in black, but they give an idea of the original. A French translation of this text with some color reproductions may be found in M.H. Vicaire, Saint Dominique de Caleruega d'après les documents du XIIIesiècle (Paris, 1955), PP. 261–71. S. Tugwell,
"The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic: A Textual Study and Critical Edition," MS 47 (1985) 1–124, has accomplished a remarkable critical study and editing of the text, in which he concludes that, if not believable in all its details, this work has a good chance of going back to an original dating from the 1230s, which conveys to us some authentic indications of Saint Dominic's way of praying.
85. Ystoria 34, p. 309 (Tocco 34, p. 108): " Et tunc scribebat Tertiam partem Summe de Christi passione et resurrectione"; cf. ST IIIa qq.46–56, and cf. what we have said above on the Life of Jesus.
strict historicity (the relative similarity of the two stories leads us to think that one of the two is a doubling).86
Without pushing this question of historicity further, we think it at least plausible that Thomas would have prayed before a crucifix. But it would not be entirely out of line to emphasize a common element in the two cases: those present report a vision—audition, of which they themselves were the beneficiaries. Neither Thomas nor his prayer before the altar or the crucifix are in any way compromised. This is one of those typical cases in which the witnesses reveal the way they approach the saint.
But the saint, whose piety we may imagine to be more cerebral, did not fear to write that Christ's humanity was a pedagogy supremely adapted to enabling us to arrive at his divinity.87 We know that the thirteenthcentury hagiographical stories are full of similar events. We do not do well to assume that Thomas is here speaking from experience.
Without taking an inventory of all the stories or witnesses,88 it seems that we can identify, with at least a modicum of certitude, three characteristic traits of Thomas's way of praying. The linking of prayer with study is clearly the first trait; Tocco, for once quite inspired, nicely summed it up as being one of the points of struggle with the seculars who could not understand that we can be saved in sola studii contemplatione.89 The second point certainly is his devotion to the Eucharist, not to the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as it will be understood later, but indeed to the sacrament celebrated each day. The testimony to his attendance at two masses daily—the one that he celebrated, the other at which he was present—is too frequently repeated for us to doubt it.90 He also had, it seems, the habit of reciting at the moment of the elevation the second part of the Te Deum: Tu rex glorie Christe, Tu Patris sempiternus es Filius, to the end.91 This matter can be rather well understood if we recall that, the
86. Cf. WN, p. 190; Colledge, "The Legend," pp. 23–24.
87. ST IIa IIae q. 82 a. 3 ad 2: "Et ideo ea quae pertinent ad Christi humanitatem, per modum cuiusdam manuductionis, maxime devotionem excitant; cum tamen devotio principaliter circa ea quae sunt divinitatis consistat."
88. We see also Thomas praying for chastity ( Naples 61, p. 349; Ystoria 11, p. 220; Tocco 10, p. 75), for God's wisdom ( Ystoria 30, p. 299; Tocco 30, p. 104), for perseverance in his state of life ( Naples 78, p. 375; Ystoria 32, p. 306; Tocco 32, p. 107), for Reginald's recovery ( Naples 90, p. 348; Ystoria 50, p. 356; Tocco 50, pp. 123–24), for the eternal repose of his relatives ( Naples 78 and 81, pp. 374 and 381), the conversion of two Jews on Christmas Day ( Naples 86, p. 389; Ystoria 23, p. 278; Tocco 22, p. 96), etc.
89. Ystoria 20, p. 262 (Tocco 19, P. 91).
90. Naples 6, 8, 40 (p. 273, 278, 317), etc.; Ystoria 29, p. 293 (Tocco 29, p. 103).
91. Ystoria 58, p. 381 (Tocco 58, p. 132): "Dicitur . . . quod in eleuatione . . . consueuerat dicere. . . . "
canticle recalls at that moment the whole set of "mysteries" of Christ's life. It was particularly during the celebration of the Mass that Thomas had the prolonged ecstasies of his last months: the one that occurred on Passion Sunday (26 March 1273) and the one on the feast of Saint Nicholas eight months later (6 December 1273).92
Since Thomas had reached Q.90 of the Tertia Pars, the composition of the treatise on the Eucharist (completed earlier) had therefore occurred approximately between these two dates. The evolution already seen at Orvieto, at the time of the composition of the Office of the Blessed Sacrament, came to its end here also and the author experienced in his own person what he had written: "By the power of this sacrament, the soul is spiritually restored by the fact that it rejoices spiritually and, in a certain way, it is intoxicated by the sweetness of the divine goodness, according to the word of the Canticle (5:1): Eat my friends, and drink; drink deep my wellbeloved."93 Pruned of their rhetoric, these stories and witnesses ultimately confirm that the Thomas of the Ystoria and of the process at Naples is not much different from the one we glimpse in his theological writings.94
We get similar verification of the third trait, which stands out even more forcefully, his devotion to the crucifix: when he is presented in prayer or in levitation, it is before the image of the crucified one or in front of the altar, liturgical symbol of Christ.95 If there were need for further justification of this last point, it would suffice to report how he speaks of Christ in his teaching or in his preaching:
Whoever wishes to lead a perfect life has nothing other to do than scorn what Christ scorned on the Cross and to desire what he desired. There is not in fact a single example of virtue that the Cross does not give to us. You seek an example of charity? There is no greater love than to give up his life for his friends, and Christ did it on the Cross . . . Are you looking for an example of patience? The most perfect patience is found on the Cross . . . Are you seeking an example of humility? Look at the Crucified One . . .
92. Ystoria 29, pp. 293–94 (Tocco 29, p. 103); Naples 79, p. 376.
93. ST IIIa q. 79 a. 1 ad 2.
94. Apart from the Eucharist, we have only penance attested in his sacramental practice; during the first Parisian period (1252–59), we know that Thomas confessed every day before Mass to Raymond Severi, who was probably one of his secretaries; it seems indeed that the practice was reciprocal (cf. Ystoria 27 and Naples 92, pp. 397–98). Tolomeo was his confessor during the Naples period, but does not give us to understand that reciprocity existed (XXIII 8).
95. Ystoria 34, P. 309; 52, p. 309 (Tocco 34 and 52, pp. 108 and 126); on praying in front of the altar: Naples 81, p. 381; 49, p. 331 (he has a dream when he is sleeping in front of the altar).
An example of obedience? Begin following Him who was obedient even until death . . . An example of scorn for earthly things? Follow behind Him who is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, in whom are found all the treasures of wisdom and who, nevertheless, on the Cross, appears naked, the object of mockery, spat on, beaten, crowned with thorns, given gall and vinegar to drink, and put to death.96
We will have to return to this omnipresence of Christ as the absolute model of the Christian life; it suffices for us here that Thomas never stops reminding us that "every one of Christ's actions is instruction for us,"97 and that this was his rule of life for himself.
Thomas's absentmindedness was legendary. Lost in thought, he continued his reflections wherever he found himself: in the refectory, where his dishes might be taken away from him without his noticing,98 or at Saint Louis's table, if one gives credence to the wellknown anecdote.99 When he was thus absorbed, he could even hold a candle without noticing the flame that burned him. During his last months, this abstractio mentis became even more accentuated: in the parlor, where he had been led to meet some distinguished visitors, he did not even perceive their presence, and it was necessary to tug on his clothes to make him come back to himself.100 This also showed itself during prayer: during the Mass on Passion Sunday 1273, with many participants present, his ecstasy continued so long that it was necessary to intervene so that he could finish the celebration. And in the evenings, at Compline, his face was bathed in tears during the singing of the Media vita.101
96. Expositio in Symbol., art. 4, nos. 920–24.
97. Cf. R. Schenk, "Omnis Christi actio nostra est instructio. The Deeds and Sayings of Jesus as Revelation in the View of Aquinas," in L. Elders, ed., La doctrine de la révélation divine de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Studi Tomistici 37 (Rome, 1990), pp. 104–31.
98. Peter of San Felice (eyewitness): Naples 45, p. 323; Ystoria 63, p. 391 (Tocco 63, p. 136).
99. Ystoria 43, p. 335 (Tocco 43, p. 117); this is the third time that the Ystoria mentions King Louis IX; certainly, his friendship for the mendicants is well known, but we cannot say that it is to him that we owe the creation of the two Dominican schools of theology, as the Ystoria has it (20, p. 264; Tocco 19, p. 93); as to stating that King Louis semper in rebus arduis dicti Doctoris requirebat consilium (35, p. 312; Tocco 35, P. 109), we have no other witnesses for it. If it truly took place, the dinner of which Ystoria 43 speaks could have taken place during the second Parisian sojourn, between September 1268, the date of Thomas's return, and March 1270, the date of Saint Louis's departure for the second crusade. We must not in any case press the reference to the Summa; the dates that we know do not at all lend themselves to this. Though the settling of the accounts with the Manicheans has led some people to believe that Thomas was working on the Summa contra Gentiles III 15 at the time, that is no more plausible: we know that Book III of that work was composed in Italy around 1265, which would exclude the possibility of a meeting with King Louis at that time.
100. Ystoria 43, p. 335 (Tocco 43, p. 117).
101. Ystoria 29, p. 294 (Tocco 29, p. 103); the Media uita is a sung response like the anthem (footnote continued on next page)
In order to excuse him to a visiting cardinal, one of his familiars explained: ''Do not be surprised! That happens often to him" ("Non miremini, quia frequenter sic abstrahitur"). In the same fashion, Reginald would later tell Thomas's sister Theodora, who was disturbed about his silence: "The Master is frequently lost in spirit when he is absorbed in contemplation. But never have I seen him out of his senses for as long as today."102 The way to make him return to himself is always the same—someone pulls strongly on his cape. Clearly he comes out of it, but only with regret for the loss of that interior world.
The Final Illness and Death
The context that we have just established perhaps clarifies the history of Thomas's last weeks. On 29 September 1273, Thomas again participated in the chapter of his province in Rome as a definitor.103 But several weeks later, according to Bartholomew of Capua, who had this story from John of Giudice who learned about it from Reginald himself—while he was celebrating Mass in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, Thomas underwent an astonishing transformation (fuit mira mutatione commotus):
"After that Mass, he never wrote further or even dictated anything, and he even got rid of his writing material [ organa scriptionis]; he was working on the third part of the Summa, on the treatise concerning penance." To Reginald, who was stupefied and did not understand why Thomas was abandoning his work, the Master responded simply: "I cannot do any more." Returning to his charge a little later, Reginald received the same response: "I cannot do any more. Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen."104
Starting with that date—around 6 December (a festo beati Nicolai circa)—Thomas appeared profoundly changed. He, whom we have known (footnote continued from previous page)
Nunc dimittis of Compline in the Dominican liturgy for Lent. Thomas's tears flowed most during the singing of the verse "do not reject us in our time of old age" (Ne proicias nos in tempore senectutis).
102. Ystoria 47, p. 347 (Tocco 47, p. 120): " Frequenter Magister in spiritu rapitur, cum aliqua contemplatur, sed nunquam tanto tempore sicut nunc uidi ipsum sic a sensibus alienatum."
103. Documenta 30, p. 583 (according to Masetti); abridged texts, the Acts of the Chapter do not mention Thomas's name, nor that of any other definitor ( MOPH 20, pp. 41–43); elected by the members of the chapter, the four definitors constitute a type of directorate chosen, with the provincial, to make concrete decisions after the plenary assembly breaks up; they remain active until the following chapter.
104. Naples 79, pp. 376–77; Tocco ( Ystoria 47, 347; Tocco 47, p. 120), who depends here on Bartholomew, does not mention the Mass, but gives the same explanation (except that he weakens paleae into modica).
as robust and who not long before still was getting up to pray before anyone else, had to take to his bed,105 and he was sent to rest at the home of his sister (the Countess Theodora) in the castle of San Severino, southeast of Naples, a little above Salerno. He arrived there only with great effort (properavit cum difficultate magna); shortly after Thomas had greeted his sister, who was disturbed to see him so quiet, Reginald confided to Theodora that he had never seen the Master out of his senses for so long. It is difficult to evaluate the length of this sojourn, but after a little while, Thomas and his socius returned to Naples—without doubt at the end of December 1273 or the beginning of January 1274.106
At the end of January or the beginning of February, they had to set out again for the council that Gregory X had convoked for May 1 in Lyons to seek an understanding with the Greeks. Thomas thus took with him the Contra errores grecorum that he had composed at Urban IV's request.107 A little beyond Teano, absorbed in his thoughts, Thomas did not notice a tree fallen across the road and struck his head against a branch. Since he was stunned by the blow (fere stupefactus), people rushed to help him, but he assured them that he was only slightly bruised. He continued to walk while chatting with Reginald, who tried to distract him by speaking of the appointment as a cardinal that he would surely receive at the council, as would Friar Bonaventure. Thomas did not much appreciate these predictions, and imposed silence on his companion.108
The traveller's reputation traveled more quickly than he did himself, and it was probably at San Germano (today's Cassino) that an envoy from Bernard Ayglier, the abbot of Monte Cassino, waited for him. This envoy invited Thomas to take a small detour through the abbey to enlighten the religious on the meaning of a passage in Saint Gregory. The climb was long and harsh (the ascent is some 480 meters, which the current road covers in 9 kilometers [about 5 1/2 miles]); Thomas declined the offer to pass through the monastery—perhaps he already felt himself too tired—
105. Naples 87, pp. 391–92: Thomam iacentem in cella . . . discrasiatum; Ystoria 54, p. 367 (Tocco 54, P. 127): debilis decumbens in lecto.
106. Scandone, "La vita," pp. 30 and 57.
107. Ystoria 56, p. 371 (Tocco 56, p. 129); of. our chapter 7; see on this point A. Walz, "Le dernier voyage de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Itinéraires of saint Thomas," Nova et Vetera 36
(1961) 289–97.
108. Naples 78, pp. 374–76; Tocco does not know of this incident, Bartholomew of Capua has it from the abbé Roffrido, the dean of Teano, who was present at the scene in the company of his uncle, William, then dean and later bishop of Teano; these two figures had clearly hosted the little group the preceding night and accompanied them a bit of the way.
and argued that a written response would have the advantage of being useful to future readers and not only to the hearers present (in fact, his response would be recopied in the margin of the disputed passage).
The monks were troubled by the interpretation of a text that concerns the connections between the infallibility of the divine foreknowledge and human liberty. Thomas reaffirms these two facts, but he emphasizes that the difference of plane between the two terms under consideration does not entail any necessity of the one on the other: to see someone sit down is not to oblige him to sit down. Thus God cannot be deceived in his knowledge, which sees all things in the present of his eternity, and man is free in his activity as a temporally situated creature. We note in passing that this little text dictated to Reginald is perhaps the clearest explanation that the author gave of this problem; it witnesses to the fact that, even if his body was already weakened, the Master's intellectual faculties were still intact.109
After several days traveling, in the second half of February (it was already Lent, which, that year, had begun on February 14), they reached the castle of Maenza, a little north of Terracina, where Francesca lived, the niece whom we have already encountered. It was there that he fell ill and totally lost his appetite; the doctor called to take care of him—John of Guido, from Piperno—asked what he would like to eat and received a disconcerting response: some fresh herring, which he once enjoyed when he was in the ile de France. Miraculously, some were found. But according to Tocco, it was the others who ate them, since the patient no longer wanted them.110 An eyewitness assures us, however, that he ate some of it: de quibus etiam arengis comedit dictus frater Thomas.111
Tocco also says that, feeling a little better after several days, he tried to begin the trek toward Rome again, but he had to stop at the abbey of Fossanova to regather his forces. According to an eyewitness, Nicholas, the future abbot of Fossanova, Thomas had himself taken from his niece's home to the abbey: "If the Lord must visit me, it is better for him to find me in a religious house than in a house of lay people."112 Another eye109. The text of this letter may be found in the Leonine, vol. 42, pp. 395–415, with A. Dondaine's introduction; see above, chapter I, note 72, for other information.
110. Ystoria 56, p. 374 (Tocco 56, p. 129); if the invalid had truly desired this dish, so strange for that region, this desire is entirely exceptional for him, because we know that he never demanded special meals: nunquam petens speciales cibos ( Naples 42, p. 319); singularitates ciborum non petebat ( Naples 47, p. 326).
111. Naples 50, p. 333 (testimony by Peter of Montesangiovanni).
112. Naples 8, pp. 276–77; 49, pp. 330–31; 80, pp. 378–79; Tocco 57, pp. 130–31).
witness, Peter of Montesangiovanni, recounts perhaps more precisely what happened. In company with the prior of Fossanova and two other friars from the monastery, he went to Maenza to pay a visit to Thomas, whom he had known for a long time; after four days at the castle, the monks departed, taking the sick Thomas and his companions with them. Thomas was on a mount (equitavit), a sign of his weakness and of the seriousness of his condition, since the Dominicans were forbidden to travel on horseback.113
Thomas survived there for some time (iacuit infirmus quasi per mensem), confused but grateful for the trouble that the monks were taking on his behalf. They even carried wood on their backs to keep him warm. According to Tocco, at that time he briefly commented on the Canticle of Canticles, to thank them for everything, but Abbot Nicholas, who was there, does not say anything about this, nor do any of the Cistercians still surviving at the time of the Naples process.114 Though it is not implausible that Thomas would have addressed several edifying words to the religious who were coming to see him, his state of health hardly permits us to think that he would have composed a complete commmentary on the Canticle. If a written text of it ever existed (Bartholomew and several catalogues speak about it, but the Prague lists do not) it has not come down to us.115
After confessing to Reginald, Thomas received the viaticum on March 4 or 5; as was the custom, he pronounced then a profession of Eucharistic faith. According to an eyewitness, Peter of Montesangiovanni, he pronounced before the assembled monastery many beautiful words on the subject of the body of Christ, among which were these: "I have written and taught much about this very holy Body, and about the other sacraments in the faith of Christ, and about the Holy Roman Church, to whose correction I expose and submit everything I have written.116 John of Adelasia, another monk from Fossanova but not an eyewitness, transmits a briefer formula with exactly the same meaning.117
We know further the amplified formulation by Bartholomew that ends with the same submission to the Church's judgment. It is doubtless from 113. Naples 49, pp. 330–32; Tocco speaks of a mulus (Ystoria 62, p. 388; Tocco 62, p. 135); for the interdiction of traveling on horseback, cf. Constitutions primitives of the order, Dist. I 22, 13 (trans. Vicaire, Saint Dominique de Caleruega, p. 156).
114. Ystoria 57, p. 376 (Tocco 57, pp. 130–31).
115. Leonine, vol. 26, p. 1*, n. 2; cf. Naples 85, p. 388; Grabmann, Werke, pp. 254–57.
116. Naples 49, p. 332.
117. Naples 27, p. 301.
Bartholomew that Tocco received the story, and he reproduces it fully. It is also here that he inserts the Adoro Te in his fourth version. The passage deserves to be reproduced, for it reestablishes a little of the judgment that the dying man bore toward his work: I receive you, price of my soul's redemption, I receive you, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched, labored; I have preached you, I have taught you;
never have I said anything against you, and if I have done so it is through ignorance and I do not grow stubborn in my error; if I have taught ill on this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I leave now this life.118
It is entirely permissible to refer to this declaration for a more positive—and therefore more exact—appreciation of Thomas's expression: "Everything I have written seems to me as straw."119 Straw is a stock expression used to distinguish, by giving it proper weight, the grain of reality within the chaff of the words; the words are not the reality, but they designate it and they lead to it. Having arrived at reality itself, Thomas had a certain right to feel himself detached with respect to the words, but this does not at all signify that he considers his work as without value. Simply put, he had gone beyond it.
Thomas received the anointing of the sick the following day, responding himself to the ritual prayers. He died three days later having received the Body of the Lord, on Wednesday, 7 March, in the early hours of the morning.120
This succinct story has posed two large questions for historians. The first concerns the nature of the final illness; it seems hardly probable that it had a direct link with the 6 December experience. The unlucky blow of the branch along the way may have set off a series of events whose nature we do not know, but this is not the place to expatiate on that subject.121 On the contrary, from time to time a popular rumor has arisen, propagated by the enemies of Charles of Anjou (notably the numerous members of the Aquinas family quarelling with him, exiled from their lands in the
118. Naples 80, p. 379; Ystoria 58, pp. 379–80 (Tocco 58, pp. 131–32); for the Adoro Te, cf. chap. VII above.
119. Tugwell, p. 267, suggests this reading.
120. Naples 49, p. 332; Ystoria 65, p. 395 (Tocco 65, p. 138).
121. Weisheipl, p. 328, suggests an internal hemmorhage.
Papal States, as were Francesca and her husband Ceccano), according to which Thomas was poisoned by a doctor on the king's payroll (recall John of Guido, who visited him at Maenza) for reasons that we can only guess. The rumor must have circulated rather widely; the chronicler Giovanni Villani and Dante Alighieri himself echo it. It seems that all the historians are in agreement today in discarding this rumor as without serious foundation.122
The second large question has given rise to many speculations. What exactly occurred around 6 December 1273? Was it only a matter of a mystical experience that further accentuated the abstractio mentis habitual to Thomas—thus provoking a near total detachment about his work, accompanied by a lack of will to live, whose clearest sign is the anorexia mentioned several times? In place of this explanation, which has been commonly accepted until now by the hagiographical tradition, various attempts have appeared in recent years to give an account of this sudden interruption of Thomas's literary activity.
For someone who sees Thomas as anxious, prey to increasing doubts about the value of his work (notably the "theoretical weakness of the analogy of being"), the explanation is essentially psychological: the growing reality of the theologia negativa would be the source of his will not to finish the Summa, to avoid seeing the intuition with which he began it be transformed into a closed system.123 Another view posits a serious cerebral stroke, a diagnosis offered by some doctors on the basis of symptoms that may be gathered from the texts: difficulty in speaking and moving, anxiety about further attacks, deep psychological disturbance.124 Without entirely denying this last explanation, Weisheipl prefers to speak of a physical and psychological breakdown as a consequence of the overwork that Thomas had imposed on himself for a long time. The 6 December experience, in accentuating still further his desire for the true homeland, only exacerbated 122. Cf. Scandone, "La vita," pp. 32–34; Divine Comedy, Purgatorio XX 67–69: "Carlo venne in Italia, e per ammenda / Vittima fe' di Corradino, e poi / Ripinse al ciel Tommaso, per ammenda." To study the file on this subject in depth, see M. Sanchez, "Como y de qué murió Santo Tomás de Aquino," Studium 16 (1976) 369–404; by the same author, "Murió envenenado santo Tomás de Aquino?," Studium 18 (1978) 3–37.
123. G. M. Pizzuti, "Per una interpretazione storicizzata di Tommaso d'Aquino. Senso e limite di una prospettiva," Sapienza 29 (1976) 429–64. We mention that following Ch.D.
Boulogne, Saint Thomas d'Aquin ou le génie intelligent (Paris, 1968), pp. 190–92, the author does not entirely discard the poison theory and makes Thomas's general superiors responsible for his departure from Paris in 1272; Boulogne's reconstructions are, however, scarcely credible.
124. Colledge, "The Legend," p. 26.
to the point of taedium uitae his detachment from the things of this world, including what he held closest to his heart.125
Before these attempts at explanation, the reader can only suspend judgment. It is true that Thomas changed his opinion on analogy—but that evolution may be placed rather early in his career and ought to have made its effects felt a good deal earlier. Furthermore, this is not the only point on which he evolved, and his intellectual robustness put him rather at ease in recognizing changes without a problem and in informing his readers of it when he thought it necessary. Though it is not implausible, a diminution of his intellectual faculties following an attack, after the Teano accident, is scarcely manifest in what he expressed to Reginald or in the letter he addressed to Bernard Ayglier several days before his death—to say nothing of the possible commentary on the Canticle of Canticles. It is also difficult to conceive that he would have been allowed to leave for Lyons if he had been ill and showing diminished faculties.
After we have gone step by step, as we have just done, through emphasizing his astonishing intellectual output, the hypothesis about his physical and nervous exaustion is easier to allow. Yet, if we bear in mind his natural robustness and exceptional intelligence, which made easier for him problems that would have been difficult for others, that hypothesis is not irrefutable. (Even in his last days we see Thomas still arising very early.) We must have the honesty to recognize that none of these explanations is entirely convincing. But if we have to choose among them, Weisheipl's thesis, which suggests an extreme physical and nervous fatigue, coupled with mystical experiences that marked his last year, may be the most plausible.
125. Weisheipl, pp. 320–23.
Chapter XV—
Difficult Sequels:
Cult, Process, Disputes
After his death, Thomas's history continues in two different registers, partly parallel, partly intersecting with one another: a cult of the saint began quickly at the place of his death, and an opposition arose at Paris and Oxford that was not disarmed by his theological thought. The harsh and tenacious struggles that followed were sometimes carried out in the name of the faith, and led to intervention by episcopal authority. They also sometimes expressed different religious or intellectual options, and we find at the time in all its sharpness the already ancient rivalry that arose so often between the order of Saint Francis and the order of Saint Dominic. In all this, we are present not only at the birth of a school of thought that without doubt owes its legendary combativeness to these difficult beginnings, but also at the birth of a development that will find its epilogue—at least provisionally—in canonization.
The Beginnings of the Cult
At Fossanova the funeral rite was celebrated by the monastery with all the requisite solemnity, naturally in the presence of brother Dominicans, but also with the Franciscan bishop Francis of Terracina, who was there in the company of several brothers of his order. Numerous noblemen from the region were also present, as well as Dame Francesca, the niece of the deceased who, not being able to enter because of the cloister, gobtained
permission from the abbot to venerate the body at the door of the church.1 After the office, it fell to Reginald as faithful companion to pronounce the eulogy of the deceased and to extol his virtues before that noble audience; we cannot fault him if the sincerity of his pain made him speak more of himself than about his master.2
In the meantime, even before the body had been buried—or even washed—the saint had already accomplished a miracle: the subprior of the monastery, John of Ferentino, was healed of an eye affliction from which he had suffered for several months.3 This was the first sign of the veneration already directed toward Thomas—
since the ill person had been laid on the body of the deceased, applying his eyes to Thomas's. That veneration could only grow in light of the miracles that were accomplished and the pilgrimages that were organized.4
Conscious of the treasure that had fallen into their hands, all the monks of Fossanova emphasized that, even before his death, Thomas had declared that the abbey would be the place of his eternal repose: Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi, hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam.5 Fearing that the Dominicans might want to recover the relics or, worse, that the relics might be stolen from them, the Cistercians secretly transported the remains, first buried near the main altar in the chapel of Saint Stephen, to the interior of the cloister. But the deceased appeared in a dream to the prior of the monastery—Brother James of Ferentino, one of those who had gone to visit Thomas at Maenza—and conveyed to him his desire to be returned to his first place of burial.
Seven months after his death, the monks attempted to carry out that request. On that occasion, the winding sheet was opened and it was verified that the body was in a perfect state of preservation (a verification that was carried out again in 1281 and in 1288). Ravished by the sweet odor that came from it and filled with joy, they bore it back into the great church. Judging that it was not appropriate to celebrate a Requiem Mass for this translation of the body, they sang the Mass Os justi, the one for holy confessors.6
1. Ystoria 62, p. 388 (Tocco 62, p. 135).
2. Ystoria 63, pp. 390–92 (Tocco 63, 136–37); we have already used many passages from this text.
3. Ystoria 61, p. 387 (Tocco 61, pp. 134–35); the biographer reports here a fact attested by two eyewitnesses: Octaviano of Babuco ( Naples 17, p. 289) and Peter of Montesangiovanni ( Naples 51, p. 335).
4. Naples 41, pp. 317–18; 51, pp. 335–36; 53–55, pp. 338–42.
5. Ps. 131:14; cf. Naples 10, p. 280; 15, p. 286; 19, p. 291; 49, p. 332; Ystoria 57, p. 375 (Tocco 57, p. 130).
6. Naples 8, p. 278; cf. 10, 15, 20, 52 (pp. 280–81; 287; 291; 338); Ystoria 66, pp. 396–99
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Let us say here in order not to have to return to it later, these comings and goings in the monastery were only the beginning of the complex history of the relics. Instead of following the incredible and hardly appetizing detail of their tribulations during a good part of the fourteenth century, let us mention simply that in 1369 they were sent to Toulouse—rather than to Paris, where the university claimed them—at the behest of Urban V, and that they resided there in the church of the Order of Preachers until the French Revolution.7 Provisionally translated to the Basilica of SaintSernin, on 7 June 1791, they remained there until 7 March 1974, when they were returned to the restored church of the Jacobins, where they would from then on be venerated.8
March 1277 in Paris
While the popular devotion to Saint Thomas had begun in Italy, in Paris doctrinal agitation, which pitted the NeoAugustinian conservatives in the theology faculty against the radical Aristotelians in the arts faculty, had hardly ceased since Thomas's departure in 1272; indeed it had even grown.9 A few months after Thomas's departure, Bonaventure gave, on his return to Paris, a series of conferences during Easter 1273, the Collationes in Hexaemeron, in which he reacted strongly against Aristotelianism.10 The opusculum De erroribus philosophorum (by Giles of Rome?) is itself an eloquent testimony to the inquietude that the theses of Arabic and Jewish Aristotelianism had caused.11 Giles of Lessines, too, submitted to Albertus Magnus a list of fifteen propositions "which the most reputable masters in philosophy teach at Paris in the schools." The fact that the first thirteen are a simple repetition of errors condemned on 10 December 1270 and that we encounter them again in the condemnation of 1277 shows
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(Tocco 66, pp. 138–40); Bull of Canonization no. V ( Fontes, p. 524); according to Tocco, the deceased appeared to the abbot of the monastery, Nicholas, but the latter clearly explained that it was the prior, James, who was the recipient.
7. C. Douais, Les reliques de saint Thomas d'Aquin. Textes originaux (Paris, 1903) (notably with the chronicle of the translation from Piperno to Toulouse by Raymond Hugues); E.
Delaruelle, "La translation des reliques de saint Thomas d'Aquin à Toulouse (1369) et la politique universitaire d'Urbain V," BLE 56 (1955) 129–46.
8. Institut catholique de Toulouse. Chronique (1975), fasc. 4, pp. 29–30 and 43–45.
9. See on this the brief account by F. Van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIe siècle, pp. 474–83 (2d ed. 1991, pp. 414–22).
10. We refer here to the fine analysis by Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes (Chicago, 1971), pp. 120–63, who underlines the prophetic and apocalyptic point of Bonaventure's growing opposition to Aristotelianism.
11. Giles of Rome, Errores philosophorum, ed. J. Koch (Milwaukee, 1944) (Latin text with English translation).
indeed the persistence of these radical positions. Albert will respond to this consultation through his De quindecim problematibus, but we must say that the old master of Cologne does not show himself in his best light here.12
The echoes of this ferment, which even reached Viterbo, disquieted the former Parisian master Peter of Spain, recently elected pope under the name John XXI. He therefore wrote to the bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, on 18 January 1277, directing him to inquire into the persons and places that were propagating these errors prejudicial to the faith and to give him a report on it as soon as possible. The bishop's response to the pope has not come down to us, but we know that he brought together a commission of sixteen theologians who wished to work as soon as possible toward eliminating the suspect literature coming from the arts faculty. This ''hasty and incoherent inquiry" concluded in less than a month with submitting to the bishop a list of 219 propositions judged to be heterodox. And the bishop, going beyond the mission of acquiring information that the pope had conferred upon him, proceeded to condemn them on 7 March 1277.13 The pope does not seem to have been angry about this measure, since several weeks later, 28 April, he asked Tempier to continue the purification already begun tam in artibus quam in theologica . . .
facultate.14
This condemnation, which included without distinction heretical theses and theological opinions that were perfectly legitimate, has been severely judged since its first promulgation. In the twentieth century, it has been the object of diverse appreciations and interpretations; from Pierre Duhem to Edward Grant, from Mandonnet and Chenu to Jacques Le Goff, or from Kurt Flasch to Luca Bianchi and Alain de Libera, the historians have not ceased returning to it in order to evaluate its bearing and consequencessometimes not without anachronism.15
12. The text can be found in Albertus Magnus, Opera omnia, vol. 17/l (Cologne, 1975), pp. 30–44; cf. also F. Van Steenberghen, "Le De quindecim problematibus d'Albert le Grand," in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain, 1947), pp. 415–39.
13. Chartul. , no. 471, p. 541; no. 473, pp. 453–558; in addition to the few pages by F. Van Steenberghen (p. 483–88; 2d ed. 1991, pp. 422–26), see principally the fundamental studies by R. Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277, Philosophes médiévaux 22, (LouvainParis, 1977), and of L. Bianchi, Il vescovo e i filosofi. La condanna parigina del 1277 e l'evoluzione dell'aristotelismo scolastico (Bergamo, 1990); J. F. Wippel, "The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977) 169–201, who was still unaware of Hissette's and Wielockx's work, remains a good study.
14. This text has been edited by A. Callebaut, "Jean Pecham O.F.M. et l'augustinisme. Aperçus historiques (1263–1285)," AFH 18 (1925) 441–72 (cf. pp. 458–61).
15. J. E. Murdoch, "Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy
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Without getting involved in a debate that would lead us too far away from our purposes, it is certain that if this authoritarian intervention stopped radical Aristotelianism for a time in Paris, it also served as a considerable brake on the evolution of independent thought. A mind as free as Godfrey of Fontaines avowed that he could not pronounce on the way angels were present in a place, out of fear of excommunication.16 We have to wait until 1325—almost fifty years later and two years after Thomas's canonization—for one of Tempier's successors to annul what in the condemnation might touch on Thomist theses.17 But in the meantime, many other events occurred, and these from the days immediately after 7 March.
The most recent studies have notably modified the approach to this period. From the beginning until a short while ago, it was basically admitted that Thomas was included in the condemnation of the 219 articles. Two of his theses in particular were aimed at: the thesis about the unicity of substantial form in man (Quod in homine est tantum una forma substantialis, scilicet anima intellectiva),18 and the thesis about the impossibility for God to create a material without a corresponding form (Deum non posse facere materiam sine forma).19
Now, quite curiously, these two propositions are not found in the list of the 219 articles condemned by Tempier. This matter is even more surprising since, if we are to believe Pecham, Thomas opposed himself directly to the bishop precisely on the point about the unique form.20 We must therefore conclude from this with Roland Hissette that the 7 March condemnation—bearing essentially on some theses issued by the arts faculty (as the introduction says clearly)—does involve some of Thomas's positions, but he is not directly a target.21
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in the Latin West," in R. Imbach and A. Maieru, eds., Gli Studi di Filosofia Medievale fra Otto e Novecento, pp. 253–302; E. Grant, "The Condemnation of 1277, God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages," Viator 10 (1979) 211–44; J. Le Coff, Les intellectuels au Moyen Age, Points Histoire 78 (Paris, 1985); K. Flasch, Aufklärung im Mittelalter? Die Verurteilung von 1277. Das Dokument des Bischofs yon Paris übersetzt und erklärt, Excerpta classica 6 (Mayence, 1989); A. de Libera, Penser au Moyen Age, (Paris, 1991).
16. Quodl. XIII, 4, Les Philosophes belges 5 (1935), p. 221: "Hoc etiam est difficile determinare propter articulos circa hoc condemnatos, quia contrarii videntur ad invicem; et contra quos nihil intendo dicere propter periculum excommunicationis"; cf. p. Glorieux, "Tempier," DTC 15 (1946), col. l04.
17. Chartul. II, no. 838, pp. 280–81.
18. Cf. ST la q. 76 a.4.
19. Cf. Quodl. III q. 1 a. 1 sc.
20. Chartul. , no. 523, p. 634.
21. R. Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles, which should be supplemented with the same
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That he would have been implicated is no less certain, for we know quite well that Thomas was read in the arts faculty.22 What then is the reason for this silence when we are dealing with a notorious fact that was right at the heart of the controversy? . . . It was thought that a plausible answer had been found by positing the respect that already existed in Paris for Thomas Aquinas's memory, which would have imposed a relative moderation on the bishop. In reality, we must find another explanation, for the events that followed show that Stephen Tempier did not hesitate to quarrel directly with Thomas.
Very soon after 7 March (and before 28 March of that very year, 1277), Giles of Rome who, without being a disciple of the Dominican master, had perhaps been his student and shared several of his positions, was refused the licentia docendi by Bishop Tempier. And he was condemned in a list of fiftyone propositions extracted from his commentary on the first book of the Sentences. Now thirtyone of these propositions aim and strike indirectly at Thomas through Giles, and his censors knew it quite well. Supported by the legate Simon of Brion, Tempier, after waging war against the arts faculty, was then planning the purification of the theology faculty, which John XXI was going to ask of him on 28 April. Furthermore, as has been shown in an irrefutable way, this censuring of Giles of Rome in 1277 is essentially the revenge of the theology faculty against one of its members who was judged too independent and was considered an "ally of Thomas Aquinas."23
In reality, this censuring of Giles of Rome fits into an orchestrated plan in which Thomas himself is the target, as the process that was put in mo
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author's important article: "Etienne Tempier et ses condamnations," RTAM 47 (1980) 231–70, which mentions and discusses a number of studies that appeared on the occasion of the seventh centenary; see on this also his response to the critics who arose in reaction to his thesis which was too new to be received without difficulties by those holding the common opinion: "Albert le Grand et Thomas d'Aquin dans la censure parisienne du 7 mars 1277," MM 15 (1982) 226–46; cf. also Hissette, "Note sur le. syllabus 'antirationaliste'
du 7 mars 1277," RPL 88 (1990) 404–16 (with regard to K. Flasch).
22. We can add to the example of Siger of Brabant the slightly later example of certain masters who also drew heavily from the IIa IIae as well as the Commentary on the Ethics: O.
Lottin, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin à la faculté des arts de Paris aux approches de 1277," RTAM 16 (1949) 292–313.
23. R. Wielockx, Commentaire in Aegidii Romani Opera omnia, III, 1 Apologia (Florence, 1985), cf. p. 223; the author adds (p. 224) that this is also "the revenge of Henry of Ghent on Giles of Rome." See in particular chapter 7: "Les 51 articles à la lumière des doctrines de Thomas d'Aquin," pp. 179–224, but the history and understanding of these years receives much more light from the whole commentary, which gives, according to R. Imbach's expression, a superb example of microanalysis of a text in all its aspects.
tion against him between 7 and 28 March 1277 witnesses. Several contemporary theologians allude to it: John Pecham, Henry of Ghent, and William de la Mare.24
John Pecham is the clearest and one of the bestinformed people, since he was present in the Roman curia during that time (between 22 May 1276 and 12 March 1279). In a letter dated 7 December 1284, he informs us that Stephen Tempier had thought to introduce a procedure against Thomas Aquinas, but that, owing to the intervention of several eminent persons, action was taken away from the bishop of Paris and referred to Rome, where it was suspended during the vacancy in the Apostolic Seat between 20 May 1277 (death of John XXI) and 25 November 1277 (election of Nicholas III).25
Henry of Ghent, for his part, alludes to a meeting called (between 7 and 28 March 1277) by Bishop Tempier and the papal legate, Simon of Brion; the Parisian masters examined a certain number of theses there, one that literally repeats Thomas's terms: Quod in homine est tantum una forma substantialis, scilicet anima intellectiva; a proposition condemned by all the masters, he says, except for two—it appears to have been the two Dominican masters who abstained.26 As for William de la Mare, he confirms and completes these data in his celebrated Correctorium (around 1279) where, to the first thesis, which he reproduces, he adds a second: Deus non potest dare actu esse materiae sine forma.27 These are indeed the two theses whose absence intrigued the researchers into the condemnation of 7 March and about which William states that they have been reproved recently by all the masters.28
Here therefore was the beginning of the procedure begun directly against Thomas; Pecham deplores this interruption so strongly that he insists on 1 January 1285 that Martin IV (the former papal legate Simon
24. R. Wielockx, "Autour du procès de Thomas d'Aquin," MM 19 (1988) 413–38, has remarkably clarified this history.
25. Chartul. , no. 517, pp. 624–26.
26. ST la q.76 a.4; cf. Henry of Ghent, Quodl. X, in Opera omnia, ed. R. Macken, vol. 14, pp. 127–28 (note to lines 60–80 of the critical apparatus that reproduces the original tenor of Henry's proposals); Henry also recounts how he had been called several days earlier by the bishop and the legate, who wanted to be assured about his opinion in favor of the plurality of forms, engaging him to hold firmly and not hesitating to threaten him should he take the contrary view; cf. L. Hödl, "Neue Nachrichten über die Pariser Verurteilungen der Thomasischen Formlehre," Scholastik 39 (1964) 178–96, for the identification of the two recalcitrants.
27. Cf. Thomas, Quodl. III q.1 a.1.
28. P. Glorieux, Le correctorium Corruptorii "Quare," p. 129: reprobatur a magistris (for the first thesis); p. 114: omnes magistri concordaverunt nuper quod est erroneum dicere (for the second thesis).
of Brion) finally deign to pay attention to this affair. But it will only be Honorius IV (who will succeed Martin on 2 April 1285) who will bring an end to this litigation.
Far from exaggerating its gravity, he relinquished it and referred the decision to Paris, not to the bishop, but to the other masters in the theology faculty, who took up the question on a date before 14 April 1286, but did not arrive at any censure.
The referral to the theologians rather than to the bishop means that the pope considered the debate a scholastic question, in which the faith is not at stake. After 1285, Giles of Rome was himself rehabilitated and authorized to teach again by a determinatio magistrorum; he made his beginning as a master in the autumn of 1285.
After everything we have recalled here, it is clear that this new episode ought to be understood as a stage in the process leading to the complete rehabilitation of Thomas: if the implication of his objective ally was thought to compromise him, the lifting of the censure that struck that ally would show indeed that Thomas himself was no longer implicated.29
To all appearances, it was the intervention of John of Vercelli, the general of the Dominicans, present in Paris between 15O 0ctober 1276 and 1278 as the legate of John XXI that was behind the referral to Rome of the proceeding against Thomas. But he had some support among the Roman curia, where it seems that the interventions of Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini and especially Giacomo Savelli, friends of the Dominican order, explain the suspension of the trial. In fact, it is the latter, who became pope under the name Honorius IV, who would impose the solution already mentioned.30 Let us add here that a part of the strategy being carried out by John of Vercelli (of which other indications exist) was Saint Albert's arrival in Paris in 1277 to defend Thomas's memory. Though disputed not long ago by Weisheipl, this is considered plausible by the most recent scholarship.31
Dominicans and Franciscans
In spite of the pacts concluded between the Franciscan and Dominican generals, Jerome of Ascoli and John of Vercelli, notably in 1274 and 29. Cf. Wielockx, "Les 51 articles," in Commentaire (see note 23, above), pp. 219–23.
30. Cf. Wielockx, Autour du procès, pp. 419–22.
31. J. A. Weisheipl, "The Life and Works of St. Albert the Great," in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays. 1980, ed. J. A. Weisheipl (Toronto, 1980), pp. 12–51
(cf. pp. 44–45); R. Hissette, Albert le Grand et Thomas d'Aquin, pp. 244–45; R. Wielockx, Commentaire on Giles of Rome, p. 217, takes very seriously the argumentation of the last.
1277,32 the hostility of the Franciscans toward Thomas did not cease. They were, moreover, generously returned. The common front that had provisionally gathered together the two orders in a common defense against the seculars had given way to a fratricidal battle that was as unglorious as it was unproductive.
We must first take a small step backward and speak once again about John Pecham. Strangely, he walks here in the footsteps of a Dominican and this should be noted because it is one of the data in a highly complex situation: not all Thomas's adversaries were found among the Franciscans. Several days after Tempier's condemnation, the Dominican archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, issued a similar condemnation 18 March 1277, but this time with a will to strike direcfly at certain theses of Thomist inspiration, notably the one on the unicity of substantial form.33
Contrary to what is sometimes said, we cannot consider this censure as complementary to the one in Paris, since the second one makes no allusion to the first, which it does not repeat. Also, each has only a local bearing. Furthermore, while the Paris condemnation pits the bishop and the theology faculty against the arts faculty, at Oxford, Kilwardby could draw support from the consensus among all the masters, regents and nonregents. Robert's condemnation would be repeated by John Pecham, his successor beginning on 19 February 1279. Thomas's old adversary will confirm his predecessor's censure on 29 October 1284, and will complete it on 30 April 1286 with eight new propositions, particularly concerning the unicity of substantial form.34
Richard Knapwell, on whom Pecham wanted to impose the retraction of these eight theses, voluntarily abstained from participating in the solemn assembly convened at London by the archbishop, but he was splendidly
32. There had already been a common exhortation of the generals of the two orders in 1255 inviting their brothers to cease from internal discord to form a better front against their exterior enemies, and there were several others, cf. G. Meersseman, "Concordia inter quatuor ordines mendicantes," AFP 4 (1934) 75–97.
33. Chartul. , no. 474, pp. 558–59.
34. The text of these propositions with an enlightening account of the context is found in P. Glorieux, "Comment les thèses thomistes furent proserites à Oxford," RT 32, N.S. 10 (1927) 259–91, and in F. Pelster, "Die Sätze der Londoner Verurteilung von 1286 und die Schriften des Magister Richard von Knapwell O. P.," AFP 16 (1946) 83–106; the most enlightening explanation of the philosophical and theological engagement during this affair probably remains D. A. Callus, The Condemnation of St. Thomas at Oxford (The Aquinas Society of London, Aquinas Paper no. 5), (London, 1955). See on this F. J. Roensch, Early Thomistic School (Dubuque, lowa, 1964), pp. 170–99, and T. Crowlcy, "John Peckham, O.F.M., Archbishop of Canterbury, versus the New Aristotelianism," Bull. of the J. Rylands Library 33 (1950) 241–55, who tries to see things from Pecham's point of view.
defended there by his provincial, William of Hothum, who also interjected an appeal of the sentence of excommunication against him. Excommunicated all the same, Richard left for Rome to plead his case. The person who dealt with it was none other than Jerome of Ascoli, the former minister general of the Franciscans, who became pope under the name Nicholas IV. He removed the excommunication without doubt, but imposed perpetual silence on Richard. Withdrawing to Bologna, where he would have continued to teach the proscribed theses, Knapwell is thought to have died there insane in 1289.35 In addition to other considerations, his case illustrates rather well the implacable nature of the confrontation.
After Pecham, we must mention the English Franciscan William de la Mare—first regent in Paris, then at Oxford—who, around 1279, published his Correctorium.36
Instead of merely deploring or condemning Thomas's ideas, he judged it more useful to propose how to rectify them by noting the dangerous theses and the censures of which they had been the target. And he also adds a critique and refutation. The whole was conceived in the form of annotations to be introduced by masters and students in the margin of the suspected texts. This series of 118 corrections to add to as many passages in Thomas's works was very quickly considered an official document by the Franciscans, since, during the chapter they held in Strasbourg in 1282, the minister general, Bongrazia Fielci, prescribed that Thomas's Summa could be made available only to the most able ( notabiliter or rationabiliter intelligentes) readers, and then only if it was provided with William's clarifications.37
35. Cf. Glorieux, Comment, pp. 265–82; D. A. Callus, "The Problem of the Unity of Form and Richard Knapwell," in Mélanges offerts à Etienne Gilson (TorontoParis, 1959), pp.
123–60; Roensch, Early Thomistic School, pp. 34–40; 200–223; F. E. Kelley, ed., Richard Knapwell, Quaestio disputata de unitate formae (Paris, 1982).
36. The text of the Correctorium may be found in the edition of its refutation by Richard Knapwell in P. Glorieux, Les premières polémiques thomistes I. Le correctorium Corruptorii
"Quare," Bibliothèque thomiste 9 (Le SaulchoirKain, 1927). Three of William's discussions bearing on the De ueritate may also be read in the edition by R. Hissette, "Trois articles de la seconde rédaction du Correctorium de Guillaume de la Mare," RTAM 51 (1984) 230–41 (with some comments on the recent literature). About this figure, of whom ultimately we know rather little, see H. Kraml's editor's introduction to Guillelmus de La Mare, Scriptum in primum librum Sententiarum (Munich, 1989).
37. G. Fussenegger, ed., "Definitiones Capituli generalis Argentinae celebrati anno 1282," AFH 26 (1933) 127–40, cf. p. 139: "Generalis minister imponit ministris provincialibus quod non permittant multiplicari summam fratris Thome nisi apud lectores rationabiliter < al. notabiliter> intelligentes, et hoc nisi cum declarationibus fratris Guillelmi de Mara, non in marginibus positis, sed in quaternis et huiusmodi declarationes non scribantur per aliquos seculares" (cf. Documenta 43, pp. 624–25; Glorieux, Premières polémiques, p. ix, n. 2; idem,
"Non in marginibus positis," RTAM 15 (1948), 182–84.
This involuntary hommage recalls what James of Viterbo, the future archbishop of Naples, reported to Bartholomew of Capua as coming from Giles of Rome himself:
"Friar James, if the Preachers wish it, it is they who will be knowledgeable and intelligent and we ignorant [ idiote]; [all they have to do] is not spread around Friar Thomas's writings."38 The diffusion of this Correctorium is an evident sign of its success. We have today twelve manuscripts of this work by William, without counting the sixteen others that have come down in Knapwell's refutation of it.
For their part, the Dominicans did not remain inactive. William's Correctorium—rebaptized by them the Corruptorium—provoked no fewer than five immediate replies by Thomas's confreres. According to custom, our enumeration distinguishes them on the basis of their incipit. The first, around 1282–83, is Richard Knapwell's Correctorium Quare, which would not take long in attracting Pecham's thundering.39 Next came the Correctorium Sciendum, which is very close to the earlier text in date (around 1283) and place of origin. Its author also seems to have been an English Dominican, very probably Robert of Orford.40
We move to Paris with the Correctorium entitled Circa, whose author is John Quidort (or John of Paris) who seems to know of his two English predecessors. But he did not finish his work (it leaves off at article 60). The date is very close to those of the earlier texts (around 1282–84).41 We return to England with the fourth Correctorium, called Quaestione. It's author is still unknown, but without doubt he was an English Dominican (some researchers believe William of Macclesfield).
He, too, did not finish and stopped at article 31. Close to the Quare, which it uses sometimes, it must be slightly later.42 The fifth is the work of Rambert of the Primadizzi (also said to be from Bologna), then at SaintJacques, who also did not finish
38. Naples 83, pp. 383–84; Giles deserves some credit for speaking this way for, like Henry of Ghent or Godfrey of Fontaines, he was hardly spared by Thomas's confreres. We have only to think of the attacks on him by Robert of Offord. We refer to P. Glorieux's valuable study, " Pro et contra Thomam: Un survol de cinquante années," in Sapientiae Procerum Amore. Mélanges . . . J.P. Müller, Studia Anselmiana 63 (Rome, 1974), pp. 255–87. Cf. pp. 271–72.
39. The edition is in Glorieux, Les premières polémiques thomistes; though Glorieux hesitates about the authorship of Quare (Pelster even more so, who thought it was Thomas of Sutton) today there is no doubt after Kelley's work, cf. L.J. Bataillon, RSPT 75 (1991) 509.
40. P. Glorieux, ed., Le Correctorium Corruptorii "Sciendum," Bibl. Thomiste 31 (Paris, 1956). Cf. Roensch, Early Thomistic School, pp. 40–42; 223–30.
41. J.P. Müllet, ed., Le Correctorium Corruptorii de Jean Quidort de Paris, Studia Anselmiana 12–13 (Rome, 1941).
42. J.P. Müller, ed., Le Correctorium Corruptorii "Quaestione," Studia Anselmiana 35 (Rome, 1954).
(he stops at article 3l). He has the distinction of replying not only to William de la Mare but to other authors also "of great renown" (qui magni sunt et magni reputantur), who appear to have been Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and Richard of Mediavilla.43 This discussion will have a last outburst around 1315–20 from the pen of an anonymous Franciscan who undertook to reply to the various contradictors of William de la Mare.44
The refutations evidently stem from a whole polemical and apologetic literature. They first try to exonerate Thomas from all accusations of error. He was never condemned by the Church or the University. And just as much time is spent justifying his positions as in refuting William's. It would be wrong, however, to consider these writings simply as works responding to circumstances and, therefore, of the second order. It has been said with perspicacity that they reveal a speculative selfconsciousness, specifically of one school coming to birth in confrontation with another.45
In support of this remark, we note that these works all came from young Dominicans (none of them was yet regentmaster at the time of writing). They are doubtless more sensitive than their elders to the newness of the stakes. If we try to verify what this controversy implies about the use of reason in the domain debated by everyone on the eternity of the world, we easily detect among the five young Dominicans the clear awareness—completely in the Thomist line—of a sharp distinction between the realms of faith and reason. This distinction also carries with it a strong reservation about the possibilities of reason, which cannot in any case prove what belongs to faith. Inversely, it is Rambert who most happily formulates William's claim to arrive at a veritable scientia of the things of the faith and points out this rationalist intemperance.
It is the deep irony of the controversy that Jordan underlines strongly. For our part, we would add something that every reader can see for himself: on the whole, Thomas himself is most quoted in these replies. Thus, the author who is attacked defends himself through the pen of his first disciples. Without yet knowing it, they were practicing the method that will be
43. J.P. Müller, ed., Rambertus de' Primadizzi de Bologne, Apologeticurn veritatis contra corruptorium, Studi e Testi 108 (Vatican City, 1943).
44. Cf. Glorieux, " Pro et contra," p. 285. For good measure, we also note (with Glorieux, p. 268) some lists that must have circulated in the decade 1280–90 and that emphasize the Articuli in quibus dissentiunt Bonaventura et Thomas or again the Artieuli in quibus Minores contradicunt Thorne in IIa IIae. This literature is almost inexhaustible.
45. M. D. Jordan, "The Controversy of the Correctoria and the Limits of Metaphysics," Speculum 57 (1982) 292–314. Beyond the remarks repeated in our text, the most uptodate work on the subject can be found in this study.
summed up later in the celebrated formula Thomas suiipsius interpres. This maxim was fecund, as these beginnings show, but it also became heavy with a repetitive sclerosis whose results have not always been happy.
To conclude this glimpse of the frictions between the Franciscans and Dominicans, it is not useless to recall that they did not confine themselves to a strictly intellectual plane. The most prominent of these apples of discord, the understanding of the vow of poverty, remained at the heart of the debate. It was in this regard that the leader of the spiritual Franciscans, Peter Olivi, is found several years later (around 1290) among the most resolute of Thomas's adversaries, as his commentary on Matthew 10:9–10 bears witness.46 We need not spend much time on this point to understand that we return here to the old field of battle on which Thomas and Pecham once faced each other. The new fact here is that the Franciscans, though divided between Augustinian followers of Bonaventure and partisans of total poverty, nevertheless gathered in "a formidable antiThomist front which, until the last moment, tried to block the penetration of Thomist doctrine and the canonization of the Common Doctor."47
In support of this assertion, we might remark that this struggle found an echo in the process at Naples. Several witnesses confirm that they saw Saint Augustine in a dream saying to them that not only was Thomas's teaching in conformity with his own, but also that he was superior in saintliness because of his virginity. It is not without importance that it was from the mouths of two Hermits of Saint Augustine that we find the most lively praises of Thomas's teaching. We have already mentioned the testimony by Giles of Rome, but James of Viterbo does not fear to put Thomas on the same level with Saint Paul and Saint Augustine and to say that there will not be another such until the end of time, because we find in his writing communis ueritas, communis claritas, communis illuminatio, communis ordo et doctrina.48
Defense of Thomas by the Dominican Order
Faced with these massive attacks from outside, Thomas's confreres, we might naturally suppose, just as massively closed ranks to defend his mem46. M.Th. D'Alverny, "Un adversaire de saint Thomas: Petrns Iohannis Olivi," in Commemorative Studies II, pp. 179–218.
47. A. Vauchez, "Les canonisations de S. Thomas et de S. Bonaventure: pourquoi deux siècles d'éceart?" in 1274 Annéecharnière—Mutations et continuités, Colloques internationaux du CNRS 558 (Paris, 1977), pp. 753–67, cf. p. 760.
48. Naples 66, pp. 356–57; 67, p. 358; 83, pp. 383–84.
ory. The reality was more nuanced than that. Very quickly, it is true, the general chapters began to be agitated over the discredit that threatened to rebound on the order if it allowed Friar Thomas's memory to be darkened. Although the chapter that opened in Bordeaux on 16 May 1277 (two months after Tempier's condemnation) still maintained a prudent silence (the time, no doubt, for John of Vercelli to perfect his strategy), the chapter held at Milan a year later in 1278
vigorously intervened in the matter and dispatched two special envoys to England with the mission of inquiring into friars who had allowed themselves to criticize Thomas's writings and punishing them as a consequence.49 The historians opportunely remark that Robert Kilwardby, created a cardinal, had left Oxford the preceding March 12. He must have left behind supporters who did not share the Thomist ideas of Hothum and Knapwell.
In 1279, the general chapter held in Paris intervened to the same purpose: ''Given that Friar Thomas Aquinas, that venerable man whose memory should be celebrated, has greatly honored our order by his praiseworthy life and writings, we can in no way allow certain people to treat him, himself and his writings, in an irreverent and indecent way—even if they think differently than he did. We enjoin on the provincial and conventual priors, on their vicars, and on all visitors to punish severely without delay those who are found at fault on this point."50
As may be seen, the order's position is still measured: you may think differently than Friar Thomas, you may not fail to show him respect. The Paris chapter in 1286
will go much further: "We prescribe and strictly order that each and every friar work efficaciously in promoting the doctrine of the venerable Master Friar Thomas Aquinas of blessed memory—at least as a defensible opinion. If someone tries to teach formally ( assertive) the contrary—be he master or bachelor, lector, prior, or other, and even if he thinks differently—let him be suspended ipso facto from his own office and the privileges of the order until he be restored by the master of the order or the general chapter."51
49. MOPH 3, p. '99: "lniungimus districte fratri Raymundo de Medullione et fratri Iohanni Vigorosi lectori Montispessulani. quod cure festinacione vadant ad Angliam inquisituri diligenter super facto fratrum, qui in scandalum ordinis detraxerunt de scriptis venerabilis patris fratris Thorne de Aquino. quibus ex nunc plenam damus auctoritatem in capitc et in membris, qui quos culpabiles invenerint in predictis, puniendi. extra provinciam emittendi, et omni officio privandi, plenam habeant potestatem."
50. MOPH 3, p. 204.
51. Moph 3, p. 233; in 1287, i.e., the following year, the general chapter of the Hermits of (footnote continued on next page)
The Saragossa chapter in 1309 will make a similar recommendation, itself quite strong, and will take an eloquent step: it permits friars who are abroad to sell their books in case of need, with the exception of the Bible and Thomas's works.52 Until the canonization, a whole series of chapters will intervene again in this way to recommend the study of his teachings, which is generally considered as sanior et communior, but they also speak now and again of those who do not follow these recommendations (Metz 1313; London 1314; Bologna 1315; Rouen 1320); in 1324 at Vienna, the chapter adopts for the order the Office of the Blessed Sacrament composed by Thomas; the chapter of Bordeaux in 1324 gives him the title of saint and prescribes the celebration of his liturgical feast by the whole order on 7 March, the day of his death—and of the celebrated condemnation of 1277.53
Disciples and Confreres
The strong and repetitive terms of the general chapters might give the impression that all the theologians of the Dominican order recognized themselves without difficulty in Thomas's doctrine. Far from it! Without returning to the instructive case of Kilwardby, we must keep in mind the first interventions of the chapters aiming at imposing silence on overly virulent detractors. They did not all disappear.
The most famous remains Durandus of SaintPourçain who, beginning with his lectures on the Sentences (1307–1308), showed himselfa resolute adversary. He was notauthorized to present himself for the license except under the promise of revising and amending his Commentary. He so employed himself, probably during the year 1312–13, when he gave a course at SaintJacques. It was in echo of his controverted teaching that the chapter of Metz in 1313 recommends Thomas's doctrine once more and institutes a commission of twelve members under the presidency of Hervé Nédellec to examine Durandus's work. Peter de la Palud and John of Naples are specially charged with sifting Durandus's Commentary and they
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Saint Augustine will take (in imitation?) an exactly similar measure in canonizing in still stronger terms Giles of Rome's doctrine ( Chartul. II, no. 542, p. 12); rehabilitated two years earlier, Giles was just forty.
52. MOPH 4, pp. 38 and 40 (= Documenta 50, pp. 655–56, which speaks mistakenly of Cologne).
53. MOPH 4, pp. 64–65, 72, 81, 123, 138, 151 (= Documenta 50, pp. 656–60); the colleered texts of these chapters may be found, with commentary, in English. See M. Burbach, "Early Dominican and Franciscan Legislation Regarding St. Thomas," MS (1942) 139–58.
drew from it ninetythree censured propositions (heretical, erroneous, etc.).
Durandus, already master of the Sacred Palace when the commission finished its work, replied through his Excusationes which were in turn submitted to Hervé Néellec's examination. The latter continued the polemic until Durandus was named bishop of Limoux in 1317 and Hervé himself became master general in 1318. But Peter de la Palud and John of Naples published in 1316–17 a selection of 235 articles, which drew to the attention of Thomas's readers the points on which Durandus deviated from the Master's doctrine.54 Durandus, however, was not alone (he was following here his master, James of Metz, who also had to deal with Hervé Nédellec),55 and other lords of lesser importance also saw themselves called to order by the provincial chapters.56
These eases alone would suffice to weaken the beautiful façade of unity that the chapter generals' pronouncements present. Without trying to be exhaustive, we must recall here something of the diversity that remained part of the wealth of the Dominican order. We have to say in passing: though we must briefly present the Correctoria literature in the framework of this story, it is important not to commit an error of perspective and reduce the prodigious intellectual vitality of this period to the vivacity of this one controversy.
In Thomas's immediate wake there were, first, some faithful readers who noticed that the master had not always said the same thing in the same way and who busied themselves with harmonizing these differences, thus creating what might be called the litterature of the " better said." As Glorieux summarizes it: "The aim is diametrically opposite to that of William de la Mare. The latter wanted to arm Franciscan readers against the doctrines thought erroneous or dangerous in Saint Thomas. The list of the 'better saids' on the contrary was put forward to help the Dominicans better 54. Cf. J. Koch, "Die Verteidigung der Theologie des hl. Thomas von Aquin dutch den Dominikanerorden gegenüber Durandus de S. Porciano O. Pr.," in Xenia Thomistica III, pp.
327–62; Koch, Durandus de S. Porciano O. P., Forschungen zum Streit um Thomas von Aquin zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhundert, BGPTM 36/1 (Münster i. W., 1927). Cf. a brief account of the facts in Glorieux, " Pro et contra," pp. 278–84, and the complete literature in Käppeli, Scriptores I, p. 340.
55. Cf. Glorieux, " Pro et contra," p. 284.
56. In 1315, at Arezzo, the chapter of the Roman province inflicted a penitence on Friar Hubert Guidi, who was guilty of having criticized Friar Thomas Aquinas's doctrine ( MOPH 20, p.
197; Documenta 51, p. 661). In 1316, at Orthez, it was the chapter of the Toulouse province that interdicted deviating from Thomas ( Documenta 52, p. 662).
understand and use Saint Thomas's writings, particularly his Commentary on the Sentences . . . [by pointing out], in the order, the improvements Saint Thomas made in the Summa . . . [in order to] clarify the development of his thought."57
We have already mentioned the "Articles in which Friar Thomas is better in the Summa than in the Sentences."58 The author's aim is not to catch him contradicting himself in flagrante delicto, but rather to mark the dynamism of his thought and development. That work would be followed several years later by the Concordance
"Volens complecti" (around 1290–1300), which extended the enterprise beyond the Summa to the Contra Gentiles, the Questiones disputatae, the Quodlibets, and to other works like the commentaries on Romans and on Aristotle. The number of articles treated went from 32 to 41, and the point of view is a little different, for it is no longer a case of pointing out passages melius dixit as much as harmonizing the apparent contradictions. That is why it bears the title: " Aliter dixit in Summa quam in Scriptis." This work will undergo as many as ten reworkings, all more or less extensive.59 Without going through the whole list of works, we might still remark in the immediate neighborhood of the Articuli in its earliest form (around 1280) the De concordantiis in seipsum (perhaps by Thomas Sutton) where, through a literary procedure borrowed from Saint Augustine's Retractationes, the author makes Thomas himself speak directly in order to dispel the apparent contradictions that may be seen in his writings,60
Without wishing to be pejorative, these might be described less as disciples than epigones; Thomas had still other disciples and even other contradictors among his own Dominican confreres, and he also had among them some authors whose work developed independently from his own. We find all this in what has been called the Rhine school or the German Dominican scholastics.61 It is even more important to say a few words about 57. Glorieux, " Pro et contra," p. 267.
58. Cf. above, chapter III, note 42, with Gauthier's article, "Les Articuli in quibus."
59. Cf. Glorieux, " Pro et contra," p. 275 and Gauthier, "Les Articuli in quibus," for an edition of the texts.
60. Edited among Saint Thomas's opuscula: Vivès, vol. 28, 560–74; cf. P. Mandonnet, "Premiers travaux de polémique thomiste," RSPT 7 (1913) 46–70; 245–262, cf. pp. 252–55.
61. See the summary of some hesitations about the justness of these descriptions in A. de Libera, Introduction à la mystique rhénane d'Albert le Grand à Maître Eckhart (Paris, 1984), pp. 9–23, in which will also be found the essential matters concerning these too little known thinkers. De Libera, Albert le Grand et la philosophie (Paris, 1990), pp. 21–36 and passim, on Albert's influence. There are also many relevant data in the second colloquium of the collabo
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them here since they have remained entirely outside of the otherwise excellent overview by Glorieux.
Thomas did not stay long enough in Cologne—and at the time he was only a beginner—for his influence to have been established as solidly as was Master Albert's.
Instead, the latter's Neoplatonism, marked by Avicenna and PseudoDionysius, gave rise to a family, and if we cannot say that the whole school of Cologne is Albertinian, it is certain that Thomas's influence was less there than in Paris. In fact, we can say without question that the Neoplatonism of that school is Albertus Magnus's legacy—as was also the Thomism that departed from it little by little.
The best known of these thinkers is certainly Meister Eckhart, bachelor and master in Paris at the times of the sharpest controversies with the Franciscans. Though not a Thomist, he nevertheless defended some of Thomas's theses on the beatific vision.62 Among the disciples proper, we must mention John of Fribourg, about whom we have already spoken, John and Gerard of Sterngassen, Jean Picard of Lichtenberg ("representing without question the most eminent Cologne Thomism," says de Libera), Henry of Lübeck, and Nicholas of Strasbourg.
The last is the author of a Summa, without real scientific value if truth be told, but that draws its inspiration from Thomas and Albert (and from various other authors, among them Giles of Rome and Hervé Nédellec). Ruedi Imbach has brought to light his importance for the history of thought in this period.63 Submitted for the approval of the master of the order, Nicholas's Summa seems to have been composed to respond to the recommendations of the general chapters and with an eye on becoming a manual for use by the friars in formation. It is interesting to note that the authors it refers to are all foreign to the nascent Cologne school. Completely ignored by Glorieux in his Pro et contra Thomam, it has rightly
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rators on the Corpus philosophorum teutonicorum medii aevi held at Fribourg, Switzerland in October 1984: Albert der Grosse und die deutsche Dominikaner schule.
Philosophische Aspekte, in FZPT 32 (1985) 3–271; we now have as well Maarten Hoenen and A. de Libera's Albertus Magnus und der Albertismus, Studien und Texte zur Geisteschichte des Mittelalters, vol. 48 (Leiden/New York/Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1995).
62. For the links between Eckhart and Thomas, see R. Imbach, Deus est intelligere. Das Verhältnis von Sein und Denken in seiner Bedeutung für das Gottesverständnis bei Thomas von Aquin und in den Pariser Quaestionen Meister Eckharts, Studia Friburgensia, N. F. 53 (Fribourg, 1976).
63. R. Imbach and U. Lindblad, " Compilatio rudis ac puerilis. Hinweise und Materialien zu Nikolaus von Strassburg und seiner Summa," FZPT 32 (1985) 155–233. The introductory remarks that we summarize above are followed by several appendixes that give, among other things, the plan for Nicholas's Summa as well as extracts that bring out the sources used.
returned amid the great attempt at clarification caused by so many contradictory positions in the period after Thomas.
With Nicholas, we are already at the beginning of the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Among those closer in time (he was masterregent in Paris probably between 1296 and 1298) and among the adversaries, the most eminent is certainly Dietrich of Freiburg, an unacknowledged precursor of modern philosophy in his discovery of subjectivity.64 He was also the most virulent of the antiThomists and did nothing to hide it, so that we can easily identify the numerous points on which he shows his disagreement: from the real distinction between being and essence to the whole doctrine of the intellect, and in particular on the beatific vision; on the Eucharist, he criticizes without restraint the theory of accidents used by Thomas. But he also finds something to say against Thomas's theory of individuation through matter and against his angelology. Frequently, he piles up scornful qualifications: not only does he put Thomas and his disciples among the communiter loquentes, but their doctrine seems "elementary" to him, "ridiculous," "false," and even "sophistical." Under these conditions, we may rightly be astonished that Dietrich was never the object of the same ''attention" that was paid to Durandus of SaintPourçain. In any case, it is certain that it is hardly possible to read him and, especially, to understand him in the abstract, apart from the internal conflicts within the Dominican order.
Among the indifferent figures, we must mention Ulrich of Strasbourg—who was a fellow student of Thomas in 1248 at Albert's school and is almost Thomas's exact contemporary both in birth and death. His De Summo Bono draws inspiration primarily from their common Master, Albert, and seems completely unaware of Thomas's work.65 Grabmann earlier made known the majority of these names,66 but the studies about them have not 64. In addition to the chapter de Libera devotes to him ( La mystique rhénane, pp. 163–229), see especially the important study by R. Imbach, "Gravis iactura verae doctrinae.
Prolegomena zu einer Interpretation der Schrift De ente et essentia Dietrichs von Freiberg, O.P.," FZPT 26 (1979) 369–425. In French, a shorter but illuminating study is "Prétendue primauté de l'être sur le connaître. Perspectives cavalières sur Thomas d'Aquin et l'école dominicaine allemande," in Lectionum varietates. Hommage à Paul Vignaux, Etudes de Phil. méd. 65 (Paris, 1991), pp. 121–32. See also the chapter relating to Dietrich in the book, so new in many ways, by F. X. Putallaz, La connaissance de soi au XIIIe siècle. De Matthieu d'Aquasparta à Thierry de Freiberg, Etudes de Phil. médiévale 67 (Paris, 1991), a lovely example of a renewed approach to the literature of the period. Cf. R. Imbach, Gravis iactura, pp. 386–91.
65. Cf. A. de Libera, Introduction à la mystique rhénane, pp. 99–162, and "Ulrich de Strasbourg, lecteur d'Albert le Grand," FZPT 32 (1985) 105–36.
66. M. Grabmann, "Forschungen zur Geschichte der ältesten deutschen Thomistenschule
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ceased since the publication of their texts—unavailable until a short while ago—made them more accessible.67
Doubtless, nowhere else do we know of a school of so strong a stamp as the one at Cologne. But it would be wrong to think that other countries were without intellectual representatives of high quality. In addition to the English authors we have already met,68 we should recall the existence of several others from diverse regions of the France of that day. Without going too far beyond the beginning of the fourteenth century, there were John Quidort, Giles of Lessines, and Hervé Nédellec (already mentioned), to whom we must add Bernard of La Treille (or of Trilia), Peter of Auvergne (a nonDominican and former student of Henry of Ghent and of Godfrey of Fontaines), who completed the commentary on the Politics, and Bernard of Auvergne (or of Gannat) who vigorously opposed Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines.69
Among the Italians, we know well Tolomeo of Lucca—who wrote not only the Historia ecclesiastica, but many other things, and probably finished the De regno.
We have also already met Romano of Rome, Thomas's successor at Paris, Rambert of Bologna, author of a reply to William de la Mare. We will soon encounter John of Naples, who worked for the canonization.70 But we should especially mention Remigio of Florence (Remigio dei Girolami) who is one of the best known because of his twofold distinction as "disciple of saint Thomas and master of Dante."71 It is prob
(footnote continued from previous page)
des Dominikanerordens," in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben I, pp. 392–431 (reprinted from Xenia Thomistica III, pp. 189–231). We refer also to the valuable status questionis by R.
Imbach, "(Néo)platonisme médiéval, Proclus latin et l'école dominicaine allemande," Rev. Théol. phil. 110 (1978) 427–48, who updates the bibliography of Grabmann's study and notably enlarges its perspectives.
67. We cannot go through that literature here, but we must at least mention the Corpus philosophorum teutonicorum medii aevi, under the direction of K. Flasch and L. Sturlese, which has already published several of these texts. The edition is not yet complete, but the four volumes of Dietrich of Freiberg's Opera omnia have already appeared.
68. We should add, at a slightly later date, Thomas of Wylton, secular master, regent in Paris from 1312 to 1323, who will be Thomas's great defender against Duns Scotus: Glorieux,
" Pro et contra," pp. 281–83.
69. A good first orientation to each of them may be found in F. J. Roensch, Early Thomistic School, pp. 84–117. This may be completed by consulting the bibliographical indications on each author in Käppeli.
70. A first orientation on these figures is M. Grabmann's study "Die italienische Thomistenschule des XIII. und beginnenden XIV. Jahrhunderts," Mittelalterliches Geistesleben I, pp.
332–91. This should be complemented with Käppeli's bibliographical notes about each author.
71. This is the title of the study M. Grabmann dedicated to him (see the preceding note). Remigio certainly attended Thomas's courses during the second period of teaching in Paris, but
(footnote continued on next page)
able that Thomas's disciples in Italy were numerous and enthusiastic enough to call forth a reprimand from the 1308 Perugia chapter. They had dared to take the Summa as the basic text for teaching. They were firmly told to stick with the Sentences.72
Since we are in Italy, it is not without interest to know that Thomas found there not only disciples in the proper sense of the term, but an unexpected diffusion among Jewish thinkers of the time. We can cite here Hillel of Verona, who might be called "the first Jewish Thomist." He translated into Hebrew the first part of the De unitate intellectus twenty years after its appearance and adopted Thomas's position on the immortality of the individual soul, not fearing to salute him as "the Maimonides of his age, even capable of responding to questions that the Master had left undecided."73 In the following generation, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, we can also mention Jehudah ben Daniel Romano, who translated into Hebrew a whole series of ''selected passages" of the scholastics of his time—Albertus Magnus and Giles of Rome notably—but especially Thomas Aquinas, from whom he reproduces 38 extracts from different works (especially from the two Summa and the Super de causis).74
It will suffice for our purposes to have noted these few names so that the period immediately after Thomas will not be too incomplete. The young medieval scholar reading these lines—Thomist or not—should understand that the publication of critical editions of new texts as well as the revived reading of those that are already known both still contain many happy surprises, and the field open to investigation remains immense.75
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it is less certain that he had Dante among his own students, although this is entirely possible. See on this point the superb labors of E. Panella, Per lo studio di fra Remigio dei Girolami (+ 1319). Contra falsos professores ecclesiae, Memorie Domenicane N.S. 10 (1979) 11–313, cf. pp. 191–92 (Thomas), p. 212 (Dante); Panella, "Un'introduzione alia filosofia in uno 'studium' dei frail Predicatori del XIII secolo. Diuisio scientie di Remigio dei Girolami," ibid., 12 (1981) 27–126.
72. MOPH 20, p. 169.
73. A. Wohlman, Thomas d'Aquin et Maïmonide, pp. 325–26, and note 11, pp. 394–95. On Hillel, see C. Sirat, La philosophic juive médiévale en terre de chrétienté (Paris, 1988), pp.
83–84.
74. Cf. G. Sermoneta, "Jehudah ben Moseh ben Daniel Romano, traducteur de saint Thomas," in Hommage à Georges Vajda. Etudes d'histoire et de pensée juives, ed. by (3. Nahon and (C. Touati (Louvain, 1980), pp. 235–62; Sermoneta, "Pour une histoire du thomisme juif," in Aquinas and his Time, pp. 150–35; (C. Sirat, La philosophic juive, pp. 84–86.
75. It is easy to catch up with the relevant research and literature thanks to the useful bibliographic survey by (C. Viola, "L'Ecole thomiste au Moyen Age," in G. Floistad, ed., La philosophic contemporaine. Chroniques nouvelles, vol. 6/1, Philosophic et science au Moyen Age (Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1990), pp. 345–77.
Chapter XVI—
Epilogue:
The Canonization in Avignon
We come now to the last stage of this story. While the disciples and adversaries were confronting one another, other forces were at work—sometimes the same figures—who were occupied no longer solely with the intellectual but with the man of God. We should not be surprised, therefore, to see appear in these final pages some things as heterogeneous as a polemical literature and a bull of canonization, an apology arguing for Thomas's sanctity and an accusation directed against the Avignon papacy for having canonized in Thomas his brother's murderer.
A WellConducted Development
The canonization process was set in motion by John XXII himself. Jacques Duèse, elected pope 7 August 1316, wished to show his gratitude to the Dominican order, which had hosted the conclave at Lyon for two years, by canonizing one of its members. Raymond of Peñafort, who had been proposed by the king of Aragon, was not considered by the new pope, whose sympathies were with the House of Anjou.1 An admirer of Thomas, he had bought from several suppliers an entire series of his works in 1317.
1. A. Walz, "Papst Johannes XXII. und Thomas von Aquin. Zur Geschichte der Heiligsprechung des Aquinaten," in Commemorative Studies I, pp. 29–47, cf. p. 36; idem., "Historia canonizationis sancti Thomae de Aquino," Xenia Thomistica III, pp. 105–72; cf. pp. 118–22; L. V. Gerulaitis, "The Canonization of Saint Thomas Aquinas," Vivarium 5 (1967) 25–
46.
We still have the list and the prices.2 There have also been found in the Vatican Library a series of fourteen beautiful volumes recopied for him between 1316 and 1324. And annotations in his hand attest the use he made of them.3
On the Dominican side, the initiative came from the Sicilian province (independent of the Roman province beginning in 1294), whose chapter meeting at Gaeta, probably in September 1317, entrusted William of Tocco, then prior of the priory at Benevento, and Robert of Benevento, his socius, to promote the canonization.4
Various indications allow us to think that Tocco had already occupied himself for a long time in gathering together documents and memories among the Aquinas family.
Thus, we see him in Salerno in 1316, with Friar Thomas of Aversa, at the home of the count of Marsico who, we recall, was the son of Theodora, the second sister of Friar Thomas Aquinas.5 Tocco will see him again in the Abruzzi in November 1317 and in February 1318, he will also meet there with the aged Lady Catherine de Morra—daughter of Maria, the saint's third sister—who provided him with some recollections that she said she got from her grandmother Theodora, Thomas's own mother.6
Tocco was evidently known for this activity as an inquirer, and Bartholomew of Capua says that he was eager to convey to him a fact that he had learned from John of Giudice. William himself tells how he learned certain things from Tolomeo of Lucca.7 We also know that he went to Fossanova where, prior to the beginning of the process in Naples, he passed four months (from the Easter octave until, 15 or 17 July), questioning witnesses about Thomas's final days and the beneficiaries of various healings.8
He recounts himself how he went to Avignon and was received by the pope in August 1318. He was the bearer of a first list of miracles performed 2. Documenta 54, pp. 664–66.
3. A. Dondaine, "La Collection des oeuvres de saint Thomas dite de Jean XXII et Jaquet Maci," Scriptorium 29 (1975) 127–52 (with plates), cf. pp. 127–28 with bibliography.
4. Tocco, miracle 10, p. 147, recalls the mission he received at the point where he introduces a miracle from which he benefitted during a sea voyage to the Curia, then at Avignon.
Tocco was still prior in 1319 during his deposition at the canonization process ( Naples 58, p. 345).
5. Ystoria 70, pp. 408–10 (Tocco 70, p. 144), and Naples 95, pp. 402–4 (testimony by Thomas of Aversa that permits the dating of Tocco's story); Ystoria 37, pp. 317–20 (Tocco 37, pp.
110–11); cf. Le BrunGouanvic, Introduction à l'Ystoria, pp. 6ff; P. Mandonnet, "La canonisation de saint Thomas d'Aquin, 1317–1323," in Mélanges Thomistes, Bibl. thom. 3 (Paris, 1923), pp. 1–48, cf. pp. 21–25.
6. Naples 60 and 62, pp. 347–48 and 350–51.
7. Naples 79, p. 378; 60, pp. 347–48.
8. Naples 73–75, pp. 351–55; Tocco, miracle 13, p. 149.
through Thomas's intercession, a letter from the nobles of the kingdom of Sicily who asked for Thomas's canonization, and a first version of his Ystoria.9 After Tocco explained his mission to the consistory of cardinals at the pope's request, the latter officially introduced the cause on 13 September 1318 and designated three delegates to conduct the preliminary inquest.10 This took places in Naples from 21 July to 18 September 1319. It heard 42 witnesses, 16 of whom—as we have already seen—knew the saint personally. Tocco was in Naples for the whole length of the process, having full leisure to meet with each witness and to note his recollections, thus completing the inquiry that he had conducted in the region around Fossanova.
At the end of 1320 or at the beginning of 1321, Tocco, constantly accompanied by Robert of Benevento, was again in Avignon with another collection of miracles that had occurred at Fossanova. The last version of the text—as it was reestablished by Claire Le BrunGouanvic—shows that this new collection of miracles resulted from an enquiry made by the archbishop of Viterbo upon his return from Naples.11 Since he was not accompanied by the archbishop of Naples, his coassessor, the canonical forms were not, strictiy, observed. The pope, therefore, ordered a second official inquest on 1 June 1321 and named three new delegates for the proceedings: Peter Ferri, bishop of Anagni; Andrew, bishop of Terracina; and Pandolpho Savelli, the pontifical notary assigned to the first process who had not been able to attend.12 This new procedure unfolded in Fossanova from 10 to 20 November 1321. It heard 112 people, but, dedicated solely to the miracula post mortem, it did not bring forward any new details about Thomas's biography. Tocco, then quite old, had to decline the carrying of this dossier to the pope. He was followed in this second phase of the affair by John of Naples, another faithful supporter of Thomas, who had begun teaching several years earlier in Paris and continued in Naples in the autumn of 1317.13 He himself would not be able to come to Avignon
9. Tocco, miracle 12, pp. 148–49; cf. Naples 60, p. 348, which allows us to specify the date; in his fourth version Tocco put ahead of the story about his reception by the pope another concerning a miracle whose beneficiary was his companion ( Ystoria, p. 9).
10. Naples 3, pp. 269–71; the three delegates were Humberto, archbishop of Naples; Angelo, bishop of Viterbo; and Pandolpho of Savelli, the pontifical notary. For reasons we do not know, the last was not present, and the other two alone conducted the process. Tocco would have wished this to be at Fossanova (he waited for the delegates there), but because the archbishop was not able to travel, the hearings were held in Naples, cf. Mandonnet, "La canonisation," pp. 28–29.
11. Cf. Introduction à l'Ystoria, pp. 13ff.
12. Fossanova III, 412–15.
13. Giovanni Regina, better known by the name John of Naples, began teaching the Sen
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for the ceremony, and it was Friar Peter Canterii who gave the discourse that John had prepared.14 But according to Le BrunGouanvic, Tocco continued to work on the final text of his history until after the canonization (he recounts that he heard the news while he was in Naples), at least until August 1323.15
The two stories about the festivities that took place in Avignon as well as the bull of canonization allow us to confirm that in this process and its conclusion a remarkable conjunction of causes converged.16
The spontaneous spread of the saint's cult in the earliest days was very quickly relayed into the mustering of the Dominican order around Thomas's doctrine. For several figures just mentioned, it was doubtless not hard to be identified with it (as an abundant literature attests). This was accompanied by the support of three Dominican cardinals (Nicholas Alberti, Nicholas of Fråauville, and William Peter Godin) and of the procurator general of the order in Avignon, Bernard Gui, who effectively supports Tocco, whose biography he will soon have to rewrite in his own way. As to the relevant expenses, they were borne by the contribution of a florin per priory, decreed by the Rouen general chapter in 1320.17
To this was added the support of the nobles of the kingdom of Sicily, who saw themselves being exalted in one of their own. André Vauchez has justly emphasized the presence of a hagiographical commonplace in Tocco that is highly significant in the present case: "Thomas was predestined for sainthood by the nobility of his ancestors."18 An entire chapter of the Ystoria strongly insists on this theme and explicitly mentions Theodora, Thomas's sister, and her son Thomas, the count of Marsico. By obtaining from the abbot of Fossanova in 1288 an important relic (the right hand), Theodora doubtless satisfied her own personal devotion, but when (footnote continued from previous page)
tences in Paris, probably in the fall of 1309. He received his license there in November 1315, and was masterregent for the two following years. After Hervé Nédellec's death (1323), he became one of the most influential theologians in John XXII's circle. Cf. T. Käppeli, "Note sugli scrittori domenicani di nome Giovanni di Napoli, I. Giovanni Regina di Napoli,"
AFP 10 (1940) 48–71; T. Turley, "An Unnoticed Quaestio of Giovanni Regina di Napoli," AFP 54 (1984) 281–91.
14. Fontes, p. 514.
15. Introduction to the Ystoria, pp. 18 and 162–64.
16. Fontes, pp. 511–18. The two stories—one anonymous, the other from a Dominican friar named Bentius—are reproduced in parallel. The second adds valuable material to the first.
The bull of canonization may be found in Fontes, pp. 519–30, or in Xenia Thomistica, vol. 3, pp. 173–88.
17. MOPH 4, p. 123.
18. Ystoria 37, pp. 317–19 (Tocco 37, pp. 110–11); cf. Vauchez, "Les canonisations," p. 756; Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident, pp. 209–15.
in 1309 she conveyed it to the Dominican priory at Salerno where so many miracles were accomplished, she effectively contributed to the spread of Thomas's cult.19
We may also think that the count of Marsico and his cousin Catherine did not entrust their recollections exclusively to Tocco. We also recall that the process at Naples allowed several lay persons to testify about Thomas's position "among the great and the lettered" doubtless—let us say the intellectual aristocracy—but not only among them, since "even educated lay people are trying to get his works," because each person can teach himself with them according to his capacities.20 The political will of King Robert (who, present at the canonization, was satisfied with the part he had played in the happy conclusion) was thus well supported by a true groundswell of public opinion.21
The Canonization and Its Consequences
The final determination evidently came from John XXII. It was he who proclaimed the canonization on 18 July 1323 and who extolled the 300 miracles by the new saint. The pope has been furnished with a celebrated saying that he seems never to have said: "As many miracles as articles" ( et quod tot fecerat miracula quot scripserat articulos).22 In fact, one is a little surprised that the bull Redemptionem misit is not more explicit on Thomas's intellectual work. The text does mention his having been master in sacra pagina and his teaching. But if we remember that the intellectual dimension of sainthood had hardly been taken into account up to that time, then we can truly appreciate John XXII's allusion to Thomas's devotion to study and the care he took to prepare himself through prayer for teaching as some of the reasons for the canonization.23 We also know that
19. Ystoria 68 and 70, pp. 402 and 408 (Tocco 68 and 70, pp. 141 and 144); Naples 95, p. 402.
20. Naples 84, p. 385: Thomas's sanctity was of public notoriety "specialiter apud magnates, bonos et litteratos viros." Naples 83, ibid.: "quilibet secundum modulum seu cogitationis seu capacitatis potest facile capere fructum ex scriptis eiusdem, et propterea etiam layci et parum intelligentes querunt et appetunt ipsa scripta habere."
21. According to the annonymous story of the canonization ( Fontes, p. 517), when the Dominican friars went to thank him for his persistent labors in this matter ( qui fideliter laboraverat in facto sancti Thome), the king replied: "Nos ira efficaciter laboravimus et laborasse voluimus. . . . " See some of the indications about his discourse on the vigil in Walz, Historia canonisationis, pp. 169–72.
22. According to Mandonnet, "La canonization," pp. 38–39, Percin, the seventeenthcentury editor, did not create the saying. It already existed well before him and we can find the equivalent in Getson: tot miracula fecit, quot quaestiones determinavit (cf. Fontes, p. 514).
23. Documenta, pp. 520 and 521: "ad theologie . . . magisterium . . . assumptus . . . per (footnote continued on next page)
the pope had his doctrine examined and that the Concordantia dictorum fratris Thomae, attributed to Benedict of Asinago, could have been put together for this purpose.24 Except for this, the bull essentially consists in a summary biography and an accurate account of the saint's virtues as they may be seen through the depositions at the process in Naples or in Tocco's biography. The composer of the bull made it a virtual tissue of reminiscences and simply added a selection of nine miracles.25
The doctrinal perspective was not, however, absent from John XXII's thought. The bull is happy to be able to put forward in Thomas a model of fidelity to the Roman Church. But it is especially one of the sermons given on the vigil of the canonization that celebrates in wellgrounded terms Thomas's teaching on religious poverty: "It gave a remarkable encomium as much of the order as of the saint. It said among other things that the saint led the apostolic life in the Order of Preachers, since in the order one possesses nothing on his own or in private, though there is property in common. Adding then: 'It is this that we think to be the apostolic life' ( Et hanc vitam apostolicam reputamus)."26 It was not unintentionally that, in his fourth version, Tocco introduced a charge against the eternal and spiritual gospel of Gerard de Borgo San Donnino.27
Furthermore, this was not mistaken. In the exalted atmosphere of the spiritual Franciscans, this canonization was considered "a veritable provocation by the adepts of voluntary poverty."28 We have an astonishing echo of this in the confession of Dame Prous Boneta, a Beguine from Montpellier. Arrested under suspicion of heresy, she was brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Carcassonne on 6 August 1325, probably before dying at the stake. Speaking of her revelations, she compares Peter
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multorum annorum curricula cathedram (regit) magistralem ( . . . ) profecro vacans studio, intendebat Deo. . premittebat divina ut roboraretur in scola . . . " See A. Vauchez, "Culture et canonisation après les procès de canonisation des XIIIe et XIVe siècles," in Le scuole degli Ordini mendicanti (Todi, 1978), pp. 151–72, for the evolution in this direction. It seems to have been a policy of the Avignon popes to canonize theologians.
24. R.A. Gauthier, BT 9, no. 1800, pp. 941–43 (for a hesitant attribution); Walz Papst Johannes XXII. , p. 42; Grabmann, Werke, pp. 411–12; T. Käppeli, "Benedetto di Asinago da Como ( + 1339)," AFP 11 (1941) 83–94; cf. pp. 90–91.
25. Vauchez errs therefore and must be thinking of another document when he says that the Bull "is among the most explicit: against the unfurling of heretical doctrines—those of the spirituals, the averroists, and the nominalists" ("Les canonisations," p. 761).
26. Anonymous account: Fontes, pp. 513–14. Friar Bentius's account says the same thing more briefly (ibid.).
27. Ystoria 21, p. 270.
28. Vauchez, "Les canonisations," p. 761.
Olivi and Thomas Aquinas to the two brothers Abel and Cain. The original Cain had killed his brother bodily; the second Cain, recently canonized, killed his brother spiritually, which is to say, with respect to his writings.29 Prous Boneta had certainly not read the scholarly works of the two authors, but her deposition surely reflects the opinion of the spiritual Franciscan friars with whom she must have conversed.30
The reverberation of this canonization was no less considerable in intellectual circles.31 We must not imagine that the March 1277 condemnation had paralyzed Parisian intellectual life. The Correctoria literature shows the opposite, and we also know that Thomas's works continued to be diffused. The booksellers' lists witness to this after 1275 with certainty (these are the most ancient catalogues that we possess).32 The English origin (one from before 1293) of the Prague lists testifies that, in Oxford too, Thomas's works continued to be studied and recopied.
Some voices began to be raised that Thomas be absolved of the accusation of heterodoxy laid more or less openly on him after Tempier's condemnation. Giles of Rome's rehabilitation in 1285 was a first favorable sign. Several years later, in 1295, in a quodlibet session—which is to say, with all the publicity that could be desired—a famous master, Godfrey of Fontaines was asked—or had himself asked—about a delicate question: "Doesn't the bishop of Paris commit a sin if he fails to correct certain articles condemned by his predecessor?" He replied with remarkable praise for the "very reverend and very excellent Friar Thomas," concluding without condemning the bishop—who in his opinion, he says, is a better jurist than a theologian—that he does not himself see how someone could excuse him from not making that rectification, for he conceded that the articles in question well deserved to be corrected.33
29. This text has been edited by W. H. May, "The Confession of Prous Boneta, Heretic and Heresiarch," in Essays in Medieval Life and Thought Presented in Honor of A. P.
Evans (New York, 1955), pp. 3–30; cf. p. 24. This text is mentioned by d'Alverny, "Un adversaire," p. 178. Cf. Vauchez, "Les canonizations," p. 761.
30. If we might temper this tragedy with a picturesque note, we should recall an echo of the canonization ceremony as seen by the anonymous writer: "No one pronounced so many praises of Saint Thomas as he did," he says in speaking of John of Tixanderie, the Franciscan bishop of Lodève ( Fontes, p. 515).
31. Cf. M. Grabmann, "Die Kanonisation des hl. Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Bedeutung für die Ausbreitung und Verteidigung seiner Lehre im 14. Jahrhundert," DT (Fr.) 1 (1923) 233–49.
32. Chartul. no. 540, p. 646 (cf. above on the De malo).
33. Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodlibet XII, q. 5, ed. J. Hoffmans, Les Quodlibets onzequatorze de Godefroid de Fontaines, Les Philosophes belges, vol. V, fasc. I–II (Louvain, 1932), pp.
100–
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It was a magnanimous gesture, for Godfrey was hardly being spared by Thomas's confreres.34 The Dominicans did not lag behind, and we must at least remember the remarkable intervention by John of Naples who, during the time of his Parisian regency, disputed two quodlibets, one of which contained a question that remained celebrated: "Can one licitly teach in Paris Friar Thomas's doctrine in all its implications?"35 The response evidently did not leave any doubt.
The step called for by a growing number of theologians was taken on 14 February 1325 by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Bourret, who annulled his predecessor's condemnation to the extent that it affects Saint Thomas. In the forefront of the considerations that he put forward figures evidently the fact that by canonizing him the Roman Church, mater et magistra of all the faithful, had put forward the saint as an example for the whole world for the purity of his life and his doctrine. But it should be noted that the bishop had the articles concerned reexamined and it was after having received the opinion of his experts that he took this step. He added, however, that it constituted neither approval nor rejection, but that it simply restored them to discussion in the schools.36
Doctor Ecclesiae
The way was then open for the career that we know and for the hyperboles that his disciples have long taken delight in. Are these only a question of personal judgments or must we already speak of "titles" among the most ancient testimonies, such as Doctor eximius (around 1282–83 in Knapwell)37 or of Venerabilis doctor ( pater, uir, magister) in the Acts of the General Chapters (starting in 1278) and in Thomas of Sutton?38 The ques
(footnote continued from previous page)
105; cf. pp. 102–3. This text had already been edited with a less summary commentary by M.H. Laurent, "Godefroid de Fontaines et la condamnation de 1277," RT 35 (1930) 273–
81; the bishop at the time was Simon Matifas, the second successor to Tempier, after Ranulphe de La Houblonnière.
34. We recall here only the attacks by Bernard of Auvergne against him: Glorieux, "Pro et contra," p. 273.
35. Quodl. VI (I) a. 2; cf. P. Glorieux, Littérature quodlibétique, vol. 2, p. 164. The text has been edited by C. Jellouschek, "Quaestio Magistri Ioannis de Neapoli O. Pr.: Utrum licite possit doceri Parisius doctrina fratris Thomae quantum ad omnes conclusiones ejus hic primum in lucem edita," in Xenia Thomistica III, pp. 73–104. In addition to Käppeli's study mentioned above (note 13), see also P. Mandonnet, "Premiers travaux," pp. 255–58.
36. Chartul. II, no. 838, pp. 280–81.
37. Cf. Glorieux, Premières polémiques, p. 208; cf. P. Mandonnet, "Les titres doctoraux de saint Thomas d'Aquin," RT (1909) 597–608.
38. Cf. A. Dondaine, " Venerabilis Doctor," in Mélanges offerts à Etienne Gilson (Toronto, Paris, 1959), 211–25.
tion has only a relative importance. Tolomeo of Lucca says in 1317, however, that Thomas was already called communis Doctor at the University of Paris.39 As to the title Doctor angelicus, it was attributed to him only in the second half of the fifteenth century,40 and it was another hundred years later, 15 April 1567, that Saint Pius V, a Dominican pope, proclaimed him Doctor of the Church.41
Everyone may choose according to his own taste from these titles. Friar Thomas would probably have been preferred by Thomas himself—as is said of the founder of his order: "Friar Dominic." Objectively, it seems that doctor ecclesiae would be the most significant, but there is no immediate evidence for it.
The liturgy today celebrates more than thirty "Doctors of the Church,"42 which is to say that the title is not very exclusive. At the time when Saint Thomas received it, there were four—Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great—and their liturgical celebrations became definitive for the universal church only under Boniface VIII in 1295. When Pius V accorded the same honor to Thomas, he introduced at the same time into the breviary the four great doctors of the Eastern Church: Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom.
It was thus an act that was not without meaning on the part of John XXII to choose for the ordinary of the Mass that followed the canonization some passages already used for the Doctors of the Church. And we may even see in this and in many other indications the place that he thus recognized for Thomas. The Introit In medio ecclesiae and the response Os iusti (Jerome and Augustine), as well as the Gospel You are the light of the world (used for all four) are explicitly as one would have it. Friar Bentius, from whom we have this description, adds for the information of his correspondent a couple of details: it was like the Mass of Saint Dominic ( sicut de beato Dominico); the alleluia was new, very beautiful, but a little long.43
39. Tolomeo XXIII 9 (Ferrua, p. 362); cf. already James of Viterbo: Naples 83, p. 384.
40. Mandonnet, "Les Titres doctoraux," p. 606, refers to Saint Antoninus ( + 1459) for its first use 41. Walz, "Historia canonizationis," pp. 162–64; idem., "San Tommaso d'Aquino dichiarato dottore della Chiesa nel 1567," Angelicum 44 (1967) 145–73.
42. A list of twentyone names that goes from Saint Bonaventure (1588) to Saint Lawrence of Brindisi may be found in Walz, "San Tommaso," Angelicum 44 (1967) 146. We must add here the four great doctors of the West and the four great doctors of the East, as well as Saint Theresa of Avila and Saint Catherine of Siena.
43. Fontes, p. 516: alleluia pucherissimum novum sed longum.
Nothing about all this is, however, specific. We must say this as well about the proper parts of the Mass, the Preface and Collect of the beginning of Mass: they are beautiful, certainly, and of an entirely Roman concision, but without very much originality. More significant, perhaps, as to the intentions of those who wished to honor Thomas, the choice for the first lesson abandons the text of Saint Paul, universally used for the four preceding doctors and for Saint Dominic,44 and prefers instead a reading from the Book of Wisdom, which celebrates the just man who, from all the goods that are offered to him, chooses wisdom: ''I have held riches as nothing compared to her . . . More than health and beauty I have loved her. . . . What I have learned in all sincerity, I have handed on without envy. . . . Those who acquired wisdom became the friends of God."45 These sentences take on particular importance for anyone who has followed the life of the new saint, step by step. The seeker is there without question, as well as the master in sacra pagina, but also the mystic glimpsed through the depositions at the process in Naples. Without facilely harmonizing all those elements, this is surely the image that we too can retain of him.
44. 2 Timothy 4:1–8: "I beseech you before God and Christ Jesus . . . proclaim the Word. . . . "
45. Wisdom 7:7–14.
Brief Chronology
Note: Matters that directly concern Thomas are in italics. Unless otherwise indicated, the dates that refer to him and that straddle two different years should be understood to reflect the length of the academic year. There is an intellectual chronology of this period in F. Van Steenberghen, La Philosophic au XIIIe siècle, which is very detailed but less precise on Thomas.
1215 (Toulouse)
Foundation of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans).
1217 (Sept.–Oct.)
Foundation of the Dominican priory in Paris.
1218 (August)
The friars settle in SaintJacques.
1220 (22 Nov.)
Crowning of Emperor Frederick II.
1221 (6 August)
Death of Saint Dominic.
1222–1237
Jordan of Saxony, master of the Dominican Order.
1224
Foundation of the university at Naples.
1224/1225
Thomas's birth at Roccasecca (region of Naples).
1229
Roland of Cremona, first Dominican regentmaster at Paris (first chair).
1239
John of SaintGilles, second Dominican regentmaster at Paris (second chair).
ca. 1230–1239
Thomas an oblate at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino.
1238–1240
Raymond of Peñafort, master of the order.
1239–1244
Studies at Naples.
1241–1252
John of Wildeshausen (John the Teuton), master of the order.
1243/44
Albertus Magnus arrives in Paris.
1244 (April)
Thomas takes the Dominican habit.
1244–1245
Forced detention at Roccasecca by Thomas's family.
1245 (17 July)
Frederick II deposed.
1245 (Fall)
Thomas is able to return to the Dominicans.
1245–1248
Studies in Paris with Saint Albertus Magnus.
1248–1252
Studying and assisting Saint Albert in Cologne: Super Isaiam.
1252–1256
First period of teaching in Paris as bachelor of the Sentences: Scriptum super Sententiis; De ente et essentia; De principiis naturae.
1254–1263
Humbert of Romans, master of the Order of Preachers.
1256 (spring)
Thomas becomes a master in theology.
1256–1259
Regentmaster in Paris: Q. D. De ueritate; Quodlibet VII–XI; Super Boetium de Trin.; C. impugnantes.
1257 (15 August)
Thomas and Bonaventure are admitted to the consortium magistrorum.
1259 (June)
General Chapter in Valenciennes.
1259 (autumn?)
Return to Italy.
1259–1261
Naples (?): Summa Contra Gentiles (begun)
1261–1265
Conventual Lector in Orvieto: Summa Contra Gentiles (finished); Super Iob; Catena aurea (Matthew); C. errores Graecorum; etc.
1264–1283
John of Vercelli, master of the Order of Preachers.
1265–1268
Regentmaster at Rome: Prima Pars; Catena aurea (Mark, Luke, John); De potentia; Sententia libri De anima; Compendium theologiae; etc.
1268–1272
Second regency in Paris: Secunda Pars; In Matthaeum; In Ioannem; De malo; De unitate intellectus; De aeternitate mundi; Comment. on Aristotle;
Quodlibet I–VI and XII; etc.
1268 (7 October)
Stephen Tempier becomes bishop of Paris.
1269 (June)
General chapter in Paris. ( De secreto).
1270 (10 December)
Bishop's condemnation of radical Aristotelianism.
1272–1273 (Dec.)
Regentmaster in Naples: Tertia Pars, qq. 1–90; In Ad Romanos(?); Super Psalmos 1–54(?).
1274 (7 March)
Death in Fossanova (south of Rome, on the way to the council of Lyon).
1274 (2 May)
Letter from the arts faculty to the general chapter of Lyon reclaiming some of Thomas's writing.
1277 (7 March)
Condemnation by Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, of 219 heterodox propositions; a process is opened against Thomas's doctrine.
1277 (18 March)
Condemnation in Oxford, by Robert Kilwardby, Dominican archbishop of Canterbury, of propositions inspired by Thomas's work.
1284 (29 October)
John Pecham, Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury, confirms his predecessor's condemnations.
1319 (summer)
First canonization process (Naples).
1321 (November)
Second canonization process (Fossanova).
1323 (18 July)
Canonization in Avignon by John XXII.
1325 (14 Feb.)
Stephen Bourret, bishop of Paris, revokes the condemnation of March 1277.
1567 (15 April)
Thomas is proclaimed "Doctor ecclesiae" by Pope Pius V.
Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas
by G. Emery, O.P.
Adapted for the English Edition
The following catalogue briefly summarizes the main indications given in the course of this book concerning Saint Thomas's works, the dates and places of their composition, their essential purpose, as well as the principal editions and translations of them that have been completed. The classification of these works, for which there does not exist a commonly accepted system, presents a certain difficulty. The order of the following list is inspired by, even as it adapts, the one established by J.
A. Weisheipl, following I. T. Eschmann1:
Theological Syntheses
Disputed Questions
Biblical Commentaries
Commentaries on Aristotle
Other Commentaries
Polemical Writings
Treatises
Letters and Requests for Expert Opinion
Liturgical Work, Sermons, Prayers
Numerous unauthentic works have been assigned to Thomas by a tradition frequently generous in its attributions. The principal texts in this category will be indicated at the end of this catalogue.
1. J. A Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1974; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 355–405.
I. T. Eschmann, "A Catalogue of St. Thomas's Works," in E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas," translated by L. K. Shook, New York, 1956, p. 381–437.
Main Editions of Saint Thomas's Works
The Leonine Edition: Sancti Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII. O. M. edita, cura et studio fratrum praedicatorum, Romae, 1882(29 volumes had appeared by 1996)
Parma: Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris angelici ordinis predicatorum Opera omnia ad fidem optimarum editionum accurate recognita, Parmae typis Petri Fiaccadori, 25 vols., 1852–73; Reprint: New York, Musurgia, 1948–50
Vivès: Doctoris angelici divi Thomae Aquinatis sacri Ordinis F.F. Praedicatorum Opera omnia sive antehac excusa, sive etiam anecdota . . . , studio ac labore Stanislai Eduardi Fretté et Pauli Maré Sacerdotum, Scholaeque thomisticae Alumnorum, Parisiis apud Ludovicum Vivès, 34 vols., 1871–72.
To facilitate the use of this last edition, consult the table drawn up by C. Viola, "Table générale et index analytique des oeuvres complètes de saint Thomas d'Aquin.
Un guide pour l'édition Vivès," Bulletin de philosophie médiévale SIEPM 29 (1987) 178–92. For the connections between the Parma edition and the Vivés edition as well as earlier editions, see L.J. Bataillon, "Le edizioni di Opera omnia degli scolastici e l'edizione leonina," in Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, Contributo a un bilancio storiografico, Atti del convegno internazionale, Rome, 21–23 September 1989, edited by R. lmbach and A. Maierù, Rome, 1991 (printed in 1992), pp. 141–54.
We also point out the volumes that have appeared in the Marietti edition in Turin, the works edited by P. Mandonnet as well as the principal separate editions. For the opuscula in particular see: S. Thomae Aquinatis, Opuscula omnia, P. Mandonnet ed., 6 vols., Paris, Lethielleux, 1927; ed. Marietti: Opuscula philosophica, R. M.
Spiazzi, ed., 1954; Opuscula theologica, R. A. Verardo and R. M. Spiazzi, eds., 2 vols., 1954. The opuscula have been translated into French by M. Védrine, M.
Bandel, and M. Fournet: Opuscules de saint Thomas d'Aquin, 7 vols., Paris, Vivès, 1856–58; Reprint, 6 vols., Paris, 1984.
Finally, let us point out the edition established for the Index Thomisticus: S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia ut sunt in Indice Thomistico . . . , curante R. Busa, 7
vols., Stuttgart—Bad Cannstatt, 1980. We recommend it particularly for the text of the sermons and of the Lectura super Psalmos.
Translations
In addition to the English and French translations, we will indicate some of the main translations into other languages for the works of theological synthesis, the disputed questions, and the commentaries. Other translations have been mentioned in the course of this book.2
2. Lists may be found of the English translations in the catalogue of works by Weisheipl, ibid. For Italian: S. Vanni Rovighi, Introduzione a Tommaso d'Aquino, RomeBari,2 1981, p. 164. For the philosophical opuscula, San Tommaso d'Aquino, L'uomo e l'universo, Opuscoli filosofici, A. Tognolo ed., Milan 1982. Opuscoli filosofici: l'ente e l'essentia, l'unità dell'intelletto, le sostanze separate, translation, introduction, and notes by A. Lobato, Rome 1989.
(footnote continued on next page)
Theological Syntheses
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum: see chapter 3.
The commentary on the four books of Peter Lombard's Sentences is the first major work by Thomas; fruit of his teaching as bachelor of Sentences at the beginning of his first stay in Paris (1252–54), its composition was not yet complete when Thomas began his activities as a master (1256). More than a simple commentary, we must see in this vast collection of questions raised by Lombard's text, encompassing all of theology, an original theological work in its own right, a revelation of Thomas's thought and decisions.
Editions: Scriptum super Sententiis, P. Mandonnet ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1929 (Books I and II); M. F. Moos, ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1933 and 1947 (Book lII; Book IV
up to distinction 22); Parma vols. 6–7, 1/2; Vivès vols. 7–11. Until a critical edition appears, see also: P.M. Gils, "Textes inédits de S. Thomas: les premières rédactions du Scriptum super Tertio Sententiarum," RSPT 45 (1961) 20l–28; 46 (1962) 445–62 and 609–28. Editing of the Leonine edition of Books II and III (vols. 18 and 19, respectively) is nearing completion.
There is no English or French translation.
According to Tolomeo of Lucca, Thomas would return to his commentary on the Sentences in Rome, before abandoning it for the Summa theologiae. That return is attested in an Oxford manuscript ( Lincoln College, lat. 95) that Leonard Boyle was able to identify as being a reportatio on this revision of the first Book of the Sentences in Rome (1265–66). While we await the complete edition, there is an edition of 15 relevant passages by H.F. Dondaine: "'Alia lectura fratris Thome'?
(Super I Sent.)," MS 42 (1980) 308–36. (Before Boyle's examination, H.F. Dondaine's conclusion was negative about the Thomistic authenticity of this manuscript.) For an idea of the content, see the list of the incipits and the explicits by M. F. Johnson, "'Alia lectura fratris thome': A List of the New Texts Found in Lincoln College, Oxford, MS Lat. 95," RTAM 57 (1990) 34–61.
Summa contra Gentiles: see chapter 6.
The Summa contra Gentiles is Thomas's second great work, which he reread, modified, and corrected several times. We still have his handwritten manuscripts for a good part of the text, from I, 13 to III, 20. The earliest version of chapter 53 of Book I goes back to the last year of his first teaching assignment in Paris (prior to the summer of 1259). In Italy, starting in 1260, Thomas revised these 53 chapters and composed the rest of the work, which was completed with the composition of the fourth Book in 1264–65, very probably before Thomas's departure for Rome (1265). The first three Books are dedicated to the truths accessible to human reason: what reason can know
(footnote continued from previous page)
For German: O. H. Pesch, Thomas von Aquin, Grenze und Grösse mittelalterlichen Theologie, Mayence, 1988, p. 406–408. Among the Spanish translations of the opuscula, we mention in particular Santo Tomás de Aquino, Escritos de Cataquesis, edition directed by J. I. Saranyana, Madrid, 1974 (translation of the sermons on the Credo, Pater, Ave Maria: De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis); Compendio de teologia, translation and notes by J. I. Saranyana and J. Restrepo Escobar, Madrid, 1980.
about God (I); the act of creation and its effects (II); providence and divine governance (III). The truths of the Christian faith that exceed the realm of natural knowledge make up the material of the fourth Book (the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, the sacraments, and the last ends).
Editions: Leonine, vols. 13–15 (with commentary by Sylvester of Ferrara), Rome, 1918, 1926, and 1930; Leonine, manual edition, Rome, 1934; Parma, vol. 5;
Vivès, vol. 12; Marietti ( Textus Leoninus diligenter recognitus), C. Pera, P. Marc, P. Caramello, eds., 3 vols. (vols. 2–3: 1961; vol. 1: 1967).
English translations: Saint Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, A. C. Pegis, J. F. Anderson, V. J. Bourke, C.J. O'Neil, eds., 5 vols., New York, 1955–57, repr. Notre Dame, 1975. Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. English Dominican Fathers. London, 1934; Of God and His Creatures, trans. J. Rickaby, Westminster, MD., 1950. French translations: Somme contre les gentils, ed. Henri Hude, Paris, 1993, with Introduction by R.A. Gauthier. Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Contra Gentiles, Leonine edition text and translation: vol. 1, trans. R. Bernier and M. Corvez, Paris, 1961; vol. 2, trans. M. Corvez and L.J. Moreau, 1954; vol. 3, trans. M.J. Gerlaud, 1951; vol. 4, trans. R. Bernier and F. Kerouanton, 1957; Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Somme de la foi catholique contre les Gentils, trans. Abbé P.F. Ecalle, 3 vols., Paris, Vivès, 1854–56. Italian translation: San Tommaso d'Aquino, Somma contro i Gentili, T. S. Centi, ed., "Classici delle Religioni 28,"
Turin, 1975. Spanish translation: Santo Tomás de Aquino, Suma contra los Gentiles, J. M. Pla Castellano, ed., 2 vols., "Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 94, 102,"
Madrid 1952–53. German translations: Des heiligen Thomas von Aquin, Summa contra Gentiles, H. Fahsel, ed., 6 vols., Zurich, 1942–60; Thomas von Aquin, Summe gegen die Heiden, vols. 1–2, K. Albert and P. Engelhardt, eds., Darmstadt, 1974 (21987)–1982; vol. 3/1, K. Allgaier, ed., Darmstadt, 1990 (the remainder to appear).
Summa theologiae: see chapter 8.
The Summa theologiae is Thomas's greatest work, on which he worked for the last seven years of his life. Started after Thomas decided not to pursue a second commentary on the Sentences (1265–66), the Prima Pars was composed during the Rome period (that is, until September 1268). The Secunda Pars was put together in Paris: the Prima Secundae in 1271, followed by the Secunda Secundae (1271–72). As to the Tertia Pars, probably begun in Paris at the end of the winter 1271–72, its composition was pursued in Naples until 6 December 1273, the date Thomas stopped writing. Broken off in the treatise on penitence ( Tertia, q.
90), the Summa was completed by a Supplement composed by Thomas's disciples based on the commentary on the Sentences. The work of the Leonine commission on this text, which dates from the years 1888 to 1903, is still only beginning. On the Tertia Pars, cf. M. Turrini, "Raynald de Piperno et le texte original de la Tertia Pars de la Somme de Théologie de S. Thomas d'Aquin," RSPT 73 (1989) 233–47. Cf. also P.M. Gy, "Le texte original de la Tertia pars de la Somme Théologique de S. Thomas d'Aquin dans l'apparat critique de l'edition léonine: le cas de l'eucharistie," RSPT 65 (1981) 608–16. For a view of the plan and the vast contents of the Summa theologiae, see above, chapter 8.
Editions: Leonine, vols. 4–11 ( Ia: vols. 4–5; Ia IIae: vols. 6–7; IIa–IIae, vols. 8–10; IIIa, vol. 11. Thomas's text is accompanied by Cajetan's commentary. The Sup
plement makes up vol. 12); Parma, vols. 1–4; Vivès, vols. 1–6. Among the numerous manual editions using the Leonine text: Studium dominicain, Ottawa, 1941–45, 5 vols.; Editions Paulines, Rome, 1962 (in one volume); Marietti, 1963, 4 vols. (several earlier editions); "Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 77, 80, 81, 83, 87,"
Madrid, 1963ff., 5 vols.(several editions).
English translations: Blackfriars, Summa theologiae, T. Gilby and T. C. O'Brien, eds., 60 volumes, LondonNew York, 1964–73. Summa Theologiae. A Concise Translation, by Timothy McDermott (Westminster, MD: 1989). French translations: Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Somme Théologique, edition of the "Revue des jeunes," 68 vols., ParisTournaiRome, 1925ff.; Thomas d'Aquin, Somme théologique, 4 vols., Paris, 1984–86. German translation by the "Philosophisch
Theologische Hochschule Walberberg": Summa Theologica, "Die Deutsche ThomasAusgabe," (Heidelberg) Graz, Vienna, Cologne, 1933ff.; Italian, by the Dominicans, La Somma Teologica, 35 volumes, Florence, 1949–75, and Bologna, 1985; Spanish, by the Dominicans: Summa de Teologia, "Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos," 16 volumes, 1947ff.
Disputed Questions
Quaestiones disputatae de ueritate: see chapter 4.
The disputed questions De ueritate date from the three years of Thomas's first period teaching as a master in Paris, from 1256 to 1259. We still have the dictated original for questions 2–22. This ensemble of 253 articles is grouped into 29 questions; the first gave its name to the whole series, but the others are only more or less connected with it. Two large categories may be seen in it: truth and knowledge (qq. 1–20), the good and the appetite for the good (qq. 21–29; see above, chapter 4].
These disputed questions De ueritate are of considerable interest for grasping the evolution of the young master's thought and his genius, which increasingly asserts itself.
Editions: Leonine, vol. 22 (3 vols.); Parma, vol. 9, pp. 1–458; Vivès, vol. 14, pp. 315–640 and vol. 15, pp. 1–356; Mandonnet, Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 1, Paris, 1925; Marietti, Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 1, R. Spiazzi, ed., 1964 and other dates.
English translation: Saint Thomas, On Truth, vol. 1, trans. R. W. Mulligan; vol. 2, trans. J. V. McGlynn; vol. 3, trans. R. W. Schmidt, Chicago, 1952–54; French translations: "Thomas d'Aquin, Question disputée de la vérité (Question I, articles 1–2, 8–9)," introduction and translation by F.X. Putallaz, in Philosophes médiéaux. Anthologie de textes philosophiques ( XIIe– XIVe siècles), R. Imbach and M.H. Méléard, ed., "10/18," Paris, 1986, pp. 69–94; Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Questions disputées sur la vérité, Question XI: Le Maître ( De magistro), Question IV, Le Verbe (De Verbo), "Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques,"
introduction, translation, and notes by B. Jollès, Paris, 1983 and 1992; S.Th. Bonino, Quaestiones disputatae De veritate. Saint Thomas d'Aquin Question 12: La prophétie, Présentation, traduction et notes, Mémoire de licence dactyl., Fribourg (Switzerland), 1989; idem., La Question 2 des "Quaestiones disputatae De veritate" de Thomas d'Aquin, Introduction, translation, and commentary, 2 vols., Diss. Univ. Fribourg (Switzerland), 1992 (the author is preparing a complete translation of the De veritate). Italian translations: San Tommaso, La Verità (Quaestio I De Veritate), intro., trans., and commentary by M. Mamiani,
Padua, 1970; De magistro, T. Gregory, ed., Rome 1965; idem., C. Scurati, ed., Padua 1970; S. Tommaso d'Aquino, Le Questioni disputatae, Testo latino dell'Edizione Leonina e traduzione italiana, vol. 1, La verità (Questioni 1–9), vol. 2, La Verità (Questioni 10–20), vol. 3, La Verità (Questioni 21–29) , V. O.
Benetollo and R. Coggi, eds., intro, by A. Lobato, Bologna, 1992–93; Spanish translations: J. Garcia López, Doctrina de Santo Tomás sobre la verdad.
Comentarios a la cuestión primera "De Verirate" y traducción castellana de la misma, Pamplona, 1967; Santo Tomás de Aquino, De Veritate, H. Giannini and O. Velásquez eds., Santiago, Chile, 1978 (trans. of Q. 1); German translations: Des hl. Thomas von Aquino Untersuchungen über die Wahrheit (Quaestiones disputatae De veritate), trans. Edith Stein, 2 vols., Breslau, 1931–32; LouvainFribourg, 1952–55; Darmstadt, 1970; Thomas yon Aquin, Von der Wahrheit, De veritate (Quaestio I), A. Zimmermann, ed., Hamburg, 1986; Thomas yon Aquin, Über den Lehrer. De Magistro, Quaestiones disputatae, De veritate quaestio XI, G. Jüssen, G. Krieger, J. H. J. Schneider, eds., Hamburg, 1988.
Quaestiones disputatae De potentia: see chapter 9.