An Introduction to His Life
An Introduction to His Life
The compilation of Latin primary sources on the life of Saint Thomas Aquinas, known as the Fontes Vitae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis---recently published to give wider accessibility--- establishes 1227 as the year of Aquinas’ birth, often assigned as 1225, January 28. All agree that he died in 1274.
The story lingers about his mother Theodora, whom, during her pregnancy with her eighth child, a holy hermit visited to inform her that her son would enter the Order of Friars Preachers (The Dominicans), and that his learning and sanctity would exceed all others. The hermit’s vision was not father Count Landulf or Countess Theodora’s plan, given their close connection to the more established and socially acceptable Benedictines of which an uncle was abbot at Monte Cassino. Thomae Aquinatis may have been born in a castle in Lombardo, near Naples, Italy, descended from Henry VI and Frederick II and emperors of the Roman Empire, but God’s call would trump all others’ attempts to steer him otherwise.
Their plans for their son in place---or so they thought--- Countess Theodora and Count Landulf entered Thomas, at age five, into the Benedictine abbey where his uncle was abbot. From the start, he was educated in Latin, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. As a teenager he was exposed to the disciplines we moderns would recognize as a classic liberal arts education. Add theology and philosophy to the mix of music, mathematics, and astronomy, and Thomas was already beginning to hone a skill that would distinguish him for all of time: defending his knowledge through the use of rhetoric.
Thomas’ preceptor could not help but notice the boy’s persistent questioning, “What is God?” The abbot, his uncle, insisted Thomas’ talents would be wasted at Monte Cassino. In 1239 he was sent to Naples to study at the University. Some say it was the war that broke out between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX that came so close to home that caused Thomas’ parents send him to Naples to protect him. In either case, God’s plans were in place.
In Naples, Thomas expressed an interest in studying the Holy Orders of the newly formed mendicants, the Dominicans. Founded around the same time as the Franciscans, it was their radical evangelical ideal of poverty, their mobility, and their devotion to study that drew the burgeoning man of faith, the scholar. Meanwhile, as a student at university he had access to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and to the finest minds in Europe. One of his favorite contacts was with a Dominican brother, John of St. Julian, who challenged him in all matters theological and devotional and who helped Thomas, at 19, discern a definitive call to monastic life as a Dominican.
Thomas knew this call would upset his family. The brothers sent him to Rome, but Theodora’s determination to stop this nonsense knew no bounds. She had Thomas’ brothers kidnap him and imprison him at a fortress in San Giovanni at Rocca Secca. His family set out for the next eighteen months-or-so to destroy his vocation. They even sent a prostitute to challenge his virtue. The earliest biography says Thomas drove the temptress away with a hot brand and received a visit from two angels in a dream who promised him “the girdle of perpetual virginity” and lifelong relief from carnal desires.
God used Thomas’ time in captivity to further his vocation and education. His sister brought him books: the Bible, Aristotle’s Metaphysics---by now Thomas’ lifelong intellectual ties to Aristotle had begun---to name a few, while the brothers supplied him with new habits and received letters from the captive. For whatever reason, perhaps that Theodora realized the futility of resisting the hermit’s vision and her son’s determination, Thomas was freed, let down by a basket into the arms of his brothers who proclaimed, “he had made as much progress as if he had been in a stadium generale.” (“Fontes Vitai”) Finally, Thomas was free to don his Dominican habit in public and was sent forth to pursue highest intellectual pursuits. After the Pope’s blessing, he was presented before Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General to the Dominicans.
If ambition had had the upper hand, Thomas could have returned to Monte Cassino as Abbot by invitation of the Pope. Instead, he was sent to the College of St. James in Paris, then the intellectual center of Christendom. There, Friar Thomas met his mentor and teacher, Chair of Theology, Albertus Magnus. Under the master’s influence, Thomas’ intellectual trajectory would be changed forever. Essentially, Albertus was rooted in the Scholastic tradition, the method of teaching that dominated the schools of Western Europe in the medieval period.
The “Schoolmen” they were called, were Christians, many of whom believed that knowledge could be achieved only by faith, but not so Albertus. He was among those scholars who believed the metaphysical quest of the Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato could complement the spiritual quest of theologians, past and present. Because of his broad range of scholarly interests---in other disciplines as well--- and mastery, Albertus Magnus was designated Doctor Universlis. It was his impact on his student, Thomas that shaped Aquinas’ masterpiece, Summa Theologica, a work that remains central to Catholic study and teaching worldwide.
Friar Thomas was eager to stay with his teacher Albertus who, when assigned regent of the stadium generale in Cologne, Thomas followed. From 1248-1252 Thomas worked as the equivalent of Assistant Professor. At first, Thomas was awkward and self-effacing. When he failed his first theological disputation, his fellows pronounced him “dumb ox,” but Albert pronounced back: “We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world!” In 1250, Thomas was ordained to the priesthood by Conrad of Hochstaden, archbishop of Cologne.
Albertus Magnus and others, who recognized Thomas’ brilliance, recommended to the master general that he send Aquinas to fill the office of sub-regent in the Dominican stadium in Paris. Here Aquinas’ public career began; professors and students were drawn to him. His order and attempt to receive his Doctor of Theology led to bitter dispute among faculty. The secular masters among the faculty were worried that the Dominicans and Franciscans would dominate among the chairs of the faculty, so they refused to admit Aquinas and his Franciscan colleague Bonaventure. Aquinas wrote a treatise as an apology (not as in “we’re sorry”, but as in “here’s what the Franciscans and Dominicans stand for”) for the mendicant orders and in 1256 the Pope ordered that the friars’ be admitted with their degrees.
In 1256 Aquinas was made Regent Master of Theology, teaching at the University of Paris until 1259. Before returning to Paris he taught for ten years in Orvieto, Rome, and Viterbo. While teaching brother friars he continued his study of Aristotle, and was engrossed in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. “He worked with the spirit of a missionary,” wrote Martian, “in the cause of truth against error.” He wrote a liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi to honor the body of Christ in the Eucharist. At this time he was caught up in an age-old dispute between the Roman and Greek Orthodox churches that, for centuries, had been feuding over the excommunication of the Eastern Church by the Pope two centuries earlier. Pope Urban IV requested that Aquinas write a piece in defense of the Pope’s arguments against those of the eastern Christians. The work was titled Against the Errors of the Greeks.
In 1265 he was moved again to Santa Sabina, a priory in Rome. There he remained for three years to help get a school started. There, his controversial debates that theology and philosophy were not only compatible, but could enrich one another, began. Out of these debates, his work on the Summa Theologica continued.
Meanwhile, back in Paris, a controversy was stirring over attraction to a radical form of Aristotelianism, called Averroism. Averroes, a late-12th century Arab philosopher, challenged Christian doctrine. Since Aquinas was so closely allied with Aristotle’s thought, he too came under suspicion for heresy, but was nonplussed that anyone could elevate the opinion of a philosopher above the authority of the Holy Bible and Church teachings. Because he was the only one whose intellect could effectively confront the aberration, Aquinas was sent back to the University of Paris in 1268.
In January, 1274 he set out on foot to take part in a general council to open in Lyons in May. He was asked to bring his treatise, “Against the Errors of the Greeks.” He fell ill and was taken to his niece, Countess Francesca Ceccano. Upon insistence of the Cistercian monks, he was transferred to their monastery. Against medical advice, Aquinas felt that it would be better for him to die in a religious house than in a layperson’s establishment. Extreme unction was performed for him at which time he pronounced his faith, affirming his belief in the articles of faith and assuring himself and others of his loyalty to loving service to Christ, and his church.
He died on March 7, 1274, at forty-nine. Cries were put out for his canonization, but no miracles had been witnessed. Pope John XXIII insisted that every article of Aquinas’ Summa was a miracle and he canonized Thomas Aquinas on July 18, 1323. 200 years later, Pope Pius V named him Doctor of the Church and declared his feast day as important as that of Saints Augustine and Ambrose. At the Council of Trent, S. Thomas’ Summa Theologica was placed on the alter next to the Bible.
In 1369, Pope Urban V ordered his body be given to the Dominicans, to be interred at the Dominican Church in Toulouse.
Relics from his body are stored at the Cathedral in Naples and at the University of Paris and in Rome at the Church of S. Maria Sopra Minerva.
In 1879, Pope Leo XIII declared Thomas Aquinas’ voluminous writings definitive for Catholic teaching and instruction in Catholic seminaries worldwide, thus instigating a revival of Thomism, often called neo-Thomism. Some maintain that the driving intellectual force helped shape circumstances leading to the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965. In 1880 S. Thomas was made patron saint of Catholic schools and colleges.
In 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an Encyclical, Fides et Ratio, in which he called for renewed commitment of philosophers and theologians to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, accounting for the modern context.