The Execution of His Brother
Chapter Six
The Execution of His Brother
“Idleness is the hook with which the devil fishes, with which all bait is taken.”
—Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas was in his early twenties when he began to truly come into his own under the guidance of Albert in Cologne. Albert began to count Aquinas as his number one protégé and as such was inclined to take him with him during all of his subsequent travels, as was the case when Albert took Thomas with him to Paris in order to continue his studies at the Dominican Convent of St. James.
Here, it is said that Aquinas really buckled down with his theological learning, reading Scripture night and day as well as further studying the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Although Aristotle was certainly not a Christian, many Christians of Aquinas’s day had begun to open up to Aristotle, valuing his treatises on logic and reason and framing them within a Christian worldview.
It was also during his stay in Paris that Thomas Aquinas met Giovanni di Fidanza, or as he became known, Saint Bonaventure. Like many of his contemporaries, Bonaventure was impressed with the devotion that young Aquinas displayed. He took note of his studious bent and dedication to learning. At one point, it is said that when Bonaventure was in the midst of writing a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, Aquinas announced to his fellow book writer, “Let us leave a saint to write the life of a saint.”
So it was that Aquinas was ushered in as a great teacher of the faith, and in Paris, he would indeed teach for the better part of two years. After this, he returned to Cologne with Albert, making the journey on foot just as he had arrived. Upon his return, it is said that Aquinas began to gain quite a wide following, larger than was the case before he had left. So great was his draw that the attendance of the courses he taught was soon greater than that of Albert himself. This is the moment they say that Thomas Aquinas began to surpass his mentor. This was a point in Aquinas’s life when he also became increasingly prolific in writing the philosophical works for which he would become so famous later on. In general, this was a time in which the passion of Thomas Aquinas seemed to burn the brightest.
Those graced with his presence were said to have been infused with the “ardour of the love of God which burned in his soul.” But ardor or not, the political situation would take another hit when Frederick II was yet again excommunicated at the Council of Lyons on July 17, 1245. These were indeed perilous times to be catholic, and Aquinas’s own family found themselves having to choose between their spiritual benefactor the pope or their temporal, yet more immediate benefactor, Emperor Frederick II.
In a move that must have made Thomas Aquinas proud, his family put their earthly land holdings aside and in the course of the conflict ended up siding with the pope rather than Emperor Frederick. In this switching of allegiance, it appears that Thomas’s brother Ronald was the most dedicated because shortly thereafter, he had joined up with a group of conspirators to plot against the emperor. This scheme was soon uncovered, however, and Ronald was arrested and charged with treason, resulting in his prompt conviction and execution in 1246.
If the execution of Ronald was not a clear enough sign that the Aquinas family was on the outs with the Holy Roman emperor, events in 1250 would bring it all home when the emperor besieged the family castle in Roccasecca. After the smoke cleared, the family had become more aligned with the Vatican than ever, and Aquinas’s sister even became an abbess at a Benedictine convent shortly thereafter.
Yet the greatest calamity to face Aquinas wouldn’t come from outside forces but rather from within his own faith. At the University of Paris, there was a certain religious guru by the name of William of Saint-Amour who began to openly speak out against Thomas Aquinas and the Dominican friars. William apparently was upset that Aquinas had recently been drawing away much of his congregants with his words of theological wisdom. Angered by what he perceived as an affront, William set about writing a book that disparaged the order to which Aquinas belonged.
Called On the Dangers of the Final Days , the book’s main theme was borrowed from the writings of the Apostle Paul who said, “In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.” This verse was widely taken as a warning to beware of pompous and ego-driven preachers leading the flock astray, and William masterfully applied it to the orders of Franciscans and Dominicans. By doing so, he insinuated that Thomas Aquinas was one of these treacherous teachers. William claimed that much of the calamities of the times were in fact due to the embrace of false doctrines, such as those the Franciscans and Dominicans espoused.
Among other things, the book criticized the main foundation with which the monks of these orders gained their sustenance. In those days, both the Franciscans and Dominicans basically lived as beggars, living off whatever donations and alms they were provided by generous givers. Other more established orders had their own sources of revenue through the property that they held and other pastoral benefices, such as being paid to copy manuscripts and other routine work. The book lambasted the Franciscans and Dominicans beggarly ways as being a lazy affront and claimed that they leeched off others with no theological justification in doing so.
Aquinas and those like him were also roundly criticized for relying too heavily on the philosopher Aristotle, who was believed to have been an atheist and who believed the universe had no beginning and no creator. Such belief would indeed be contrary to Scripture which has God stating, “I am the beginning and the end.”
Thomas Aquinas had an interesting solution to these theological problems, but his solution would only bring him more criticism. When it came to the ultimate nature of the universe, some would even go so far as to say that Aquinas had developed an outlook that was panentheistic in nature. As Aquinas himself was more likely to describe it, he had an all-in-God interpretation of creation. This is sort of a reverse take on the classical pantheistic notion that every living thing is a small manifestation of God. The subtle difference was that Aquinas believed that while the divine was present in all things, it was not so much that all matter was a manifestation of God, but that God was somehow present in all matter.
Aquinas believed that this divine spark was present throughout all creation, but humanity had a very special dose of this divinity in the form of the Holy Spirit. He believed that every human had this essence within them, but not every human had been enlightened to reach inward and tap into it. Aquinas would eventually crystalize these conclusions in his famous Summa theologiae .
Although this philosophical framework would be the platform of one of his major works, it would also lead those that disagreed with it to condemn him as a false teacher or otherwise heretical to the faith. Aquinas initially responded to these attacks by the best way he knew—by writing a book of counter-arguments against his detractors. In the aptly named Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion , he laid out the defense of both himself and his fellow brothers in the faith. Initially this book only seemed to provide even more fuel to the fire, and these contrary camps of theologians continued to spar back and forth.
Nevertheless, as many critics as he may have had, Aquinas had some pretty powerful supporters as well. On the official level, the school authorities came out against William’s book and attempted to vindicate both Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan and Dominican orders from the slander that his book contained. These efforts proved to be too little too late, however, and once the general body had read William’s book, many had already made up their mind to entertain the type of criticism and theories that the work contained.
As a result of all the attacks thrown his way, Thomas Aquinas would soon find himself in the greatest ethical challenge of his life. His closely cherished ideals were under siege, but the man who was being ridiculed as nothing more than a monkish beggar had chosen to fight.