1.1 Aquinas’s Life
Thomas Aquinas entered the world as a member of a wealthy and aristocratic family.1 But he died as one among a group of people committed to poverty.2 He was born around 1224–1226. He was dead by the end of 1274.3 His birthplace was the castle of Roccasecca in southern Italy, which was his family’s home. His death occurred at the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova, not far from Rome. His remains are now in the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, France. He was canonized as a saint by Pope John XXII in 1325; his feast day is celebrated by the Catholic Church on January 28, though before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) it was celebrated on March 4.4
At the age of five or six, Aquinas was sent to study at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, whose abbot was one of his relatives. Here he was instructed in grammar and writing. He was also introduced to biblical texts and to the works of Christian theologians such as St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430). But military conflict between the Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) and Pope Gregory IX (d. 1241) led to Aquinas leaving Monte Cassino so as to continue his education at the University of Naples, founded by Frederick II in 1224 as a training place for potentially useful civil servants. This university, however, had a wide-ranging curriculum that included philosophy and theology.5
While studying in Naples, Aquinas became acquainted with the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic Guzman (1170–1221). The Dominicans were an order of friars, and they had only a few men working in Naples when Aquinas got to know them. But he took the Dominican habit in 1242 or 1243. His family was not happy with this decision and detained him under house arrest for some time, though they eventually released him to go his own way.
To begin with, Aquinas lived among Dominicans in Paris, which at that time, along with Bologna and Oxford, was home to one of the major medieval universities. Here, he might have had some connection with the university’s Faculty of Arts, and he was almost certainly working under the direction of St. Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), at that time one of the most prominent and influential of Dominican scholars.6 Aquinas continued to work under Albert’s direction when Albert moved to Cologne in 1248 so as to establish a house of studies there. While at Cologne, Aquinas acted as Albert’s secretary. He may also have started commenting on the Bible. Also in Cologne, Aquinas probably wrote his De Principiis Naturae (On the Principles of Nature), a short text that discusses themes developed early in Aristotle’s Physics.7
In 1251 or 1252 Aquinas returned to the University of Paris to begin work as a teacher. Initially, he delivered lectures commenting on biblical books. He then lectured and commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1096–1160).8 In 1256 he became a Master of Theology, a post he relinquished around 1259. Writings of Aquinas that derive from this period of his life include a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences (Commentum in Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi), a commentary on the De Trinitate (On the Trinity) by Boethius (c. 480–524) (Super Boethium De Trinitate), and On Being and Essence (De Ente et Essentia). At this stage in his career Aquinas also began to write his Summa Contra Gentiles.
Aquinas’s function as a Master of Theology was to lecture on the Bible, to preach, and to preside over academic debates referred to as “Disputed Questions.”9 Around the time when he became a Master of Theology, however, Aquinas was also drawn into an acrimonious argument that had arisen between teachers at the University of Paris who were members of the Dominican and Franciscan orders of friars and those who, though clerics, were not Dominicans or Franciscans. In 1256 Aquinas defended the friars in Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem (Against Opponents of the Worship of God and Religion). In later years he followed up this defense in two other works.
In 1261 or thereabouts, Aquinas moved to Orvieto in Italy in order to teach Dominican friars in their priory there.10 Dominican legislation of the day required that Dominican priories had in residence a “conventual lector” whose job was to ensure that friars continued with studies regardless of their age or experience; and it was as the Orvieto priory’s conventual lector that Aquinas became a member of that house. In 1265, however, he was assigned to set up a Dominican institute of studies at the priory of Santa Sabina in Rome. It was at this time that he began to write his monumental Summa Theologiae, on which he was still working at the time of his death.11
In 1268 Aquinas returned to Paris as a Master of Theology, and his duties were the same as they had previously been. In 1272, however, he was directed to found a Dominican study house in Naples and to teach at the university there. But his health was evidently failing around this time. He stopped writing from the end of September 1273, and he died in 1274. His death occurred while he was making his way to France in order to attend the Second Council of Lyons so as to advise concerning disagreements between Greek and Latin Christians. He was already fairly ill by the time he set out for the council. On his way to it he became increasingly sick and was taken to the Abbey of Fossanova, where he died on March 7.