Chapter 4 The Tides of Thomism, 1275–1850
The Tides of Thomism, 1275–1850
The influence of the thought of Thomas Aquinas in the more than seven centuries since his death is not just a question of the reception of the Summa theologiae, although reading and commentating on the Summa has been central to the story of Thomism (the word Thomismus appears as early as the fourteenth century). It would also be a mistake to restrict the story of the Summa only to those who are usually identified as Thomists (Thomistae). Some of the most significant moments in the history of the reception of the book concern readers who either attacked the work, misunderstood it (sometimes creatively), or used it for their own purposes. Limiting the biography of the Summa to the history of the Thomist Schools would miss what is often most interesting about the reception of the book, the encounters between the Summa and non-Thomist thinkers. This chapter will look at a variety of Thomisms, but also consider some of these encounters. To try to include them all would be to write a history of Western theology and philosophy over the past seven hundred years.
Even trying to write the history of Thomism itself is so difficult a task that no attempt at a general account has been made for more than a century and a half. Over a thousand commentaries on the Summa theologiae, in whole or in part, exist, and one catalogue of Thomists lists 2,034 names. What does it take to become a Thomist? Is it enough to self-consciously proclaim oneself as a follower of St. Thomas? Or does one also have to adhere to a number of key principles or teachings of Thomas, especially as identified by those who argue for a distinction between what they call “classical,” or “strict,” Thomism, and a broad, or eclectic, use of aspects of Thomas along with other systems of thought? Any list of the key principles of Thomism is a product of interpretation, so we should not be surprised that these lists have varied greatly over the centuries. Strict constructionist positions on what constitutes Thomism have a number of drawbacks. The first is the paradox that although Thomas was a theologian who used philosophy, many forms of strict Thomism, such as Neothomism, have been primarily philosophical in nature. It is also true that although Thomas strove to be clear about the relation of faith and reason, his works have been read over the centuries in quite different ways, giving rise to at least two main views of the respective roles of theology and philosophy: one that sees philosophy as being pursued primarily within the context of the work of theology, the other viewpoint arguing that philosophy is a separate discipline for Thomism. A second difficulty is the sheer multiplicity of views claimed as Thomist over the centuries, a diversity that has not lessened in the past hundred years. A generation ago Henri de Lubac remarked, “As for the ‘Thomism’ of our own century, I have too often found in it a system that is too rigid and yet at the same time not faithful enough to the Doctor it claims as its authority. I have also seen it raised too often (in complete good faith) like a pavilion to cover the most diverse merchandise to be able to take it seriously.” Surveying the history of Thomism down to the seventeenth century, the English Dominican Gerald Vann was no less pessimistic: “In the main … the history of Thomism during these centuries is a history of failure; and a failure precisely … to meet the intellectual needs of the times.” To use Aquinas’s own language, Thomism is at best an analogical term; perhaps an equivocal one. Nonetheless, even equivocations have histories.
The First Half-Century (1274–1325)
The period from Thomas’s death to his canonization was formative for much that followed. A few general observations will help for introducing this period. First of all, Thomas failed in his objective of having the Summa replace the unwieldy Sentences of Peter Lombard, even among the Dominicans. The Lombard’s book was too solidly entrenched in the theological curriculum to yield its place, in part because it was used as a jumping-off place for individual theological speculation. In an era when tensions and divisions among theological camps were growing, different schools and masters could use the Lombard’s text for their own purposes far more easily than they could the carefully structured and closely argued Summa. A second point concerns the paradox of Thomas’s position in the scholastic world during these fifty years. Thomas left no successor, or formal “school.” Shortly after his death he was attacked both by ecclesiastical authority and by theological opponents among the Neo-Augustinian thinkers, primarily Franciscans, but also including the secular master Henry of Ghent (d. 1293). The Dominicans sprang to his defense. These attacks testify to Thomas’s importance: one does not have to man the walls of theological correctness against a nonentity. Although it would take two centuries before the Summa would become the textbook that Thomas had intended, its influence was major, as we can see both from the number of manuscripts that survive and the ways in which the book was used, especially in moral theology and in speculation on God.
Thomas’s road to fame was a bumpy one. The condemnation of the Radical Aristotelians in 1270 does not appear to have put a halt to their suspect teaching in the Arts Faculty at Paris. The Neo-Augustinian theologians, the heirs of Bonaventure, were exasperated by the Aristotelian positions advanced by some Parisian philosophers, such as their claims for the eternity of the universe. Their anger, however, was also directed against Thomas, who they felt had given away too much to Aristotle, especially on such issues as the substantial unity of the human soul and the philosophical demonstrability of the creation of the universe in time. While many of the specific issues under dispute were philosophical, important theological questions were also at stake: In what sense is theology a science? What are the limits of the use of philosophy in the work of theology? The disputes came to a head in 1277 with dual condemnations by the bishops of Paris and Oxford of lists of erroneous teachings, which included a number shared by Thomas.
All medievalists see these condemnations as significant. For Etienne Gilson and his followers they were not so much a cause as a symptom of the desire to rein in “the excessive philosophical independence of some masters in philosophy and theology”—a defensive move that signified the end of the “golden age” of scholasticism. Thomas’s way of building a bridge between theology and philosophy was under attack by theologians who deplored what has been called “Greco-Arabian Necessitarianism,” that is, philosophical arguments that seemed to limit God’s freedom of action. These views, which Thomas would also have rejected, are expressed in a number of the condemned articles; for example, “God would not have been able to make prime matter without the help of a celestial body” (art. 38; see also arts. 43–44). Other scholars have seen the condemnations as a reaction to the birth pangs of a new form of independent philosophical teaching, which Bishop Stephen Tempier wanted to get under control by subordinating philosophy to theology. The meaning and effect of the events of 1277 continue to be disputed. It seems clear, however, that the condemnations shifted the ground in the theological world, at least in Paris, and they certainly were a challenge to Thomas’s life’s work.
Although much has been written about the condemnations, there are still puzzling issues. In Paris Bishop Tempier, former chancellor of the university, established a commission of masters (including the anti-Thomist Henry of Ghent) to investigate dangerous teaching in the Arts Faculty. On March 7, 1277, he issued a condemnation of 219 propositions with attendant excommunication for anyone holding them. The preface to the document explicitly attacks “some Parisian students in the Arts who have gone beyond the limits of their own Faculty and who have dared to treat and dispute in class … some open and detestable errors, or rather vanities and false ravings.” The list is a mixture of propositions in no order, some of them contradictory. The articles are mostly philosophical, including many from Aristotle and Averroes, though they also contain errors about theology—“Nothing is to be believed unless it is known in itself or can be derived from things known in themselves” (art. 37); “No one knows anything more by knowing theology” (art. 153). Although there is some dispute about the actual number, about sixteen articles involve Thomas’s teaching, especially on such issues as the nature of separate substances (i.e., angels), individuation by matter, and the operation of the intellect. Thomas’s controversial doctrine of the unicity of form in humanity, however, is not mentioned. The probable reason why it is not found is that during the same month of March Tempier instituted two theological commissions, one against the Augustinian theologian, Giles of Rome (d. 1316), a former student of Thomas, and the other against the deceased Dominican himself. On March 28, fifty-one propositions from Giles were condemned, including his teaching on the unicity of form, and he was denied his license to teach. The second commission singled out as erroneous Thomas’s view “That in man there is only one substantial form, that is, the intellectual soul” (Ia, q. 76.4), but for reasons still unclear, Tempier did not issue a condemnation, but forwarded the material to Rome where it was still under discussion in 1284. Nothing ever happened with this process.
A parallel case evolved in Oxford, the center of theology in England. On March 18, 1277, Robert Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury and himself a former Dominican and master at Oxford, issued a document prohibiting the teaching (not formally condemning) thirty errors in grammar, logic, and natural philosophy. The twelfth of the errors in natural philosophy was unicity of form: “[It is an error to say] that the vegetative, sensitive and intellective principles are one simple form.” It is commonly said that this and a number of the other prohibited errors in natural philosophy were directed at Thomas, but he is not mentioned by name and these issues were under discussion in many circles.
The attacks against Thomas continued, but they moved into the realm of the tensions between the two mendicant orders, with a concerted Franciscan push against the Dominican theologian. About 1279 the English Franciscan William de la Mare, who had succeeded Thomas’s adversary John Pecham in the Franciscan chair of theology at Paris, published a Correctory of Brother Thomas, listing 117 passages from Aquinas’s writings, mostly from the first two parts of the Summa theologiae, with “corrections” based on Augustine and Bonaventure. This work was approved by the Franciscan General Chapter of Strassburg of 1282, which commanded that only “intelligent readers” could use Thomas’s Summa—and only in tandem with William’s corrections.
Notwithstanding the episcopal actions in Paris and Oxford, the Dominicans came to Thomas’s defense by issuing a number of directives in their General Chapters. For example, the 1279 Chapter of Paris issued a general ban against “irreverent or unbecoming talk about Thomas and his writings.” Another Paris Chapter (1286) legislated that all Dominicans should study, promote, and defend “the doctrine of the late venerable master, Friar Thomas Aquinas,” a regulation reiterated at Saragossa in 1309. The Chapter of Metz in 1313 issued an order forbidding any friar from teaching something contrary to “what is commonly held as the opinion” of Thomas, a reference to the French Dominican Durandus of St. Pourçain (ca. 1270–1334), whose commentary on the Sentences adopted many positions against Thomas. At the behest of the Dominican Master General a commission drew up a list of Durandus’s anti-Thomist errors in 1314. (After several years of controversy, Durandus escaped the power of the order by being named Bishop of Limoux in 1317.) Some Dominican Chapters issued positive commands concerning Thomas, as when the 1315 Chapter of Bologna ordered that all the houses of general studies should acquire “a complete set of the writings of Friar Thomas, especially in theology.”
William’s Correctory was a serious threat to Thomas’s heritage, so the next decade saw five Dominican responses, or Correctories of the Correction (or Corruption, as the Dominicans called it). These are traditionally seen as expressions of the first “Thomistic School.” The respondents were international (English, French, Italian), and they were not “masters,” but younger friars who sprang to the defense of the great Dominican magister. A study of their works indicates that they generally had a good sense of many of Thomas’s controversial teachings, such as the distinction of essence and existence, the philosophical neutrality of the duration of creation, and the unicity of the substantial form of the human person. The core of the dispute, however, was the relation between faith and reason and the role of philosophical reasoning in theology. Some of the “correctors” suffered for their adherence to Thomas. Richard Knapwell, who began his teaching at Oxford in 1284, soon ran afoul of Thomas’s old adversary, the intransigent Franciscan John Pecham, who had become archbishop of Canterbury in 1279. The archbishop, who had renewed his predecessor Kilwardby’s restrictions on erroneous teaching, condemned Knapwell as a heretic in 1286 and excommunicated him, largely over the issue of unicity of form. Knapwell appealed to Rome, but when he arrived there he found a Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, who forbade him to teach. He died not long after.
The Correctory literature provides us with a sense of what was at stake in the arguments between Franciscans and Dominicans, but they were the tip of the even larger iceberg of the growing influence of the Summa. Dominican legislation encouraged reading Thomas and the Summa, and, even though the Lombard’s Sentences remained the standard text, the Dominican chapters insisted that it be read with the help of material taken from the Summa. Thomas had strong (though not universal) support across the Dominican network of houses throughout Europe. Some Dominican theologians, such as John of Freiburg, composed moral handbooks that excerpted and simplified the IIaIIae of the Summa for the use of confessors, and therefore had a real effect on the lives of the laity. Thomas was also widely read outside the Dominican Order, if not always correctly. The Augustinian Giles of Rome, who got into difficulty for some of his Thomist views, seems to have been the first to introduce a serious misunderstanding of Thomas’s teaching on the distinction of existence (esse) and essence (essentia) in created beings, conceiving of them as two things (res) and not as principles of created things. This misunderstanding was to mislead Thomists for centuries. Another sign of the popularity of Thomas’s Summa was the widespread copying and dissemination of the work in the fifty years following his death.
A brief look at two encounters of the Summa with major scholastics of this first half century can suggest the work’s role in the wider intellectual arena. The Franciscan John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308), like Thomas, had a short but productive career. “The Subtle Doctor” was not only an original thinker, but also an influential one. Various Scotist Schools were active for centuries. Scotus was especially concerned with the scholastics of his era, such as Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines, but he knew the writings of Bonaventure and of Thomas, including the Summa. Like Thomas, his writings were mined both for philosophy and for theology, and he contrasts with the Dominican on issues in both respects. For example, Thomas had argued that all our language about God is analogical, but Scotus held that when we talk about God as the perfect being, the language we use of God and creatures must be univocal if we are to attain real knowledge of God. Hence, Scotus was also far less apophatic, or negative, in his theology, because “being” has a generic conceptual sense that gives us some positive idea of God (for Aquinas esse is not a concept). In anthropology Scotus was a voluntarist, insisting (against Thomas) that the will is autonomous, not linked to the direction of the intellect. Similar contrasts show up regarding many theological doctrines, as in Scotus’s arguments for the Immaculate Conception of Mary, or in his defense of the doctrine that the Word would have become flesh even if Adam had not sinned. As an example, we can look at the differences between the two scholastics on the nature of theology itself.
Scotus’s teaching on theologia or doctrina revelata (i.e., revealed teaching) seems to have developed over the course of his career, so it is not always easy to pin down his position. The lengthy Prologue to his Ordinatio forms a parallel to Thomas’s treatment of sacra doctrina in question 1 of the Prima Pars, treated in . Another, perhaps more mature, treatment, is found in the Reportatio Parisiensia (book III, d. 24). A major difference that emerges from these texts is that Scotus treats theology as a habitus in the mind of the theologian, rather than primarily as a process of teaching and learning as did Aquinas. In the Ordinatio Scotus’s consideration, more detailed than Thomas’s, deals with five issues: (1) the necessity of revealed teaching, (2) the sufficiency of scripture, (3) the object of theology, (4) theology as a science, and (5) theology as a practical science. In discussing the first question, “Whether another teaching [besides philosophy] that is supernaturally inspired is necessary for a human person in this life,” Scotus shows awareness of the Paris condemnation of 1277 and the threat of a philosophy that claims to be sufficient for humans to reach the goal of life. He begins by contrasting the arguments of the philosophers that reason alone is sufficient for human happiness with the arguments of the theologians that revealed teaching is necessary for salvation (Thomas is explicitly cited in one place). Scotus disagrees with the theologians, however, because he contends that God could, on the basis of his absolute freedom, save someone who does not have the gift of faith (Prol., Pars 1, q. unica, nn. 54–56). The Franciscan does not side with the philosophers either, because he holds that natural reason on its own cannot solve the dilemma of whether or not the enjoyment of God is our end; revelation teaches us that it is.
Scotus also differs from Thomas when it comes to the scientific character of theology. In refuting Thomas in book III, d. 24 (nn. 16, 22) of the Reportatio Parisiensia he denies that in the strict Aristotelian sense we can have both science and faith about the same thing in the same respect, but at the beginning of the work, in his “Prologue,” questions 1 to 3, he argues that theology as “a science of faith” possesses a scientific character insofar as it orders its contents “under the proper aspect of deity,” although its forms of evidence will not be the same as those of other sciences. Scotus also differs from Thomas, who argued that sacra doctrina/theologia was primarily theoretical and to a lesser extent practical, by insisting that theology is only a practical science related to right action, that is, to loving God. This is true even with regard to the teachings that seem theoretical, such as the statement “God is a Trinity.” No, says Scotus: “I say that such truths are practical; theology includes in a virtual way knowledge of the correctness of the love tending towards the three persons, so that if an act were elicited towards one person alone and excluding the others, it would not be a correct act” (Ordinatio, Prol. Pars 5, q. 1, n. 322).
The German Dominican Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–1328), like Thomas, was also twice called to the Dominican chair at Paris. Eckhart was a famous vernacular preacher and mystic, but also a profound philosopher-theologian, who planned a massive, but incomplete, synthesis he called the Three-Part Work (Opus tripartitum). The first part of this work, the Work of Propositions, was intended to be an exercise in axiomatic theology; but the second, the Work of Questions, was to have been modeled on Thomas’s Summa. Most of what survives is from the third part, the Work of Expositions, consisting of commentaries on the Bible designed to aid in preaching. Eckhart had a profound respect for Thomas and appealed to the example of his confrere, now a saint, when he himself was under investigation for heresy at the end of his life (1326–28). Eckhart knew Thomas and the Summa inside out, citing it hundreds of times in his Latin writings and showing a special preference for the Prima Pars. Nevertheless, Eckhart was not a strict follower of Thomas. Rather, he used Thomas as a conversation partner in creating his own system of thought.
Eckhart’s independence can be partly explained by the reception of Thomas and the Summa among the German Dominicans trained at the studium generale in Cologne. The German Dominican School, especially its contributions to philosophy, has come in for considerable study in recent years. Between about 1260 and 1350 the German Dominicans produced a succession of thinkers whose philosophical and theological positions, though often influenced by Thomas, show real independence. Albert the Great’s turn to the negative theology of Dionysius, as well as developments of his Aristotelian theory of the intellect with marked Neoplatonic and Avicennan elements, shaped many of these thinkers in ways that have not yet been fully studied. Eckhart’s contemporary, Dietrich of Freiburg (ca. 1250–1320), who has emerged as the most interesting philosophical mind among the German friars, took a decidedly anti-Thomist stance on many issues, including his introduction of the notion of “conceptual being” and his teaching on the relation of the active intellect and natural felicity. Other Dominicans, such as John of Sterngassen (active ca. 1320), were Thomist in outlook. Meister Eckhart was independent.
Eckhart was influenced by Dietrich, but his thought differed from his contemporary’s as much as it did from Thomas’s. Citing a few examples of the differences between Thomas and Eckhart will illustrate the German’s independent use of Thomas. First, Eckhart, unlike Thomas, held that a priori proofs for God’s existence were valid. Second, with regard to the perfective terms used of God, in his Parisian Questions given in Paris 1302–3 Eckhart parts company with Thomas on the priority of the language of existence (esse) when used of God. “I declare,” he says, “it is not my present opinion that God understands because he exists, but rather that he exists because he understands. God is intellect and understanding and his understanding is the ground of his existence” (Parisian Questions, q. 1). Third, Eckhart’s understanding of the nature of the intellect is different from that of Thomas. While Thomas held that the human mind is made “to the image” of God (Ia, q. 92), Eckhart insisted that the human mind was both made to the image (hence, different from God) and, on a deeper level, identically one with the image, or Second Person of the Trinity. This helps explain why, fourth, Eckhart’s view of human action is nonteleological (not goal-oriented), in distinction from Thomas’s view that human moral action is always directed to final happiness. For Eckhart, since the intellect is identical with God’s image, human virtuous activity, like God’s, should be “without a why,” that is, done for itself alone, not for any further purpose. Good action springs from the inner divine formal cause, the ground of the soul, not from striving toward an external final cause (e.g., Commentary on John n. 336).
At the root of Eckhart’s creative misreading of Thomas is a contrasting notion of the relation of theology and philosophy. Aquinas distinguished between truths known by reason and those taught only by faith and sought to show the relation, as well as the nonopposition of philosophy and theology. For Eckhart reason and revelation are coterminous, differing not in what they teach, but only in the way they teach. In a noted passage he says, “Moses [i.e., the Old Testament], Christ, and the Philosopher [Aristotle] teach the same thing, differing only in the way they teach, namely as worthy of belief [Moses], as probable or likely [Aristotle], and as truth” (Commentary on John n. 185). Aquinas contended that there could be no real contradiction between the truths taught by faith and human reason; for Eckhart human reason as the presence of God in the mind is capable of knowing and unknowing both natural truths and the mysteries of faith, such as the Trinity. Given his insistence on the perfect reciprocity between reason and revelation, he describes his scriptural commentaries as designed “to show how the truths of natural principles, conclusions and properties are well intimated for him ‘who has ears to hear’ [Matt. 13:43] in the very words of sacred scripture that are interpreted through these natural truths” (Commentary on John n. 3). For Eckhart, in contrast to Thomas, all metaphysical, ethical, and theological truths are fundamentally one.
Thomas Aquinas’s position in the church changed dramatically in the second decade of the fourteenth century. Pope John XXII ascended the throne of Peter in 1316. His fondness for Aquinas is evident both from his own library and from the support he gave to the Dominican initiation of a canonization inquiry regarding the teacher who was already being called the “common doctor” (doctor communis). After inquiries held at Naples and Fossanova in 1319 and 1321, the case went to the pope at Avignon and on July 18, 1323, John solemnly proclaimed Thomas Aquinas a saint in strong language: “He has illuminated the church more than all the other doctors. In his books a person can gain more profit in a year than in the teaching of others for a whole lifetime.” The canonization process also involved a theological component, because John XXII commissioned the Dominican Giovanni Dominici (d. 1324) to compile a long abbreviation of the Summa, which in effect was something like a commentary, the first of its kind. After all the controversy surrounding his teaching, Thomas had achieved a recognition that put him beyond condemnation. Under pressure from the Paris masters, on February 14, 1325, Stephen Bourret, the bishop of Paris, revoked Tempier’s condemnation of 1277, insofar as it might affect Thomas. The wheel had turned.
The Fortunes of the Summa (1325–1500)
The next two centuries reveal a shifting story in the fortunes of the Summa theologiae. The fourteenth-century world of academic theology was divided into contending schools of Scotists, Albertists, Thomists, and especially the “modernists” (moderni), or “Nominalists,” who adopted in greater or less degree the critical philosophy and theology of William of Ockham (d. 1347), as contrasted to the “old-timers” (antiqui), or the “Realists,” who adhered to the teaching of one or the other of the major thirteenth-century scholastics. Thomas Aquinas was the official theologian of the Dominicans, but this did not make his Summa their main teaching text. Nevertheless, Thomas’s book was recognized as an impressive summary of the teaching of the Latin Church, as is evident from the fact that it was translated into Armenian and Greek in the fourteenth century, as well as into Middle High German.
Byzantine interest in Thomas is noteworthy, given the opposition between Orthodox theology and the Latin West. Nevertheless, there was a line of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Greek theologians, some of them converts to Catholicism, who studied and translated Thomas’s works, including Demetrios Cydones (d. 1397), who rendered both the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles into Greek. Byzantine Thomism was primarily philosophical and not theological: Thomas was seen as the best interpreter of Aristotle. Greek interest in Thomas continued on into the fifteenth century, as can be seen in Cardinal Bessarion (d. 1472), whose thought was shaped by Orthodox theology, but who read Thomas assiduously both before and after his conversion to Rome. There were even translations of parts of the Summa into Hebrew. The interest of Jewish philosophers in the thought of Thomas as a way to counter Averroistic readings of Aristotle that conflicted with the Hebrew Bible, something that had begun in the late thirteenth century with thinkers like Rabbi Hillel of Verona and Jehudah ben Daniel Romano, continued on during the fourteenth century. Still, the fourteenth century in general did not witness the appearance of major Thomists or original uses of the Summa, perhaps due to the crisis of society and academia at the time of the Black Death in the middle of the century.
The early fifteenth century marked a change in the fortunes of Thomas and the Summa theologiae. Three important developments deserve attention. The first was a renewed focus on the Summa accompanied by the growth of the commentarial tradition. The second was the encounter of Thomas’s thought and the Summa with Humanism in Italy. The third factor was the birth of printing and the possibilities it provided for the dissemination of the book to a wider audience.
As Bernard Lonergan once observed, “St. Thomas practiced a method, the method of the quaestio. The great Thomists practiced a method, the method of the commentary.” It was in the fifteenth century that the Summa began to become the subject of multiple commentaries. The commentary, according to Paul Griffiths, is a form of “meta-work” based on another text and featuring (1) extensive quotation, summary, or paraphrase of the base text, that (2) quantitatively or qualitatively outweighs other elements in the work, and that (3) provides the structure and order of the meta-work. With the exception of the Bible, few books in the history of Christianity have inspired more commentaries than the Summa. For the succession of schools of Thomism teaching and commenting on the book became the essential mortar. Thomist commentators often invoked general interpretive principles. Two of the most common were reading “according to the mind of St. Thomas” (ad mentem S. Thomae), and speaking of “St. Thomas as his own interpreter” (Divus Thomas sui interpres)—certainly laudable principles, although they did little to curtail the variety of readings.
The earliest of the great commentators was the French Dominican John Capreolus (1380–1444), who taught at Paris and Toulouse. Called “the Leader of the Thomists,” Capreolus was a defender of Thomas’s views against other scholastics, such as Henry of Ghent, Durandus of St. Pourçain, Scotus, and William of Ockham. He did so through a massive commentary on Thomas’s Writing on the Sentences called the Defenses of the Theology of St. Thomas, written between 1408 and 1433. The Defenses do, however, contain much material from the Summa. Capreolus begins his work with the pious statement dear to all Thomist commentators: “I make one prefatory remark, namely that through this whole reading I have one supposition and it is that I intend to introduce nothing of my own, but only the views that seem to me to belong to the mind of St. Thomas, and I will not employ any proofs or conclusions beyond his own words, except on rare occasions.” With Capreolus, however, we can detect a major shift from Thomas’s view of theology as sacra doctrina. For Thomas sacred teaching is scientific because it is primarily a form of deductive teaching (i.e., an activity) based on revealed first principles. For Capreolus theology is a science of conclusions: “It is not a science of the articles of faith, but of the conclusions which follow from them.” Many later Thomist commentators were to follow Capreolus to the extent that they treated faith as a kind of preliminary starting point, so that theology became a form of natural metaphysical argumentation. This misunderstanding was instrumental in the development of the tradition of seeing Thomas as more of a philosopher than a theologian.
During the fifteenth century, first in Germany and soon spreading widely, both Dominicans and non-Dominicans began to employ the Summa as a school text. The University of Cologne was the earliest center of teaching and commenting on the Summa. The initiators were secular priests. The Dutch Henry of Gorcum (called “the Monarch of the Cologne Thomists”) studied at Paris, came to Cologne to teach in 1420, and died in 1431. It is not known if his Compendium of the Summa theologiae, printed in 1473, is actually based on class lectures, but it is one of the first major commentaries. His disciple, the Belgian secular master John Tinctor (d. 1469), wrote a Commentary on the Summa theologiae in the 1460s that was certainly based on class lectures. John’s commentary concentrated on the objections and doubts raised about Thomas’s positions, so he does not deal much with the actual arguments in the body of the Summa articles. Quite different was the contemporary work of the Dominican Gerard of Elten (d. 1484), the Lectura on the First Part of the Summa of St. Thomas. Gerard, one of the first to reflect on the structure of the Summa, divided his treatment of each of Thomas’s articles into a “declaration of the text,” where he reduced the arguments in the body of the articles into syllogisms, and a “solution of difficulties,” in which he added his own reflections. Perhaps the most important of the Cologne Thomists was another Dominican, Konrad Köllin, whose Exposition of the IaIIae of the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas was published in 1512 on the eve of the Reformation. By this time the teaching of the Summa was widespread in Germany (e.g., Vienna, Freiburg, Rostock) and was also found in other countries. The Italian Dominican Tomasso di Vio (1469–1534), called “Cajetan,” began to lecture on the Summa in Pavia in 1497, and the Belgian Dominican, Peter Crockaert, began to teach the Summa in Paris in 1507. The spreading use of Thomas’s work in the fifteenth century is also evident in the creation of tools to assist in using the book, such as abbreviations, concordances, indices (this process had begun in the fourteenth century). The prolific Dutch scholar Denys the Carthusian (d. 1471) produced a compendium to the Summa called the Summa of Orthodox Faith, while the Italian Dominican Peter of Bergamo (d. 1482) compiled the massive index known as the Golden Table (Tabula aurea), first printed in 1473. This work, often appended to editions of the Summa even into modern times, was the most complete index until the publication of the forty-nine volume electronically generated Index Thomisticus by Robert Busa (1974–81).
The role of Thomas and the Summa theologiae in Renaissance Humanism, especially in Italy, has often been misunderstood. Disputes about the meaning of the Renaissance have been many, at least since the publication of the Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt’s The Renaissance in 1864. Burkhardt stressed the break between the Humanist intellectuals and artists who turned back to the Classical past to devote themselves to the studia humanitatis, on the one hand, and, on the other, their scholastic predecessors of what the Humanists themselves were the first to call “the Middle Age.” Later investigators, however, pointed out that many of the figures considered central to the Renaissance, for all their criticisms of the narrow scholasticism and rigid clerical ecclesiasticalism of their day, were religious reformers who were familiar, though in varying ways, with the thought of the scholastics, not least Thomas Aquinas. Humanist emphasis on Platonic theology by no means led to a total break with scholasticism and Thomas.
A number of Italian Dominicans, such as Vincent Bandelli of Castronovo (1435–1506), were able to combine devotion to Thomas and his Summa with Humanist sympathies, although members of other religious orders sought to resist the growing movement to elevate Thomas above other doctrinal authorities. Thus, the Carmelite Battista Spagnoli, called “Mantuanus” (1447–1516), wrote a treatise around 1490 called The Golden Work Against the Thomists in which he argued that Thomas was a worthy member of the third class of teachers (the scholastics), but these were inferior in authority to the first class (the apostles) and even the second class (the Fathers of the patristic period). Thomas would not have disagreed. Renaissance emphasis on the power of rhetoric fostered the preaching of sermons in praise of Thomas on his feast day of March 7. The most interesting was given by the layman Lorenzo Valla in Rome at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in 1457, the year of his death. Valla’s antipanegyric praises Thomas’s sanctity, but has less use for his scholasticism, because the Dominican, like other scholastics, mixed the water of philosophy with the wine of sacred teaching. Thomas’s thought was also used in the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Padua in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when his views were seen as a counter to the reigning Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle.
Interesting encounters of Thomas with Renaissance thought are found in the premier Platonizing philosophers of the Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494). Neither can be considered a Thomist, but they both knew the friar’s works. Ficino’s Platonic Theology Concerning the Immortality of the Soul, composed between 1469 and 1474, was the closest thing to a summa produced by the Renaissance philosophers. Ficino found an ally in Thomas for his attempt to demonstrate the immortality of the soul against the Averroists. He occasionally cites Thomas by name and silently refers to him in a number of places. Ficino, however, uses Thomas within the context of his own Neoplatonizing philosophy. For example, in the discussion of the divine nature in book 2, Ficino makes use of Thomas about twenty-five times and includes a reference to “our divine Thomas, the splendor of theology” (II.12.8). Ficino’s program, however, remains fundamentally Platonic. Ficino makes use primarily of the Summa contra Gentiles not the Summa theologiae. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola read widely, not only in ancient philosophy, Jewish and Arabic sources, but also among the scholastics. His bold syncretistic plan to dispute nine hundred theses at Rome was stopped by Innocent VIII, who condemned thirteen of the announced theses as dangerous or heretical in 1487. Among the list of nine hundred were forty-five of Thomist origin (mostly from the Writing on the Sentences).
Finally, the fifteenth century saw the invention of printing, a development that made a radical change in the accessibility of texts to the reading public. A sign of the importance of the Summa is that it was printed early and often. If the Gutenberg Bible can be dated to circa 1455, it is noteworthy that by circa 1463 the earliest printing of the most popular part of the Summa, the IIaIIae, appeared in Strassburg. The Prima Pars was printed in Venice in 1484, and both the Ia and the IaIIae came out together in Basel in the same year. (Given that manuscripts of the Summa generally were copied as parts, this practice is not surprising.) The first complete printing of the Summa theologiae also appeared in Basel in 1485. Altogether there were twenty-nine incunables, or early printings, of the Summa before 1501. It was no accident that the same half century that saw the emergence of the Summa as a class text witnessed the work’s rapid movement into print.
The Summa in Divided Christianity (1500–1650)
By the first quarter of the sixteenth century the Summa was widely used in teaching theology. The European religious scene, however, shifted dramatically after 1517, when the Augustinian Martin Luther mounted a challenge to the whole edifice of scholastic theology and the medieval conception of the church. Before looking at the encounter between Thomas and Luther, it will be useful to consider the status of the Summa among Catholic theologians during the period 1500–1550. In Roman Catholicism the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often described as the “Golden Age” of Thomist commentators, the time of “Second Thomism.” Many theologians set forth their views about philosophy, theology, ethics, and politics as much through their commentaries on the thirteenth-century Dominican’s book as through their own writings. Still, we should not think that everyone was a Thomist. As in the late Middle Ages, different theological schools still contended, but Thomism acquired a preponderance it had not enjoyed previously.
The most significant figure in early sixteenth-century Thomism was Tommaso di Vio, Cardinal Cajetan. Cajetan was educated in Naples and Bologna and in the 1490s began lecturing at Padua, where he contended with but also absorbed some of the Averroistic Aristotelianism popular in this center of Italian philosophy. He then went to Pavia (1497–99), where he was the first Italian to teach the Summa. The friar taught at Rome (1501–8) before becoming the Master General of the Dominicans (1508–18). Deeply involved in the Roman reaction against Luther, Cajetan confronted the Reformer at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, served on the theological commission that resulted in Luther’s excommunication in 1520, and wrote a number of treatises against his teaching. Cajetan became a bishop, papal legate, and eventually a cardinal. This Italian Dominican was not only a skilled politician but also an original thinker who wrote extensively on philosophy (especially commentaries on Aristotle), on biblical exegesis (late in life), and on Thomas. In the 1490s he composed a series of treatises collected under the title The Analogy of Names (1498) in which he advanced a metaphysics of analogy that he claimed was an explanation of Thomas, but which recent scholarship has seen as more his own construction. Nevertheless, The Analogy of Names was one of the most influential texts in the history of Thomism. Cajetan also took up the monumental task of writing the first full commentary on the Summa theologiae, which he published between 1508 and 1522. Although he expressed a basic adherence to Thomas, Cajetan was not loath to disagree with his Dominican predecessor on such issues as the ability of reason to prove the soul’s immortality, which the cardinal denied. Cajetan’s view of sacred teaching as a “habit of conclusions” was also not that of Thomas. Cajetan was not the first to introduce the non-Thomist notion of “pure nature” (natura pura) into his reading of the Summa’s account of the creation and finality of human nature, but he was surely among the most influential. The significant differences between the two thinkers, however, cannot be explored here.
Cajetan’s commentary on the Summa is based on a distinction between “formal exposition,” where he explains Thomas’s arguments in syllogistic form, and a “magisterial exposition,” where he treats issues raised by Aquinas’s positions. His respect for his predecessor is evident in the words of the Preface:
In the case of such a great collection of issues our vast Thomas (immensus Thomas) is not less to be admired for how he brought arguments and words together in a rational way than in how he treated and penetrated such a mass of material. The limpidity of his style is such that nothing can be added to it; taking anything away would be to reduce it to ashes.
Cajetan was one of the most influential of all Thomists, as witnessed by the fact that both the first papally approved printing of the Summa issued by Pius V in 1570–71 as well as the edition sponsored by Leo XIII include Cajetan’s Commentary along with the text of Thomas. Cajetan’s contemporary Francisco Silvestri of Ferrara (d. 1528), who also served as Dominican Master General, wrote an equally classic Commentary on the Summa contra Gentiles during this same period.
Cajetan’s Thomism, while the most significant of its time, had many rivals, as the influence of the Second Thomism deepened its hold on Catholic Europe. In the period up to the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 and Luther’s death in 1546, Thomism, and especially lecturing on the Summa theologiae, spread widely. If the use of the Summa had begun in Germany and moved on to Italy and France, its penetration into Spain, which became the most powerful Catholic state in the mid-sixteenth century, was crucial. As noted above, Peter Crockaert taught the Summa at Paris from 1507. Among his pupils was the Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (ca. 1483–1546), who studied at Paris between 1508 and 1522 and then returned to Spain to teach first at Valladolid (1523–26) and then at Salamanca (1526–46), the premier Spanish theological faculty. In both places Vitoria introduced the custom of lecturing on the Summa and thus helped establish the hold that Thomas had on Spanish theology for more than a century. Vitoria’s most noted contribution to Thomism was his Commentary on the Secunda Secundae, which laid the foundation for his defense of the human rights of the Indians of the New World and for his famous writings on just war (1538, 1539). The Dominican’s work has been seen as at the origins of modern views on international law and had an influence on the Protestant jurist and theologian Hugo Grotius (d. 1645). Other Salamancan Dominicans who left commentaries on the Summa include Vitoria’s pupil Domingo de Soto (d. 1560).
Thomists of the first half of the sixteenth century were in the forefront of the fight against Luther and his followers. But what was Luther’s view of Thomas and the Summa? Did the Reformer have a real encounter with the book? Luther was trained in medieval scholastic theology at Erfurt, though not in the via Thomae but in the via moderna of the Nominalists. He was certainly aware of Thomas to some extent through the use of the Dominican by the Nominalist theologian Gabriel Biel (d. 1495). Luther may have read something of Thomas during his training and after he began teaching at Wittenberg in 1511, but we are not sure. Thomism did not play any real role in his intellectual formation.
During the second decade of the sixteenth century Luther broke with the scholasticism in which he had been trained and eventually with the papal church. Luther’s initial reaction was primarily directed against the Nominalistic theology he knew well, as can be seen in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology of 1517. Like some Humanists but for different reasons, Luther felt that the original sin of scholasticism was the introduction of the foul water of philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, into the limpid springs of the Gospel. Thomas was certainly more than tainted by this error, so, however much Luther did or did not know of the Dominican, there was a significant difference in their conceptions of theology.
Luther had harsh things to say about Thomas from 1518 on. In his 1524 treatise Against the New Idol he denounces Thomas “as the source and foundation of all heresy, error, and obliteration of the Gospel.” Luther’s sharp language against Thomas, however, was provoked not so much by Thomas as by his followers. The Reformer’s main opponents in his attack on the validity of indulgences and other religious abuses of the day were Dominican Thomists, like Cajetan, Sylvester Prierias (d. 1523), and Ambrose Catharinus (d. 1553). Against their claims for Thomas as the ultimate authority in theology, Luther argued that no teacher, let alone Thomas, has an authority higher than scripture and the councils. Thomas’s views were theological opinions, not defined truth as the Thomists contended. As the disputes deepened, Luther came to agree with his opponents that Thomas’s teaching was, indeed, the mainstay of the papal church and was therefore in opposition to the Bible. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church of October 1520, he even denounces “the Thomistic church.” If Luther decisively rejected the authoritative Thomism of his day, we can still ask about the deeper relation between the theology of the Reformer and that of the thirteenth-century Dominican.
Modern research has given a more nuanced answer to this question than what was common in the pre-ecumenical era. Work still needs to be done on how much Luther may have actually had direct knowledge of Thomas and the Summa—though the answer seems to be relatively little. If historical research does not yield strong connections, attempts to compare the mode of theology of Aquinas and Luther, such as those conducted by Otto Hermann Pesch, have been more fruitful. The details of these comparisons cannot be pursued here, but the core of Pesch’s argument is that for all their serious differences, Thomas and Luther were often not as far apart as has been thought in the past, especially on such questions as the certitude of salvation, sin and grace, the role of faith and charity in salvation, and saving knowledge of God. Pesch argues that Thomas’s “sapiential style” of theology, that is, looking at the world objectively from God’s point of view as it were, in contrast to Luther’s “experiential style,” that is, “a way of doing theology from within the self-actuation of our existence in faith,” always needs to be taken into account when seeking to determine how far the Reformer really disagrees with the author of the Summa theologiae.
Had Luther been the only person disaffected by the abuses and intransigence of the late medieval church, he would have remained a footnote. His call for reexamination of questionable teachings and practices met with rapid success, not only among theologians, but also in wide swaths of believers across Europe. The Reformation sundering of Western Christianity was a matter of both ecclesiastical structures and theological differences, though the latter have often come to be seen today as misunderstandings as much as real differences. Obviously, Thomas and his Summa theologiae were mostly viewed in negative terms by the majority of the Reformers and their successors, but the rise of what has been called “Protestant scholasticism” in the late sixteenth century represents a complicated adoption and rejection of medieval scholasticism in general and of Thomas in particular. Learned Protestant divines, both on the Continent and in England, could scarcely avoid Thomas and the Summa, though their degree of knowledge and use varied.
During the two decades of upheaval that followed Luther’s attack on the papacy, the popes continued to resist serious reform while more and more areas in Europe abandoned obedience to Rome. Eventually, in December 1545 a council convened by Paul III met in Trent to address both the doctrinal challenges of the Reformers and to take up the issue of the reform of Catholic Christianity. The Council of Trent that met sporadically between 1545 and 1563 addressed the first charge by clearly laying out Roman Catholic theology against Reformation views on such issues as the relation of the Bible and tradition, original sin, justification, and the sacraments. Reform decrees on the parochial and diocesan levels were approved, but not for the Roman curia, where Pius IV, the last pope of the council period, reserved such reforms to himself. The Council of Trent helped form modern Catholicism down to the mid-twentieth century—the First Vatican Council of 1870 can be considered as a kind of addendum to issues of ecclesiology that Trent postponed due to lack of consensus.
A popular legend (one repeated by Leo XIII) has it that Thomas’s Summa theologiae was set up on the altar at Trent next to the Bible so that the council fathers could pay equal homage to these joint sources of truth. This never happened. The shifting membership of Trent during its many sessions included representatives from all the late medieval schools of theology: Thomists (i.e., Dominicans), Scotists (Franciscans, who appear to have had the largest number), and Augustinians, whose major representative was Cardinal Seripando (d. 1563). With regard to dogmatic issues, the council fathers wisely abstained from making decisions favoring one or the other position in the contested world of late medieval theology. As “committee documents,” the Tridentine decrees were framed in ways that would exclude Protestant “error,” but allow for readings consonant with Dominican, Franciscan, or Augustinian interpretations. A study of the conflicts between Thomists and Scotists in the debates on such issues as justification and the causality of the sacraments shows how consensus language was gradually achieved. Later attempts to make Trent a “Thomist” rejection of the Reformation are wide of the mark. This is not to say that the Thomists who attended Trent, such as Melchior Cano (d. 1560), Domingo de Soto, and Pietro Bertano, did not play significant roles in the discussions and final decisions.
The growing role of Thomism in Roman Catholicism was a product not of Trent, but of the classroom and of the papacy. Along with the widening academic use of the Summa theologiae in the first half of the sixteenth century, the proliferation of editions and commentaries grew exponentially. The Council of Trent and the subsequent Counter-Reformation introduced the period often referred to as the time of Baroque scholasticism (ca. 1550–1700). The Dominican Order, especially in Spain, emerged as the center of Thomism through the efforts of classic commentators on the Summa like Bartolomeo de Medina (d. 1580) and Domingo Bañez (d. 1604), as well as Seraphino Capponi (d. 1614) in Italy. Bañez, who served as Teresa of Avila’s confessor, was praised by Etienne Gilson as one of the few commentators on the Summa who got Thomas’s teaching on the primacy of existence (esse) right. Commenting on Ia, question 3.4, Bañez put it with some exasperation: “And this is what Thomas calls out so often and what Thomists don’t want to hear, that existence is the actuality of every form and nature.” Nonetheless, the most significant boost to the role of Thomas and the Summa in the wake of Trent was the initiative of the stern Dominican Michael Ghislieri, Pope Pius V (1566–72), who did much to further the reform initiated at Trent. In 1567 Pius took the unprecedented step of naming Thomas Aquinas a “Doctor of the Church,” a title hitherto restricted to eight traditional patristic teachers (four from Eastern Christianity and four from Western). Pius also sponsored what was meant to be the definitive edition of Opera omnia of Thomas Aquinas, which appeared in seventeen volumes in Rome in 1570–71 (the Editio Piana). The emergence of Thomas and the Summa as the central theological resource for Catholicism was now an established fact.
Another key moment in the history of Thomism was the adoption of the “Angelic Doctor” (as he was now called) as the official teacher of the Jesuit order organized by Ignatius Loyola from the 1520s on and given papal recognition in 1540. Ignatius himself (1491–1556) was not a theologian, but a converted soldier and courtier who devoted his energy, organizing skills, and deep piety to creating a new form of religious life that would combine action and contemplation. The highly disciplined, centralized, and well-educated Jesuits became the mainstay of the Counter-Reformation. Ignatius’s preference for the theology of Thomas Aquinas was evident (see his Constitutions of the Jesuit Order 4.14.1), but it was not until 1593 that the Jesuit General Chapter adopted Thomas as their official theologian. This decree, however, did allow departure from Thomas’s views in extraordinary cases, an exception that the Jesuits seem to have employed too frequently—at least as viewed by the Dominicans. The Jesuit theological school in Rome, the Collegio Romano, founded by Ignatius in 1551 and later supported by Pope Gregory XIII (1572–85)—today named after him as the Gregorian University—became another center for the study of Thomas. The Jesuits produced their own commentators on the Summa, such as Francisco de Toledo (d. 1596) and Gabriel Vazquez (d. 1604). The Jesuits were also responsible for the earliest dissemination of Thomas into Asia, when seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries led by Louis Buglio produced an edited Chinese version of the Summa (1654–78).
The greatest of the Jesuit thinkers of the time was Francisco Suarez (1548–1617). Suarez was very familiar with Thomas and wrote a long commentary on the Summa published between 1590 and 1620. This commentary was unusual in paying particular attention to the Christology of Thomas’s Tertia Pars, to which the Jesuit devoted no fewer than three volumes. A glance at these reveals how complex commentaries on the Summa had become. For example, the first volume of Suarez’s commentary on the IIIa, covering questions 1 to 26 (published 1590), contains not only Thomas’s text and Suarez’s explanation of it, but no fewer than fifty-six disputations, some of considerable length, defending and extending Thomas’s views. Suarez, like Cajetan, was an independent thinker, philosophically and theologically. The Spanish Jesuit’s metaphysics, for example, broke with Thomas and came closer to Scotus in teaching that being is a general category embracing both God and creatures and in denying the distinction of essence and existence in created beings. Despite his distance from Thomas, Suarezian “Thomism” was formative in Jesuit education for centuries.
During this time the Dominicans and Jesuits entered into theological combat, debates that often involved differing interpretations of Thomas. The most notorious was the controversy over the relation of grace and freedom called the “De auxiliis Controversy” because it concerned the “aids” (auxilia) to divine grace. This quarrel disturbed Catholicism from the 1580s until 1611 and continued to poison relations between the two orders well into the twentieth century. In 1584 Domingo Bañez published a Treatise on the System of Physical Predestination Founded on Preexistent Divine Decrees in which he set forth, on the basis of texts from Thomas, a form of predestination centered on divine decrees giving “irresistible grace” by way of what he called “physical premotion” to some people and denying it to others. Many thought that Bañez’s view denied the role of human freedom in the path to salvation. In 1588 the Jesuit Luis de Molina (d. 1600) argued for another approach in his Concord of Free Choice with the Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination and Reprobation. Molina contended that human cooperation with grace can be guaranteed only by grounding the efficacy of grace not in a divine decree, but in God’s foreknowledge of free human actions through what he called “middle knowledge” (scientia media), that is, the knowledge God alone has of what humans would do in any set of circumstances. Therefore, God gives grace to those he foreknows will cooperate with it. Bañez and the Dominicans said that they were following the authority of Augustine and Aquinas and accused Molina and his Jesuit supporters of Pelagianism. The Jesuits, including their foremost theologian Robert Bellarmine (d. 1621), responded that they were not innovators and that Bañez’s view contradicted Trent and was not different from that of the Protestant predestinarian theologian John Calvin. Disputations were held, accusations hurled back and forth, pamphlets and treatises issued on all sides. In 1598 Clement VIII mandated silence on both groups and established a special “Congregation on the Aids” to investigate the question. Molina came close to being condemned in 1598 and 1601, but the Jesuits staved off defeat. Clement VIII and his successor Paul V reserved final judgment to the papacy and heard endless arguments that resulted in mounds of evidence. Although the majority of the consulters wanted to censure some of Molina’s propositions, many of the cardinals and higher clergy convinced the pope that the issues involved were too intricate for a decision at the time. No conclusion was ever reached. The Congregation on the Aids was dissolved, and in 1607 Pope Paul issued an injunction ordering both parties to stop calling each other heretics and “hoping that they abstain from mutual harsh words signifying bitterness of soul.” On December 11, 1611, the Inquisition issued a decree that all writings on grace, even under the pretext of commenting on St. Thomas, would henceforth require its examination and approbation.
The last of the great Thomist commentators of this Golden Age began his teaching shortly afterward. John Poinsot, the son of a Hungarian nobleman and a Portuguese mother, was born in 1589 and entered the Dominicans in 1612, taking the religious name John of St. Thomas. He started teaching in 1620 and spent most of his career at the University of Alcalà, dying in 1644. John moved in the highest ecclesiastical and political circles, serving as advisor and confessor of Philip IV of Spain. He published his Thomistic Philosophical Course between 1632 and 1636, a work that remained in use in Catholic seminaries down into the twentieth century, though often in abridged or adapted form. His greatest work, however, was the unfinished eight-volume Thomistic Theological Course (1620–44), which followed the order of the Summa, although with many digressions and discussions of current issues. John of St. Thomas made extensive use of earlier commentaries, especially Cajetan and Suarez, though often disagreeing with the Jesuit. The most famous part of his influential commentary (the last section he lived to complete) was his treatise on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit discussed in Summa theologiae IaIIae, question 68, and IIaIIae, questions 8–9, 19, 45, 52, 121, and 139.
The Decline of Thomism (1650–1850)
The authority of Aquinas and the Summa in early modern Catholicism was evident not just in the ongoing loyalty of the Dominicans and the adherence of the Jesuits, but also by the fact that perhaps the greatest school of Thomists of the 1600s was that of the Spanish Carmelites. A succession of Carmelite professors at Alcalà called the Complutenses wrote a seven-volume philosophical survey of Thomas’s thought published from 1624 on. An even more weighty Theological Course on the Summa of St. Thomas was put out by the Carmelites of Salamanca between 1600 and 1725. The work of these Salmanticenses, as they were called, one of the largest commentaries on the Summa, is a monument to how different ages have understood and (mis)understood the Summa. These Carmelite commentators, for example, did not even deign to discuss the first two questions of the Prima Pars in which Thomas explains the significance of sacra doctrina and the existence of God, issues that were to become major in twentieth-century Thomism. The volumes devoted to the Tertia Pars feature an extensive treatment of the first twenty-six questions on Christology and then go on to treat the sacraments, but totally neglect questions 27 to 59 on Christ’s saving mysteries.
By the time the Salmanticenses completed their immense—and skewed—commentarial efforts Thomism was no longer an important part of the cutting edge of philosophical discussion in Europe. René Descartes published his Discourse on Method in 1637 and his Meditations on First Philosophy appeared in 1641. Although Descartes had some knowledge of scholastic thinking, his books set philosophy on a new course in their quest for a new form of philosophical certitude and the construction of a carefully articulated mathematical model for metaphysics. The Enlightenment philosophers who followed him, such as John Locke, David Hume, Christian Wolff, and Immanuel Kant, had little sympathy with Thomas, even when they had some familiarity with his thought. Comparative analyses of the philosophical differences between Aquinas and Kant, as well as other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophers, have been written, but these Thomist encounters are too complicated to be addressed here. The distance between Thomas’s sacra doctrina based on revealed truth and Kant’s critical and ethical philosophy is well illustrated by the title of one of Kant’s most famous writings, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries what Thomism there was in Catholic universities and seminaries was restricted to the production of long, dry commentaries. There was a good deal of eclecticism in many Catholic schools, with philosophical textbooks often more based on Suarez, Descartes, or Wolff, than on Thomas. Many Catholics of the Enlightenment Era lost interest in the world of Thomist commentary, concentrating rather on the positive, historical theology that had been born in the seventeenth century and grew strong in the eighteenth, as can be seen in the editions and publications of the Benedictines of the Congregation of St. Maur and the Bollandist Jesuits who inaugurated the critical edition of the lives of the saints (the Acta Sanctorum).
Despite this shift in interest, Thomism did not die out between 1700 and 1850, although even devoted Thomists admit that this era can be described as the nadir of Thomism. An incident from the end of the period illustrating the decline can be found in the career of the most famous Catholic thinker of the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman (1801–90). After Newman converted to Catholicism in 1846, he went to Rome for a year (November 1846–June 1847) to prepare for being ordained a Catholic priest. Newman had just published one of his most profound works, the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Already equipped with a deep knowledge of patristic theology, Newman seems to have hoped to find out more about Thomas Aquinas at the center of Catholicism. He was disappointed. A Jesuit father he encountered told him, “O no—he said—Aristotle is in no favor here—no, not in Rome: nor St. Thomas. I have read Aristotle and St. Thomas, and owe a great deal to them, but they are out of favor here and throughout Italy. St. Thomas is a great saint—people don’t dare to speak against him—they profess to reverence him, but put him aside.” Newman’s love of the Fathers had drawn him to Rome, but his knowledge of Thomas remained a distant and notional one, not a real knowing. Things were about to change.