Part Three Italy (1259–68)
PART THREE ITALY
(1259–68)
Thomas had been absent from Italy for some fourteen years when he returned in 1259, more likely than not first going to his home priory in Naples. I say more likely than not because historians are far from being of one mind on how Thomas spent the ten years before his return to Paris in 1269. If he did indeed return to Naples, he would have remained there until 1261 when he assumed the post of lecturer in the convent at Orvieto. It is thought that Thomas was associated with the papal court, which in those years was something of a movable feast, spending time in one town or another north of Rome. In Viterbo there is a pulpit on a street corner from which Thomas Aquinas allegedly preached during these years. From 1265 to 1268, Thomas was regent master at Santa Sabina in Rome.
But of course it is the works Thomas wrote during this period that most interest us. Before leaving Paris he conceived the idea of the Summa contra Gentiles, a work in four books, the first three of which were to be a defence of the faith on the basis of principles available to all, not only to adherents of other religions of the Book, but to non-believers as well. Only in Book 4 does Thomas claim to be mounting formally theological arguments, that is, arguments whose premisses are supernatural truths that God has chosen to reveal. The work was completed in 1265 and we have the bulk of the text in Thomas’s own hand. But the text also indicates another factor in the literary production of Thomas, the help of secretaries. Increasingly, he would dictate to a Dominican socius assigned to him for this purpose. Reginald of Piperno thus makes his dé but in the career of Thomas, a faithful and devoted companion to the end. But there are other hands in evidence as well, indicating that Thomas had the help of more than one confrère in his writing.
Among the scriptural commentaries contemporary with the Summa contra Gentiles, mention must be made of that on Job. In the prologue Thomas tells us that he intends to produce a commentary on the literal meaning of the text, its moral meaning having been exhaustively treated by St Gregory the Great. Boleslaw Sobocinski, the logician, professed to be an admirer of this commentary because of its logical sophistication. Increasingly, students of Thomas’s biblical writings are recognizing the importance of his commentary on Job. Thomas also composed the extraordinary Golden Chain during this period, beginning it at Orvieto and completing it in Rome. Patristic sources are mined to produce a commentary on the four Gospels: it is one of the most self-effacing of Thomas’s works. He is nowhere in it, yet of course presides over the selection and orchestration of the texts. This is a work that found its way into English because of the interest of John Henry Newman and his fellows in the Oxford Movement.
Thomas’s three-year stay at Santa Sabina is notable for several reasons. First, the Disputed Question on the Power of God, from which we have selected the imposing Question 7 dealing with the divine simplicity and the reach of human language to speak of God. Second, in his final year in Rome, Thomas commented on Aristotle’s On the Soul . This was the first of twelve commentaries on Aristotelian works he would compose during the next five years. Finally, it was in Rome that Thomas began the Summa theologiae, writing there the first part of that magisterial work.