The Life of Thomas
Thomas was born into a somewhat large, aristocratic family in southern Italy near Naples. He is called âAquinasâ as a branch of his family once held the county of Aquino, which is part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in Italy. The familyâs castle wasâand still is todayâlocated in the town of Roccasecca, and it was here that Thomas was born around 1225âgive or take a year. At this time, Thomasâ family had some degree of political clout due to their geographical location at the boundary of the power struggle between Emperor Frederick II and the papacy; the allegiances of various family members, including Thomasâ father and some of his brothers, shifted between emperor and pope. This complex political landscape no doubt influenced Thomasâ treatise On Kingship to the King of Cyprus (De regno), in which he draws a clear distinction between secular and religious spheres of authority; although he reserves ultimate moral authority to the papacy for reasons that will become evident when we discuss the Summaâs treatise on law.
As was customary for the youngest son of an aristocratic family, Thomas left Roccasecca at the age of five or six to enter the Benedictine Archabbey of Monte Cassino and then later the Benedictine house of studies in Naples. Given his familyâs social position and his already evident intellectual acumen, Thomasâ father, Landolfo, probably expected that his son would rise through the ranks of the Benedictine Order to become the abbot of Monte Cassino, a position of immense ecclesiastical power at the time. Like many rebellious youths, however, Thomas disrupted his fatherâs plans for him by abandoning the well-established Benedictines to join the newly founded Order of Preachersâinformally known as the âDominicansâ after their founder, St. Dominic (1170â1221)âadopting the white habit with black cloak around April 1244. The Dominicans were one of two mendicant orders founded in the 12th centuryâthe other being the Franciscans. As mendicants, members of both orders took vows of absolute poverty while devoting themselves to a life defined by their orderâs particular charism_ service to the poor for the Franciscans and preaching for the Dominicans. Intellectually gifted members of both orders, however, could attain seats of academic leadership in the emerging universities, which we will discuss in further detail below.
A month after he entered the Dominican Order in Naples, Thomasâ mother, Theodora, went there in an attempt to dissuade him from his Dominican vocation. By the time she arrived, though, Thomasâ superiors had secreted him to Rome and were preparing to send him further away from his familyâs influence. Just north of Rome, however, Thomas was accosted by a party led by his brother, Rinaldo. Peaceful by nature, Thomas did not physically fight his captors and went willingly, ensuring only that he was able to take his breviaryâa book of daily prayers, known as the âLiturgy of the Hours,â required for clergy and members of religious orders. The only remarkable feature of his arrest is that his captors were unable to remove his Dominican habitâone of the hagiographical moments of Thomasâ life intended to demonstrate his unswerving vocation. He was brought back to Roccasecca and kept under âhouse arrestâ for over a year. Although one may be tempted to the image of a âfriar in distressâ locked away in the castle tower, Thomas was by no means mistreated by a family who, after all, loved him dearly. He enjoyed the freedom of the castle grounds, received visitorsâincluding fellow Dominicansâand was able to carry out his studies of the Bible and other texts expected of him by the order. There is, of course, the (in)famous story of his older brothers pulling an atypical sibling prank and sending a prostitute to Thomasâ room, whom he allegedly chased away with a hot iron from his fireplace and then vowed himself to perpetual chastity. Finally, unable to convince him to abandon his vocation, Thomasâ family allowed him to return to the Dominicans. This incident, however, did not sour Thomasâ relationship with his family, as there are records of his visiting some of his siblings during his travels and even arranging for financial assistance to his family in a time of dire need. Just before he died, in fact, Thomas resided for brief recuperative periods at his sister Theodoraâs and his niece Francescaâs respective homes.
Upon his return to the Dominicans, Thomas was sent to begin his formal studies. First, in Paris for about three years, Thomas completed his education in the liberal artsâlogic, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and musicâas well as encountering Aristotelian philosophy. Later, in Cologne, Thomas was under the tutelage of the Dominican master Albert the Great (c. 1193â1280). In a final, but certainly not mean-spirited, snub at his family, Thomas turned down an offer directly from Pope Innocent IV to become the abbot of Monte Cassino, despite being a Dominican, in order to study with Albert. For four years, Thomas worked closely with Albert, performing tasks such as organizing the latterâs course notes, including his lectures on Aristotleâs Nicomachean Ethics, the influence of which is evident in Thomasâ own later commentary on that work. During this time, Thomas also began to deliver his own lectures to his Dominican brethren on Sacred Scripture. It was apparently around this time that Thomas acquired the dubious nickname âthe Dumb Oxâ from his peers, ridiculing him for his stout stature and taciturn nature. Thomas disdained idle speech, but rather believed that every word uttered should be in the service of God. Albert, justifiably impressed when his star pupil handily responded to a series of difficult questions in a disputatio with his classmates, admonished Thomasâ confreres with the prescient claim, âWe call him the Dumb Ox, but the bellowing of that ox will resound throughout the whole world.â
In 1252, Thomas returned to Paris to begin lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1096â1164). In some respects, Lombardâs Sentences was the Summa of its day. But rather than a systematic presentation of arguments defending particular conclusions to various questions against objectorsâas is the case with Thomasâ SummaâLombardâs text collected the teachings of the early Christian Fathers, such as Augustine, John Chrysostom, and Pope Gregory the Great, organized around various theological topics. As was expected of him to progress to the next academic level, Thomas wrote an extensive commentary on Lombardâs Sentencesâakin to writing a doctoral dissertation today. In this earliest of Thomasâ large-scale projects, he begins to use Aristotle as an authoritative resource, citing him twice as much as he cites Augustine. We will look at the rise of Aristotleâs influence on Thomas and other Christian thinkers later on. During this time, Thomas also authored two shorter, but still intellectually powerful, treatises: On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia) and On the Principles of Nature (De principiis naturae). These writings are noteworthy not only for their content, but also for the evident influence of two Arabic thinkers impacting Thomasâ thought: Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd). As we will see further below, the Christian intellectual tradition owes a tremendous debt to these Muslim scholars for preserving and commenting upon the Aristotelian corpus, which was largely lost to the Latin world following the final destruction of the Alexandrian library in Egypt in the 4th century.
Although his commentary on Lombardâs Sentences was not yet complete, in 1256 Thomas took up the duties of a âMaster of Sacred Scriptureââa title commensurate today with being a newly minted Ph.D. These duties were legere (to read), disputare (to dispute or argue), and praedicare (to preach). The first involves reading and commenting on the Bible, and this would constitute Thomasâ typical, everyday teaching activity. The second is a more active form of pedagogy that became one of the most distinctive characteristics of 13th-century academic life. Instead of passively listening to the masterâs lecture on a particular topic, students and other faculty members would pelt the master with argument after argument on a subject of the masterâs choosing. One of the masterâs advanced studentsâin effect, a graduate teaching assistantâwould offer a preliminary response to each of these arguments. Then, the master would offer a definitive resolution to the question at hand. Transcriptions of these disputations would be later edited by the master into a publishable form. We have redacted accounts of several disputations in which Thomas engaged on matters of truth (De veritate), evil (De malo), spiritual creatures (De spiritualibus creaturis), virtues (De virtutibus), the soul (De anima), the power of God (De potentia Dei), and the Incarnation (De unione Verbi incarnati). In addition, during Advent and Lent each year, a public disputation would be held for the entire university community in which questions of whatever sort (quaestiones quodlibetales) could be hurled at the master by students and peers. Thomas no doubt found this form of teaching both more exciting and more illuminating for his students, as he modeled the structure of the Summa on the disputatio format. Thomasâ third duty in his position at the University of Paris was to preach and, lest we commit the error of focusing solely on his academic scholarship, we must recall that the fundamental mission of the Dominican Order is to preach the Christian Gospel. Thomas did so on a regular basis and there are a number of extant sermons attributed to him. Furthermore, he composed a variety of specifically liturgical works, including prayers and hymns such as the widely popular Adoro Te and Panis angelicus, as well as a Mass and the Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi incorporated into the Liturgy of the Hours.
Thomas did not spend his entire career in Paris, although this is where he is most associated. As expected for a Dominican of his stature, Thomas attended the General Chapter meeting for the order at Valenciennes in June 1259. Following this date, there is uncertainty as to his whereaboutsâwhether he returned to Paris or was in Italy for the next two years. From 1261 to 1265, however, Thomas was assigned as a lectorâreader and commentator on Sacred Scriptureâat the Dominican convent in Orvieto. This time afforded Thomas the luxury of composing many works, including the second of his major systematic worksâafter his commentary on Lombardâs Sentencesâthe Summa contra Gentiles (Summary [of the Christian Faith] against Unbelievers), which we will look at in detail later on, as well as an extensive commentary on the Book of Job. In 1265, Thomas was commissioned by his Dominican superiors to found a house of studies (studium) for the order at Santa Sabina in Rome. It was during these three years in Rome, inspired by the carte blanche he no doubt enjoyed in designing a curriculum of the new studium as he saw fit, that Thomas began composing the first part of the Summa theologiae.
Thomas returned to Paris in 1268. For the next four years, he lectured, participated in disputations, and wrote prodigiously. Reportedly, he dictated to three or even four secretaries simultaneously drafting texts as diverse as a commentary on one of Aristotleâs works, a redaction of a recent disputation, a short polemical treatise on a controversial subject, a Scriptural commentary, or a section of the second part of the Summa theologiae. He was also embroiled in more pragmatic disputes concerning the status of the mendicant ordersâFranciscans and Dominicansâas academic leaders above other faculty. Physical attacks were not uncommon; sometimes, Thomas and his fellow friars had to be protected by a detachment of royal archers. In 1272, in light of a dispute between the university and the Bishop of Paris, Thomas returned to Naples, where his Dominican vocation was rooted, and founded a new studium. He evidently chose Naples himself as the location of this new house of studies, as opposed to Rome or Orvieto, due to the cityâs âvitalityâ as a (at that time) Sicilian seaport where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures intersected. Thomas, as we will see further below, was intellectually cosmopolitan. In Naples, he conducted courses on the Epistles of St. Paul and on the Psalms, while also composing the third part of the Summa and several other works.
Perhaps simply exhausted by his non-stop intellectual efforts, perhaps suffering a mild stroke, or perhaps experiencing a vision of the Divine Essenceâor perhaps both the latterâThomas suddenly stopped all scholarly activity after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. He said to his primary secretary (socius), Reginald of Piperno, âI cannot do any more. Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen.â After a period of rest at his sisterâs home in San Severino, Thomas returned to Naples before being summoned to the Council of Lyons convened by Pope Gregory X. En route, Thomas struck his head on a tree branch and fell illâperhaps from a hemorrhaged blood clotânear his nieceâs home and was taken there to recuperate. He later requested to be taken to the monastery at Fossanova. His health declining, he still continued to teach from his bedside, composing a commentary on the Song of Songs as a form of gratitude to the monks at Fossanova. Thomas died on March 7, 1274; he was about 49 years old. His body was moved around to various places that wanted to claim his spiritual patronage and now rests in Toulouse, France.
