Thomas Aquinas

Thomas was born about 1225 at Roccasecca, between Rome and Naples, the youngest son of the count of Aquino. His family sent him at five to the great Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, expecting him eventually to be its abbot, a rich and respectable position for a younger son.

He studied at Naples instead, met the Dominicans, and joined them. The Dominicans were beggars. His family reacted by having him kidnapped on the road and held in the family castle for about a year. His brothers, according to the early accounts, put a prostitute in his room to break his resolve; he drove her out with a burning stick. His mother finally let him go.

He went north to Cologne and Paris and studied under Albert the Great. He was large and silent, and the other students called him the dumb ox. Albert told them that the bellowing of this ox would be heard around the world.

He taught at Paris, at the papal court, at Naples. He wrote at enormous speed, sometimes dictating to several secretaries at once on different subjects.

The project of his life was to show that reason and revelation do not contradict each other. The works of Aristotle had recently come back into Europe through Arabic and Greek translations, and they looked dangerous, a complete, powerful account of the world built without Scripture. Some churchmen wanted them banned. Thomas took them up instead and argued that truth found by reason and truth given by revelation come from the same God, and cannot finally conflict. Grace, he wrote, does not destroy nature but perfects it.

The Summa Theologiae is the result: thousands of questions, each stated, each answered first by the strongest objections against his own position, then decided, then the objections answered one by one. He wrote it, he said, for beginners. He also wrote the Summa Contra Gentiles, and commentaries on most of Aristotle and on much of Scripture, Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Matthew, John, and all of Paul. The Eucharistic hymns Pange Lingua and Adoro Te Devote are his.

On 6 December 1273, while saying Mass at Naples, something happened to him. He stopped writing. His secretary Reginald pressed him to finish the Summa, and Thomas answered: I cannot, because everything I have written seems like straw to me compared to what I have seen. He never wrote another line. The Summa is unfinished.

He died on 7 March 1274 at the abbey of Fossanova, on the road to a church council, about forty-nine years old.

Sources: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles; William of Tocco, Vita Sancti Thomae Aquinatis; G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. V.