This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part I.
“He will enter the Order of Friars Preachers and so great will be his learning and sanctity that in his day no one will be found to equal him.” So a hermit told Theodora, the countess of Teano (in Italy), of the child she carried in her womb. The child, whom they named Thomas, was born in 1225 (some accounts say 1227) to the countess and her husband, Landulph, count of Aquino (for which Thomas has been called “Aquinas”). Thomas Aquinas lived to fulfill this prophecy—despite, as it turned out, his family’s opposition.
Thomas’s parents had their own plans for his future. When he was five years old, they sent him to the Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino, whose abbot was Thomas’s uncle. The education he would receive from the monks could have been the beginning of an illustrious career in the Church—as an abbot, perhaps, or a bishop. At the monastery school, Thomas was known to be an unusually bright and thoughtful student who loved meditation and prayer. He surprised his teachers by asking frequently, “What is God?”
So brilliant was young Thomas that the abbot insisted that he be sent to the University of Naples. So, to Naples he went—when he was only 10 or 11 years old. There he studied the liberal arts and astounded his teachers by his deep and clear understanding. In Naples, Thomas met members of the new Dominican order. So impressed was he by their life and dedication to study that he desired to join them. However, the Dominican prior in Naples told the young man—then 16 years old—to wait three years before entering the order. The prior knew Thomas’s parents would likely oppose their son’s decision.
Thomas’s parents were rich and powerful. Related, as they were, to the Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II, as well as to the kings of France, Aragon, and Castile, they would not like the thought of Thomas entering an order of mendicants—religious beggars! So it was that, when they heard about Thomas becoming a Dominican in 1244, his parents were quite upset. The countess tried to persuade her son to change his mind. She even asked the archbishop of Naples and the pope himself to force Thomas to leave the Dominicans. But when these measures did not work, and Thomas refused to change his mind, his parents took more drastic steps.
At their mother’s insistence, Thomas’s two brothers, who were knights, kidnapped him and put him in a fortress belonging to their father at Rocca Secca. There Thomas remained, imprisoned by his own family, for three years. During that time his parents, brothers, and sisters tried by various means to force him to change his mind and abandon the Dominicans. Seeing they could not shake his resolve and that even Pope Innocent IV and the Emperor Frederick II were opposed to their treatment of Thomas, the family at long last let him go free.
Thomas returned to Naples, where he made his final profession as a Dominican. From Naples, his superiors sent him to the University of Paris. On the way he traveled to Cologne in Germany to study with the celebrated teacher, Albert the Great (or Albertus Magnus). The German Albert, a fellow Dominican, was one of the most brilliant scholars of his time, a man who was interested in many areas of learning, including the study of the natural world. While in Cologne, Thomas spoke little—which his fellow students thought was because of dullness and stupidity. And because Thomas was a large man, they called him the “dumb ox.” But the great Albert came to see that behind Thomas’s humble silence lay a great intellect. Once, after Thomas defended a difficult thesis, Albert exclaimed, “we call this young man a dumb ox, but the bellowing of that ox will one day resound through the whole world.”
In time, Thomas received his doctorate in theology at Paris and taught there in the Dominican faculty. Young Dominicans from all over Europe eagerly attended his lectures because of the power and clearness of his thought. He had achieved complete mastery of Aristotle’s philosophy, and he showed how it could be used in leading one to a deeper understanding of Divine Revelation.
Thomas brought Aristotle’s thought together with Divine Revelation in a great work of theology, called the Summa Theologica (Theological Summary). Thomas began his Summa as an attempt to write a textbook in theology for his brother Dominicans. The work grew to encompass almost all the questions asked by medieval theologians.
Thomas Aquinas’s teachings were at first accepted only by his own Dominicans. Indeed, many of his ideas were hotly disputed for centuries. But his theological writings have exerted great influence on the teachings of the Catholic Church, and he has given his name to a still influential philosophy that is called “Thomism” after him.
Thomas traveled across Europe several times during his life, typically on a donkey’s back. After spending some years in Paris, teaching his fellow Dominicans, he went to Orvieto in Italy to teach at the papal court. He taught there from 1259 to 1269, while also writing a treatise on the Blessed Sacrament. In a chapel one night, as Thomas knelt in prayer before the altar, he heard a voice that seemed to come from the crucifix: “Thou hast written well of me, what reward wouldst thou have?” To which Thomas said, “Nothing but thyself, Lord.”
Thomas returned to Paris, where he taught for a few more years. In 1272, he went to Naples to form a Dominican House of Studies at the university there. In Naples, however, he ceased work on his Summa, leaving it unfinished. He had received a vision of God. To one of his brother Dominicans, he said, “the end of my labors is come. All that I have written seems to me so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” This was in 1273.
The next year, an ailing Thomas began his final journey. He went to attend the general council at Lyons in France. On his way north, however, his illness forced him to stop at the Cistercian monastery of Fossanova, south of Rome. At that monastery Thomas made his final profession of faith, just before he received the viaticum for the dying. “I receive Thee,” he prayed, “the price of my redemption, for whose love I have watched, studied, and labored. Thee have I preached; thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against thee. If anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance.”
Thomas Aquinas died at Fossanova on March 7, 1274. His remains were solemnly transported to the Dominican church at Toulouse, France, in 1367. The Church observes St. Thomas’s feast on January 28.
The Church canonized Thomas as a saint in 1323 and named him a Doctor of the Church in 1567. In 1880, Pope Leo XIII declared Thomas’s work the foundation of Catholic thought and accorded him the title Doctor Angelicus. He is the patron of all Catholic universities, colleges, academies, and schools throughout the world.
Comentários