Priest, Church doctor and Dominican friar, the highly intelligent St. Thomas Aquinas wrote great doctrinal works, including the famous ‘Summa Theologica’.
Newsroom (04/02/2025 14:30, Gaudium Press) Thomas was born on the outskirts of Aquino, at the end of 1224 or the beginning of the following year, into one of the most illustrious families in the Kingdom of Sicily. His relatives included his uncle, Emperor Purplebeard, and his cousin, Frederick II of the Holy Empire.
Desirous of seeing one of their offspring on the abbatial throne of the Monastery of Monte Cassino, located in the vicinity of the family fiefdom, his parents arranged for little Thomas to enter religious life. He was barely six years old and already on the path of the great St. Benedict. Provided with a profound and at the same time elevated spirit, he reflected on the truths of the Faith that he heard. Even at the beginning of his education, he was known for asking his confreres for a full explanation of who God was.
Contact with the Order of Preachers
Due to certain dissensions between the Holy Empire and Rome, his parents sent him to Naples at the age of fourteen to study the liberal arts at the university that had just been set up there. It was during this period that his true vocation blossomed. When he came into contact with the Order of Preachers, recently founded by St. Dominic of Guzman, he was greatly attracted and joined its ranks.
However, because it was mendicant, the Order clashed with the worldly standards of the time, especially his parents’ goals of human fulfilment. For this reason, his mother ordered the other children to kidnap Thomas and take him back home.
Master in Paris
After his imprisonment among his own people ended in 1245, the young religious was taken by the Superior General of the Dominicans himself to the then capital of Christian thought: Paris, the ‘new Athens’. It was at the Convent of Saint-Jacques that he found the atmosphere of seclusion and meditation necessary to make the most of his studies. In order to study theology, he entered the university, where he was joined by the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, and by his guide and teacher, St. Albert the Great, the Universal Doctor, whom he followed three years later to Cologne.
In 1252, at the age of 27, he returned to Paris as a bachelor and began teaching in order to obtain a master’s degree. In March of 1256, he received the licentia docendi together with St. Bonaventure. During this time, he wrote commentaries on the Book of Sentences by Peter Lombard, as well as on the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Book of Isaiah. Four years later, he wrote the Summa contra gentiles, a work which addresses the philosophical principles that underpin the Christian faith.
His prestige as a sage and saint had reached the highest ecclesiastical circles. Between 1259 and 1268, he was summoned to accompany the pontifical court on trips to Italy as the Pope’s theologian-consultant. He reconciled his new role with his magistracy in Paris.
An ardent devotee of the Blessed Sacrament
Thomas loved the Bread of Angels so much that he was the first to wake up at night to prostrate himself before the tabernacle. When the bell rang for Matins, he would secretly return to his cell so that no one would notice him. Divine Providence, however, arranged events in such a way as to manifest to the world the Eucharistic ardour that overflowed from the heart of this great man.
It is said that Urban IV, in order to create his own office for the newly instituted Solemnity of Corpus Christi, asked each of his principal theologians to draw up a proposal in order to choose the most suitable one. When the deadline had passed, they all met with the Pope and, not without reluctance, St. Thomas was the first to read his own work. Hearing the praises coming from the Aquinate’s heart caused a general rapture. St. Bonaventure, who was also there, was so impressed by the content of the Angelic Doctor’s composition that he tore up his writings and was then imitated by the others. An attitude of unusual humility, unfortunately rare in intellectual circles…
From the Lauda Sion sequence, whose praises will always fall short of what is deserved, the purest and most devout cry seems to rise to Heaven from those who find in the Sacrament of the Altar the Real Presence of that same Jesus who, triumphant, strolled through Galilee after the Resurrection encouraging his Apostles.
Counsellor to the king
When he returned to Paris in 1269, St. Louis IX appointed him his private counsellor.
The holy monarch once invited him to his table for a meal. Without worrying about the prestige that such an invitation entailed, he excused himself on the grounds that he was dictating the Summa Theologica, a work that could not easily be interrupted. The king then turned to the saint’s superior, who in the name of obedience ordered him to attend.
While the diners chatted in a lively manner, Friar Thomas remained oblivious, immersed in his own thoughts. The courtiers, amused and intrigued, watched the singular guest who suddenly struck the table, exclaiming in a loud voice: ‘Modo conclusum est contra hæresim Manichæi!’ He had just found the decisive argument against the heresy of the Manichaeans and couldn’t contain his joy. Astonished, the superior reprimanded him, warning him that he was in the presence of the king and the nobles. However, St. Louis, who shared the same ideals of conquering the truth and serving God, ordered his personal secretary to take note of the newly explained argument.
Mysterious vision
Two years before his death, obedience sent him back to his homeland to found a great Dominican theological centre like the one in Rome. In the little time he had left, he dedicated himself to writing the third part of the Summa Theologica, which ended up being incomplete…
After the feast of St. Nicholas, Reginaldo de Piperno, his faithful secretary, noticed that Thomas had stopped writing and was quieter than usual. He asked him why he was doing this. ‘I cannot anymore,’ replied the master. After much insistence from Reginaldo, he finally said, asking for a reservation: ‘Everything I have written so far seems to me to be just rubbish compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me’.
‘I leave everything to the correction of the Holy Church’
A few months later, Pope Gregory X convened an ecumenical council in Lyon, in which the Angelic Doctor was to take part. The latter, increasingly focused on supernatural realities and detached from the world, was stopped in the middle of his journey by a mortal illness.
Worthy of note are his words after receiving the viaticum: ‘I receive You, pledge of my soul’s ransom, I receive You, viaticum of my pilgrimage. For love of You, I have studied, sailed and worked; I have preached and taught You. I have said nothing against You, but if I have, it has been without knowing it; I do not persist obstinately in my judgements; if I have spoken wrongly in relation to this and the other Sacraments, I leave everything to the correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now leave the world.’
On 7 March 1274, having piously received the last Sacraments, he gave up his spirit. He was finally able to contemplate without veils the One whom he had sought to know and love since childhood, and for whose sake he had made his future.
Extract from the Heralds of the Gospel Magazine no. 259, July 2023. By Rodrigo Siqueira Pinto Ferreira.
