Thomas Aquinas was born at the castle of Roccasecca,
near Naples, Italy, to a noble family. He
was sent away before he was five to be educated at
the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino,
where his father’s brother was abbot. Later he studied
at the University of Naples. In this culturally
rich environment Thomas became familiar with
the writings of the Muslim thinkers AVICENNA and
AVERROËS, whose study of the Greek philosopher
ARISTOTLE, the ideas of whom had been almost forgotten
following the collapse of the Roman Empire,
was beginning to attract the interest of
Christian Europe. Thomas Aquinas was among
those who studied Aristotle’s theories.
In Naples, Aquinas also met members of the
new Dominican order of mendicant friars,who led
a more austere and self-denying life than that practiced
by the older established monastic orders such
as the Benedictines. Aquinas was still a teenager
when he decided to join the Dominicans.His family
opposed this decision and held him captive for
more than a year, trying to force him to change his
mind. Eventually they had to accept that their efforts
were wasted, and he was allowed to take his
vows in 1244.
The Dominicans sent young Thomas to
Cologne to study with the scholar Albertus Magnus
(later known as Saint Albert the Great, ca.
1200–80). Albertus Magnus had made an extensive
study of Aristotle, and this shared interest contributed
to the close relationship between master
and pupil, which lasted for many years. Aquinas
moved to Paris when Albertus Magnus took up a
teaching position there in 1245. After completing
his studies, he remained in Paris as a professor for
another three years.He then spent 10 years in Italy,
much of the time in attendance on the pope, but
returned to Paris for another three years before
taking up a teaching position at the University of
Naples. A mystical experience in 1273 that made all
his work seem to him “like straw,” as he told a
friend, led to his ceasing to write, but he continued
with his teaching and administrative work.
When he was about 50 years old, he was on his way
to Lyons on church business when he died, not far
from his birthplace.
Critical Analysis
Thomas Aquinas wrote more than 60 works, all in
Latin, the language of scholarship in his day. There
are sermons, biblical commentaries, polemical
tracts (he was often called on by Church leaders to
respond to controversies and potential heresies),
philosophical expositions, and theological works.
His 13 commentaries on the works of Aristotle are
still valued by students of philosophy for the help
they give in understanding Aristotle’s ideas, but as
a Christian philosopher, Aquinas probably saw
them more as a means to a clear understanding of
the unity of God’s creation.
The early medieval Catholic Church tended to
dismiss classical philosophers like Aristotle, who
had lived before the time of Christ, as pagan and
therefore irrelevant or even harmful to Christianity.
Aquinas demonstrated that Aristotle’s ideas were in
fact compatible with Christian teaching. Aristotle’s
confidence in the capacity of human reason to uncover
the underlying order in the universe by
studying the details of creation was pursued by
Aquinas, who identified that underlying order with
God. Aristotle’s proof of the existence of a prime
mover was developed by Aquinas as proof of the
existence of God. His modification of Aristotle’s
approach was to argue that human reason could
not discover everything, and God’s revelation was
needed to discover the fullness of truth.
Aquinas’s greatest book, the Summa Theologica,
which he began around 1265 and was still working
on when he stopped writing in 1273, was conceived
as an aid to students of theology and
metaphysics. The original title, Summa Totius The-
ologiae, may be translated as “the summary of all
theology,” and the work is indeed ambitious. It has
three parts, dealing with the nature of God, ethics,
and Christ. In a logical progression of ideas,
Aquinas takes a philosophical and theological approach
to reconciling the concepts of reason and
faith. He includes commentaries by such philosophers,
theologians, and scholars as Avicenna, IBN
GABIROL, Averroës, AUGUSTINE, and MAIMONIDES.
Aquinas was the most important Christian theologian
of the European MIDDLE AGES, providing a
new balance between theology and philosophy
that held until the age of science began in the 17th
century.
Aquinas was officially recognized as a saint by
the Church in 1373, and his teachings (collectively
known as “Thomism”) have become identified
with the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
His work is still studied by modern philosophers.
English Versions of Works by
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings. Edited by
Timothy McDermott. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages
of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.
Edited by Peter Kreeft. San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1993.
St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics: A New
Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations. Translated
by Paul E. Sigmund. New York: Norton,
1988.
Works about Saint Thomas Aquinas
Flannery, Thomas L. Acts Amid Precepts: The Aristotelian
Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas’s
Moral Theory.Washington,D.C.: Catholic University
of America Press, 2001.
McInerny, Ralph. A First Glance at Thomas Aquinas:
Handbook for Peeping Thomists. Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.
Nichols, Aidan. Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction
to His Life, Work, and Influence. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003.