St. Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born around 1225 in Roccasecca, a hilltop castle in the Kingdom of Naples, into one of the most prominent noble families of southern Italy. As the youngest son of Landulf of Aquino and Theodora, Countess of Theate, he was expected to follow in the footsteps of his kinsmen and become a Benedictine abbot, a path that would have brought both ecclesiastical prestige and family honor. From childhood, he was educated at the nearby Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, where his early aptitude for learning was unmistakable. The political turmoil of the Hohenstaufen period in southern Italy shaped the volatile world into which he was born, and it would later influence his decision to refuse a position within the family's sphere of influence.

Around 1244, Thomas made a decision that scandalized his family: he joined the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, who were then a relatively new mendicant order known for itinerant preaching and theological study. His family responded by imprisoning him at the family castle for roughly a year, hoping to dissuade him from what they saw as a humiliating step down from noble ambitions. According to tradition, his sisters helped him escape through a window, and he eventually made his way north to study in Paris and Cologne, where he became a student of the great Albert the Great. In Cologne, the other students reportedly nicknamed him the 'Dumb Ox' because of his slow, deliberate speaking style and large frame, though Albert reportedly replied that his student would one day make the whole world resound with his learning.

Thomas spent much of his career teaching and writing at the University of Paris and in various Dominican studia in Italy. In 1256, he was appointed regent master at the University of Paris's Faculty of Theology, an extraordinarily high position for a man still in his early thirties, and one that placed him at the center of the major intellectual debates of the age. His most famous work, the Summa Theologica, was conceived as a comprehensive manual of Christian theology that would systematically present the doctrines of the faith and address every conceivable objection to them. Although it remained unfinished at his death, the Summa is one of the towering works of medieval thought, alongside the Summa contra Gentiles and a host of commentaries on Aristotle, Peter Lombard, and Scripture. Thomas's synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology helped shape the Catholic intellectual tradition for centuries and continues to be studied seriously in seminaries and philosophy departments.

Thomas was also remembered as a man of personal holiness and asceticism. Late in life, according to a well-attested tradition, he experienced a profound mystical vision during Mass that so overwhelmed him that he declared all of his writings to be like 'straw' compared to what he had seen. He died on March 7, 1274, at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, while traveling to the Council of Lyon. He was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, and his theology has been cited, at varying points, as a touchstone for Catholic thought. In 1567, Pope Pius V declared him a Doctor of the Church, giving him the title 'Doctor Angelicus,' and his remains were eventually translated to the Church of Saint-Jacques in Toulouse.