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28 January: St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church

The universe has nothing greater than the human soul

“Because we cannot know what God is, but rather what he is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how he is not”, Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote. Thomas was born in 1225 in Roccasecca, in the province of Frosinone, to one of the most prominent families in Italy. Because he was the youngest child, he was destined for an ecclesiastical career. At the age of five, he entered Montecassino as a “puer oblatus”, and at fifteen, he studied Aristotelian philosophy, grammar, natural sciences, Arabic science and Greek philosophy at the University of Naples.

When he was 19 years old, he joined the Dominican Order. His decision was met with strong opposition from his family, who had him kidnapped on the road to Paris. However, he continued to pursue his studies in theology at the Dominican convent of St. Jacques in Paris, and in philosophy at the Faculty of Arts from 1245 to 1248. Towards the end of that year, he followed his teacher, Saint Albert the Great, to Cologne, where he attended lectures as assistant in the Studium founded by Albert. 

When he was a biblical bachelor, he wrote his first treatise, Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram. At the request of the Master General of the Order, Albert the Great appointed Brother Thomas, who was then 27 years old, as Bachelor of the Sentences in Paris, where he commented on the standard textbook on theology for the Middle Ages, the four books of Peter Lombard's The Sentences.

Known as the “Dumb ox” due to his taciturn and gentle nature, after Thomas’ public defense of an argument with sharp and brilliant reasoning, Albert the Great told his students that “the bellowing of this ox will resound throughout the world”. Like his master, he was a supporter of the revival of ancient works, particularly those of Aristotle. 

In 1257, Thomas obtained his Doctoral Degree and directed one of the two schools of the College of Saint Jacques. From then on, his fame spread throughout Europe.

After teaching for three years, he returned to Italy and served as General Preacher at the Papal Curia from 1259 to 1268, promoting studies both within his Order and in the Studium Urbis, in light of the new texts and translations from Greek and Arabic. He completed his Summa contra Gentiles, started working on Summa Theologiae, wrote Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei and commented on some of Aristotle’s most important works (Metaphysics, Physics, On the Heavens, Nicomachean Ethics), and other writings. 

He dedicated the last nine years of his life to completing his great work, the Summa Theologiae. He died on 7 March 1274, at the age of 49, in the Abbey of Fossanova while he was on his way to the Council of Lyon, where he had been sent as an expert by Pope Gregory X. His body was later translated to the Dominican church of the Jacobins in Toulouse in 1369.

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