#Memory
St Thomas Aquinas.
7 March is the death anniversary of St Thomas Aquinas.
Landolf and Theodora Aquino were horrified when they learned that their 19-year-old son Thomas had joined the Dominican Order. They had no objection to Thomas becoming a monk, but they preferred the more prestigious Benedictines. Determined to change his mind, they had Thomas’ brothers kidnap him and bring him home. Thomas was kept as a virtual prisoner for nearly two years.
At one point the brothers sent a prostitute into Thomas’ room, hoping he would succumb to temptation and give up the Dominicans. But Thomas drove the woman out with a hot poker and, according to legend, two angels came to protect him from any further threats to his celibacy.
Finally, his parents relented, and Thomas returned to his order. When Thomas was later sent to the University of Paris to study, his brilliance became evident to the professors and in time he joined the faculty.
It is difficult to overstate the impact Thomas Aquinas had on philosophy and theology. Whereas before Thomas the Church had been heavily under the influence of Plato, and deeply suspicious of Aristotle, Thomas adopted Aristotelian methodology (students jokingly said Thomas baptised Aristotle) and because of Thomas, Aristotle came to displace Plato in Christian philosophy. Thomas published numerous extremely influential texts, but his undisputed masterpiece was the Summa Theologica. The philosophical methodology of the Summa (stating a proposition, then listing “objections” to the proposition, then defending the original proposition against them) became the norm for Western philosophy. Thomas’ use of reason and logic was revolutionary.
There is not an area of Western philosophy that has not been deeply influenced by Thomas’ work.
Without a doubt, Thomas Aquinas cast a large shadow. Literally. By all accounts he was an enormous man. Probably the most brilliant of the saints, he was also likely the fattest. Long before he was revered as St. Thomas, he was mocked at “the Sicilian Bull.” Weighing over 300 pounds (in a time when that was extraordinarily rare), Thomas was so large that his monastic brothers had to cut away a section of the table so that Thomas could reach his food from a chair. Using the medieval version of photo-shopping, artistic representations of Thomas depict him as far less corpulent than he actually was.
In 1274, while riding a donkey and likely lost in deep thoughts, Thomas struck his head on a branch overhanging the road. He fell ill and never recovered, dying not long afterwards, while expounding to his monastic brothers on the Song of Songs.
Fifty years after his death, Thomas was canonised. Later he was declared to be a “Doctor of the Church,” one of 36 saints recognised for their significant contributions to theology and doctrine. Thomas is popularly known as “the Angelic Doctor.”
St. Thomas Aquinas died at age 50, on March 7, 1274, seven hundred forty-nine years ago today.
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( Image of St. Thomas Aquinas from the Demidoff Altarpiece by Carlo Crivelli (1476), in the National Gallery, London).
