Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) - the English pronunciation of Aquinas is a-KWEYE-ners, IPA: /ə 'kwaɪ nəs/ - was an Italian philosopher and theologian. He was the greatest of the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages and, with the publication in 1879 of the papal encyclical Aeterni Patris, was recognised as the 'official' philosopher and theologian of the Roman Catholic church. Aquinas is sometimes referred to as the Angelic Doctor, and his philosophical and theological system is known as Thomism, the related adjectives being Thomist and Thomistic.
Thomas Aquinas was born into a noble Italian family - his father, Count Landulf, was the feudal ruler of Aquino, a small town in Latium (modern Lazio) about 100 km southeast of Rome. (The word 'Aquinas' is simply a Latin adjective meaning 'of or from Aquino'.) Aquinas was educated first in the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino not far from Aquino, and then, from the age of fifteen, at the University of Naples. In 1244 he decided to become a Dominican friar - a decision which incensed his family who had expected him to become a Benedictine monk. (The recently established Dominican Order did not enjoy the same social status as the centuries-old and wealthy Benedictine Order.) In an attempt to make him change his mind his family imprisoned him for more than a year in one of their castles, but he did not abandon his original decision and spent the rest of his life as a student, teacher, and scholar within the Dominican Order.
In 1248 Aquinas was sent by the Dominican Order to their House of Studies in Cologne to study under the renowned German philosopher Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) (?1193-1280), and four years later he went to the Dominican House of Studies in Paris to prepare himself for a professorial post in the University there. In 1256 he became one of the professors of theology in the University, a post which he held until 1259, when the Order sent him back to Italy. Aquinas spent the next nine years in Italy, first as a scholar at the Papal Court, and then as a teacher in the Dominican House of Studies attached to the church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill in Rome. In 1267 he resumed his former position as a professor of theology in the University of Paris, remaining there until, in 1272, he was sent to Naples to establish a new House of Studies in the city. It was while celebrating Mass in Naples on 6th December 1273 that he had what may have been a mystical experience which led him to regard his life's work as worthless. Urged by his secretary to continue writing his Summa Theologiae (Summary of Theology), he said that he could not because 'all that I have written now seems like straw' (mihi videtur ut palea). Early the following year Aquinas was on his way to a general council of the Church in Lyons when he met with an accident and died in the Cistercian monastery at Fossanova, halfway between Naples and Rome.
As a professor of theology, Aquinas gave lectures and wrote commentaries on various books of the Bible (e.g., on Job and The Psalms in the Old Testament, and on the Gospels of Matthew and John, and Paul's Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians in the New Testament). He also wrote commentaries on several works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) (e.g., his Metaphysics, Physics, and Nicomachean Ethics) - Aquinas himself, like most of the great scholars in western Europe at the time, did not know Greek but read Aristotle in a Latin translation.
Aquinas' comprehensive system of philosophy and theology is essentially a synthesis of the teachings of the Church Fathers (i.e., the theologians of the early centuries of the Christian church) and the philosophy of Aristotle. It is contained in two massive works: the relatively early Summa contra Gentiles (Summary against the Gentiles, though usually in English given the title On the Truth of the Catholic Faith), some 300,000 words long, written in Italy between 1259 and 1264; and the later Summa Theologiae (Summary of Theology), more than 2,000,000 words long, begun in 1266 and never finished). Both works cover essentially the same ground, but the Summa Theolgiae does so in much greater detail. It is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the nature of God and the created world. Part II, which still retains considerable interest for contemporary (non-Catholic) philosophers, is devoted to moral philosophy: it considers what human happiness consists in, examines the concepts of action and emotion, and discusses the nature of moral goodness or virtue in general, before offering extended treatments of each of the particular virtues, i.e., the three 'theological' virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the four cardinal 'moral' virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. Part III deals with a number of topics in Christian theology, such as the incarnation and the sacraments of baptism, the eucharist, and penance.
