Thomas Aquinas

He fused Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology and wrote the Summa Theologiae.

Life

Joining the Dominicans

Thomas Aquinas came from a noble family in southern Italy. As a youth he joined the newly founded Dominican Order against his family's wishes, then studied in Paris and Cologne under Albertus Magnus, learning Aristotle's natural philosophy. At that time Aristotle's works had only just returned to Western Europe by way of Arab scholars' commentaries, sparking enormous controversy among theologians.

Summa Theologiae

From 1265, while teaching in Rome, Paris and elsewhere, he began writing his masterpiece, the Summa Theologiae, which systematically applied Aristotle's logical method to argue for Christian doctrine and sought to reconcile reason and faith. Covering a vast range of subjects including the existence of God, ethics and law, it is enormous in length yet rigorous in structure, and became the crowning synthesis of Scholasticism. He wrote prolifically all his life, but late in life, after a mystical experience, he suddenly stopped writing, saying that everything he had written was "but straw."

Doctor of the Church and Controversy

The Summa Theologiae long remained the core text of Catholic theological education, and Thomism profoundly influenced Western philosophy and legal thought for centuries afterward. His heavy borrowing from Aristotle was at one time seen by the church as a dangerously heretical tendency, and in 1277 the Bishop of Paris even publicly condemned some propositions associated with him; only after he was canonized as a saint decades later did this controversy gradually fade in later orthodox accounts.

Legacy

Thomas Aquinas was the great synthesizer of medieval Scholasticism. He systematically reconciled Aristotle's philosophy with Christian faith, arguing that reason and revelation do not conflict. He was canonized as a saint in 1323 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1567, and in 1879 Pope Leo XIII made his teachings the foundation of Catholic philosophy. His theory of natural law profoundly influenced Western ethics and jurisprudence, though in modern times it has also been criticized by empiricism and other schools of thought.

Major works & achievements

• Summa Theologiae
• Summa contra Gentiles
• The "Five Ways" of proving God's existence
• Wrote commentaries on Aristotle's works

Did you know? Because he was large and taciturn, his fellow students nicknamed him "the Dumb Ox."

Key dates

• 1225Born near Naples
• 1244Joined the Dominican Order
• 1245Studied in Paris and Cologne
• 1256Became professor of theology at the University of Paris
• 1265Began the Summa Theologiae
• 1273Stopped writing after a mystical experience
• 1274Died while traveling