Thomas Aquinas

• Born: c. 1225
• Birthplace: Roccasecca, Italy
• Died: 7 March 1274
• Best Known As: Medieval Catholic scholar who wrote Summa Theologica

Name at birth: Tommaso d'Aquino

Thomas Aquinas was a priest, professor and philosopher who influenced centuries of religious and academic thought with his methodical way of harmonizing faith and reason. Born to nobility in southern Italy, he became attracted to life as a monk and scholar while a university student in Naples. He joined the Dominican religious order, but his family locked him in their castle tower, hoping to change his mind. A year later he escaped, studied in Cologne and Paris, was ordained a priest, and taught in universities during the Scholastic era, when the ancient logic of Aristotle was being revived despite condemnations by the Roman Catholic Church. Aquinas reconciled the two by granting reason its own integrity. He used Aristotelian arguments to "prove" God's existence and the truth of Christian beliefs, but held that some doctrinal truths are revealed only by faith. He painstakingly questioned-and-answered his way through two major works: Summa Contra Gentiles ("Summary of Arguments against the Disbelievers) and his final synthesis, Summa Theologica. His thinking, later called Thomism, was rapidly adopted by the church. Known as "the angelic doctor," he was canonized in 1323. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII declared Aquinas's works "the only true philosophy."

"Aquinas" is a Latinized form of his family's Italian name, which reflected their domain over an area including the county of Aquino. He was born in the castle of his parents, Count Ladolfo and Countess Theodora d'Aquino, halfway between Rome and Naples... Aquinas's uncle was Frederick II, a maverick leader of the Holy Roman Empire. Thommaso was named for his grandfather, who had been the Empire's military commander...

Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74), Dominican friar and theologian. Born of a knightly family at Rocca Secca near Aquino, Thomas was educated from the age of five to thirteen at the monastery of Monte Cassino (founded by Benedict), and later at the university of Naples for five years. There he met and was attracted by the Dominican friars; he planned to join their Order. This caused great indignation in his home, partly because the Dominicans were mendicants. Thomas, however, had set his heart on the intellectual apostolate of the friars. This did not prevent his family from pursuing, capturing, and imprisoning him for over a year at Rocca Secca; but he joined the Dominican Order in 1244. The rest of his life was divided between Paris and Italy, studying, lecturing, and writing incessantly until his death at the early age of forty-nine. His first master was Albert the Great, who soon recognized his worth: he is said to have prophesied that although Thomas was called the ‘dumb ox, his lowing would soon be heard all over the world’. Thomas was described by a contemporary as ‘tall, erect, large and well-built, with a complexion like ripe wheat and whose head early grew bald’. His deep contemplative devotion at prayer, which was sometimes ecstatic, was matched by an intense power of concentration and an ability to dictate to four secretaries at once. His own handwriting survives; it is cramped and almost illegible, making very frequent use of abbreviations because the poverty of the friars obliged them to use parchment very sparingly. His first teaching appointment was at Paris in 1252, at the Dominican convent of S. Jacques. Here he wrote a spirited defence of the mendicant orders against William of St.-Amour, a Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the De Ente et Essentia, and works on Isaiah and Matthew. In 1256 he became Master in Theology at the early age of thirty-one. Towards 1259 he began his Summa contra Gentes, i.e. a theological statement of the Christian faith argued partly by the use of pure reason without faith against Islam, Jewry, heretics, and pagans, probably not so much for the use of missionaries in foreign lands as for a university milieu, such as Naples or Toledo, where these opinions were well known. Islam had produced famous Aristotelian thinkers and Thomas's aim was to answer them from Aristotle himself.

But this work was set aside for some years because Thomas was sent to Italy in 1259, where he stayed for ten years, teaching at Anagni, Orvieto, Rome, and Viterbo and organizing the schools of his Order. He completed the work Contra Gentes c.1264, and started the most important work of his life, the Summa Theologica, c.1266. This work which fills five substantial volumes is a comprehensive statement of his mature thought on all the Christian mysteries: it proceeds through objections and authoritative replies in each article to a concise summary of his view on the matter under discussion, after which the various objections are answered. Although in his own time there were several summae (others were composed by Franciscans such as Bonaventure), and in the later Middle Ages many of his positions were attacked, the emergence of a series of gifted Dominican commentators and the explicit approval of Pius V and later of Leo XIII powerfully assisted its adoption as the standard theological text in many schools and universities. Its intrinsic excellence, its insistence on Aristotle combined with Platonist philosophy, its patristic learning and clear reasoning, have commended it to generations of theologians. But it remained unfinished.

In 1269 he was recalled to Paris for three years. The king, Louis IX, highly esteemed him and consulted him; so also did the university of Paris. Once, as a guest at the king's table, he was absorbed in thought and quite oblivious of his surroundings. To the astonishment of all, this huge friar (who had grown very corpulent in middle age) banged his fist on the table and exclaimed: ‘Tht's finished the heresy of the Manichees.’ A gentle reproof from his prior was followed by the friar's apology and the immediate arrival of a scribe to take down his argument.

In 1272 Thomas was recalled to Naples as regent of studies. Here on 6 December he experienced a revelation of God, after which he dictated no more, but said that all he had written in comparison to what he had then seen was like so much straw. He died on his way to the Council of Lyons on 7 March after a partial breakdown or a stroke, caused no doubt by constant overwork. Quite apart from his oral teaching, his writings alone on theology, philosophy, and scripture with the study necessary to produce them would have taken several normal lifetimes. Throughout he was modest and unassuming and all his life a man of deep prayer and spiritual insight. His devotion in serving God through theological scholarship may be compared with that of Bede through historical and patristic work. He also met the needs of the faithful by writing commentaries on the Creed, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary, besides preaching on the commandments and the Creed. He was canonized in 1323; his body was translated to Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, in 1368 and thence to the Jacobins' church, Toulouse, in 1974. Pope Pius V declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1567; his Summa Theologica was accorded special honour at the Council of Trent. The substance of his work, but not all its details, remains as an authentic statement of Christian doctrine. Feast: formerly 7 March, but since 1970, 28 January.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• Contemporary Lives by William da Tocco and Ptolemy of Lucca in AA.SS. Mar. I (1668), 655–747; K. Foster, The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas (1959; biographical documents, translated and edited); studies by M. Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas, his personality and thought (translated from the German, 1928); M. C. D'Arcy (1930); J. Maritain (1931) and A. Walz (Eng. tr. 1951); F. C. Copleston (1955); M. D. Chenu (1959). Works in Leonine edition (1882 ff.), Ottawa edition (1941 ff.), Eng. tr. by T. Gilby. See also: A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino: his Life, Thought and Works (1975); R. Barron, Thomas Aquinas Spiritual Master (1995)

The Italian philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1224-1274) was one of the foremost minds of medieval scholasticism. He is recognized as the leading theological authority within the Roman Catholic Church.

The central question facing Christian thinkers in the 13th century was the attitude to be taken toward Aristotle and the use to be made of his thought by theologians committed to a Christian view of the nature of God, man, and the universe. By the middle of the century the writings of Aristotle, for the most part unknown in the Latin West until the end of the 12th century, were readily available in Latin translation and were being taught in the arts faculties at universities in England, France, and Italy. In combination with the writings of Averroës, which were used to interpret Aristotle, this new intellectual material provided the early 13th century with the developed, integrated philosophical system for which they had been searching. On the other hand, because of the completeness and self-sufficiency of the Aristotelian system, Christian theology seemed less necessary as an avenue to truth, which because of Aristotle, was now accessible to man by natural reason, without revelation.

For those who were unwilling to relinquish the primacy of Christian revelation and who felt that Aristotle had not made the latter obsolete, there were still particular aspects of the Aristotelian system as they knew it that directly conflicted with Christian truth. For example, the Aristotelian notion of God as a distant and unapproachable prime mover, the idea of the eternity of the world, the notion of necessity and determinism, the idea that there was one intellect shared by men into which souls were absorbed after death, thus denying personal immortality, and the idea that all love is based ultimately on self-interest caused problems for Christian doctrine, which affirmed a personal, transcendent God who created the world freely and in time, who was concerned about particular individuals, and who would ultimately reward with eternal life the person who loved God rather than self.

In the 13th century men believed that all truth was one and that there could be no serious conflict between philosophy and theology or between Aristotle and Christianity. Since for them Christianity could not be wrong and since Aristotle was an established, ancient authority, the natural tendency was to bring Aristotle and Christianity into agreement. It was part of the achievement of St. Thomas Aquinas that he created a theological and philosophical system that remained basically Christian while incorporating significant elements from the Aristotelian world view. Many historians have viewed this system, sometimes referred to as the Thomist synthesis (a synthesis of theology and philosophy, of faith and reason, as well as Aristotelianism and Christianity), as the most important achievement in medieval thought and an archetype of philosophical and theological thinking for the modern period.

Thomas was not alone in this endeavor, nor did his version go unquestioned. He was criticized in his lifetime by such important theologians as Bonaventure, and some of Thomas's solutions were condemned along with a variety of others at Paris in 1277. His reputation, however, remained of major import from the 13th century on, and through the respect accorded him at the Council of Trent in the 16th century and the emergence of a neo-Thomist movement among Catholic philosophers he has had a significant impact on modern thought.

Early Life and Education, 1224-1252

Thomas was born into the Italian lower nobility, the youngest son of Landolfo of Aquino, Lord of Roccasecca and Montesangiovanni and justiciary of Frederick II, Emperor of Germany and King of Naples. Thomas's father lived to see most of his sons, including Thomas, abandon the causes to which he had devoted his life, shifting their allegiance from the Hohenstaufen emperor to the papacy and from the older monastic institutions to the newer mendicant orders.

At the age of 5 or 6, Thomas was placed in the care of the monks of the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino with the intention that he should become a monk and, eventually, abbot of this, one of the most prestigious monastic communities in Europe. After 8 years of instruction he was forced by political circumstances to leave Monte Cassino with the other oblates and to complete his education in Naples at a Benedictine house connected with the university there.

Thomas remained in Naples 5 years. During this time he came in contact with several influences that changed the course of his life. First, he was attracted to the opportunities for intellectual growth and service offered by the universities. In particular, he came into contact with Greek and Arabic learning, especially the thought of Aristotle and Averroës, which had been recently translated. Second, he was attracted to the newer mendicant orders, which espoused an apostolic life of service in the world (rather than the cloistered meditation typical of Monte Cassino) and which played an active role in the intellectual life of the university.

By 1243 Thomas had made a momentous decision: turning his back on his family and the plans that had been made for his career, he joined the Dominicans and received the habit in 1244. Foreseeing that his family would oppose his decision and try to intervene, Thomas allowed himself to be taken immediately out of their reach, initially to Rome and then on to Bologna. Before reaching Bologna he was captured by his older brother and returned home. After a year during which Thomas would not change his mind, he returned to the Dominicans at Naples, from where he journeyed northward to begin his theological education.

From 1245 until 1252 Thomas studied at the Dominican houses at Paris and Cologne under the leading Dominican theologian on the Continent in that period, Albertus Magnus. When Albertus organized the house of studies at Cologne in 1248, Thomas accompanied him as his student and assistant, lecturing on sections of the Scriptures and being ordained to the priesthood. In 1252 Albert recommended Thomas to be one of the two Dominican lecturers on the Sentences of Peter Lombard at Paris and thus to become a candidate for the degree of master of theology, in spite of the fact that Thomas was 3 or 4 years too young for that stage in his career.

Teaching Career at Paris, 1252-1259

Thomas remained in Paris for 7 years, living at the Dominican house of studies and lecturing, debating, and writing. His first important work was his commentary on the Sentences, polished during 1254-1256, which for over 200 years remained one of the major sources for the thought of Thomas. After his 4 years of study Thomas was granted the license to teach, and for 3 additional years he was one of the two regent masters of theology for the Dominicans at Paris. During this period he wrote several important philosophical treatises, the most remarkable being De ente et essentia and De veritate, which revealed even at this early stage his Aristotelian approach to philosophical questions.

Thomas faced strong opposition from the secular masters at Paris. In the mid-13th century in Paris animosity toward the mendicants had been growing among the secular masters of theology and arts, an animosity that was founded on the belief that some mendicants were theologically unorthodox, that in any case they had no right to belong to the university, and that, as semimonastic persons, they should not be copying the functions of secular priests. This animosity toward both Dominicans and Franciscans delayed Thomas's recognition by his colleagues, and the debate over the place of the mendicants within the structure of the university occupied much of Thomas's time.

Teaching Career in Italy, 1259-1268

Upon his return to Italy, probably at the request of the general chapter, or governing body, of the Dominicans, Thomas lectured at the Dominican convents in central Italy that were connected with the residence of the papal court: Anagni, Orvieto, Rome, and Viterbo. Here he came in contact with the improved translations of Aristotle directly from the Greek that were being compiled by a Dominican, William of Moerbeke. On the basis of this new source material and his growing desire to provide an acceptable interpretation of Aristotle's thought, Thomas began a series of commentaries on the works of Aristotle that rank among the most significant ever written.

A similar product of Thomas's ability as an expositor and commentator that dates from this period is the Catena aurea, or Golden Chain, a commentary on the four Gospels. Unlike his commentaries on Aristotle, however, this work is not Thomas's own interpretation but gathers passages from other writers to enlighten the meaning of Scripture.

Italy provided Thomas with the opportunity and incentive to expand the types of philosophical and theological problems with which he dealt in his writings. He wrote De regimine principum, an important political treatise that discussed the principles governing society and the political activity of rulers, basing his work in part on Aristotle's Politics. Moreover, he became more aware of the conflicting issues within Islamic theology - particularly, concerning the problem of expressing the freedom and power of God without, on the one hand, making God's freedom so extensive that it can become arbitrary and irrational in its operation or, on the other hand, limiting God's activity within the bounds of a deterministic system.

In part as a result of this awareness of the importance of the problem of the freedom and power of God and the importance of Islamic theology for the Western theologian, Thomas composed two works: De potentia, which dealt with the question of God's omnipotence and of His creative power; and a theological manual, the Summa contra Gentiles, written to provide the Christian missionary with a clear, precise statement of the Christian faith along with a defense of its basic doctrines. The latter work, probably begun while Thomas was still in Paris, and at the suggestion of the Dominican missionary Raymond of Peñafort, was primarily intended to be of use in attempting to convert the Mohammedans. Similarly, it could be helpful in converting the Jews.

Return to Paris, 1268-1272

Late in 1268 or early in 1269 the Dominican order sent Thomas back to Paris for a second period of teaching. The crisis which he found there and which may have occasioned his being summoned back was quite different from the earlier controversy between the seculars and mendicants, although that animosity was still in evidence. The type of Christian Aristotelianism that Thomas and Albertus Magnus had been intent on creating was being threatened from two sides. On the one hand, the anti-Aristotelian forces within theology had increased and were reaffirming a strong Augustinian approach that rejected Aristotle on a number of points and limited his use as an authority in theological argumentation. On the other hand, there was an attempt to teach an unchristened Aristotelianism in the arts faculty by a group known as the Latin Averroists, led by such figures as Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia.

In this crisis, toward which the intellectual currents of the century had been building, Thomas tried to establish a middle position. He believed that Aristotle could be shown to agree with Christian truth in the majority of instances and therefore could be used as a source in argumentation, although not in theology on the level with Scripture or the Fathers.

One of the most crucial issues was the question of the eternity of the world. Thomas's position, against Bonaventure and others, was that although the world was created in time, as revelation teaches, this doctrine could not be demonstrated by reason alone which, in this matter, can provide no final solution.

This conclusion is typical of the way in which Thomas approached the relation of faith and reason, Aristotle and Christian truth. Faith completes rather than contradicts reason. Although some things can be known only through reason because revelation is not concerned with those things, and although some things can be known through both reason and revelation, such as the existence and unity of God, there are many truths necessary for salvation which are inaccessible to man apart from revelation, such as the doctrine of creation in time or the mystery of the Trinity. Aristotle, because he lived before Christ, could go only so far, and his thought must be completed by Christian revelation.

Thomas therefore accepts the idea of God as prime mover but goes on to identify Aristotle's God with the personal God of revelation, who has knowledge and concern for individuals. Thomas rejected the Averroistic notion of one active intellect for all mankind, and he argued that there was only one substantial form in man, the rational soul, which, with its individual intellect, provides the psychological foundation for personal immortality. Similarly, Thomas accepted the Aristotelian idea that man is naturally a political animal who finds his fulfillment in a quest for happiness within human society. But for Thomas that is only one end of man which, although important, is secondary to the primary end of man, the love of God, an end that is learned only through revelation.

Many of these conclusions are found in Thomas's most important work, the Summa theologiae, or Summa theologica, written in this period, although it was begun earlier in Italy, probably at Rome, and completed by a disciple after Thomas's death. Most of his reputation is based on this work. It is a systematic analysis and defense of the Christian faith, arranged topically, beginning with the nature of God and moving through creation and salvation to the last things and the beatific vision. Within each topic Thomas, in proper scholastic style, presented the most important questions and arranged his argument by initially presenting the pro and con arguments, then his analysis of the issue, and then his rebuttal to the initial objections.

Last Years, 1272-1274

At the request of the general chapter in Florence in June 1272, which he attended, Thomas went to Naples to establish a program of theological studies at the Dominican house, near the university. His writings from this period, although numerous and of high quality in comparison to those of his contemporaries, did not maintain the level of the works written in previous periods in his life. In December 1273, on the feast of St. Nicholas, his writing career came to an end. As an early biographer described it, the change resulted from a vision or mystical experience. When his secretary asked him why he had ceased to write, Thomas answered, "All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."

Thomas set out early in 1274 to attend the second Council of Lyons. He soon became ill and broke his journey at the Cistercian monastery of Fossanuova, where he died in March.

Further Reading

The best biography of St. Thomas Aquinas in English is Vernon Joseph Bourke, Aquinas' Search for Wisdom (1965). Other useful biographies are Martin C. D'Arcy, St. Thomas Aquinas (1930; rev. ed. 1953), and Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas (trans. 1931; rev. ed. 1958). The best work on the background of Thomas's writings is Marie Dominique Chenu, Towards Understanding Saint Thomas (1950; trans. 1964).

For a survey of Thomas's thought the following works are all of high quality, although each takes a somewhat different approach: Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought (trans. 1950); Frederick Copleston, Aquinas (1955); and Étienne Henry Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (trans. 1956). Among the works on Thomistic metaphysics, the following are especially helpful: Herman Reith, The Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas (1958); George Peter Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (1960); and Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (1963). One of the few works in English treating the political views of Thomas is Thomas Gilby, The Political Thought of Thomas Aquinas (1958). Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, with Other Essays (trans. 1930), is a recommended study of Thomas's esthetic theory.

(c.1225-74) Catholic theologian and political philosopher, regarded as one of the great figures of medieval thought. The tradition he founded became known as ‘Thomism’. The basis of his political theory is contained in his commentary on Aristotle's Politics, in De regimine principum (On the Rule of Sovereigns), written while at the papal court in Italy (1259-68) and completed by others, and in the Summa Theologiae, II, First Part, Questions 90-7.

Following Aristotle, he held that the state is a natural, not a conventional (such as a society, company, or club), institution; and it is a perfect society (communitas perfecta). It is natural, not conventional because human beings are social animals. They need to form a society for their survival, prosperity, and cultural development. Gregarious animals do this by instinct; humans do it by using reason. It is perfect in that (in principle) it can satisfy all the ends of human life, and is not dependent on any higher society, unlike the family (also a natural society), which is dependent on a larger community for survival and material and cultural development.

All power, according to Aquinas, comes from God since it involves the power of life and death which, in Church doctrine, is the prerogative of God—here Aquinas deviates from Aristotle. But he returns on stream when he argues that (1) sovereignty (be it monarchy, parliamentary government, or popular government) is natural, and that (2) it comes (albeit from God) through the people governed. It is natural in that without a governing body capable of making binding decisions anarchy would result and people could destroy each other. It comes through the people, because, whatever the form of government, it must reflect the wishes of the governed. The sovereign or government, in the view of Aquinas, is the representative of the governed (popularly called ‘the people’): ‘If the people (multitudo) do not have the power to institute laws freely or to rescind laws imposed by a superior power, a custom prevailing among such people, however, obtains the force of law, insofar it is by it [the custom] that those who impose them on the people are allowed to do so’ (ST, II, First Part, Question 97, Article 3).

The State is, therefore, not in any way dependent on the Church. Each has a separate end and a separate role. But Aquinas believed in a supernatural end for humankind. In the pursuit of this end the Church is a perfect society, since in this respect, it does not depend on any other body. Moreover, unlike the State, it is an autonomous perfect society. In the Thomist view the Church as such is in no way subordinate to the State, whereas the State must take the interests of the Church into account, since its end is loftier and it is the ultimate end of the citizen. Aquinas likens the relationship of Church to State to that of the soul to the body. Each has its own particular role to play but ultimately the soul's is higher.

This unity of purpose comes about in the citizen who has one end but separate spiritual and material needs. The citizen's relationship to the State is also holistic. He is subordinate to the State as the part is to the whole, the members to the body. But this does not give the State unlimited power over its subjects. For one thing, it is never permissible to obey a law which is contrary to divine law. For another, civil laws and decrees that are contrary to natural (i.e. moral) law are invalid. In this Aquinas was voicing the views of most medieval political theorists, as in his support for the legitimacy of tyrannicide. As political power, after God, rested with the governed, the government holds power in trust. If the ruler or rulers abuse that trust by tyrannical behaviour, it can be withdrawn, even if this means deposing the tyrant.

— Cyril Barrett

For more information on Saint Thomas Aquinas, visit Britannica.com.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), a Dominican scholar, is recognized as one of the greatest systematic theologians. His system has become known as Thomism, and his crowning work, Summa Theologica, is often compared with a vast Gothic cathedral. In the words of theologian Justo Gonzalaz, it is "an imposing monument in which each element of creation and the history of salvation has a place and stands in perfect balance and symmetry." Aquinas was one of the school of theologians whose body of work is called scholasticism because its methodology was forged in academic institutions that would later grow into what we know as universities. One of their main contributions to the field of theology was the reintroduction of the thought and wisdom of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. This movement introduced the process of logic and science into what had been, until scholasticism, mainly a field dominated by faith and acceptance of doctrine. For instance, in his famous "five ways," or arguments for the existence of God, Aquinas was able to produce a logical, philosophical "proof" that God was real, based not on scriptural passages to be accepted without question but on a step-by-step system of logic. Religion thus became something to be thought about and pondered with the analytical left side of the brain, rather than a feeling intuited by the right. He helped to elevate the study of religion to an academic science, integrated with the humanities.

People have argued ever since that there is a dark side to this achievement. Twentieth-century Star Trek-influenced Christians have even been known to call Thomas "the Vulcan's theologian." Treating Christianity as an intellectual endeavor can produce a dry, logical religion void of warmth, love, grace, and magic, much like actor Leonard Nimoy's portrayal of the television show's methodical Mr. Spock from the Vulcan planet. But Saint Thomas himself argued that he never intended his logical theological system to replace grace and mystery. Rather, he intended it as a healthy proof that truth incorporates both.

Sources: Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.

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Aquinas, Thomas (c.1225-1274). Philosopher and theologian. For his thought see Scholasticism. For modern Thomism, based on his thinking, see Maritain.

Aquinas, St Thomas (c. 1225-74) Born in the castle of Roccasecca in the kingdom of Naples in Southern Italy, into the family of the counts of Aquino, Aquinas was brought up in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. At the age of fourteen he was sent to complete his studies at the university of Naples, one of the few universities of the time where a full range of Aristotelian doctrine was studied. Here he became influenced by, and at the age of twenty joined, the Dominican order. He studied in Paris, and then Cologne, under Albert the Great, and returned to Paris in 1251/2. He subsequently resided at Orvieto, Rome, Viterbo, Paris again, and Naples, constantly writing and engaging in the doctrinal and philosophical debates of the day. His works include numerous translations and commentaries on Aristotle, theological writings, and the two major texts for which he is best known, the Summa contra Gentiles (‘Against the Errors of the Infidels’), a ‘text-book’ for missionaries, and the Summa Theologiae, begun in 1266, and universally acknowledged to be the crowning achievement of medieval systematic theology.

Throughout his writings Aquinas's major concern is to defend a ‘naturalistic’ or Aristotelian Christianity, in opposition not only to sceptics but also to the surrounding tendency to read Christianity in Neoplatonic terms, derived largely from Augustine, and also channelled to the 13th century through such writers as Avicenna. Aquinas takes issue with the occasionalism of the Neoplatonists, which reduces mankind to spectators of the world order in which all causality is ultimately an expression of God's will; like Aristotle he is concerned to protect the notion of a genuine human agent who is the responsible author of his or her own actions. The human being is a composite, but not a queer amalgamation of two things, a soul in a body like a sailor in a ship, as Plato is supposed to have held. Like Aristotle, Aquinas held that it is meaningless to ask whether a human being is two things (soul and body) or one, just as it is meaningless to ask whether ‘the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one’ (De Anima, 412 b 6). On this analogy the soul is the form of the body. Life after death is possible only because a form itself does not perish (perishing is loss of form), and is therefore in some sense available to reactivate a new body. It is therefore not I who survive bodily death, but I may be resurrected if the same body becomes reanimated by the same form. It is notable that on Aquinas's account a person has no privileged self-understanding. We understand ourselves, as we do everything else, by sense experience and abstraction, and knowing the principles of our own lives is an achievement, not a given. In the theory of knowledge Aquinas holds the Aristotelian doctrine that knowing entails some similarity between knower and known; a human's corporeal nature therefore requires that knowledge start with sense perception. The same limitation does not apply to beings further up the chain of being, such as angels.

In the domain of theology Aquinas deploys the distinction emphasized by Eriugena between reason and faith. Although he lays out proofs of the existence of God (see Five Ways) he recognizes that there are doctrines, such as that of the Incarnation and the nature of the Trinity, known only through revelation, and whose acceptance is more a matter of moral will. God's essence is identified with his existence, as pure actuality. God is simple, containing no potential. But we cannot obtain knowledge of what God is (his quiddity), and must remain content with descriptions that apply to him partly by way of analogy: what God reveals of himself is not himself. After a brief period in 1277 in which several of his views were condemned, the Dominicans officially imposed his teachings on that order. He was canonized in 1323, with the difficulty that his life did not display the necessary miracles being met by Pope John XXII who said that every question he answered was a miracle. His synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinnings of the Catholic church.

(ca. 1225-1274)

One of the most profound scholars and subtlest logicians of his day. Aquinas was born around 1225 in Roccasecca, Italy. He was educated under the Benedictine Monks of Monte Cassino and in the University of Naples, and entered the Society of Preaching Friars, or Dominicans, at 17 years of age. His mother, indignant that he should take the vow of poverty and thus remove himself from the world for life, employed every means in her power to induce him to change his mind. In order to remove Aquinas from her influence, the friars relocated him from Naples to Terracina, from Terracina to Anagnia, and from Anagnia to Rome.

His mother followed him in all these changes of residence but was not permitted to see him. At length she induced his two elder brothers to seize him by force. They kidnapped him while he was traveling to Paris, where he had been sent to complete his course of instruction, and they carried him off to the castle of Aquino, where he had been born. Here Aquinas was confined for two years, but he found a way to correspond with the superiors of his order, and he finally escaped from a window in the castle.

Aquinas exceeded most men in the severity and strictness of his metaphysical disquisitions and thus acquired the name of "Seraphic Doctor." He was canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323.

Because of his association with Albertus Magnus, he shared many legends of magical powers. For example, it was said that because his study was placed in a great thoroughfare where the grooms exercised their horses, Aquinas found it necessary to apply a magical remedy to this nuisance. He made by the laws of magic a small brass horse, which he buried two or three feet underground in the middle of this highway so that horses would no longer pass along the road. The grooms were compelled to choose another place for their daily exercises.

Another legend claimed that Aquinas was offended by the perpetual chattering of an artificial man made of brass, constructed by his tutor Albertus Magnus, and he dashed the automaton to pieces. Aquinas was also supposed to have written some tracts on alchemy.

However, his credulity regarding demonology and witchcraft had an unfortunate influence on witchhunters, and he was later cited as an authority by such writers as Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, authors of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum. Although Aquinas did not accept the concept of a pact with the Devil, he endorsed the belief of diabolical association, and the incubus and succubus. He echoed Albertus Magnus in claiming that when Satan tempted Christ on the mountain-top, he carried Christ on his shoulders, and this belief was used by later witchhunters to endorse the theory of transvection, or magical transport of witches through the air. Aquinas also believed in the power of the evil eye used by old women who had an association with the Devil. His argument that heretics should be burned was later used to justify the burning of witches.

It should be stressed that Aquinas's credulity was characteristic of his time, and his theses concerning the Devil reflected the conclusions of theological dogmas of his day. Nevertheless, his discussions were used by later and lesser individuals to justify the witchcraft delusion.

The major works of Aquinas include the Summa Theologica and the Summa contra Gentiles. His great intellectual and theological achievements have somewhat overshadowed the mystical side of his character, and it should be remembered that he ended his life as a contemplative mystic.

He died March 7, 1274, in Fossanova, Italy.

Sources:

St. Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1994.

Stockhammer, Thomas. Thomas Aquinas Dictionary. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965.

(1225–74). The greatest of the medieval scholastics. Aquinas was primarily a theologian, but in his theological work he was led to develop a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical issues at stake; hence we can extract from his writings a philosophical psychology which he considered capable of standing on its own feet, without requiring support from Christian revelation.

St Thomas, the seventh son of Landulf, count of Aquino, was born at the family's castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino (about halfway between Rome and Naples). He was educated at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino and at the University of Naples. In 1244 he decided to join the newly established Dominican order, and afterwards studied at the University of Paris and at the Dominicans' institute in Cologne, where one of his teachers was St Albert the Great. Aquinas lectured at various times at the universities of Paris and Naples and at the papal court. He died while on his way to the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Lyon, and was canonized in 1323.

Aquinas rejected much contemporary Christian theorizing about man, based on the thought of St Augustine and, via Augustine, on Plato and Neoplatonism, and instead took over and developed many of Aristotle's conclusions. Like Aristotle, he viewed human activity as taking place on three levels: vegetative (comprising the powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction), sensitive (comprising sensory activity and locomotion), and intellectual (comprising reason and will). Among bodily creatures, only man possesses reason and will, but these powers are found also in angels and, in a very much higher manner which we cannot adequately comprehend, in God; and it is because man shares, to some degree, in these divine attributes of reason and will that the Scriptures speak of man as made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1: 26–7).

Aquinas followed Aristotle in defining the soul of a living being as its substantial form, i.e. as that inherent principle by which it is the kind of entity or substance that it is; and he contrasted the soul as form with the matter that it organizes or 'informs': both soul and matter are necessary constituent principles of the living being. So, he believed, all living creatures have souls, but only human beings have spiritual souls. Aquinas rejected the medieval Augustinians' belief that in man there are three distinct souls, vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual, each accounting for human activity at its corresponding level. This view, he said, would destroy man's natural unity by breaking him up into three distinct entities; rather, there is just the one soul, which is responsible for all of a man's activities, regardless of the level to which they belong.

Following Aristotle, Aquinas distinguished the five external senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, and four 'internal senses'. These latter are: the 'common sense' by means of which sense impressions or 'phantasms' produced by different external senses are referred to a single entity existing outside the perceiver; secondly, the imagination (imaginatio or phantasia), which stores sense impressions and can combine them into complex images of hitherto unperceived things and events; thirdly, the 'cogitative power' (vis cogitativa), which corresponds to instinct in animals and by which we can apprehend things and events in the world as either beneficial or harmful to us; and finally the sense memory (vis rememorativa), in which information gained by the cogitative power is stored.

In sensory cognition we appropriate the sensible forms of objects, that is, their observable characteristics, without the matter of the objects themselves; so (for example) in seeing a silver coin I receive its colour into my sense organ, but not the actual matter of the coin. Likewise, he thinks, the two kinds of human activity at the rational level, thinking and willing, involve receiving into the soul the intelligible form of whatever one's thinking or willing is about. For an entity or substance in the external world is made to be the sort of thing that it is by possession of a certain nature or form — the form of oak tree, for example — and we understand and think about things by mentally receiving their forms: in this way, as Aristotle said, 'the mind is in a way all things'. But matter as such, considered in isolation from any determining form, is unintelligible, and so we can 'latch on' to a thing in thought only by mentally disengaging or 'abstracting' its intelligible form from the material conditions of sensation. This process of abstraction, Aquinas said, is carried out by a power called the agent intellect (intellectus agens), and another power, the receptive intellect (intellectus possibilis), then receives and stores the forms abstracted by the agent intellect. Thus the form of (say) cat which is present in cats themselves, thereby making them the kind of animal they are, is also present in the minds of human beings, thereby making them capable of thinking about cats. In this way Aquinas accounted for the fact of intentionality, that is, the fact that our thoughts are about things. The form of something, as stored in the receptive intellect, is a concept. Unlike sensations, which are particular modifications of the sense powers, concepts are universals because they enable us to think about a potentially indefinite number of things of a given kind, and the receptive intellect employs these concepts in carrying out such intellectual operations as judging, reasoning, and deliberating. A form present in someone's mind as a concept is, Aquinas said, obviously present in a very different way from that of a form present in an external thing, and he called this mental mode of presence 'intentional being' (esse intentionale).

Against the Latin Averroism of Siger of Brabant and others, St Thomas denied that the agent intellect is a single entity which is distinct from all human beings but in which the latter somehow participate. Rather, he said, it is a constituent power of each human mind. There are, then, as many agent intellects as there are men.

Because he believed that human beings can acquire concepts only by abstracting forms from sense appearances, Aquinas can be called an empiricist. He insisted that without some sensory input on which the mind's abstractive power could get to work, no concepts would ever be constructed, nor would any rational activity ever take place: there are no 'innate ideas'. Moreover, any actual use of concepts in thinking or willing must — at least in this life, in which the soul is embodied — be constantly referred to sense contents, either of perception or memory or imagination. This necessary human orientation to sensory data is what Aquinas called 'conversion to sense experience' (conversio ad phantasmata).

Since concept formation involves the abstraction of intelligible forms from all material conditions, Aquinas concluded that the formation and utilization of concepts are activities that cannot in principle be performed by any physical organ or organism. For, he said, if there were a physical organ of thought it would be unable to do something that it obviously can do, namely, receive the forms of all physical objects, but would be restricted to receiving the forms of only one particular kind of object, as the eye is restricted to receiving colours. Nor would any physical organ be capable of that self-conscious awareness which is so prominent a feature of human thought. Our concepts are, then, present in us in a non-material way; hence that which performs mental acts must be a wholly non-material, that is, spiritual, principle. So the human soul, as well as being the substantial form of the body — that by which the human body is a body — must also be a spiritual substance in its own right.

Because man's soul is a spiritual substance, it can survive death. For it is not made up of physical parts and is, therefore, unlike the body, free from corruption and dissolution. Admittedly, since man depends on his sense organs to provide him with appropriate objects of thought — things to think about — it seems that a disembodied soul will be unable to exercise its mental abilities without some special help from God; and in any case, since the human soul is the substantial form of the human body, disembodiment is clearly an unnatural condition for it. Thus, although we can have reason to accept the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body only on the basis of God's revelation, that doctrine is entirely appropriate to the human condition. For only if soul and body are eventually reunited will there be a fully constituted human being once more; until then, the souls of the departed will exist in a condition that is abnormal, contrary to nature (praeter naturam).

For Aquinas, man is not the highest of all created beings, because angels far exceed him in intellectual power. But he is the highest of all bodily creatures, and as a partly material, partly spiritual being, man forms the bridge, so to speak, between the physical and spiritual realms.

How does a human being come into existence? Is he generated out of physical elements, as is a plant, or is some higher, non-physical agency required? Aquinas replies that since the soul is a purely spiritual entity it must be created directly, out of nothing, by God. But there is no pre-existence of souls: when God creates a soul he immediately infuses it into the appropriate matter which is present in a woman's womb.

Just as man's cognitive powers are present on both sensory and rational levels, so it is with what Aquinas calls man's appetitive or striving functions. The latter include such activities as wishing, willing, desiring, intending, and feeling emotions. Here we shall concentrate on Aquinas's account of the will, which he defines as the rational appetite, that is, the appetite or tendency that belongs to the rational part of the soul. As rational, it is directed not to any particular good, as are the sensory appetitive powers, but rather to goodness as such: it is the power by which man strives towards that which he rationally apprehends as in some way good or desirable. Aquinas analyses the process of deciding to do something into a whole series of 'component' acts, some belonging to the intellect and some to the will. The decisive choice (electio) which results in some action's being performed is an act of the will, but the will cannot function without the intellect's aid; we can will something only if we have already recognized it to be good. However, Aquinas also believes that the will very often operates freely, i.e. without being determined to any particular outcome. For, he says, we choose to do one thing rather than another because our intellect apprehends the goodness of what is chosen, but nothing short of the supreme and final good of man (which, for Aquinas, ultimately consists in the vision of God in heaven) can irresistibly attract the human mind; everything other than this will be attractive in some respects but unattractive in others. Hence the will can choose freely among goods which fall short of the complete and ultimate good. This is St Thomas's principal argument for the freedom of the will, or 'free choice' (liberum arbitrium), as he calls it; but he also argues that unless man were capable of making free choices, 'advice, exhortations, precepts, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain'.

While some of Aquinas's arguments rest upon outdated theses of Aristotelian science, his major conclusions concerning thinking, willing, and the nature and destiny of the human soul escape this limitation and still find defenders today. P. T. Geach's Mental Acts, for example, is a particularly interesting analysis of human mental activity that owes much to Aquinas.

Aquinas's account of the nature and workings of the mind is presented, above all, in the Summa theologiae (English translation in 60 vols., ed. T. Gilby, 1963–75), especially vols. xi–xiii, and in the Summa contra Gentiles (English translation by A. C. Pegis et al., 1955–7), especially vol. ii. A useful selection of readings is A. C. Pegis, (ed.), Introduction to St Thomas Aquinas (1948).

(Published 1987)

— F. J. Fitzpatrick

Bibliography
• Copleston, F. C. (1955). Aquinas.
• Geach, P. T. (1957). Mental Acts.
• Lonergan, B. J. F. (1967). Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas.
• Weisheipl, J. A. (1974). Friar Thomas D'Aquino.

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