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After the fall of Ancient Greece, most of the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers were lost in fires. For instance, Aristotle's Poetics was made up of two parts: Tragedy and Comedy. The Comedy part, however, was destroyed, so we are left only with the Tragedy portion of Poetics. His other works like Nicomachean Ethics are often considered only to be his lecture notes from the Lyceum (the "University" at which he taught). Likewise with Plato, only (a few) of his dialogues survived. These dialogues (Republic, Phaedo, Phaedrus, etc.) were only shorter, summary-like versions of his actual works. Again, we were only left with minimal writings from Ancient Greece.

Into the Medieval period, the Roman Empire expanded its empire and certain works in literature and thought were also expanded. Among these were Aristotle's notes/writings, which were also being translated by the Muslims. The Muslims saw the importance of these notes and salvaged as much as they could, but the Roman empire (and much of Europe) was dominated by religion at this time. Aristotle's teachings weren't necessarily understood in terms of these religious ideals, so they were rejected by the religious institutions of the time. A few people stood up against this, however.

One of them was (Saint) Thomas Aquinas. He was a Catholic theologian who attempted to make the religious institutions accept the teachings of Aristotle by slanting them toward a pro-religion perspective. For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas built upon Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by adding Faith, Hope and Love to Aristotle's list of virtues. These virtues are known as the religious virtues as they involve one's relationship with god and his or her Christian brothers and sisters (according to Aquinas). Aquinas also attempted to prove the existence of god through philosophical reasoning, so he was able to "sanctify" Aristotle's philosophies by presenting them in a certain way.

Thus, St. Thomas Aquinas was paramount in un-obstructing Ancient Greek philosophy from Medieval (Christian) thought.

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