Thomas Aquinas

About this figure

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and theologian whose systematic synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine made him one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western theology. Born into a noble family at Roccasecca, near Naples, Aquinas was sent as a child to the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino for his early education before studying at the University of Naples, where he encountered the newly recovered works of Aristotle and decided, against his family's strong objections, to join the recently founded Dominican order, a decision his family reportedly tried to prevent by holding him under house arrest for roughly a year.

Aquinas went on to study in Paris and Cologne under the German scholar Albertus Magnus, who introduced him more deeply to Aristotelian philosophy, and Aquinas later taught theology at the University of Paris on more than one occasion, as well as at various Dominican houses of study in Italy. His central and unfinished project, the Summa Theologica, composed mainly in the 1260s and early 1270s, attempted a comprehensive and rigorously organized treatment of Christian theology, addressing questions from the nature and existence of God through ethics, law, and the sacraments, and it drew extensively on Aristotle, whom Aquinas frequently cites simply as "the Philosopher," while also engaging with Islamic and Jewish philosophers such as Averroes and Maimonides.

In late 1273, Aquinas reportedly underwent an intense experience during Mass after which he stopped writing entirely, telling a companion that all he had written seemed like straw compared to what he had seen, and the Summa Theologica remained unfinished at his death the following year. Aquinas died in 1274 at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, while traveling to a church council, and he was canonized as a saint in 1323 and later declared a Doctor of the Church.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.