Aquinas, St Thomas 1225-74
Italian scholastic philosopher and theologian

Thomas Aquinas was born in the castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino, and was a descendant of the family of the Counts of Aquino. He was educated by the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and at the University of Naples. In 1244, bitterly opposed by his family, he entered the Dominican order of mendicant friars. His brothers kidnapped him and kept him a prisoner in the family castle for over a year; in the end he made his way to Cologne to become a pupil of the great Dominican luminary, Albertus Magnus. In 1252 he went to Paris, and taught there, with growing reputation, until in 1258 he was summoned by the pope to teach successively in Anagni, Orvieto, Rome and Viterbo. He died at Fossanuova on his way to defend the papal cause at the Council of Lyons, and was canonized in 1323.

Aquinas's prolific writings have exercised enormous intellectual authority throughout the Church. He was the first among the metaphysicians of the 13th century to stress the importance of sense perception and the experimental foundation of human knowledge. Through his commentaries he made Aristotle's thought available and acceptable in the Christian West, and in his philosophical writings he tried to combine and reconcile Aristotle's scientific rationalism with the Christian doctrines of faith and revelation.

His influence on the theological thought of succeeding ages was immense. Aquinas was known as the 'Doctor Angelicus' and the only other scholastic theologian who rivalled him was the 'Doctor Subtilis', Duns Scotus. The Franciscans followed Scotus, and the Dominicans Thomas, with the result that medieval theologians were divided into two schools, Scotists and Thomists, whose divergencies penetrate more or less every branch of doctrine.

Bibliography: Aquinas's best-known writings are two large encyclopedic syntheses: the Summa contra Gentiles (1259-64), which deals chiefly with the principles of natural religion, and the Summa Theologiae (1266-73), which was still uncompleted at his death but contains his mature thought in systematic form and includes the famous 'five ways' or proofs of the existence of God.