<h1>XVII <br/> AQUINAS THE SCHOLAR.</h1>
<p>No one of all the sons of the Thirteenth Century, not even Dante
himself, so typifies the greatness of the mentality of the period as
does Thomas, called from his birthplace Aquinas, or of Aquin, on whom
his own and immediately succeeding generations because of what they
considered his almost more than human intellectual acumen, bestowed
the title of Angelical Doctor, while the Church for the supremely
unselfish character of his life, formally conferred the title of
Saint. The life of Aquinas is of special interest, because it serves
to clarify many questions as to the education of the Thirteenth
Century and to correct many false impressions that are only too
prevalent with regard to the intellectual life of the period. Though
Aquinas came of a noble family which was related to many of the Royal
houses of Europe and was the son of the Count of Aquino, then one of
the most important of the non-reigning noble houses of Italy, his
education was begun in his early years and was continued in the midst
of such opportunities as even the modern student might well envy.</p>
<p>It is often said that the nobility at this time, paid very little
attention to the things of the intellect and indeed rather prided
themselves on their ignorance of even such ordinary attainments as
reading and writing. While this was doubtless true for not a few of
them, Aquinas's life stands in open contradiction with the impression
that any such state of mind was at all general, or that there were not
so many exceptions as to nullify any such supposed rule. Evidently
those who wished could and did take advantage of educational
opportunities quite as in our day. Aquinas's early education was
received at the famous monastery of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy,
where the Benedictines for more than six centuries had been providing
magnificent opportunities for the studious youth of Italy and for
serious-minded students from all over Europe. When he was
scarcely more than a boy he proceeded to the University of Naples,
which at that time, under the patronage of the Emperor Frederick II.,
was being encouraged not only to take the place so long held by
Salernum in the educational world of Europe, but also to rival the
renowned Universities of Paris and Bologna. Here he remained until he
was seventeen years of age when he resolved to enter the Dominican
Order, which had been founded only a short time before by St. Dominic,
yet had already begun to make itself felt throughout the religious and
educational world of the time.</p>
<p>Just as it is the custom to declare that as a rule, the nobility cared
little for education, so it is more or less usual to proclaim that
practically only the clergy had any opportunities for the higher
education during the Thirteenth Century. Thomas had evidently been
given his early educational opportunities, however, without any
thought of the possibility of his becoming a clergyman. His mother was
very much opposed to his entrance among the Dominicans, and every
effort was made to picture to him the pleasures and advantages that
would accrue to him because of his noble connections, in a life in the
world. Thomas insisted, however, and his firm purpose in the matter
finally conquered even the serious obstacles that a noble family can
place in the way of a boy of seventeen, as regards the disposition of
his life in a way opposed to their wishes.</p>
<p>The Dominicans realized the surpassing intelligence of the youth whom
they had received and accordingly he was sent to be trained under the
greatest teacher of their order, the famous Albert the Great, who was
then lecturing at Cologne. Thomas was not the most brilliant of
scholars as a young man and seems even to have been the butt of his
more successful fellow-students. They are said to have called him the
dumb one, or sometimes because of his bulkiness even as a youth, the
dumb ox. Albert himself, however, was not deceived in his estimation
of the intellectual capacity of his young student, and according to
tradition declared, that the bellowings of this ox would yet be heard
throughout all Christendom. After a few years spent at Cologne, Thomas
when he was in his early twenties, accompanied Albert who had been
called to Paris. It was at Paris that Thomas received his
bachelor's degree and also took out his license to teach—the doctor's
degree of our time. After this some years further were spent at
Cologne and then the greatness of the man began to dawn on his
generation. He was called back to Paris and became one of the most
popular of the Professors at that great University in the height of
her fame, at a time when no greater group of men has perhaps ever been
gathered together, than shared with him the honors of the professors'
chairs at that institution.</p>
<p class="cite">
"Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas
Aquinas, form among themselves, so to speak, a complete
representation of all the intellectual powers: they are the four
doctors who uphold the chair of philosophy in the temple of the
Middle Ages. Their mission was truly the reestablishment of the
sciences, but not their final consummation. They were not exempt
from the ignorances and erroneous opinions of their day, yet they
did much to overcome them and succeeded better than is usually
acknowledged in introducing the era of modern thought. Often, the
majesty, I may even say the grace of their conceptions, disappears
under the veil of the expressions in which they are clothed; but
these imperfections are amply atoned for by superabundant merits.
Those Christian philosophers did not admit within themselves the
divorce, since their day become so frequent, between the intellect
and the will; their lives were uniformly a laborious application of
their doctrines. They realized in its plenitude the practical wisdom
so often dreamed of by the ancients—the abstinence of the disciples
of Pythagoras, the constancy of the stoics, together with humility
and charity, virtues unknown to the antique world. Albert the Great
and St. Thomas left the castles of their noble ancestors to seek
obscurity in the cloisters of St. Dominic: the former abdicated, and
the latter declined, the honors of the Church. It was with the cord
of St. Francis that Roger Bacon and St. Bonaventure girded their
loins; when the last named was sought that the Roman purple might be
placed upon his shoulders, he begged the envoys to wait until he
finished washing the dishes of the convent. Thus they did not
withdraw themselves within the exclusive mysteries of an
esoteric teaching; they opened the doors of their schools to the
sons of shepherds and artisans, and, like their Master, Christ, they
said: "Come all!" After having broken the bread of the word, they
were seen distributing the bread of alms. The poor knew them and
blessed their names. Even yet, after the lapse of six hundred years,
the dwellers in Paris kneel round the altar of the Angel of the
School, and the workmen of Lyons deem it an honor once a year to
bear upon their brawny shoulders the triumphant remains of the
'Seraphic Doctor.'"</p>
<p>For most modern students and even scholars educated in secular
universities the name of Aquinas is scarcely more than a type, the
greatest of them, it is true, of the schoolmen who were so much
occupied with distant, impractical and, to say the least, merely
theoretic metaphysical problems, in the later Middle Ages. It is true
that the renewed interest in Dante in recent years in English speaking
countries, has brought about a revival of attention in Aquinas's work
because to Dante, the Angelical Doctor, as he was already called,
meant so much, and because the Divine Comedy has been declared often
and often, by competent critics, to be the Summa Theologiae of St.
Thomas of Aquin in verse. Even this adventitious literary interest,
however, has not served to lift the obscurity in which Aquinas is
veiled for the great majority of scholarly people, whose education has
been conducted according to modern methods and present-day ideas.</p>
<p>As showing a hopeful tendency to recognize the greatness of these
thinkers of the Middle Ages it is interesting to note that about five
years ago one of St. Thomas's great works—the Summa Contra
Gentiles—was placed on the list of subjects which a candidate may at
his option offer in the final honor school of the <i>litterae
humaniores</i> at Oxford. There has come a definite appreciation of the
fact that this old time philosopher represents a phase of intellectual
development that must not be neglected, and that stands for such
educational influence as may well be taken advantage of even in our
day of information rather than mental discipline. For the purposes of
this course Father Rickaby, S. J., has prepared an annotated
translation of the great philosophic work under the title, "Of
God and His Creatures," which was published by Burns and Oates of
London, 1905. This will enable those for whom the Latin of St. Thomas
was a stumbling block, to read the thoughts of the great scholastic,
in translation at least, and it is to be hoped that we shall hear no
more of the trifling judgments which have so disgraced our English
philosophical literature.</p>
<p>The fact that Pope Leo XIII., by a famous papal bull, insisted that
St. Thomas should be the standard of teaching in philosophy and
theology in all the Catholic institutions of learning throughout the
world, aroused many thinkers to a realization of the fact that far
from being a thing of the dead and distant past, Thomas's voice was
still a great living force in the world of thought. To most people Leo
XIII. appealed as an intensely practical and thoroughly modern ruler,
whose judgment could be depended on even with regard to teaching
problems in philosophy and theology. There was about him none of the
qualities that would stamp him as a far-away mystic whose thoughts
were still limited by medieval barriers. The fact that in making his
declaration the Pope was only formulating as a rule, what had
spontaneously become the almost constant practice and tradition of
Catholic schools and universities, of itself served to show how great
and how enduring was St. Thomas's influence.</p>
<p>In the drawing together of Christian sects that has inevitably come as
a result of the attacks made upon Christianity by modern materialists,
and then later by those who would in their ardor for the higher
criticism do away with practically all that is divine in Christianity,
there has come a very general realization even on the part of those
outside of her fold, that the Roman Catholic Church occupies a
position more solidly founded on consistent logical premises and
conclusions than any of the denominations. Without her aid Christian
apologetics would indeed be in sad case. Pope Leo's declaration only
emphasizes the fact, then, that the foundation stone of Christian
apologetics was laid by the great work of St. Thomas, and that to him
more than any other is due that wonderful coordination of secular and
religious knowledge, which appoints for each of these branches of
knowledge its proper place, and satisfies the human mind better
than any other system of philosophic thought. This is the real
panegyric of St. Thomas, and it only adds to the sublimity of it that
it should come nearly six centuries and a half after his death. To
only a bare handful of men in the history of the human race, is it
given thus to influence the minds of subsequent generations for so
long and to have laid down the principles of thought that are to
satisfy men for so many generations. This is why, in any attempt at
even inadequate treatment of the greatness of the Thirteenth Century,
Thomas Aquinas, who was its greatest scholar, must have a prominent
place. The present generation has had sufficient interest in him
aroused, however, amply to justify such a giving of space.</p>
<p>When Leo XIII. made his recommendation of St. Thomas it was not as one
who had merely heard of the works of the great medieval thinker, or
knew them only by tradition, or had slightly dipped into them as a
dilettante, but as one who had been long familiar with them, who had
studied the Angelical Doctor in youth, who had pondered his wisdom in
middle age, and resorted again and again to him for guidance in the
difficulties of doctrine in maturer years, and the difficulties of
morals such as presented themselves in his practical life as a
churchman. It was out of the depths of his knowledge of him, that the
great Pope, whom all the modern world came to honor so reverently
before his death, drew his supreme admiration for St. Thomas and his
recognition of the fact that no safer guide in the thorny path of
modern Christian apologetics could be followed, than this wonderful
genius who first systematized human thought as far as the relations of
Creator to creature are considered, in the heyday of medieval
scholarship and university teaching.</p>
<p>Those who have their knowledge of scholastic philosophy at second
hand, from men who proclaim this period of human development as
occupied entirely with fruitless discussion of metaphysical theories,
will surely think that they could find nothing of interest for them in
St. Thomas's writings. It is true the casual reader may not penetrate
far enough into his writing to realize its significance and to
appreciate its depth of knowledge, but the serious student finds
constant details of supreme interest because of their
applications to the most up-to-date problems. We venture to quote an
example that will show this more or less perfectly according to the
special philosophic interest of readers. It is St. Thomas's discussion
of the necessity there was for the revelation of the truth of the
existence of God. His statement of the reasons why men, occupied with
the ordinary affairs of life, would not ordinarily come to this truth
unless it were revealed to them, though they actually have the mental
capacity to reach it by reason alone, will show how sympathetically
the Saint appreciated human conditions as they are.</p>
<p class="cite">
"If a truth of this nature were left to the sole inquiry of reason,
three disadvantages would follow. One is that the knowledge of God
would be confined to few. The discovery of truth is the fruit of
studious inquiry. From this very many are hindered. Some are
hindered by a constitutional unfitness, their natures being
ill-disposed to the acquisition of knowledge. They could never
arrive by study at the highest grade of human knowledge, which
consists in the knowledge of God. Others are hindered by the claims
of business and the ties of the management of property. There must
be in human society some men devoted to temporal affairs. These
could not possibly spend time enough in the learned lessons of
speculative inquiry to arrive at the highest point of human inquiry,
the knowledge of God. Some again are hindered by sloth. The
knowledge of the truths that reason can investigate concerning God
presupposes much previous knowledge; indeed almost the entire study
of philosophy is directed to the knowledge of God. Hence, of all
parts of philosophy that part stands over to be learned last, which
consists of metaphysics dealing with (divine things). Thus only with
great labour of study is it possible to arrive at the searching out
of the aforesaid truth; and this labour few are willing to undergo
for sheer love of knowledge.
<br/><br/>
"Another disadvantage is that such as did arrive at the knowledge or
discovery of the aforesaid truth would take a long time over it on
account of the profundity of such truth, and the many prerequisites
to the study, and also because in youth and early manhood the soul,
tossed to and fro on the waves of passion, is not fit for the
study of such high truth; only in settled age does the soul become
prudent and scientific, as the philosopher says. Thus if the only
way open to the knowledge of God were the way of reason, the human
race would (remain) in thick darkness of ignorance: as the knowledge
of God, the best instrument for making men perfect and good, would
accrue only to a few after a considerable lapse of time.
<br/><br/>
"A third disadvantage is that, owing to the infirmity of our
judgment and the perturbing force of imagination, there is some
admixture of error in most of the investigations of human reason.
This would be a reason to many for continuing to doubt even of the
most accurate demonstrations, not perceiving the force of the
demonstration, and seeing the divers judgments, of divers persons
who have the name of being wise men. Besides, in the midst of much
demonstrated truth there is sometimes an element of error, not
demonstrated but asserted on the strength of some plausible and
sophistic reasoning that is taken for a demonstration. And therefore
it was necessary for the real truth concerning divine things to be
presented to men with fixed certainty by way of faith. Wholesome,
therefore, is the arrangement of divine clemency, whereby things
even that reason can investigate are commanded to be held on faith,
so that all might be easily partakers of the knowledge of God, and
that without doubt and error (Book I. cix)."</p>
<p>A still more striking example of Thomas's eminently sympathetic
discussion of a most difficult problem, is to be found in his
treatment of the question of the Resurrection of the Body. The
doctrine that men will rise again on the last day with the same bodies
that they had while here on earth, has been a stumbling block for the
faith of a great many persons from the beginning of Christianity. In
recent times the discovery of the indestructibility of matter, far
from lessening the skeptical elements in this problem as might have
been anticipated, has rather emphasized them. While the material of
which man's body was composed is never destroyed, it is broken up
largely into its original elements and is used over and over again in
many natural processes, and even enters into the composition of other
men's bodies during the long succeeding generations. Here is a problem
upon which it would ordinarily be presumed at once, that a
philosophic writer of the Thirteenth Century could throw no possible
light. We venture to say, however, that the following passage which we
quote from an article on St. Thomas in a recent copy of the Dublin
<i>Review</i>, represents the best possible solution of the problem, even
in the face of all our modern advance in science.</p>
<p class="cite">
"What does not bar numerical unity in a man while he lives on
uninterruptedly (writes St. Thomas), clearly can be no bar to the
identity of the arisen man with the man that was. In a man's body,
while he lives, there are not always the same parts in respect of
matter but only in respect of species. In respect of matter there is
a flux and reflux of parts. Still that fact does not bar the man's
numerical unity from the beginning to the end of his life. The form
and species of the several parts continue throughout life, but the
matter of the parts is dissolved by the natural heat, and new matter
accrues through nourishment. Yet the man is not numerically
different by the difference of his component parts at different
ages, although it is true that the material composition of the man
at one stage of his life is not his material composition at another.
Addition is made from without to the stature of a boy without
prejudice to his identity, for the boy and the adult are numerically
the same man."</p>
<p>In a word, Aquinas says that we recognize that the body of the boy and
of the man are the same though they are composed of quite different
material. With this in mind the problem of the Resurrection takes on
quite a new aspect from what it held before. What we would call
attention to, however, is not so much the matter of the argument as
the mode of it. It is essentially modern in every respect. Not only
does Thomas know that the body changes completely during the course of
years, but he knows that the agent by which the matter of the parts is
dissolved is "the natural heat," while "new matter accrues through
nourishment." The passage contains a marvelous anticipation of
present-day physiology as well as a distinct contribution to Christian
apologetics. This coordination of science and theology, though usually
thought to be lacking among scholastic philosophers, is constantly
typical of their mode of thought and discussion, and this example, far
from being exceptional, is genuinely representative of them, as
all serious students of scholasticism know.</p>
<p>Perhaps the last thing for which the ordinary person would expect to
find a great modern teacher recommending the reading of St. Thomas
would be to find therein the proper doctrine with regard to liberty
and the remedies for our modern social evils. Those who will recall,
however, how well the generations of the Thirteenth Century faced
social problems even more serious than ours—for the common people had
no rights at all [at] the beginning of the century, yet secured them with
such satisfaction as to lay the foundation of the modern history of
liberty—will realize that the intellectual men of the time must have
had a much better grasp of the principles underlying such problems,
than would otherwise be imagined. As a matter of fact, St. Thomas's
treatment of Society, its rights and duties, and the mutual
relationship between it and the individual, is one of the triumphs of
his wonderful work in ethics. It is no wonder, then, that the great
Pope of the end of the Nineteenth Century, whose encyclicals showed
that he understood very thoroughly these social evils of our time,
recognized their tendencies and appreciated their danger, recommended
as a remedy for them the reading of St. Thomas. Pope Leo said:</p>
<p class="cite">
"Domestic and civil society, even, which, as all see, is exposed to
great danger from the plague of perverse opinions, would certainly
enjoy a far more peaceful and a securer existence if more wholesome
doctrine were taught in the academies and schools—one more in
conformity with the teaching of the Church, such as is contained in
the works of Thomas Aquinas.
<br/><br/>
"For the teachings of Thomas on the true meaning of liberty—which
at this time is running into license—on the divine origin of all
authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of
princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual charity one
towards another—on all of these and kindred subjects, have very
great and invincible force to overturn those principles of the new
order which are well known to be dangerous to the peaceful order of
things and to public safety."</p>
<p>For this great Pope, however, there was no greater teacher of any of
the serious philosophical, ethical and theological problems than this
Saint of the Thirteenth Century. His position in the matter would only
seem exaggerated to those who do not appreciate Pope Leo's marvelous
practical intelligence, and Saint Thomas's exhaustive treatment of
most of the questions that have always been uppermost in the minds of
men. While, with characteristic humility, he considered himself
scarcely more than a commentator on Aristotle, his natural genius was
eminently original and he added much more of his own than what he took
from his master. There can be no doubt that his was one of the most
gifted minds in all humanity's history and that for profundity of
intelligence he deserves to be classed with Plato and Aristotle, as
his great disciple Dante is placed between Homer and Shakespeare.
Those who know St. Thomas the best, and have spent their lives in the
study of him, not only cordially welcomed but ardently applauded Pope
Leo's commendation of him, and considered that lofty as was his praise
there was not a word they would have changed even in such a laudatory
passage as the following:</p>
<p class="cite">
"While, therefore, we hold that every word of wisdom, every useful
thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with
a willing and grateful mind. We exhort you, Venerable Brethren, in
all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to
spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic
faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the
sciences. The wisdom of St. Thomas, We say—for if anything is taken
up with too great subtlety by the scholastic doctors, or too
carelessly stated—if there is anything that ill agrees with the
discoveries of a later age, or, in a word, improbable in whatever
way, it does not enter Our mind, to propose that for imitation to
Our age. Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the
doctrines of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth
clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the academies
already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this
doctrine, and use it for refutation of prevailing errors. But, lest
the false for the true or the corrupt for the pure be drunk in, be
watchful that the doctrine of Thomas be drawn from his own
fountains, or at least from those rivulets which derived from the
very fount, have thus far flowed, according to the established
agreement of learned men, pure and clear; be careful to guard the
minds of youth from those which are said to flow thence, but in
reality are gathered from strange and unwholesome streams."</p>
<p>Tributes quite as laudatory are not lacking from modern secular
writers and while there have been many derogatory remarks, these have
always come from men who either knew Aquinas only at second hand, or
who confess that they had been unable to read him understandingly. The
praise all comes from men who have spent years in the study of his
writings.</p>
<p>A recent writer in the Dublin <i>Review</i> (January, 1906) sums up his
appreciation of one of St. Thomas's works, his masterly book in
philosophy, as follows:</p>
<p class="cite">
"The <i>Summa contra Gentiles</i> is an historical monument of the first
importance for the history of philosophy. In the variety of its
contents, it is a perfect encyclopedia of the learning of the day.
By it we can fix the high-water mark of Thirteenth Century thought,
for it contains the lectures of a doctor second to none in the great
school of thought then flourishing—the University of Paris. It is
by the study of such books that one enters into the mental life of
the period at which they were written; not by the hasty perusal of
histories of philosophy. No student of the Contra Gentiles is likely
to acquiesce in the statement that the Middle Ages were a time when
mankind seemed to have lost the power of thinking for themselves.
Medieval people thought for themselves, thoughts curiously different
from ours and profitable to study."</p>
<p>Here is a similar high tribute for Aquinas's great work on Theology
from his modern biographer, Father Vaughan:</p>
<p class="cite">
"The 'Summa Theologica' is a mighty synthesis, thrown into technical
and scientific form, of the Catholic traditions of East and West, of
the infallible dicta of the Sacred Page, and of the most enlightened
conclusions of human reason, gathered from the soaring intuitions of
the Academy, and the rigid severity of the Lyceum.
<br/><br/>
"Its author was a man endowed with the characteristic notes of the
three great Fathers of Greek Philosophy: he possessed the
intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytical
keenness of Aristotle, and that yearning after wisdom and light
which was the distinguishing mark of 'Plato the divine,' and which
has ever been one of the essential conditions of the highest
intuitions of religion."</p>
<p>As a matter of fact it was the very greatness of Thomas Aquinas, and
the great group of contemporaries who were so close to him, that
produced an unfortunate effect on subsequent thinking and teaching in
Europe. These men were so surpassing in their grasp of the whole round
of human thought, that their works came to be worshiped more or less
as fetishes, and men did not think for themselves but appealed to them
as authorities. It is a great but an unfortunate tribute to the
scholastics of the Thirteenth Century that subsequent generations for
many hundred years not only did not think that they could improve on
them, but even hesitated to entertain the notion that they could equal
them. Turner in his History of Philosophy has pointed out this fact
clearly and has attributed to it, to a great extent, the decadence of
scholastic philosophy.</p>
<p class="cite">
"The causes of the decay of scholastic philosophy were both internal
and external. The internal causes are to be found in the condition
of Scholastic philosophy at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century.
The great work of Christian syncretism had been completed by the
masters of the preceding period; revelation and science had been
harmonized; contribution had been levied on the pagan philosophies
of Greece and Arabia, and whatever truth these philosophies had
possessed had been utilized to form the basis of a rational
exposition of Christian revelation. The efforts of Roger Bacon and
of Alfred the Great to reform scientific method had failed; the
sciences were not cultivated. There was, therefore, no source of
development, and nothing was left for the later Scholastics except
to dispute as to the meaning of principles, to comment on the text
of this master or of that, and to subtilize to such an extent that
Scholasticism soon became a synonym for captious quibbling. The
great Thomistic principle that in philosophy the argument from
authority is the weakest of all arguments was forgotten; Aristotle,
St. Thomas, or Scotus became the criterion of truth, and as Solomon,
whose youthful wisdom had astonished the world, profaned his
old age by the worship of idols, the philosophy of the schools, in
the days of its decadence, turned from the service of truth to
prostrate itself before the shrine of a master. Dialectic, which in
the Thirteenth Century had been regarded as the instrument of
knowledge, now became an object of study for the sake of display;
and to this fault of method was added a fault of style—an
uncouthness and barbarity of terminology which bewilder the modern
reader."</p>
<p>The appreciation of St. Thomas in his own time is the greatest tribute
to the critical faculty of the century that could be made. "Genius is
praised but starves," in the words of the old Roman poet. Certainly
most of the geniuses of the world have met with anything but their
proper meed of appreciation in their own time. This is not true,
however, during our Thirteenth Century. We have already shown how the
artists, and especially Giotto, (at the end of the Thirteenth Century
Giotto was only twenty-four years old) were appreciated, and how much
attention Dante began to attract from his contemporaries, and we may
add that all the great scholars of the period had a following that
insured the wide publication of their works, at a time when this had
to be accomplished by slow and patient hand-labor. The appreciation
for Thomas, indeed, came near proving inimical to his completion of
his important works in philosophy and theology. Many places in Europe
wanted to have the opportunity to hear him. We have only reintroduced
the practise of exchanging university professors in very recent years.
This was quite a common practise in the Thirteenth Century, however,
and so St. Thomas, after having been professor at Paris and later at
Rome, taught for a while at Naples and then at a number of the Italian
universities.</p>
<p>Everywhere he went he was noted for the kindliness of his disposition
and for his power to make friends. Looked upon as the greatest thinker
of his time it would be easy to expect that there should be some signs
of consciousness of this, and as a consequence some of that unpleasant
self-assertion which so often makes great intellectual geniuses
unpopular. Thomas, however, never seems to have had any
over-appreciation of his own talents, but, realizing how little he
knew compared to the whole round of knowledge, and how
superficial his thinking was compared to the depth of the mysteries he
was trying, not to solve but to treat satisfactorily, it must be
admitted that there was no question of conceit having a place in his
life. This must account for the universal friendship of all who came
in contact with him. The popes insisted on having him as a professor
at the Roman university in which they were so much interested, and
which they wished to make one of the greatest universities of the
time. Here Thomas was brought in contact with ecclesiastics from all
over the world and helped to form the mind of the time. Those who
think the popes of the Middle Ages opposed to education should study
the records of this Roman university.</p>
<p>Thomas became the great friend of successive popes, some of whom had
been brought in contact with him during his years of studying and
teaching at Rome and Paris. This gave him many privileges and abundant
encouragement, but finally came near ruining his career as a
philosophic writer and teacher, since his papal friends wished to
raise him to high ecclesiastical dignities. Urban IV. seems first to
have thought of this but his successor Clement IV., one of the noblest
churchmen of the period, who had himself wished to decline the papacy,
actually made out the Bull, creating Thomas Archbishop of Naples. When
this document was in due course presented to Aquinas, far from giving
him any pleasure it proved a source of grief and pain. He saw the
chance to do his life-work slipping from him. This was so evident to
his friend the Pope that he withdrew the Bull and St. Thomas was left
in peace during the rest of his career, and allowed to prosecute that
one great object to which he had dedicated his mighty intellect. This
was the summing up of all human knowledge in a work that would show
the relation of the Creator to the creature, and apply the great
principles of Greek philosophy to the sublime truths of Christianity.
Had Thomas consented to accept the Archbishopric of Naples in all
human probability, as Thomas's great English biographer remarks, the
Summa Theologica would never have been written. It seems not unlikely
that the dignity was pressed upon him by the Pope partly at the
solicitation of powerful members of his family, who hoped in
this to have some compensation for their relative's having abandoned
his opportunities for military and worldly glory. It is fortunate that
their efforts failed, and it is only one of the many examples in
history of the short-sightedness there may be in considerations that
seem founded on the highest human prudence.</p>
<p>Thomas was left free then to go on with his great work, and during the
next five years he applied every spare moment to the completion of his
Summa. More students have pronounced this the greatest work ever
written than is true for any other text-book that has ever been used
in schools. That it should be the basis of modern theological teaching
after seven centuries is of itself quite sufficient to proclaim its
merit. The men who are most enthusiastic about it are those who have
used it the longest and who know it the best.</p>
<p>St. Thomas's English biographer, the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan, who
is a worthy member of that distinguished Vaughan family who have given
so many zealous ecclesiastics to the English Church and so many
scholars to support the cause of Christianity, can scarcely say enough
of this great work, nor of its place in the realm of theology. When it
is recalled that Father Vaughan was not a member of St. Thomas's own
order, the Dominicans, but of the Benedictines, it will be seen that
it was not because of any <i>esprit de corps</i>, but out of the depths of
his great admiration for the saint, that his words of praise were
written:</p>
<p class="cite">
"It has been shown abundantly that no writer before the Angelical's
day could have created a synthesis of all knowledge. The greatest of
the classic Fathers have been treated of, and the reasons of their
inability are evident. As for the scholastics who more immediately
preceded the Angelical, their minds were not ripe for so great and
complete a work: the fullness of time had not yet come. Very
possibly had not Albert the Great and Alexander (of Hales) preceded
him, St. Thomas would not have been prepared to write his
master-work; just as, most probably, Newton would never have
discovered the law of gravitation had it not been for the previous
labors of Galileo and of Kepler. But just as the English astronomer
stands solitary in his greatness, though surrounded and
succeeded by men of extraordinary eminence, so also the Angelical
stands by himself alone, although Albertus Magnus was a genius,
Alexander was a theological king, and Bonaventure a seraphic doctor.
Just as the Principia is a work unique, unreachable, so, too, is the
'Summa Theologica' of the great Angelical. Just as Dante stands
alone among the poets, so stands St. Thomas in the schools."</p>
<p>Probably the most marvelous thing about the life of St. Thomas is his
capacity for work. His written books fill up some twenty folios in
their most complete edition. This of itself would seem to be enough to
occupy a lifetime without anything more. His written works, however,
represent apparently only the products of his hours at leisure. He was
only a little more than fifty when he died and he had been a
university professor at Cologne, at Bologna, at Paris, at Rome, and at
Naples. In spite of the amount of work that he was thus asked to do,
his order, the Dominican, constantly called on him to busy himself
with certain of its internal affairs. On one occasion at least he
visited England in order to attend a Dominican Chapter at Oxford, and
the better part of several years at Paris was occupied with his labors
to secure for his brethren a proper place in the university, so that
they might act as teachers and yet have suitable opportunities for the
education and the discipline of the members of the Order.</p>
<p>Verily it would seem as though his days must have been at least twice
as long as those of the ordinary scholar and student to accomplish so
much; yet he is only a type of the monks of the Middle Ages, of whom
so many people seem to think that their principal traits were to be
fat and lazy. Thomas was fat, as we know from the picture of him which
shows him before a desk from which a special segment has been removed
to accommodate more conveniently a rather abnormal abdominal
development, but as to laziness, surely the last thing that would
occur to anyone who knows anything about him, would be to accuse him
of it. Clearly those who accept the ancient notion of monkish laziness
will never understand the Middle Ages. The great educational progress
of the Thirteenth Century was due almost entirely to monks.</p>
<p>There is another extremely interesting side to the intellectual
character of Thomas Aquinas which is usually not realized by the
ordinary student of philosophy and theology, and still less perhaps by
those who are interested in him from an educational standpoint. This
is his poetical faculty. For Thomas as for many of the great
intellectual geniuses of the modern time, the sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist was one of the most wondrously satisfying devotional
mysteries of Christianity and the subject of special devotion. In our
own time the great Cardinal Newman manifested this same attitude of
mind. Thomas because of his well-known devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament, was asked by the Pope to write the office for the then
recently established feast of Corpus Christi. There are always certain
hymns incorporated in the offices of the different Feast days. It
might ordinarily have been expected that a scholar like Aquinas would
write the prose portions of the office, leaving the hymns for some
other hand, or selecting hymns from some older sacred poetry. Thomas,
however, wrote both hymns and prose, and, surprising as it may be, his
hymns are some of the most beautiful that have ever been composed and
remain the admiration of posterity.</p>
<p>It must not be forgotten in this regard that Thomas's career occurred
during the period when Latin hymn writing was at its apogee. The Dies
Irae and the Stabat Mater were both written during the Thirteenth
Century, and the most precious Latin hymns of all times were composed
during the century and a half from 1150 to 1300. Aquinas's hymns do
not fail to challenge comparison even with the greatest of these.
While he had an eminently devotional subject, it must not be forgotten
that certain supremely difficult theological problems were involved in
the expression of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. In spite of the
difficulties, Thomas succeeded in making not only good theology but
great poetry. A portion of one of his hymns, the Tantum Ergo, has been
perhaps more used in church services than any other, with the possible
exception of the Dies Irae. Another one of his beautiful hymns that
especially deserves to be admired, is less well known and so I have
ventured to quote three selected stanzas of it, as an illustration
of Thomas's command over rhyme and rhythm in the Latin tongue.
[Footnote 24]</p>
<p>Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,<br/>
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas.<br/>
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,<br/>
Quia te contemplans totum deficit.<br/>
<br/>
Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur,<br/>
Sed auditu solo tute creditur:<br/>
Credo quidquid dixit Dei filius<br/>
Nihil veritatis verbo verius.<br/></p>
<p>And the less musical but wonderfully significative fourth, stanza—</p>
<p>Plagas sicut Thomas non intueor,<br/>
Deum tamen meum te confiteor,<br/>
Fac me tibi semper magis credere,<br/>
In te spem habere, te diligere.<br/></p>
<p>Only the ardent study of many years will give anything like an
adequate idea of the great schoolman's universal genius. I am content
if I have conveyed a few hints that will help to a beginning of an
acquaintance with one of the half dozen supreme minds of our race.</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 24: The following translation made by Justice O'Hagan
renders sense and sound into English as adequately perhaps as is
possible:
<p class="cite2"><br/>
Hidden God, devoutly I adore thee,<br/>
Truly present underneath these veils:<br/>
All my heart subdues itself before thee.<br/>
Since it all before thee faints and fails.<br/>
<br/>
Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit.<br/>
Hearing only do we trust secure;<br/>
I believe, for God the Son hath said it—<br/>
Word of truth that ever shall endure.<br/>
<br/>
…<br/>
<br/>
Though I look not on thy wounds with Thomas,<br/>
Thee, my Lord, and thee, my God, I call:<br/>
Make me more and more believe thy promise,<br/>
Hope in thee, and love thee over all.<br/></p>
]
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