Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas spent his life arguing that faith and reason cannot contradict each other, and was told by his family not to become a friar. He was born about 1225 to a noble family near Aquino, sent to the Benedictines at Monte Cassino at five with the expectation that he would become its abbot, and joined the Dominicans instead at nineteen. His brothers kidnapped him on the road and held him in the family castle for a year, at one point sending a prostitute to his room, whom he is said to have driven out with a brand from the fire. He went to Cologne to study under Albert the Great, who is supposed to have said of a large and silent pupil that this dumb ox would one day fill the world with his bellowing. The intellectual problem of his generation was Aristotle. The complete works had arrived in Latin through Arabic and Greek translation within living memory, they were the most powerful system of thought anyone had seen, and they were pagan and in places incompatible with Christian doctrine. The Summa Theologiae is the answer: every question stated with the strongest objections first, then a reply, then answers to each objection — some 3,000 articles of it, unfinished. His five ways argue for God from motion, causation, contingency, degree and design. He stopped writing in December 1273 after an experience at mass, saying that all he had written was straw. He died in 1274. His work was condemned in part at Paris and Oxford within three years of his death and made the official framework of Catholic theology in 1879. He is also the reason that a great deal of Aristotle is still taught in philosophy departments that have no interest in the theology.
- Lived: 1225 CE – 1274 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: philosopher, religious_leader
