ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
I.
INTELLECTUAL ITINERARY.
(1224/25 - March 7, 1274)
1.
Formation at Monte Casino, Naples, Paris, and Cologne.
He
was born in a castle at Roccasecca (midway between
Rome and Naples) on the via Latina next to the village
of Aquino. His
father, Landolfo, was the count of Aquino, which is
not far from Monte Casino; he had four daughters and
four sons. St.
Thomas was the last to be born and according to tradition
was to destined for the Church.
He was presented as an oblate in 1231 at Monte
Casino; it was a true religious profession, although
temporary, that could eventually be renewed personally
instead of by the parents.
He
stayed at Monte Casino until 1239 and was then sent
by his father to study at the university of Naples,
founded by Frederick II.
Here he reads Aristotle and Arab commentators.
St.
Thomas became interested in Dominicans, 1244, and
joined. This
was against family plans of having him as abbot of
Monte Casino. His
mother had him chased down by his brother’s
north of Orvieto, and brought back to Roccasecca.
The young religious was held for a whole year
against attempts of his family to dissuade him.
Perhaps memorized the whole bible during that
time.
July
17, 1245 - Frederick II deposed by the Pope.
The Aquino family lived between borderline
of the dispute and had to become more friendly to
the Pope. Provincial
had complained to Rome about Thomas and so apparently
this was a reason for his release.
First he returns to Naples and then leaves
Italy accompanying the Master General (John the Teutonic).
Cologne
1248/52
He
follows St. Albert the Great in the studium generale.
The Saint was his assistant, and was influenced
by St. Albert in ethics.
He also studies under St. Albert, The Celestial
Hierarchy (analogy).
Studied:
Ethica
Nicomachea.
De
Divinis Nominibus.
wrote:
Super Isaiam
Baccalarius Biblicus
Paris
- 3 possible trips.
1245-48:
STUDY
1252-56:
BACCALARIUS SENTENTIARIUS,
1256-59:
MAGISTER IN SACRA PAGINA
1268-72:
SECOND ROUND OF TEACHING.
1252-56
Paris
Aristotle
was prohibited except for those with a dispensation,
although the prohibition was not respected.
William
of Tocco writes a letter to St. Albert asking for
a young theologian for Paris.
The problem is that Thomas has 27 yrs. and
needs to be 29. He
is dispensed. A
stressed atmosphere at Paris exists between mendicants
and seculars and between three philosophical tendencies.
a)
Augustinianism: wanted to limit Greek philosophy in
theology.
b)
Avveroism: Double truth, the separated intellect agent..
c)
Christian Aristotelianism.
Works:
Scriptum
Super Libros Sententiarum
: respected distinctions introduced by Alexander of
Hales
De
Ente Et Essentia
and De Principis Naturae
are work written for beginners.
He was asked to write them, in fact has a great
readiness to help others intellectually: 26 works
are written due to requests, others are done for his
teaching, preaching, research, or to help the other
brothers.
To
become a Magister was pretty solemn affair,
usually one needed at least about 36 years of age,
he was 31 when he earned it.
Two days were needed for the ceremony.
In the afternoon of the first day, VESPERE,
two of the four theses prepared by the doctor were
presented to the university.
On the second day, called AULA, in front of
the bishop. There
he made the oath and inaugural lesson (principium).
Finally last two last questions were disputed.
And lastly was given the title Magister.
The the Magister had three obligations
1) to read, 2) to dispute, 3) to preach.
1)
He comments the sacred scripture, an exegesis
of sorts explaining every word.
He commented half of the New Testament: St.
Matthew, St. John, Pauline texts.
Old Testament: Psalms(unfinished), Jeremiah,
Job.
2)
Disputatio: Treated problems, autonomous questions,
and not in the order of scripture.
Two
forms:
a)
Private: Three actors take up the event: The
master, assistant, the Baccalarius Formatus,
and the students.
The master would pose the problem and the students
would choose one side of the contradictory.
The Bacc. put the argument in to form and the
master made the determinatio, resolving the problem
with a doctrinal position.
At the end the Baccalarius Formatus
redacted the text.
b)
Public: These were rare events, held solemnly
twice a year (Advent and Lent) and not so liked by
the participating masters. They are called Quodlibetales.
They were open to all the doctors and students.
Everyone could ask questions
C)
Structure of disputatio:
Quaestio vel articulus, utrum(specific). The
steps were: the development and
the writing of text.
The oral unity was the article and not the
quaestio. In
the redaction the master in charge ordered it in logical
order and gave a strong unity to the quaestio -written
unity.
1256-59
De Veritate contains 80 articles, less than
available school days (there were many feast days
in the medieval period).
Not everything would be disputed and the disputatio
became a literary genre.
3)
Praedicatio: To preach on feasts and Sundays.
St. Thomas' are not extant.
Polemical
works: A conflict between secular clerics and mendicants.
Seculars'
complaint: a) They robbed the gold and the bread from
secular priests. b) Accused the mendicants of wanting
to enter into the normal order of the Church.
Returns
to Italy.
Naples
1259-61.
Orvieto
1261-65
Rome
1265-68
June
1259, the Master General commissions 5 masters to
promote study in the Order.
These legislated: the obligation to pick the
best and send them to study at the Studium Generale,
obliged priors to follow a programmed course of study,
established houses of study for liberal arts and a
philosophy (Aristotle.), appointed academic visitors
to corporeally punish lazy students.
Naples
1259-61.
Orvieto
1261-65
Urban
the IV brought the Curial See to Orvieto, but St.
Thomas was not officially part of it.
He lived in the Dominican monastery and taught
the brothers not able to attend the Studium Generale.
He prepared them to teach and confess.
Students had used up to then a kind of sin
manual and St. Thomas did not think it the proper
casuistic formation.
He
also had, according the Orders rule to comment on
a book of scripture.
He chose Job, because it seems it coincided
with the theme of the part of the Contra Gentiles
he was writing: Reditus.
Wrote
also Contra Errores Graecorum by request of
Urban the IV on the question of the Greek schism.
Contains a critical exam from the Church Fathers.
De
rationibus Fidei,
tract of apologetics against the Saracens who denied
the Incarnation and Trinity and against Armenian Greeks
- wrote defending purgatory.
Prologue: shows how to argue with non-believers:
One ought not prove the Faith through reason but ought
to demonstrate that the arguments of the others are
not necessary conclusive, and one ought to utilize
the authority which the other shares, looking for
a common base.
Com.
De Divinis Nominibus:
What is the
influence of Platonism and Aristotelianism in St.
Thomas' writings?
In it is the platonic thematic of participatio
and intellectual light.
Although the structure seems Aristotelian-
analogy, realism, knowledge through causes and principles.
Liturgical
Writings
Officium
De Festo Corporis Christi:
Petitioned by the Pope.
A question of authorship exits for the hymn
Adoro Te Devote.
Catena
Aurea:
The pope asked him for it.
It is an exegesis of the four Gospels from
the Fathers of the Church. 1263-64.
Rome
1265-68
He
is asked by the provincial to found a Studium at Rome.
The reason was that studies needed to be improved.
Thomas thought of the Summa Theologiae.
(prima pars) for beginners to give a serious moral
teaching instead of casuistic studies.
n.b. the Summa did not become an immediate
success until two centuries later when it became the
standard text book.
Completed other important works
Returns
to Paris 1268-72
How
he came to Paris is uncertain, by ship or land, for
Conrad, a German, had invaded Rome that year.
Why he was called to Paris is also uncertain.
There
were three crises at the time.
1)
The Avveroistic controversy
2)
Cleric-mendicant conflict
3)
Conservative Augustinianism against Aristotle in theology.
Themes
of conflict
1)
Polemic over the eternity of the world.
2)
Unicity of substantial forms- one or more.
3)
De unitate intellectus.
1)
Aeternitas mundi:
For the Franciscans, St. Bonaventure and John
Peckham it was easy to demonstrate the finiteness
of the world from its contingency.
St.
Thomas looked at two elements:
There exists an ontological dependence of finite
being on an Ipsum Esse Subsistens.
Philosophy can say God is Creator.
As
for eternity or non-eternity only the faith can say,
because both sides of the argument are not necessary
conclusions (S. Th., q.45; Opuscula de Aeternitate
Mundi: perhaps a response to Peckham).
2)
How many substantial forms in man? - The debate
originates among the Arabs.
Avicenna,
Avicebron: To every formal aspect ought to be assigned
a form.
For
St. Thomas only one form was necessary: ens et verum
convertuntur. The
single form concretes the realness of the form.
The others made more of a logical distinction,
like Scotus: Omni conceptui (entitati) formali
correspndet ad adaequate aliquod ens .
According to him what can be distinguished
in the mind must be found in the thing itself.
The
real conflict came with the question of the Resurrection
of Christ. If
there is only one form then the resurrected body of
the Lord is not that of the Lord's.
S.Th. III, q.5, There remained something of
the Second Person in the body which gave it continuation.
It univocally remained the body of Christ not
equivocally like it would in other creatures.
3)
De unitate intellectus:
Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Balia, belonged
to the faculty of arts at the University of Paris.
There is only one possible intellect in man,
only the imagination is singular in everyone but not
the intellect is common to all (similar to Spinoza
and German idealism).
St. Thomas wrote De Unitate Intellectus
Contra Avveroistas.
The foundation of the work is, hic homo
intelligit.
Being
so involved in these controversies made him disliked
by some; John Peckham was crude to him.
He was always quick to pick up the truth from
the others. What
he looks for most is to refute all rupture between
faith and reason.
In
Liber de Causis
: Discovered
it to be not from Aristotle but an abridgement of
Proculus' Elementatio Theologica.
Refuting all that was not compatible he keeps
the synthetic vision of the work.
Criteria
for bk λ
' of Aristotle’s Metaphyscis:
In the translation before Moerebeke’s
such book is called the 11th but after the translation
it is called the 12th bk (1271) by St. Thomas.
St.
Thomas performed a seemingly unrealizable work.
A commentary on Aristotle for a good philosopher
takes 3 yrs, in 4 yrs St. Thomas comments much of
the Aristotelian corpus.
He wrote at least 3.5 pages a day (12.5
pages 8 x 12), every day of the year in order
to match the 1536 days of work put into his writings.
(10 commentaries on Aristotle, 1 De Causis,
101 articles De Malo...... plus many tracts.)
Had 4 or 5 secretaries to whom he dictated
different material at the same time.
(Napoleon and Caesar seem also to have had
this ability).
Naples
1272-73, last period of teaching.
Seems
that the King of Naples asked the Dominicans to found
a Studium with a reputed master.
He then worked actively on the Pauline Corpus.
Epist. to Corinthians: Part of text lost from
I Cor. 7,10 to 10,33.
Finished the Summa up to III q.25. Finished
In Metaphysicorum , commented the
Psalms(incomplete), De Vita Christi, De
Sacramentis, In II Anal. Post.
Preached: The Our Father (in neapolitan), De
Symbolo. Apostolorum, Ten commandments.
6
Dec. 1273
Having celebrated Mass he says afterward to
Reginald, his secretary, “all that I have written
seems like straw...” Tired from exhaustion he
was sent to rest to his sister’s, Contessa Teodora.
January:
The Holy Father calls him to the Council at Lyon as
an expert on the union with the Greeks.
He takes with him his
Contra Errores Graecorum. and begins
the journey. He
gets sick on the way and is taken by horse to Fossanova
(two hours from Rome).
4
march.
Puts all of his writing up to the judgment
of the Church and receives Viaticum. On
7 March 1274
he dies in the morning.
