Thomas Aquinas began his last journey from Naples with the intention of arriving in Lyons for the Church Council to which he had been invited by Pope Gregory X as a special expert on the Greeks. He had left the Dominican Convent of Naples, San Domenico Maggiore, presumably at the end of January or beginning of February in 1274. Some days later he arrived in Maenza, where he fell ill. He was moved to Fossanova, a Cistercian Monastery nearby, to rest and hopefully recover (see the map). However, there death took him in the early morning of 7 March.

This chapter focuses on the scene of Thomas Aquinas's death. Earlier hagiographical studies have noted that the description of the moment of death was one of the most important passages in a life of a medieval saint. According to Pierre-André Sigal, it was not just a theological idea, but a widely held belief that the last days and hours, and the last breath in particular, were especially revealing in the process of distinguishing a saint from an ordinary man. Formalized signs often proved that the person's life would continue in heaven. In the light of these ideas, I shall examine how Thomas's contemporaries, later hagiographers, and others perceived Thomas's passage to a heavenly life. Different parties developed an interest in Thomas's post mortem memory soon after his death. The most important were the Cistercian community of Fossanova, the Dominican Order, and Thomas's family. By turns, they repeatedly constructed, revaluated, and reconstructed the perception of the scene of Thomas's death in line with the opportunities it presented to them and the reality of their situation vis-à-vis Thomas's relics. The whole message of the Christian faith and resurrection was compounded in the written or pictorial images of Thomas's death. My particular interest focuses on the question of whether the interpretations of Thomas's death influenced the perception of his corpse or relics. It seems that Thomas's last days became crucial for the century-long dispute over the possession of his corpse. The first key to an understanding of the importance of Thomas's body is in the words which he allegedly pronounced when he arrived at the Monastery of Fossanova.