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St Thomas Aquinas as a Dominican
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
St Simeon the New Theologian, telling the story of a young man called George writes: “For love for what he sought separated him from the world, and creaturely things and all affairs, and made him entirely of the Spirit and light. Yet all the while he lived in the middle of a city and was responsible for a house and occupied with slaves and free men, doing and achieving all the things that pertain to the present life.”
With only a little modification, this description applies equally well to Aquinas, at least if we accept the accounts of him handed down to us by his early biographers. Given to rapture and religious ecstasy, supposedly “bound with a bond of chastity that shall never be loosened” (Gui, Chapter 7) he spent his active life in an entirely urban context as writer, teacher, administrator and advisor. He wined and dined with kings; he had the ear of the papacy and highest nobility as well as the offer of the loftiest ecclesiastical preferment. The Lives of the Brethren says that : “One day somebody asked Master Jordan ‘What Rule do you follow’? He replied, ‘The Rule of the Friars Preachers. And this is their Rule: to live an upright life, to learn and to teach’.” We need to see Aquinas as a man whose rule shows itself in his life and its handling of study and teaching. In this respect, although he doubtless represents ideals common to more than one religious order, common to many Christians indeed, Aquinas is typically Dominican. The Prologue to the Primitive Constitutions observes that: “Our Order was established particularly for the sake of preaching and the salvation of souls, and that our whole study should be principally and earnestly devdted to our being useful to the souls of others.
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- Copyright © 1979 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 ‘George’ is Simeon. Text in Catechesis 22 (168‐173).
2 The major sources for Aquinas's life are (1) the minutes of the first canonization enquiry at Naples, 1319 in Fontes Vitae S. Thomae, pp. 264‐407; (2) biographies by William of Tocco, Bernard Gui and Peter Calo; (3) Bonum universale de apibus by Thomas of Cantimpré (1201‐1272); Gérard de Frachet, Vitae Fmtrum Ordinis Praedicatorum and Cronica Ordinis; (4) Tolomeo of Lucca, Historica Ecclesiostica Among the biographies Tocco is generally held to be original with Gui dependent on him. The most useful English collection is The Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas Bio graphical Documents, trans. and ed. by Foster, Kenelm O.P. London, 1959Google Scholar. The current standard biography is Friar Thomas D Aquino by Weisheipl, James, Oxford, 1975Google Scholar.
3 Lives of the Brethren III 42,3. MOPH 1, p. 138.
4 This represents the Dominican Constitution in 1220.
5 On Dominican spirituality see Vicaire, M. H. O.P. Saint Dominique de Caleruega, Paris, 1954Google Scholar; Dominique et ses Preccheurs, Paris, 1977Google Scholar; Tugwell, Simon O.P. The Way of the Preacher, London, 1979Google Scholar.
6 M. B. Crowe, ‘On Re‐writing the Biography of Aquinas’, Irish Theological Quarterly, October 1974.
7 Thomas Aquinas' (unpublished lecture).
8 Aquinas's refusal of Monte Cassino parallels the attitude of St Dominic. He was offered, and refused, two, possibly three, bishoprics.
9 Cf. Weisheipl, pp. 26‐27.
10 The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure, trans, by Trethowan, Dom IIltyd, London, 1938, p. 45Google Scholar.
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12 Grabmann, Martin, ‘Die Kanonisation des heilegen Thomas’,Divus Thomas, Jahrgang 1 (1923)Google Scholar. Cf. Foster, p. 1: “For modern Catholics, surely, St Thomas Aquinas is, by and large, an authority rather than a saint, a sort of embodiment of theology or doctrinal orthodoxy rather than a lover of Christ.”
13 Cf. Kenelm Foster, ‘St Thomas and Dante’, New Blackfriars, April 1974, p. 153.
14 Latin text with translation by Victor White O.P. London, 1947. White's version is based on that of Mandonnet, P. O.P. S. Thomas Aquinatis Opuscula Omnia, Vol IV, p. 535 (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar. Mandonnet counts it among the ‘vix dubia’ of the writings of Thomas, but there is not clear evidence that it is definitely not by Aquinas.
15 2a2ae, 180, 3. Cf. ’’ Aquinas, Thomas St ‐ His Life, Times and Spirituality’ by Tugwell, Simon O.P. in Learning To Pray, ed. Lemass, Peter, Dublin, 1977. pp. 69‐83Google Scholar.
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17 See B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1952. Cf. Cf also Chenu, p. 240.
18 Cf. Weisheipl, p. 270. Similar language is found in De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas Parisienses.
19 Life 62 (A.SS. 12, 877 DE).
20 De Vita Regulari (ed. Berthief, J. J., Turin, 1956) vol. II p. 32Google Scholar.
21 Trans. White, Victor O.P. On Searching into God, Oxford, 1947Google Scholar. This is the second question of a series of six appended to a commentary of Boethius's On the Trinity.
22 History of Western Philosophy, London, 1946, p. 475Google Scholar.
23 Dominique et ses Preccheurs, p. 163.
24 Pieper, J., Introduction to Thomas Aquinas, London, 1963, pp. 81‐82Google Scholar.
25 i.e. what survives in Aquinas's handwriting. This is excessively difficult to decipher.
26 Crowe, pp. 266‐7.