A Summary of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, Chs Xiii-Xvi By Jean Pierre Torrell

A Summary of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, Chs Xiii-Xvi By Jean Pierre Torrell

In Chapter XIII, Thomas left Paris in the spring of 1272, after a sojourn of almost four years. Since Lent, the university had been living again through a period of agitation: a conflict not at all clear for us pitted the masters against the bishop of Paris, and a strike had been announced that was supposed to last from Lent until the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, which is to say, the end of the scholastic year. It is certain that Thomas had been able to hold his quodlibetal dispute for Lent of 1272, a sign that for him university activity was not totally suspended, or at least that the strike did not affect the theology faculty. However, a little after Pentecost of that very year (12 June 1272), the chapter of the Roman province, meeting in Florence, gave him the task of organizing a studium generale of theology, and left him the free choice of the site, the staff, and the number of students.

As to the material taught during these last months of Thomas’s life, he wrote commentaries on the epistles of Saint Paul, and more precisely on the Epistle to the Romans; commentaries on the Psalms, the first fifty-four psalms, and lastly on the Life of Jesus as he speaks about “what the Incarnate Son of God did and suffered in the human nature that was united to him,” or—according to a formula that occurs several times—of the acta et passa Christi in carne.

Chapter XIV, presents us with names among his confreres or his friends and family members who are linked to Thomas as his disciples. We find them as witnesses at the two canonization proceedings. Firstly, the process at Naples (which was held from 21 July to 18 September 1310), and the second process (Fossanova, 10-20 November 1321), the inquirers were not given the responsibility to look into the life and virtues of the saint, but were solely to inquire about miracles after his death. Among all these more or less close witnesses, Reginald (or Raynald) of Piperno warrants special mention. Reginald was not the only secretary to Thomas, but he was his only permanent socius and we see him at Thomas’s disposition even in the middle of the night; some people even think that their collaboration goes back to the time when Thomas was still in Paris. Thomas died three days later having received the Body of the Lord, on Wednesday, 7 March 1274, in the early hours of the morning.

In Chapter XV, after his death, Thomas’s history continues in two different registers, partly parallel, partly intersecting with one another: a cult of the saint began quickly at the place of his death, and an opposition arose at Paris and Oxford that was not disarmed by his theological thought. The harsh and tenacious struggles that followed were sometimes carried out in the name of the faith, and led to intervention by episcopal authority. They also sometimes expressed different religious or intellectual options, and we find at the time in all its sharpness the already ancient rivalry that arose so often between the order of Saint Francis and the order of Saint Dominic. In all this, we are present not only at the birth of a school of thought that without doubt owes its legendary combativeness to these difficult beginnings, but also at the birth of a development that will find its epilogue—at least provisionally—in canonization.

The canonization process was set in motion by John XXII himself. Jacques Duèse, elected pope 7 August 1316, wished to show his gratitude to the Dominican order, which had hosted the conclave at Lyon for two years, by canonizing one of its members.