Volta
Person1225 – 1274

Thomas Aquinas

Also called: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Tommaso d’Aquino

Dominican theologian whose Summa Theologica reconciled Aristotelian philosophy with Christian faith, bringing scholasticism to its height

Born into the family of the counts of Aquino in southern Italy, he was educated at Monte Cassino. His family so opposed his joining the mendicant Dominicans that they confined him in a castle for a time. He studied under Albertus Magnus in Paris and Cologne, and, quiet and heavily built, was nicknamed “the Dumb Ox” by his fellow students. Teaching at the University of Paris and in Italy, he wrote the Summa Theologica but left it unfinished, dying on his way to the Council of Lyon. He was canonised in 1323.

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1 related event

  1. 1
    1088 – 1274Rise of the Universities and Scholasticismauthor

    From the late 11th century universities — guilds of masters and students — arose at Bologna, Paris and Oxford, and scholasticism, which sought to explain faith through reason, culminated in Thomas Aquinas.

Themes this person appears in

  • Late Medieval Europe and the Renaissance1077 – 1517

    From Canossa to the eve of the Reformation — papal power at its height and in decline, towns and parliaments, royal power growing through the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death, and the Renaissance and printing