Thomas Aquinas Writes the Summa Theologiae

Thomas Aquinas came of a noble family. William of Tocco, a Dominican who gathered the evidence for his canonization more than forty years after his death, tells how he was sent as a boy to study at Naples, joined the Friars Preachers there, and was seized and held by his family before they let him go back (William of Tocco, Life of Thomas Aquinas chs. 5–8, 11). The order sent him to Cologne to study under Albert the Great. His fellow students, Tocco says, called the silent young man “the dumb ox”, and Albert is reported to have said that his bellowing in teaching would be heard through the whole world (William of Tocco, Life of Thomas Aquinas chs. 12–13). On Albert’s recommendation he went to teach at Paris, where he became a master. Among his books Tocco names a Summa of theology in three parts (William of Tocco, Life of Thomas Aquinas chs. 14, 16–17).

The Summa opens by asking whether any teaching is needed beyond philosophy. Thomas answers that human beings are directed to an end beyond the grasp of reason, and that even what reason can discover about God would be known only by a few, after a long time and with many errors; a teaching revealed by God was therefore necessary for salvation (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.1). Theology argues from the articles of faith and treats Scripture as its proper authority, but it also uses philosophy, because “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.8). The second question gives five ways of proving that God exists: from motion, from efficient causes, from possibility and necessity, from the degrees found in things, and from the governance of the world (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.2.3).

In the Third Part Thomas treats the eucharist with the word that stands in the creed of the Fourth Lateran Council (Fourth Lateran Council, constitution 1). The whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, a change that “can be called transubstantiation”, while the appearances of bread and wine remain (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.75.4–5).

He did not finish. Bartholomew of Capua testified in 1319 that after saying Mass at Naples Thomas wrote and dictated nothing more, leaving the Summa in the treatise on penance. Pressed by his companion Reginald, he answered that all he had written seemed to him straw beside what he had seen and what had been revealed to him (Canonization process of Thomas Aquinas (Naples, 1319), 79). Tocco has a similar story (William of Tocco, Life of Thomas Aquinas ch. 47). Summoned to a council, Thomas fell ill on the road and died on 7 March 1274 (Canonization process of Thomas Aquinas (Naples, 1319), 79) (William of Tocco, Life of Thomas Aquinas ch. 65). The editors of the English translation note that the missing questions were supplied afterwards from his commentary on the Sentences (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Supplement, editors’ note).

In 1879 Pope Leo XIII called Thomas “chief and master” of the scholastic doctors, recalled that the Council of Trent laid the Summa on the altar beside Scripture, and asked the Catholic bishops to restore his teaching (Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris 17, 22, 31).