Thomas was born to a noble family in southern Italy and entered the new Dominican order against his family's wishes — they kidnapped him to dissuade him; he escaped and went to Paris to study under Albert the Great. There he encountered the rediscovered Aristotle, then arriving in Latin Europe through the Arabic translations of al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). His life's work was to reconcile that pagan Greek philosopher — read carefully through Muslim commentary — with Christian theology. The Summa Theologiae, begun in 1265, runs to over 3,000 pages and asks 512 questions about everything from the existence of God (the famous 'Five Ways') to whether angels move from place to place. He died at 49, on his way to the Council of Lyon, the work unfinished — having near the end of his life had a vision after which he said 'all that I have written seems like straw to me' and refused to write further. Canonised 1323; declared a Doctor of the Church 1567.
All Figures
Dominican Friar · Theologian · Doctor of the Church
Thomas Aquinas
1,225 CE – 1,274 CE
The Italian friar who married Aristotle to Christianity in the Summa Theologiae — the most ambitious work of medieval thought, never finished.
Lifetime
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