Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born into a noble family in Naples in the year 1225. It was there that he became interested in the work of Aristotle. In 1243 he decided he wanted to join the Dominican order. His brothers tried to get him to change his mind about the order by kidnapping and imprisoning him for two years as well as trying to tempt him with a prostitute. He scared her off with a firebrand, and burned a crucifix on his door. After his brothers gave up, he joined the order. He was then sent to Cologne and Paris where he was the student of Albertus Magnus, an Aristotelian teacher. In 1257 he got his master's degree and teaching license. He traveled and taught at a plethora of European places of learning, and he wrote often. On December 6, 1273, due to a mystical experience, he stopped writing. Four months later he was ordered by the Pope to attend the Council of Lyons. While on his way to attend the council, he became sick and died. Despite being labeled "the dumb ox" because of his stocky build and slow speech, his intellegence and character seldom went unnoticed. Albertus Magnus once said of him that "one day the bellowing of this ox will resound throughout the world", and in 1323 Aquinas was pronounced a saint. Aquinas believed as did Aristole, that every living thing has a soul, and that what sets humans apart from animals is our ability to think rationally. He believed that the true nature of God can't be grasped by humans because we are limited by our experiences therefore we can't accurately describe God, who is a transcendent being; However that doesn't mean that our perception of God is false. It merely means that the qualities that we attach to God, exist in him in a more perfect way than is possible for us to grasp as human beings. That is the life and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas in a nutshell. For more information about Thomas Aquinas, read Eyewitness Companions book "Philosophy" by Stephen Law.