Aquinas's Summa: background, structure, & reception

1 The Author and His Work

 The Author and HisWork S  ’ Confessions are riddled with autobiographical references; the Summa is not as obliging about its author. It is not completely silent about him,but identifying whatever allusions there are requires supplemental information to help us understand how the personality of the man who would be its author was formed.    Thomas was born in  or  in the family castle of Roccasecca in southern Italy,halfway between Rome and Naples.Of the lesser nobility, his family was related to the Counts of Aquino, whence his name.As the youngest son, and according to the customs of the time,Thomas was destined for a career in the Church and became an oblate of the famous Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino.We can only speculate about the intentions of his parents who would have liked him to become its abbot.What is certain is that it was at Monte Cassino that he received his first education.With a solid foundation in Latin letters, he acquired a deep understanding, apparent in all of his writings, of the Bible and of the writings of Gregory the Great. But above all, he acquired and maintained a contemplative orientation that was to be the distinctive mark of his theology.  Y In , at the age of fourteen or fifteen,Thomas was sent to Naples to study at the university recently founded there by Emperor Frederick II. With the encouragement of the emperor, Sicily and southern Italy were, at this time, seats of a rich intellectual life. Because of the many translations of Michael Scotus and his school, the study of Aristotelian science,Arab astronomy, and Greek philosophy and medicine flourished at Palermo, Salerno, and Naples.Although it is difficult to be specific about what Thomas learned from two of his known teachers, Master Martin and Peter of Ireland, we know enough to understand that, very early on, he became familiar with the natural philosophy of Aristotle,the writings of the Arab commentator Averroës, and, probably, the work of the Jewish Maimonides. It was also during this period that Thomas became acquainted with the Order of Preachers or Dominicans, who had been in Naples since .In the spring of ,he took the habit.We can understand, even without the details of his family’s opposition to this move, that his decision to enter a still young and unknown mendicant order, instead of the powerful position that his family expected of him,signaled a spiritual choice that would profoundly affect his personality and his work.This is clear in his writings on the religious life, in which he reveals his attachment to the intellectual ideal of study, teaching, and preaching, to the poverty of his mendicant order, and, especially, to his love for Christ crucified. Thomas was sent to Paris in  to continue his studies. For three years he worked under the direction of Albert the Great. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of his first stay in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Christendom.The convent of Saint Jacques where Thomas lived was the center of lively research . Under the direction of Hugh of Saint-Cher, a team of  The Author and His Work scholars had just completed work on correcting the text of the Vulgate and creating a concordance. Another team, under the direction of Vincent of Beauvais (who was still at Saint Jacques before departing to teach at Royaumont in ), was in the process of compiling the Speculum maius, a kind of encyclopedia of all the knowledge available at the time and a work that had a lasting influence.The history of this period has not been well researched , but it remains certain that Thomas found there a rich library, a fervent religious atmosphere, and favorable models for his own spiritual and intellectual development. Under the direction of his master, for whom he performed some transcription work, Thomas pursued his theological formation and became familiar with the ethics of Aristotle and the work of Pseudo-Dionysius. He frequented the Faculty of Arts (whose philosophers were becoming more and more protective of the autonomy of their discipline) where later, because of his writings, he would have considerable influence and would leave a lasting impression even at the time of his death. When Albert left for Cologne to found a house of studies that would later become a university,Thomas accompanied him, acting as his assistant from  to . It was there...