Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. Aquinas became an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, and he became a saint of the Catholic Church.
Biography[]
Thomas Aquinas was born in Roccasecca, Kingdom of Sicily in 1225 (now in the Lazio region of Italy). He was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, and he went to the University of Naples, becoming an intelligent and talented student. Aquinas studied philosophy, Catholic theology, church history, liturgy, and canon law, and he became a friar in the new Dominican Order in 1240. His parents imprisoned him in a castle for two years, hoping to prevent him from following in his uncle's footsteps in becoming an abbot. However, upon his release, he immediately joined the Dominicans. Aquinas became a renowned theologian, writing Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles, among many other works. The optimistic Aquinas believed that it was human nature to do good and not evil, and he believed that there were God-created, "natural laws" that could be got from nature by the reason of human beings. Aquinas embraced several ideas put forward by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, synthesizing his ideas with those of Christianity; he believed in the clear distinction between the natural realm (the domain of reason and philosophy) and the supernatural realm (that of faith and theology). Aquinas died in Fossanova in 1274, and he was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII.