A Short Biography of St. Thomas Aquinas

by Miguel Grosso

A brief biography. Simple as his life.

He did not aspire to be rich. He was. He came from a most noble lineage on both his mother's and father's sides. And he renounced those comforts and pleasures to become a mendicant friar.

He did not aspire to be wise. He achieved it thanks to his natural talent and a disciplined passion for study, driven by an innate love for Truth. He only aspired to be a saint. And he achieved that as well. That was his only and true aspiration.

That is why those politically correct poses, observed in incredibly dull academic works, of referring to him only as Thomas of Aquinas and not as Saint Thomas of Aquinas, always seemed ridiculous to me. As if talking about philosophy and calling him Saint meant succumbing to "superstition." To me, Thomas is a Saint. Hiding this honor is hiding who he was. Because that was the only thing he cared to be in life. And those who did not understand this did not understand his life or who he was. Consequently, I doubt they understood his thought.

Another very common clich is to corner the Saint in his capacity as a theologian because "Aristotle did the philosophy" and he only repeated it. Leaving aside the falsehood of this proposition, one must ask: why should he have reflected without regard to God? Why is it legitimate to philosophize without God and not legitimate to philosophize starting from or thinking about God? Why is a conclusion valid in the first case and not in the second? Saint Thomas philosophized because that is the only way to do theology. True theology implies true philosophy. So first, he was a philosopher and then a theologian. When he was imprisoned in the tower of the castle of Roccasecca, his readings were the Bible and Aristotle. The same people who call believers "fanatics" are the same ones who label as theologians those who philosophize starting from God. So, I ask: who is the fanatic?

In short, this small biography aims to be a gateway to the series of books we have published under the title Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics. The work consists of 19 chapters, namely: 1. The 13th century: society 2. The 13th century: the Catholic Church 3. His family 4. At Monte Cassino 5. At the University of Naples 6. In the Order of Preachers 7. Impeded vocation 8. The intellectual formation 9. Begins to teach 10. In Paris: path to the doctorate 11. The conflict with the mendicants 12. Doctorate 13. Return to Italy 14. Portrait of a friar 15. Back in Paris 16. Back in Naples 17. He ceases to write 18. The end 19. As an epilogue: other anecdotes. Likewise, numerous notes conclude this study.

I owe it to myself to delve deeper into some aspects of this life: what poverty meant to Saint Thomas; what it meant for him to obey even when doing so took him away from his books and classes; the significance of mendicant religious within his ecclesiology; how he wove his mystical experiences with his studies; what happened to his soul on that December 6, 1273, when he abruptly and definitively abandoned his task as a writer; how to explain his mysterious death.

Let us hope, God willing, to one day answer these doubts and questions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08ZVTPYWB
• ISBN13: 9798726781655
• Release Date: March 2021
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 132 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"