![]() Aquinas earned his masters in theology in 1256, the year after the Pope lifted the prohibition on teaching and studying Aristotle in Paris which many Parisians were doing anyways through the Arabic works and translations into Latin. The Neo-Platonist Dionysius argued that the mind works dialectically, positively and negatively through belief and doubt, to come to a greater vision of the angelic and demonic forces of the cosmos, both psychology and angelology. Both spurned sex for logic, though unintentionally on Abilard’s part, as well as the rest of him.Īquinas’ family finally saw the scholastic light and sent him to Paris to study with Albert the Great, who gave him Pseudo-Dionysius, Fake Dennis, to study. Over a hundred years before, the logician Abelard of Paris was castrated for getting his student and boss’ daughter Heloise pregnant and shipping her off to a convent for safekeeping, which is somewhat the opposite of Aquinas’ problem. I’m impressed he could wield a flaming log with such chaste hands. One questionable story says that his family locked him in a prison tower with a prostitute hoping to discourage him from studying philosophy, logic and theology, but Aquinas drove her away with a flaming log from the fire, and then collapsed, after which two angels girdled him with a cord that removed all sexual temptation from him, which the angels told him no man can obtain except by God’s grace, not man’s own efforts. Aquinas was sent to Naples, in 1239 at the age of 14 to study Aristotle, Averroes, and probably Maimonides, though antisemitism Aquinas shared with the Church and Naples was quite quiet about that.Īquinas met and became a Dominican to further his studies, but his parents, who weren’t happy about Aquinas majoring in theology and philosophy, had him kidnapped and imprisoned in the family castle for over a year. Greek and Arabic philosophy were catching on in Palermo, Salerno and Naples, separate city-state principalities of Italy that were not united, such that Renaissance “Italians” would have identified with their state, not Italy as a whole, with continuous warfare between the states and their alliances and intermarriages with other European powers. Like al-Farabi and Avicenna, Augustine was a committed Neo-Platonist and quite committed to the logic of Aristotle’s Organon, but unlike Farabi, Avicenna and Islamic philosophy, Augustine followed Averroes, and Europe followed Augustine. Unfortunately for his folks, Aquinas wasn’t interested in worldly power, but rather ideal universals found in philosophy, theology and logic, which likely made his family name far more famous than his family had hoped for.Īquinas was taught to read and write in Latin, particularly to read the Latin author Augustine, the original Christian Neo-Platonist, like al-Kindi was for Islamic philosophy. ![]() Here to the left is Gozzoli’s classic painting of Aquinas of 1471, between Aristotle on the inferior left, Plato on the superior right side, and Averroes lying at his feet, as if the Islamic enemy of Christianity has been defeated.Īt six years old, Thomas, the youngest son of nobles, was given as an offering to the Church, specifically the Benedictines, and even more specifically the Abbey of Monte Cassino, which isn’t anywhere near Vegas, such that their youngest son would one day be a powerful abbot, which would have made Aquinas the Abbot of Monte Cassino, somewhat like the famous Count of Cristo Mountain. European castles are based on Persian questles, quite literally in Iberia, and Italians got castles from Persian and Islamic lands, the same place they got much of their Neo-Platonism and the latest in Aristotelian logic, particularly the commentaries and studies of Avicenna and Averroes, which Aquinas was more influential than any at popularizing in Europe and the Catholic Church. ![]() Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 CE) was born in the family castle of Roccasecca, between Rome and Naples, minor nobles of the house of the Counts of Aquino.
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