Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae : a biography

273 Pages·2014·3.71 MB·English

by  McGinn

Lives of Great Religious Books
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae
McGinn.indb 1 2/26/14 8:05 AM
Lives of Great Religious Books
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, Bernard McGinn
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Thomas Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae
A Biography
Bernard McGinn
PRIn CETOn UnIVERSIT y PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
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Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, new Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket art: Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas over Heretics by
Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457– 1504), fresco, Basilica of Saint Mary Above
Minerva, Carafa Chapel, Rome, 1489– 1492 / De Agostini Picture
Library / V. Pirozzi / Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library. The
scene shows Thomas seated on a throne between personifications of
Philosophy and Theology on his right and Dialectic and Grammar
on his left, with the figure of vanquished Evil under his feet. In the
foreground groups of the heretics refuted by Thomas in the Summa
theologiae are escorted to Thomas by a papal official on our left and a
Dominican on the right.
All Rights Reserved
ISBn 978- 0- 691- 15426- 8
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro
Printed on acid- free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To my classmates at the north American College
Class of 1963
Ad multos annos, gloriosque annos, vivas!
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
The World That Made Thomas Aquinas 7
Chapter 2
Creating the Summa theologiae 19
Chapter 3
A Tour of the Summa theologiae 74
Chapter 4
The Tides of Thomism, 1275– 1850 117
Chapter 5
The Rise and Fall of neothomism 163
Epilogue 210
vii
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Abbreviations for Thomas’s Works 215
Notes 217
Bibliography 245
Translations of the Summa theologiae 245
General Books on Thomas and His
Thought 246
Particular Studies of Thomas’s Thought
Relating to the Summa 247
Histories of Thomism 247
Online Resources 248
Indexes
name and Title Index 249
Subject Index 254
viii contents
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Preface
This book owes its origin to the polite persistence of
Fred Appel of Princeton University Press, who kept
asking me to think of contributing something to a
new series, Lives of Great Religious Books. I consid-
ered composing a short book on a mystical classic,
such as Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song
of Songs, but the more I thought about the possibili-
ties the more I was drawn to the scary idea of writing
a book on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, one
of the longest works in the canon of religious clas-
sics and one of the most studied. I am not a card-
carrying member of any Thomist party and I’ve writ-
ten only a few things on Thomas over my academic
career. never theless, I’ve been reading Thomas for
almost sixty years and teaching him for over forty.
When I was studying a dry- as- dust version of neo-
thomist philosophy from 1957 to 1959, I was rescued
from despair by reading the works of Etienne Gilson,
especially his Being and Some Philosophers. Doing
theology at the Gregorian University in Rome
ix
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