Selected writings

975 Pages·1998·3.47 MB·English

by  Aquinas Saint Thomas

THOMAS AQUINAS: SELECTED WRITINGS
was born around 1225 at Roccasecca near Aquino, to the nobleman
ST THOMAS AQUINAS
Landulf of Aquino. Educated by Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino and then
at the University of Naples, it was during his time at university, around 1244,
that he joined the Dominican monastic order. This decision so shocked the other
members of his noble family that they kidnapped him and held him against his
will for a year. Despite this, he remained committed to the religious life and,
once he was free, Aquinas went to Cologne to study under St Albert the Great.
In 1256 he took the degree of Master in Theology, and then embarked on a life
of teaching, preaching and writing, living and working in France and Italy. He
died from an illness at the abbey of Fossanuova while on his way to attend a
meeting of the general council at Lyon in 1274. Thomas Aquinas was formally
canonized in 1323.

Aquinas’ religious writing has had a significant influence on both theological
and philosophical thought through the centuries. His two great works are Summa
contra Gentiles (1259–64), a treatise on God and his creation, and Summa
theologica (1266–73), a massive, though unfinished, work, designed as a
complete systematic exposition of theology.
is the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the
RALPH MCINERNY
University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is a fellow of the Pontifical Academy of
Saint Thomas Aquinas and has published several works on the thought of
Thomas, most recently Aquinas and Analogy (1996) and Ethica Thomistica
(1997).
THOMAS AQUINAS
Selected Writings
Edited and translated with an introduction and notes by
RALPH MCINERNY
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This translation first published 1998
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Copyright © Ralph McInerny, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the translator has been asserted
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EISBN: 978–0–141–90818–2
Contents
Introduction
Chronology
A Note on the Texts
PART ONE: STUDENT (1245–56)
1 The Inaugural Sermons (1256)
2 On the Principles of Nature (1252 – 6)
3 On Being and Essence (1252–6)
4 The Nature of Theology. Commentary on Sentences 1, Prologue (1252–4)
5 The Work of the Six Days of Creation. Commentary on Sentences 2.2, d. 12
(1252–4)
PART TWO: MASTER AT PARIS (1256–9)
6 Theology, Faith and Reason. On Boethius On the Trinity, 1–2 (1257)
7 How are Things Good? Exposition of On the Hebdomads of Boethius (1257)
8 The Meanings of Truth. Disputed Question on Truth, 1 (1256–9)
9 On the Teacher. Disputed Question on Truth, 11 (1256–9)
10 On Conscience. Disputed Question on Truth, 17 (1256–9)
PART THREE: ITALY (1259–68)
11 Proof of God’s Existence. Summa contra Gentiles, 1, 9–14 (1259)
12 The Human Good. Summa contra Gentiles, 3 (1259–65)
13 On the Divine Simplicity. Disputed Question of the Power of God, 7 (1265–
6)
14 On Goodness and the Goodness of God. Summa theologiae, 1, 5–6 (1268)
15 On Creation. Summa theologiae, 1, 44 (1268)
16 On Angelic Knowledge. Summa theologiae, 1, 54–8 (1268)
17 Definitions of Soul. On Aristotle’s De anima, 2, 1–3 (1268)
18 Platonism and Neoplatonism. Preface to Exposition of On the Divine Names
(1265–8)
PART FOUR: PARIS (1269–72)
19 The Range of Natural Philosophy. Expositions of Physics, 1, 1, Preface to On
the Heavens, Preface to On Sense and the Sensed Object (1269)
20 How Words Mean. Exposition of On interpretaiton, 1–5 (1270–71)
21 On the Ultimate End. Summa theologiae, 1–2, 1–5 (1271)
22 On Human Choice Disputed Question on Evil, 6 (1266–71)
23 What Makes Actions Good or Bad? Summa theologiae, 1–2, 18–20 (1271)
24 On Law and Natural Law. Summa theologiae, 1–2, 90–94 (1271)
25 The Virues, Summa theologiae, 1–2, 55–7 (1271–2)
26 The Active and Contemplative Lives. summa theologiae, 2–2, 179–81 (1271–
2)
27 On the Eternity of the World (1271)
28 The Love of Wisdom. Exposition of Metaphysics, Preface and 1, 1–3 (1271)
PART FIVE: NAPLES (1272—4)
29 The Logic of the Incarnation. Summa theologiae, 3, 16 (1273)
30 What is a Sacrament? Summa theologiae, 3, 6 (1273)
31 The Exposition of the Book of Causes,1–5 (1272)
32 Exposition of Paul’s Epistle to Philemon (1273)
33 Exposition of the Angelic Salutation (Ave Maria) (1273)
Glossary
Introduction
Shortly after Thomas Aquinas died in the Cistercian abbey at Fossanova on 7
March 1274, a message came from the theology faculty at the University of Paris
asking that the body of the saintly theologian be sent to Paris for burial and
veneration. Although that request was not granted, the body did eventually come
to rest in France.

Thomas was buried for the first time before the high altar of the church of the
Cistercian abbey in which he had died after a funeral Mass attended by members
of his family as well as by fellow Dominicans and other non-Cistercians.
Because the subprior at Fossanova was cured of blindness when he touched
Thomas’s body and soon other miracles occurred, the Cistercians began to fear
that the remains would be stolen and taken off to a Dominican resting place. As
a result of this fear, the body was disinterred and reinterred at Fossanova several
times during the next two years. Jealous of their treasure, the monks took
macabre precautions. They ‘exhumed the corpse of Brother Thomas from its
resting place, cut off the head and placed it in a hiding place in a corner of the
chapel’. The idea was that, even if the corpse were taken, the head would be
theirs. His sister was given a hand, a finger of which was to describe a grisly
trajectory of its own. This story of reverent mutilations is a long one. By the time
the canonization process began in 1319 the corpse had been reduced to bones
from which the flesh had been removed by boiling. In 1368, the bones were then
removed to the Dominican monastery at Toulouse where they remained until the
French Revolution. They were then removed to the church of St Sernin in the
same city. In 1974, the seventh centenary of the death of Thomas, his remains
were returned to the Dominican church in Toulouse, where they have rested to
this day.
The fate of Thomas’s literary corpus, while not so lurid, has been similarly
interesting, as is usually the case with authors who lived before the advent of
printing. Manuscripts were copied and recopied and handed on. Some of the
manuscripts that Thomas wrote in his own illegible hand have come down to us,