Aquinas

Aquinas, or d'Aquino. Thomas, born about 1227 A.D., entered the Dominican Order at the age of twenty, and after studying at Cologne and Paris graduated as Doctor of Theology in 1257. He spent his life in the service of his Order, and refused ecclesiastical promotion though revered and consulted by the Pope and by his kinsman, Louis IX. He combined the highest intellectual culture of his times with such remarkable piety and sweetness of temper as to earn the title of "The Angelic Doctor." In 1323 he was canonised, and his authority has come to be recognised as paramount in the Roman Church, though his theological opponent, Duns Scotus, of the Franciscan Order, for many years had a large following. The views of Aquinas are summed up in his great work entitled Summa Theologiae. Aquinas spent his last years at Naples, and died in 1274 at the monastery of Fossanova, near Terracina, on his way to the Council of Lyons.