St thomas aquinas biography summary organizer

Perhaps the most well-known and highly regarded theologian and philosopher of the Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas was born the youngest son to a Sicilian noble family in Although Aquinas was intended from a young age to become an abbot, Italian political and papal infighting redirected him to a university in Naples, where his studies, including his earliest encounters with Aristotle, were directed by members of the newly founded Dominican Order, an order of which Aquinas eventually became a member despite prolonged, powerful objections from his family.

Traveling to France in , Aquinas studied under the renowned Aristotelian commentator and fellow Dominican, Albert Magnus. He later joined the University of Paris’ faculty as regent master in theology, during which time he began work on his Summa contra Gentiles. Upon completion of his regency in Paris, Aquinas returned to Italy in , where he was eventually called to Rome, in , by Pope Clement IV to serve as a papal theologian. While in Rome, Aquinas continued to teach, now at a newly established Dominican school at Santa Sabina, and began to write his most famous work, the Summa Theologiae, sometimes called the Summa Theolog