Thomas Aquinas, Saint

THOMAS AQUINAS, Saint. - He is the greatest representative of Scholasticism (v.) and the official doctor of the Catholic Church.

I. LIFE

He was born, it now seems certain, in the castle of Roccasecca, in the Kingdom of Naples, to Landolfo of Aquino, lord of Roccasecca, and to Teodora of Chieti but of Lombard origin. Since the date of his death is certain (7 March 1274) and the official biographer G. of Tocco states that the Saint had then just completed his 49th year, the date of birth falls around the last months of 1225 and the first of 1226.

From his early infancy the episode especially remembered is that of the lightning bolt which killed a little sister in the castle of Roccasecca while leaving unharmed the small T. who was beside her. In 1230 T., at the age of five, was placed by his parents among the « pueri oblati » of Montecassino to be educated there with the intention of directing him toward the monastic life, in the secret hope that he might reach the supreme office and increase the power of the family. Instead, certainly by his own mature deliberation and, according to G. of Tocco, with the counsel of the abbot himself (Vita s. Th. Aq., ch. 65; in Fontes Vitae s. Th., fasc. II, ed. D. Prümmer, St-Maximin, Var. 1924, p. 138) and also because of the devastation that Montecassino had suffered in the year 1239 at the hands of Frederick II, T. returned to his family and went on to continue his studies at the University of Naples, where he received his first direct initiation into Aristotelian philosophy under the master Martin of Dacia for logic and Peter of Ireland for natural philosophy (thus G. of Tocco, loc. cit.; but the other biographers P. Calo and Bernard Gui, more succinct, do not speak of it). At the University of Naples the Dominican vocation was born through the work of the preacher Father Giovanni of St. Julian: to the opposition of his family, which did not spare either physical or moral violence, T. opposed a heroic firmness that won his sister Marotta to the religious life. It seems that the Saint received the religious habit from the hands of the master general Giovanni Teutonico between 1243 and the end of 1244. Having finally obtained his freedom by flight, he was directed to complete his higher studies. Some (Mandonnet, Grabmann, Glorieux, Castagnoli), following the emphasis of Tocco (op. cit., ch. 7; ed. cit., p. 72), maintain that the first destination was the University of Paris from 1245 to 1248, as is also suggested by the famous letter of the masters of Arts of Paris (of 2 May 1274) where the « omnium studiorum nobilissima Parisiensis civitas » is presented as the one that « ipsum prius educavit, nutritit et fovit » (cf. Chartul. Univ. Paris., ed. Denifle-Chatelain, I, Paris 1889, n. 447, p. 505). In 1248, when the Studium generale of Cologne was founded by Albert M., T. attended the courses of theology for immediate preparation for the priesthood; at the school of Albert, St. T. came into contact not only with the whole corpus aristotelicum, but also with the Arab and Greek commentators translated up to that time, especially with the corpus dionysianum, and was able to reveal to the master his real ability. At the insistence of Albert, who solicited the good offices of Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher, the general of the Order in 1252 summoned T. to Paris to take the vacant post of bachelor in theology of the Dominican chair. After bitter disputes, fomented by the secular masters who had to yield through the direct intervention of Pope Alexander IV (cf. Letter to the Chancellor of the Univ. of Paris of 3 March 1256, in Chart. Univ. Paris., I, n. 270, p. 307; cf. nn. 293, p. 339, and 317, p. 366), T. obtained the licentia docendi within the month of June of the same year, but was not admitted to the College of Professors (together with St. Bonaventure) until 15 Aug. of the following year (1257), beginning his teaching as magister regens in the following month of Oct.

From then on the whole life of T. was absorbed by scientific activity, which unfolded alternately between the University of Paris and Italy. The first Parisian magisterium (1256-59) was disturbed by the attack of the secular masters, led by William of St. Amour, to prevent the Mendicant Orders from entering the University: the adversaries threw into the balance also the question of the Evangelium aeternum, but without succeeding in their aim. St. T. at the end of the academic year 1259 set out on his journey to Italy, after having participated at Pentecost (June 1259) in the General Chapter of Valenciennes, collaborating with St. Albert the Great and Peter of Tarentaise (later Pope Innocent V) in the compilation of the Ratio studiorum of the Order (cf. Chart. Univ. Paris., t. I, n. 385, p. 385 ff.). This first Italian stay (1259-68) of almost ten years is the most continuous and tranquil period of the Saint's life, in which he displayed a prodigious scientific activity.

He taught at the Studium Curiae, called there by Urban IV to Viterbo and then to Orvieto; in the years 1265-67 he is found in the Roman convent of S. Sabina with the task of reorganizing the Studium generale of the Order; in 1267-68 he is probably still at Viterbo with Clement IV. At the pontifical Court he formed a friendship with his Flemish confrere William of Moerbeke, who was a precious help to him both through the revision of old versions and through new versions from the Greek of Aristotle and of the principal Greek commentators of Aristotle and of the Neoplatonic texts, in particular of the Σωτειάσις θεολογικῆς of Proclus in 1268, the commentaries on the Categories of Simplicius in 1266 and on the De Coelo et mundo of the same in 1271, on the Perihermeneias of Ammonius in 1268, on the De anima of Themistius in 1268 and on the De anima of John Philoponus also in 1268. Of earlier date is the version of the commentary on the Metereologica of Alexander of Aphrodisias, at Nicaea in 1260. Toward the end of 1268, perhaps by order of the same Pontiff, St. T. was on his way to Paris, where in Jan. 1269 he began teaching, continuing in the academic year 1270-71. This second Parisian magisterium is the most agitated period in the Saint's life and of the bitterest struggle on all fronts: first of all the outbreak of Averroism in the Faculty of arts, then the open struggle against his Aristotelianism on the part of the Augustinian tendency dominant in the Faculty of theology (and it seems under the direct inspiration of St. Bonaventure: cf. J. D'Albi, S. Bonaventure et les luttes doctr. de 1267-77, Paris 1923) culminating in the stormy disputation of 1270 which embraced the principal theses of Thomism (and in particular the « unicity of the substantial form ») in the presence of Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, in which T. «fuit quasi solus huius sententiae»; finally the struggle rekindled by the secular masters Gerard of Abbeville and Nicholas of Lisieux against the Mendicant Orders, which provoked on the part of the Saint the two admirable writings De perfect. vitae spirit. and Contra retrahentes a relig. ingressu. In the spring of 1272 T. received from his superiors the task of reorganizing (at the invitation of Charles of Anjou) the teaching of theology in the University of Naples: in addition to the teaching, which embraced the entire year 1272-73 and the first part of 1273-74 until Jan., St. T. devoted himself intensely to the III part of the Sum. Theol., to the composition of opuscules and commentaries on Aristotle, and to Lenten preaching to the people in the vernacular. In January 1274 he was invited by Gregory X to the Council of Lyon; having set out, in the company of his faithful secretary Friar Reginald of Piperno, he was seized along the way by an unusual illness which, resisting the loving care of his niece Francesca, the countess of Ceccano who received him in the castle of Maenza, brought him to death on 7 March 1274 in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, where, foreseeing his end, he had asked for hospitality. He was canonized by John XXII at Avignon on 18 July 1323, and by the Dominican St. Pius V he was declared in 1567 "Angelic Doctor," which is his title of honor together with the official one of Doctor communis. Already his master St. Albert the Great, having hastened to Paris to defend him from the condemnation of 1277, had proclaimed him "splendor and flower of the whole world" (Fontes vitae s. Th. Aq., fasc. IV, p. 382).

II. WORKS

The scientific activity of St. Thomas has a double origin: first of all the duty of teaching, which obliged him to interpret the official texts such as Holy Scripture, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the works of Aristotle, of Boethius, of Pseudo-Dionysius, etc., and to draft the disputed questions and the seasonal scholastic gatherings (Quodlibeta); then the occasional writings, prompted by fraternal charity and by the courtesy of responding to the commissions received from the Pope and from his superiors and to the questions that were put to him. In this second class of "occasional writings" there may be included, besides the opuscules, his two most original works: the Sum. c. Gent. and the Sum. Theol., the first composed (it seems) at the request of the master general of the Order, St. Raymond of Peñafort, the second — which is his unfinished masterpiece — written for the benefit of the young students of the Order to guide them through the chaos in which theological teaching, tied to the commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, was often lost (cf. the Prologue).

1. Chronology

Most of the dates are approximate: following Grabmann (Die Werke..., posthumous ed. 1949), for disputed dates the extreme terms a quo and ad quem considered most probable are given, according to the researches of P. Castagnoli, J. A. Destrez, A. Dondaine, T. Käppeli, P. Glorieux, O. Lottin, A. Motte, A. Manson, F. Pelster, A. Pelzer, P. Synave, G. Théry, A. Walz and above all of P. Mandonnet and of Msgr. Grabmann himself. The problem of the chronology of the writings, for a critical study of St. Thomas's thought, has an importance at least equal to that of their authenticity. Nevertheless, the importance of following, in the study of the doctrines, the chronological order of the works is not yet sufficiently understood: this has prevented grasping the development of the doctrines (cf. P. Mandonnet, Les écrits auth. de st T. D'A., 1st ed., Fribourg 1910, p. 10, note; J. De Guibert, Les doublets de st T. d'A. Leur étude méthod., Paris 1926: examines the problems De Deo uno et trino, the doctrines on faith, on the salvation of unbelievers, on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, on the nature of charity).

a) Commentaries on Holy Scripture. — 1. Expos. in Job (Tolomeo of Lucca, 1261-64; Mandonnet, 1269-72). 2. In Psalmos Davidis lectura (1271-73). 3. Expos. in Cantica canticorum (lost). 4. Expos. in Jiatam prophetam (Mandonnet, 1256-59; Destrez, 1269-74); 5. Expos. in Jeremiam prophetam (Mandonnet, 1267-68). 6. Expos. in Threnos Jeremiae prophetae (Mandonnet, 1264-69); 7. Catena aurea super quattuor Evang. (1261-64 for St. Matthew; after 1264 for the others). 8. Expos. (lectura) in Ev. s. Matthaei (1256-59). 9. Expos. in Ev. s. Joannis (1269-72). 10. Expos. in s. Pauli apost. epist. (for I Cor. 11 to the end: 1259-65; for Rom. — I Cor. 1-10: 1272-73).

b) Commentaries on Aristotle. — 1. In libros Perihermeneias expos. (up to bk. II, lect. 2: 1268-72). 2. In libros posteriorum Analyticorum expos. (1268-72). 3. In octo libros Physicorum expos. (after 1268). 4. In libros De

Caelo et Mundo expos. (up to bk. III, lect. 8: 1272). 5. In libros De Generatione et Corruptione expos. (up to bk. I, lect. 17: 1272-73). 6. In libros Meteorologicorum expos. (up to bk. II, lect. 10: 1269-72). 7. In libros De Asima lectura (bk. I; around 1279, Verbeke) expos. (bks. II-III: 1267-72). 8. In libros De sensu et sensato expos. (1267-72). 9. In librum De memoria et reminiscentia expos. (1267-72). 10. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum expos. (1266-72). 11. In decem libros Ethicorum expos. (1260-69). 12. In libros Politicorum expos. (up to bk. III, lect. 6: 1269-72). 13. In librum de canis expos. (1269-73).

c) Systematic works. — 1. Commentum in quattuor libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi (1254-56; a second, later commentary has been lost). 2. Sum. c. Gent. (1261-64). 3. Sum. Theol. (up to pars III, q. 90. There follows the Supplem., a compilation by friar Reginald of Piperno who made use of the Commentary on bk. IV of the Sentences): pars I, 1266-68; pars II: 1ᵃ-11ᵃc, 1269-70, 11ᵃ-11ᵃc, 1271-72; pars III, 1272-73. 4. Quaestiones disputatae: De veritate: Paris, arts. 1-84 (1256-1257); arts. 85-168 (1257-58); arts. 169-253 (1258-1259); De potentia: Rome, arts. 1-55 (1265-67); Viterbo, arts. 56-83 (1267-68); De spiritualibus creaturis, Viterbo (1268). At Paris: De anima (1269); De virtutibus in communi (1269-70); De malo (1269-72); De caritate (1269-72); De spe (1269-72); De correctione fraterna (1269-1272); De unione Verbi incarnati (1270-72). 5. Quaestiones Quodlibetales (they were held during the Christmas and Easter vacations): Quodl. VII-IX (1256-59); Quodl. I-VI and XII. Fr. Mandonnet suggests the following distribution: Quodl. VII (Christmas 1256); Quodl. VIII (Christmas 1258); Quodl. IX (Easter 1258); Quodl. XI (Easter 1259); Quodl. I (again Easter 1259); Quodl. II (Christmas 1269); Quodl. III (Easter 1270); Quodl. IV (Easter 1271); Quodl. V (Christmas 1271); Quodl. VI (Easter 1271). The doubts raised by P. Glorieux about the authenticity of Quodl. IX were rejected as unfounded by J. Isaac, in Arch. d'hist. doctr. et litt. du m. d., 22-23 (1947-48), p. 187 ff.

d) Authentic opuscules. — 1. Contra errores Graecorum ad Urbanum IV Pont. Max. (1261-64). 2. Compendium theologiae ad fratrem Reginaldum socium suum cariss. (1272-1273; unfinished, up to De virtute spei, c. 256). 3. De rationibus fidei contra Saracenos, Graecos et Armenos ad Cantorem Antiochenum (1261-64). 4. De duobus praeceptis caritatis et decem legis praeceptis (reportatio) (1273). 5. Devotiss. expos. super Symbolum Apostol. (1273). 6. Expos. devotiss. orationis dominicae (1273). 7. Devotiss. expos. super salutationem angel. (1273). 8. De artic. fidei et Ecclesiae Sacramentis ad archiep. Panormitanum (1261-68). 9. Responsio ad fr. Joannem Vercelleniem, gener. magistr. Ord. Praed., de artic. XLII (1271). 10. Responsio ad lect. Venetum da artic. XXXVI (1269-71). 11. Responsio ad lect. Bisuntinum de artic. VI (1271). 12. De differentia verbi divini et humani. 13. De natura verbi intellectus. 14. De substantis separatis seu de angelorum natura ad fratrem Reginaldum socium suum cariss. (unfinished; 1272-73). 15. De unitate intellectus contra averroistas (1270). 16. Contra pestiferam doctrinam retrahentium homines a religionis ingressu (1270). 17. De perfectione vitae spiritualis (1269-1270). 18. Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (1256-57). 19. De regimine principum ad regem Cypri (up to bk. II, ch. 4: 1265-66). 20. De regimine Judaeorum ad ducissam Brabantiae (1270). 21. De forma absolutionis ad gener. magist. Ord. (1269-72). 22. Expos. primae decretalis ad archidiac. Tudertinum (1259-68). 23. Expos. super secundam decretalem ad eundem (1259-68). 24. De sortibus ad dominum Jacobum de Burgo (1269-72). 25. De indictis astrorum ad fratrem Reginaldum socium suum cariss. (1269-1272). 26. De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes (1270). 27. De principio individuationis. 28. De ente et essentia (1254-56). 29. De principiis naturae ad fratrem Silvestrum (1255). 30. De natura materiae et dimensionibus interminatis (1252-56). 31. De mixtione elementorum ad magist. Philippum (1273, Walz). 32. De occultis operibus naturae ad quemdam militem (1272). 33. De motu cordis ad magistrum Philippum de Castrocoeli (1269-72). 34. De instantibus. 35. De quattuor oppositis. 36. De demonstratione. 37. De fallaciis ad quosdam nobiles artistas. 38. De propositionibus modalibus. 39. De natura accidentis. 40. De natura generis. 41. De emptione et venditione ad tempus. 42. Expos. in librum Boethii De hebdomadibus (1255-61). 43. Expos. super librum Boethii De Trinitate (1255-61). 44. Expos. in Dionysium De divinis nominibus (1261-68). 45. Officium de festo Corporis Christi ad mandatum Urbani Papae IV (1264). Hymn "Adoro te devote." 46. Epist. de modo studendi. 47. De secreto. 48. Responsio ad fr. Joannem Vercell., gener. magist. Ord. Praed., de artic. CVIII sumptis ex opere Petri de Tarantasia (1265-67). 49. Responsio ad Bernardum, abbatem Cassinensem (1274; it is the last writing of the Saint, composed while he was traveling, addressed to the Council of Lyons).

e) Various. — Sermons (the number is uncertain. A new collection of 11 sermons was discovered in the libraries of Spain by Fr. T. Käppeli, see Arch. Fr. Praed., 13 [1943], pp. 59-94). Prayers (the number is uncertain). Two Principia (or magisterial lectures): one as "Baccalaureus biblicus" of 1252 on the theme "Hic est liber mandatorum Dei" and the other as "Magister regens" of 1256 on the theme "Rigans montes de superioribus suis" (ed. F. Salvatore, Due sermoni ined. di s. T. d'A., Rome 1912).

2) Observations. — a) Spurious opuscules. — Grabmann (op. cit., p. 395 ff.) lists 33 titles of opuscules that were attributed to St. Thomas but that are certainly spurious. Some of them are compilations extracted from authentic works (for example, De nat. loci; De nat. luminis; De tempore for chapters 1-4; De quo est et quod est, etc.). An Italian sonnet that cod. 9 A 27 of the Bibl. Estense of Modena attributes to St. Thomas and that Fr. Mandonnet accepts as authentic has raised serious doubts, and Grabmann (op. cit., p. 413) hypothesizes whether it might not be attributable to St. Thomas's brother, Rinaldo d'Aquino, who left a collection of poems. Grabmann (op. cit., 141 ff.), basing himself on the criticism of Fr. A. Dondaine, does not even accept the Quaest. de nat. beatit., discovered in cod. Vat. lat. 784 by Fr. Mandonnet and dated by him to 1266. A fundamental investigation into the authenticity of the opuscules, on the basis of a comparative study of the manuscript tradition, has been begun by G. F. Rossi, Gli opuscoli di s. T., Criteri per conoscere l'autenticità, in Divus Thomas Piac., 56 (1953), pp. 211-36.

b) The autographs. — The Library of Montecassino (cod. 82) possesses the text of the Saint's last writing, the Responsio ad Bernardum, abbatem Cassin., written in the margin of the manuscript of St. Gregory the Great's Moralia, which Tosti and Uccelli declared to be an autograph (cf. P. Mandonnet, op. cit., 1st ed., p. 107; he concurs in the attribution). The Vatican Apostolic Library possesses two codices — a gift from the diocese of Bergamo to Pius IX in 1874 — that are recognized, without any doubt, as being in the Saint's hand. Cod. Vat. lat. 9850 contains a good part of the three following works: Sum. c. Gent. (about half of the work, in ex. ff. 2ª-50ª; Comm. in Boeth de Trinit. (in its entirety, ff. 90ª-104ª); Postillae in Iasiam (cc. 34-50, ff. 105ª-14ª). The Leonine edition (vols. XIII-XV) of the Sum. c. Gent. is made for the part preserved on the autograph codex. Cod. Vat. lat. 9851 contains the commentary on book III of the Sentences (fundamental study: G. F. Rossi, L'autografo di s. T. del Comm. al III lib. delle Sent., 2nd ed. Piacenza 1933). The Vatican autographs are written in the so-called littera inintelligibilis (Cod. 9851 beginning at f. 11) which has finally found in Fr. P. Mackey, of the Leonine Commission, its sure interpreter (cf. in vol. XIII, p. IV the table that reproduces the "littera inintelligibilis" of f. 34, C. Gent. II, 25-25 with the diplomatic transcription). Of some other alleged autographs, with the exception of a few fragments found in reliquaries, there is no sure proof (cf. M. Grabmann, Die Werke..., p. 436 ff.). Even if it cannot be recognized as an autograph, as Fr. Keppeli has demonstrated, mention should be made of cod. VIII. F. 16 of the National Library of Naples, which contains the commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, which seems to be corrected by St. Thomas's hand or certainly under his di-

THOMAS AQUINAS, saint - Page of the Summa contra Gentiles. I, 52-beginning of 9ª; Opera Omnia, XIII, Rome 1918, pp. 157 ff., 23ª. Autograph of St. Thomas Aquinas in the so-called littera inintelligibilis. An example of diplomatic transcription of this writing is found under the entry CONCORENZA, vol. III, coll. 373-74 - Vatican Library, cod. Vat. lat. 9850, f. 16ª (ca. 1258).

rection. Another codex, even more celebrated, of the National Library of Naples, which contains St. Albert the Great's Commentary on the whole Corpus Dionysianum, was believed by local tradition and by Uccelli to be a "reportatio" and therefore an autograph of St. Thomas, which thus goes back to the period of his stay in Cologne: but there is no decisive argument (cf. P. Mandonnet, op. cit., 1st ed., p. 133 ff.; G. Meersseman, Introd. in opera Alberti M., Bruges 1931, p. 102; M. Grabmann, Die Werke..., p. 341 ff., p. 436 ff.).

c) Lost works. - In their letter, the masters of the faculty of arts of Paris ask to be able to have those works that the Saint, on leaving Paris in 1272, had promised (speciali promissione) to send them, as soon as certain philosophical writings begun there were finished, which they hoped he had brought to completion in Italy: there are indicated specialiter Comm. Simplicii super librum de coelo et mundo et Exposit. Tymaei Platonis ac librum De aquarum conductibus et ingenii erigendis. The first work certainly inspired Thomas's commentary on the De coelo et mundo, which remained unfinished and is dated precisely to the last Neapolitan stay. Recent studies by Birkenmajer and Grabmann have proved that Moerbeke had completed the translations of the three works indicated: a large fragment in three pieces of the Moerbekian translation of Proclus's Commentary on the Timaeus has been identified in the encyclopedic work of E. Bate of Malines, Speculum divin. et quorumdam naturalium, l. XI, c. 24, l. XXII, c. 10 and c. 25 (cf. A. Birkenmajer, Neues zu dem Briefe der Pariser Artistenfakultät über den Tod des hl. Th. v. A., in Xenia Thom., III, Rome 1925, spec. p. 65 ff.). Among the commentaries on Sacred Scripture, if we go by the indications of the official catalogue drawn up by the notary Bartolomeo di Capua, who in his youth knew St. Thomas personally, the commentaries on St. Mark, St. Luke and St. John and the reportatio on St. Matthew appear to have been lost. Likewise lost are the commentary on the Song of Songs and a second redaction of the commentary on book I of the Sentences: writings contemporary, it seems, with the 1st part of the Sum. Theol. (cf. P. Mandonnet, op. cit., pp. 34, 53, 57). Of a commentary by St. Thomas on the other two works, no trace has yet been found, and in all likelihood they remained in the state of a project. In this matter it may be observed that, despite the notable progress of historical criticism on St. Thomas's output, it is not excluded - especially with regard to the opuscules - that one may arrive at the discovery or identification of some other work. Thus ms. lat. 14, 546 of the National Library of Paris, of great authority because it seems to go back to ca. 1280, contains, for example, the opuscule De concord. dictorum s. T., among the other opuscules of undoubted authenticity (cf. G. F. Rossi, Il Cod. lat. 14, 546 della Bibl. naz. di Parigi con gli opusc. di s. T., in Divus Thomas Plac., 54 [1951], p. 301 ff.).

Incomplete commentaries: the commentary on the Perihermen. reaches as far as the 3rd lect. of book II; what follows in the editions is by Cardinal Cajetan. The commentary on the Metaph. ends with book XII; the commentary on the Polit. reaches lect. 6 of book III, that on the De Coelo et mundo reaches lecture 8 of book III, that on the Metereol. as far as lect. 8 of book II (they were completed by the secular master Peter of Auvergne) and that on the De gener. et corrupt. as far as lect. 17 of book I (the rest is the work of the Dominican T. De Sutton). The De reg. princ. too has remained at chap. 4 of book II: the rest seems to be the work of Ptolemy of Lucca.

III. THE FORMATION OF THOMISM

1. The problem of the sources in Thomist thought is capital and constitutes the key to understanding its formation. It is a matter first of all of identifying the texts and possibly the versions (from Greek and from Arabic) that St. Thomas actually had before him; then one must note the precise doctrinal context according to which such sources influenced the development of Thomist thought; finally one should indicate the other interpretations that these sources received in the cultural milieu of the Middle Ages, in order to be able to make an exact assessment of the Saint's doctrinal work.

As for the first point, it can be said that the revolutionary novelty of the 13th-century library had been the translation of Aristotle's works of natural philosophy and metaphysics, of ethics and politics: the fact that St. Thomas, barely an adolescent, attended at the University of Naples the direct text of logic and natural philosophy under Master Martin and Peter of Ireland can be considered a decisive moment in his future orientation in favor of Aristotelianism, breaking with the Platonism of the Augustinian tradition. The Angelic Doctor could know directly of Plato the Timaeus in Calcidius's version-commentary (which inspires the humanist Platonism of the school of Chartres) and perhaps also the Phaedo and the Meno; the Platonic doctrine was also spread by the works of Cicero and especially in Macrobius's commentary on the Somnium Scipionis; the principal source, however, of medieval Platonism was St. Augustine (cf. De Trin., bk. VII; De Civ. Dei, bks. VIII-X), and this must guide us as to the precise sense of the Platonism-Aristotelianism antithesis that dominates the Middle Ages and stands at the center of St. Thomas's activity and of the polemics aroused by his work. For it is well known that St. Augustine did not read directly any work of Plato and knew the Platonism of the late elaboration of Plotinus, whose Enneads had been translated by the rhetor Marius Victorinus, to whom one can credit having brought the terms and problems of Neoplatonic speculation close to the Christian theology of the West (cf. E. Benz, Marius Victor. u. die Entwicklung der abendländ. Willensmetaph., in Forsch. z. Kirchen u. Geistesgesch., I, Stuttgart 1932, esp. pp. 39 ff., 343 ff.). In this historical context the common thesis, set forth by Baeumker, that Platonism is dominant in the 12th century, recedes in the 13th century to regain vigor in Humanism (Cl. Baeumker, Der Platonismus im Mittelalt., in Stud. u. Charakteristiken, Baeumkers Beiträge..., 25 [1928], p. 58 ff.) enunciates the simple historical fact, but does not specify its measure and its actual cultural significance. If one can acknowledge that the doctrinal struggles of the Middle Ages really revolve around the Plato-Aristotle alternative, one must admit that the authentic Plato (the Plato of rigid dualism, of the χῶμα, of the γομισμός between appearance and reality, between the sensible world and the ideas) is absent. The alternative is reduced rather to the one between Plotinus (or Neoplatonism in general) and Aristotle, where the gap between Plotinus, who conceives necessary emanation and remains a monist of transcendence, and Plato the dualist, who creates the myths of the Demiurge and of the soul, is perhaps greater than that between Plotinus and Aristotle, a monist of immanence who recognizes neither the myths nor any transcendence (cf. E. Hoffmann, Platonismus und Mittelalt., in Wartburg, Vortr. 1923-24, Berlin 1926, esp. p. 71 ff.). In the controversies of the 13th century, therefore, Plato is out of the running, and this explains why a critical mind like St. Thomas had the intention, as is clear from the Letter of the faculty of arts of 10 May 1274, of giving a commentary or direct study of the Platonic Timaeus: such a commentary would certainly have given the key to understanding the inspiring principles of Thomist metaphysics in its last phase, regarding which, as will be said, the Thomist school has not yet fully shed light. It is therefore understandable that the Angelic Doctor had at his disposal only scanty elements, insufficient to attempt an interpretation of Plato, unlike what he was able to do for Aristotle. The principal source for the knowledge of Plato, as for all pre-Aristotelian philosophy, was for St. Thomas Aristotle himself in the introductions to his treatises (cf. bk. I of the Et. Nic., of the Metaph., of the De An., of the De Gen. et Corr.), where the theories are by then found simplified and in some way bent to give greater prominence to the polemical opposition.

The second capital fact of the sources of Thomist thought, with regard to the Plato-Aristotle alternative, is given by the complex superstructure of influences of Neoplatonizing inspiration that intervened in the debate. First among all, St. Augustine himself with the weight of his authority as undisputed master of medieval theology, which St. Thomas accepts no less than his contemporaries, especially in questions concerning Trinitarian theology, sin and Grace. More delicate is the relationship between the two doctors in purely philosophical questions, where Thomist Aristotelianism could not accept compromises: all theless he accepts the fundamental doctrines of causal transcendentalism and of divine exemplarism, where the inevitable contrast with the cornerstones of Aristotelian thought is skillfully overcome through that "synthetic" interpretation of which we shall speak (on the Thomist synthesis of Augustine and Aristotle, v. M. Grabmann, Des hl. August. quaest. de Ideis in ihrer inhaltl. Bedeutung u. mittelalt. Weiternärkung, in Mittelalt. Geistesleben, part 2, Munich 1936, p. 32). The recent controversies concerning the agreement between the Neoplatonic St. Augustine and the Aristotelian St. Thomas have not yielded appreciable results, nor can they, because the doctrinal function of the two doctors belongs to two epochs of culture, the ancient and the medieval, which are not commensurable for the comparison one wishes to institute, and St. Thomas himself provides us with sufficient criteria (cf. In I Sent., 13, q. 1, a. 3 ad 1; Sum Theol., 1a, q. 15 De ideis; ibid., q. 77, a. 3 ad 3; ibid., q. 84, a. 5; ibid., q. 85, a. 2, etc.). Nevertheless St. Thomas is well aware of St. Augustine's Platonism and highlights his work of purification regarding the heterodox doctrines inadmissible for the Christian faith, such as the existence of "separate ideas" (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 84, a. 5): the metaphysics of participation expounded by the two doctors expresses the, so to speak, transcendental structure of the finite being in its dependence on God (cf. De spir. cr., a. 10 ad 8: «Non multum refert dicere quod ipsa intelligibilia participantur a Deo vel quod iumen faciens intelligibilia participantur a Deo». The first is the solution of St. Augustine, the second is that of St. Thomas, who assimilates the Aristotelian doctrine of the agent intellect (on the character of St. Thomas's dependence on St. Augustine, v. G. von Hertling, Augustinusitate bei Th. v. A., in Sitzungsb. d. philosoph. hist. Klasse der hois. Bayer. Akad. d. Wissenschaft., Munich 1914, pp. 535-602; repr. in Hist. Beitr. z. Philos., Kempten-Munich 1914, pp. 97-151). Therefore the controversy, agitated in Neoscholastic circles, concerning the agreement or divergence between these two greatest doctors of the Church, must not present a polemical task but only an exegetical one: the two doctrinal attitudes correspond to two different moments of Christian culture, so that questions such as asking whether St. Augustine admitted the Thomist doctrine of abstraction or whether he conceives the spiritual soul as the substantial form of the body in the Aristotelian-Thomist sense are not susceptible of any precise answer because the different cultural perspective does not permit the alternative of an answer (cf. B. Kaelin, Die Erkenntnislehre des hl. Aug., Sarnen 1921, p. 42; the theory of the abstraction of the intelligible from the sensible is foreign to St. Augustine). The profound transformation of Augustinian doctrine through contact with Aristotelianism is often masked by St. Thomas: one has the impression that he attributes most of the errors of the metaphysics of the Augustinian school to the extrinsicism of Avicenna and of M. Maimonides and to the exaggerated realism of the Jew Avicebron (this is the correct thesis, with a perhaps unfortunate title, of E. Gilson in the article: Pourquoi et Th. a critiqué et Aug., in Arch. d'hist. doctr. et litt. du m. à., 1 [1926], p. 5 ff., cf. p. 117 ff.). A disconcerting but significant example of the synthetic character of Thomist exegesis is the prologue to the responsio of art. 1 of the Q. de spir. creat. where St. Thomas places the authority of St. Augustine before that of Aristotle for the metaphysical concept of prime matter as "pure potency" («...ut patet per Augustinum XII Confess. et I Super Gen. ad litt. et per Philosophum in VII Metaph.», ed. L. W. Keeler, p. 10, 2-5). More original is St. Thomas's relationship to the other source of theological Neoplatonism, which is the Ps. Dionysius (v.), whose influence equals and in some problems surpasses that of St. Augustine himself. St. Thomas commented on the Corpus Dionysianum only the De divinis nominibus, adhering — as for the commentaries on Aristotle and on Scripture — to the literal method: notable is the Saint's effort to find, among the various versions, the most intelligible reading, which is usually that of the Sarrazin translation (cf. G. Théry, L'entrée du Ps. Denis en Occident, in Mélanges Mandonnet, Paris 1930, vol. I, p. 23 ff.). The influence of the Ps. Dionysius is profound and concerns the most arduous problems of metaphysics such as the doctrine of the transcendentals and of analogy, the knowledge of God (affirmative and negative theology) and the problem of evil; this Dionysius, moreover, according to St. Thomas, better than anyone pruned away the error of Platonic philosophy and inserted the deep nucleus of its truth into Christian theology (cf. St. Thomas's declarations in the Prol. to the Commentary on the De div. nom. and especially in the De subst. separ., c. 17). It is especially in the atmosphere of the Dionysian texts, dense with profound mystical resonances and continuous demands of transcendence, that St. Thomas lived that reconciliation between Platonism and Christian truth which would make him bold enough to incorporate the methodological principle (not the method!) of Platonism within a metaphysics elaborated and expressed with Aristotelian principles. That this was his precise intent is shown first of all by the 1,700 explicit citations of the Ps. Dionysius that recur in his works (cf. Durantel, S. T. et le Pseudo-Denis, Paris 1919), so that his authority is called upon to have the last word, for example, regarding the theology of the De Causis: «Hanc autem positionem corrigit Dionysius quantum ad hoc quod ponebant (Platonici) diversas formas separatas quas dicebant deos, et aliud per se bonitas, et aliud per se esse, et aliud per se vita et sic de aliis. Oportet autem dicere quod omnia ista sunt essentialiter ipsa prima omnium causa»... (In I. De Causis, lect. 3a; ed. cit., p. 722 a). Another sign of the exceptional theoretical value that Dionysian speculation has in Thomism lies in the concern to disavow the heterodox interpretations in the sense of the formal pantheism of the school of Chartres, which makes him raise in good time the question: «Utrum Deus sit esse omnium rerum» (In I Sent., dist. 8, q. 1, a. 2); in the Sum. c. Gent., I, 26: Quod Deus non est esse formale omnium. The Saint protests against the «intellectus perversus» that some have made of the Dionysian expression: Deus est esse existentibus (De div. nom., § 4; PG 3, 818), doing open violence to the context (this energetic rectification of St. Thomas is expressly referred to by Cusanus in Apol. doctor ignorant., Paris n.d., but 1514, f. XXXVIII a). Again, the Dionysian affirmation, inspired by the purest Platonism of the primacy of the good over being, is expressly accepted by St. Thomas as the principle of the dynamic order («in causando»: Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 5, a. 2 ad 1) by virtue of which the same "prime matter," which is non-ens, could have been created by God (on the primacy of the good over being, v. Q. de malo, q. 1, a. 2. Also In I. De Causis, lect. 4, ed. cit. p. 724 b: «Dionysius... in c. 4 De div. nom. praeordinat nomen boni in Deo omnibus divinis nominibus et dicit quod eius participatio usque ad non ens extenditur, intelligens per non-ens materium primam»). Finally, Dionysian is the "principle of degrees" or of the decreasing continuity of the forms of being according to which the extremes touch: «ovvero: semper fines primorum coniungens principiis secundorum (PG 3, 872), which St. Thomas renders with a more transparent expression: Supremum infimi attingit infimum supremi (Q. De Spir. creat., a. 2; ed. L. W. Keeler, p. 29, 5), which gives him a precious key to escape the trap of Averroism.

The last group of metaphysical sources consists of Boethius, the De Causis and Avicenna, to whom is owed the direct suggestion of the capital thesis of Thomist metaphysics, namely the real distinction between essence and the act of being in creatures (cf. De Verit., q. 21, a. 5; De Pot., q. 3, a. 4): here there matured that notion of participation which, inserted by St. Thomas into Aristotelian metaphysics, raises it to the affirmation of the creature's total dependence on the creator and integrates the Aristotelian concept of causality as a process of otherness and distinction with the Platonic one of "presence" and "likeness." To Boethius is owed, first among the Latins, the project of translating all the works of Aristotle and the Dialogues of Plato and of showing the fundamental agreement of the two thinkers (Comm. in Arist. Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, 2nd ed., II: PL 64, 433; ed. Meiser, Leipzig 1877, p. 80). From Boethius, moreover, St. Thomas drew, on the text of the De Hebdomadibus, the fundamental doctrine that the structure of the concrete, at every one of its predicamental and transcendental levels, is according to a participation: the further fact that Boethius was the first master of medieval Aristotelianism, first through his versions and then in the rigor of logical method and in scientific methodology and terminology, suggests the observation that the theme of the synthesis of Plato and Aristotle is the fundamental element, variously operative but everywhere present, in the cultural rebirth of Europe. Fruit of the lofty magisterium of Boethius and inspired by him is the Thomist commentary on the De Trinitate (preserved in part in the Vatican autograph): in it Thomas confronts the problem of science, of the division of the various fields of knowledge and of scientific method: from natural philosophy, to mathematics, up to theology, with a breadth and precision that is not found in any of his other works. The De Causis, once its true origin and Neoplatonic character had been recognized, engaged St. Thomas in the final bringing together of the Platonic metaphysics of transcendence with the Aristotelian metaphysics of immanence: the Thomist commentary on the opuscule (the common editions are very inaccurate) contains elements of exceptional speculative interest for a theory of being whose content is decidedly Platonic within a solid Aristotelian armor. The commentary has, moreover, the merit of frequently comparing the De Causis with St. Augustine and Ps. Dionysius (cf. propositions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 19) in order to reaffirm the overcoming of the Platonic conception of "separation," to which, as St. Thomas expressly notes, Proclus too remained faithful, but not the author of the De Causis, for whom — as for Christians — everything refers back to God (lect. 16; ed. cit., p. 744 a). It would be most instructive, for the purpose of clarifying the originality of Thomism, to be able to compare the Thomist commentary with the other medieval commentaries on the De Causis and in particular, for example, with that of St. Thomas's master, Albert the Great (it is found in vol. X of the Borgnet ed., Paris 1891). Albert shows himself very uncertain about the author of the opuscule and has no suspicion of its dependence on Proclus. The commentary is divided into 2 books, each book contains various treatises and each treatise comprises several chapters) and with that of Giles of Rome, who was his disciple in Paris, who wishes to specify that the author of the opuscule is Alfarabi (Giles of Rome, Opus super aucth. de causis Alfarabium, Venice 1550). At prop. 12, f. 40v. one reads the declaration: "Liber iste extractus est ex libro Procii et est totus platonicus." One can note, among other things, a polemical allusion of Giles to the Thomist commentary in the commentary on prop. IV, at the end: "Notandum quod secundum quosdam per dicta huius authoris potest solvi ratio commentatoris ponentis unitatem intellectus. Voluit commentator quod unius et eiusdem rei non plurificaretur species, nisi propter materiam... At patet per authorem istum quod possunt plurificari species intelligibiles propter diversitatem recipientium, dato quod illa recipientia non sint materialia, ut in diversis substantiis sunt diversae species intelligibiles, quamvis substantiæ immateriales existant" (ed. cit., f. 18f). St. Thomas, however, had written exactly the opposite, and the disciple does not seem very perspicacious (Lect., IV of St. Thomas, ed. cit., p. 726 b. The date of the Aegidian Commentary is: A. D. MCC nonag., Die Mercurii ante Purif. B. M. V.; col. 112f).

Last in this list of Neoplatonic sources, but first along with Aristotle in the formation of Thomist thought, is Avicenna, known in good time in the 13th century thanks to the translation of Gerard of Cremona. The presence of Avicenna is continuous, but following St. Thomas's citations one has the clear impression that while in the early works (Comm. on the Sentences, De Ente et essent., De Ver.: cf. A. Forest, La constit. métaphys. de l'être fini, Paris 1932, pp. 331-60, a collection of all the explicit citations of Avicenna) his influence is predominant, in the works of maturity it undergoes a notable decline (cf. the harsh criticism of the De Subst. sep., c. 10). Nevertheless the influence of Avicenna was notable at the crucial moments of Thomist metaphysics: 1) The Thomist solution of the problem of universals (cf. Quodl., VIII, q. 1, a. 1), and the theory of the correspondence between the logical composition of genus and difference and the metaphysical composition of matter and form is referred to Avicenna (cf. W. Kleine, Die Substanzlehre Asic. bei Th. v. A., Freiburg im Br. 1933, esp. pp. 93 ff., 113 ff.). 2) The real distinction in creatures between essence and the act of being is affirmed by St. Thomas in the early works with a verbal dependence on the Avicennian text (cf. In I

Sent. dist. 8, q. 5, a. 1: the article summarizes Avicenna, Metaph., tr. III, c. 8 and tr. V, c. 3) and earlier q. IV, a. 2 the article summarizes Avicenna, Metaph., tr. V, c. 4 and tr. IX, c. 1, and in the ad 2 reference is made to Metaph., tr. II, c. 1 and tr. III, c. 8: for the real distinction). The Thomist position, however, soon denounces the extrinsicist conception that Avicenna forms of the esse as "accidens additum," in order to defend being as "actus substantiae" (In IV Metaph., lect. II, n. 556; cf. O. Pretal, Die frühislam. Attributenlehre, in Sitzungsb. d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., Phil. hist. Klasse, 1940, fasc. 4, p. 61 note. Also A.-M. Goichon, La philos. d'Asic. et son influence en Europe méd., Paris 1944, p. 44 ff.). Another Avicennian doctrine connected with this cornerstone by Thomism is the distinction of the possible esse proper to the creature and the necesse esse proper to God, which certainly inspires the Thomist III via in the demonstration of the existence of God (esp. in the C. Gent., I, 15; it seems that the exposition of the Sum. Theol., 1v, q. 2, a. 3 is inspired by M. Maimonides). However, even on this point St. Thomas departs notably from Avicenna in that he attributes (with Averroes) a form of necesse esse, dependent on God, to spiritual creatures. 3) The distinction between the causes τοῦ fieri and the causes τοῦ esse: a distinction that lies at the foundation of the whole Thomist metaphysics of causality. Also in this regard St. Thomas will denounce the extrinsicism of the Avicennian doctrine of the "Dator formarum" and will develop on the one hand the Aristotelian principle of predicamental immanence that "omne agens agit sibi simile, quia agit per formam..." and on the other the principle of transcendental immanence of the De causis: "Causa prima plus influit in effectum quam causa secunda..." (prop. 1; ed. Bardenhewer, p. 163).

These critical-textual data impose two conclusions: 1) St. Thomas intends and declares that he wishes to give the Aristotelian conception of reality. His activity as a commentator on the philosopher's principal works, directed above all to the search for the most genuine reading of the text and its direct sense, confirms his adherence to Aristotelianism, which is unconditional as regards the fundamental theoretical orientation, both as to the content of being and with respect to the method of expressing it in the definition of truth. 2) St. Thomas, on the other hand, introduces from the very beginning and intensifies, by defining with greater critical awareness, a complex of theses, principles and methodological suggestions of evident Platonic or — more precisely — Neoplatonic derivation: this leads to giving speculation as its immediate aim that of bringing about the agreement between Plato and Aristotle, around which the last St. Thomas labors with intense speculative fervor (cf. De Subst. sep., c. 2: In quo conveniunt Plato et Aristoteles; c. 3: In quo differunt...). This attitude, which is decisive for an interpretation of Thomism, is suggested to the Angelic Doctor first of all by Boethius, but takes shape and explicit meaning in his mind especially in his last writings, when he acquires direct knowledge of the great Commentaries on Aristotle translated by the generous friar G. of Moerbeke. Alexander of Aphrodisias had drastically denounced the irreducibility between the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle (cf. In I. Metaph. 8-9, 990 a 34; ed. M. Hayduck, Berlin 1891, p. 78, 4 ff.); but the Neoplatonic tendency prevailed against him, taken up by Simplicius, of a substantial agreement between the two philosophers on the substance of the problems, so that Aristotle's anti-Platonic polemic concerns solely the "terminology," more poetic than philosophical, of Plato (cf. Simplicius, In III De Coelo, 7, 306 a 1; ed. I. L. Heiberg, Berlin 1894, p. 640, 21 ff. See also: In III De Anima, 5, 430 a 23; ed. M. Hayduck, ibid. 1882, p. 347, 14 ff. Also: In Categor., Prooenium: ed. C. Kalbfleisch, ibid. 1907, p. 7, 29. It is to this text that St. Thomas seems to allude in Comm. III s. Metaph., 11, n. 468 and D. De Spir. creat., a. 3, ed. Keeler, p. 41, 3. The "antiquior" Latin translation of Moerbeke is given as finished in March 1266. Cf. ibid., Praef., p. XIX col. 6). Among the Arabs it is Alfarabi, the teacher of Avicenna, who continues the enterprise of showing the agreement of the two philosophers, which was to be the prologue of the agreement between reason and Quranic monotheism: the fact that the mystically inclined Neoplatonist Avicenna held a position of privilege in most of Scholasticism and that St. Thomas himself, especially in the works of his youth, grants him full favor, demonstrates to evidence that medieval Aristotelianism was oriented toward the "synthesis" and not toward the "crisis" of the two philosophers. In fact the Angelic Doctor in the end noticed, in the text of Simplicius, the discordance among the Greek commentators; but in the impossibility in which he found himself of giving his own interpretation of Plato, he too resigned himself to the syncretistic interpretation of Simplicius (cf. In I De Coelo et mundo, lect. 22; ed. Parm. t. XIX, p. 58 b). Thus in the work of St. Thomas, considered in its historical development, there appears the paradox that his Aristotelianism is far more intransigent in its formulas at the beginning, when nevertheless his thought was notably influenced by St. Augustine, by Avicenna, etc., than when in his mature age he knew the philosopher's works thoroughly and did battle against Latin Averroism. This has given an opening to P. Duhem (Le syst. du monde de Platon & Copernic, V, Paris 1917, p. 569; thesis taken up by L. Rougier in the essay La scolast. et le thomis., ibid. 1923) to accuse the Thomist synthesis of artificiality; but wrongly, because this synthesis was accomplished in function of a tradition of thought rediscovered by the Angelic Doctor in continuity with classical philosophy and broadened by him in the Christian climate in order to overcome the deadlock of classical thought with the Plato-Aristotle antithesis.

2. The "literal method" of the Commentaries

There is no doubt that the originality of St. Thomas's doctrinal innovation has as its principal cause the knowledge and assimilation of Aristotle's writings. In fact, unlike Albert the Great, who like Avicenna uses paraphrase, St. Thomas adopts, with Averroes, the literal method. The first concern in the Thomist commentaries (and the principle holds for all commentaries, both biblical and doctrinal) is to grasp the direct sense of the littera of the philosopher, which at that time, because of the various, incomplete and often discordant translations, was not always an easy undertaking (cf. In Periherm., l. I, lect. 5, n. 20; ed. Leon., I, 28 a; ... Et ideo magis sequamur verba Aristotelis...); St. Thomas then takes care to show the "structure" that the period has in the chapter, the chapter in the book and the book in the complex of the whole work and of the Corpus Aristotelicum, with a critical intent that no commentator sought or had before him; for every book, treatise and chapter he gives the prospectus of the material in its inner articulation (cf. the plan of the logical works, In Post. Anal., l. I, lect. 1; for natural philosophy, v. In I Physic., lect. 1). The intentio Aristotelis, at which he aims, springs from the criticism of the text and from the mastery of the principles which, even without the direct use of the Greek text and disposing of versions anything but luminous, makes him glimpse almost always the exact thought of the philosopher with a sureness that still astonishes today: "Patet igitur praedicta verba Philosophii diligenter consideranti quod non est intentio eius excludere a Deo simpliciter aliorum verum cognitionem" (De subst. sep., c. 13; ed. De Maria, t. III, p. 351; ed. Perrier, c. 12, n. 77, p. 174). Therefore St. Thomas can reproach Averroes, on the basis of the analysis of the context, for not having grasped the philosopher's method... "quia non coniungit totum ad unam intentionem" (In I Physic., lect. I; ed. Parm., t. XVIII, p. 228 a). The literal commentary is often integrated by opportune questions on certain debated points: these digressions, rare in the first commentaries, became preponderant in the last, thanks to the deepening of Averroes's commentaries and the knowledge of the great Greek commentators (cf. M. Grabmann, Die Aristoteleskomm. des hl. Th. v. A., in Mittelalt. Geistesleben, I, Munich 1926, spec. p. 281 ff.). In particular the Thomist commentary on the Metaphysics is judged superior to any other for the mastery that St. Thomas shows of this work, which is the most arduous that ever existed (cf. E. Rolfes, Arist. Metaphysik, I, Leipzig 1904, Einleitung, p. 15 and 17). Evidently, in order to grasp the importance of the Thomist "commentaries" (or rather expositiones) of the Aristotelian text, one must keep in mind the Latin version (or the various versions) that St. Thomas keeps before him and at times expressly discusses (for this critical investigation the first volume of the Arist. latinus [Rome 1939] can serve excellently with precious indications. On the preponderant influence of Boethius on the Thomist commentaries on Aristotle, cf. J. Isaac, S. T. interpr. d'Arist., in Scholast. ration historico-critical, Rome 1951, p. 360 ff.). This search for the genuine meaning of the Aristotelian text earned him the high esteem of the head of Latin Averroism, Siger of Brabant (cf. De anima intell., ed. P. Mandonnet, vol. II, 2nd ed., Louvain 1911, p. 152: « Praecipui viri in philosophia Albertus et Thomas »). See also: Quaest. in metaphys., ed. A. C. Graiff, Louvain 1948, p. 20, 25. The encyclopedist Henry Bate of Mechelen calls him « famosus expositor » (cf. G. Wallerand, H. Bates de Malines et st Th. d'A., in Hommage à M. De Wulf, Louvain 1934, p. 395 ff.) and this title of « expositor » was attributed to him throughout the Middle Ages, just as the title of « commentator » was given to Averroes. This tradition is attested at the beginning of the 15th century by Friar Luis of Valladolid who, after listing St. Thomas's Aristotelian commentaries, adds: « In exponendo autem litteraliter Aristotelem non habuit aequalem, unde a philosophis expositor per excellentiam nominatur » (in P. Mandonnet, Les écrits authentiques..., 1st ed., Freiburg im Br. 1910, p. 73). Agostino Nifo, converted from Averroism undoubtedly above all through the merit of the Thomist commentary, expressly acknowledges in St. Thomas the primacy among commentators, even above the Greeks themselves: « Hunc Thomam Aquinatem non modo in his Physicis commentationibus, sed in omnibus aliis fidum ducem, cui etiam non ab re nomen expositoris tributum est. Isto enim (pace graecorum expositorum dixerim) curiosior atque uberior, aut (quod raro est) clarior inventus est nemo » (Praef. in comm. super VIII lib. Physic., Venice 1543, fol. 2; cf. also the Praef. to the Disput. Metaphys.; Venice 1559, fol. 1 a; fol. 4 b: « Thomas noster »; 88 a; 129 b; Nifo names « Expositor senex et expositor novus »). « Antiquus expositor » is what St. Thomas is called by John of Jandun (cf. Quaest. in XII ll. Metaphys., l. IV, q. 3; Venice 1560, fol. 236. Especially disp. XIII of l. VII, fol. 206 b: « Expositor Thomas raro aut numquam dissentit a doctrina peripatetica, fuit enim totus peripateticus et omni studio peripateticus, et numquam aliud voluit nisi quod peripatetici »; see also Nifo, In XII Met., Venice 1518, fol. 21° a; In I. de subst. orbis, Venice 1519, fol. 5° b). This fidelity to the Aristotelian text of St. Thomas's commentary was instead energetically contested by Siger's successor in the leadership of Averroism, John of Jandun, who declares that St. Thomas ... « in omnibus aut pluribus in quibus potuit conatus fuit contradicere Commentatori... » but protests: « Dico quod ergo non credo ei in hoc sicut nec in aliis conclusionibus philosophicis in quibus contradicit Commentatori » (J. de Janduno, Quaest. in lib. phys., l. VII, q. II, Venetian ed. 1501, fol. 89 ab). The discredit is explicit in the controversy over the unity of form: Jandun, who stands for plurality, proclaims that this opinion was taught by Aristotle and Averroes: ... « immo illa positio aliquando fuit famosa apud omnes antiquiores: sed post tempus Alberti et Thomae aliquantulum facta est improbabilis propter eorum famositatem et propter quasdam rationes eorum superficiales » (op. cit., l. VIII, q. 11; fol. 107° a). Jandun's bitterness toward St. Thomas for such a defeat is noted and rebuffed by Nifo himself, a good connoisseur of Averroist matters: « Hoc est divi Thomae decretum, qui (pace aliorum dixerim) omnibus Aristotelis interpretibus est praeferendus. Verum Gandavensis, doctor malignus et erroneus, evaginato gladio et quidem bene acuto, contra decretum istud verissimum digladiatur » (A. Niphi, Collect. comm. in lib. III De An., tc. 32, Venice 1559, coll. 339, 890). The most mature example of St. Thomas's critical and textual acumen in the interpretation of Aristotle is certainly the first part of the De unitate intellectus contra averroistas (c. 1 §§ 3-50, ed. L. W. Keeler; §§ 2-22, ed. J. Perrier); especially the last Thomist commentaries stand out for their frequent in-depth soundings of the Aristotelian text (cf. In Periherm., lect. 5: on the concept of esse, In I De coelo et mundo, lect. 5: on the nature of the celestial bodies, etc.). The wealth of thought lavished by St. Thomas in his Aristotelian commentaries has still to be largely known through a continuous and methodical study that is indispensable for the complete and organic exposition of his thought.

3. The critical spirit, though lively and constant in St. Thomas

and superior to his time, could not produce the impossible: thus throughout his life he too, along with his contemporaries, accepted the authorship of Dionysius the Areopagite for the corpus dionysianum and of certain works falsely attributed to St. Augustine. But it is his personal merit first of all to have spurred Brother William of Moerbeke to revise the earlier translations of Aristotle and to make a new translation of the Philosopher's more important Works as well as of the Greek Commentaries and of Proclus (cf. the dedication to Urban IV of the Catena sup. Matth. of St. Thomas, which laments the difficulty in using the Homiliary of St. John Chrysostom 'propter hoc quod est translatio vitiosa', and the other dedication to Card. Annibaldo for the "Catena" of the other three Gospels, which declares that 'ut magis integra et continua praedicta sanctorum expositio redderetur, quasdam expositiones Doctorum graecorum in latinum feci transferri': Catena aurea, ed. A. Guarienti, Turin 1953, vol. I, p. 4; vol. II, p. 429). St. Thomas earned special merit for having identified the origin of the celebrated opuscule De Causis: first it is attributed to the Philosopher (In I Sent., dist. 8, q. I, a. 2 contra), then doubts arise and it is cited without the author's name (Quodl. V, a. 7); finally it is said to be an Arabic compendium of Proclus' Theology on the basis of a precise comparison made between the translation by Moerbeke — which he had urged — of each proposition of the opuscule and the paragraphs of the Proclean work (Sup. lib. de Causis, lect. 1; Op. Omnia, ed. Parm., vol. XXI, p. 718. On the attribution of the opuscule, St. Thomas's conclusion has been declared definitive by modern criticism: O. Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-arist. Schrift: Über das reine Gute, bekannt unter dem Namen Lib. de Causis, Freiburg im Br. 1882, p. 12). Another pseudepigraphon that had great fortune as an "authority" in the controversy over "materia spiritualis" and therefore also over the plurality of substantial forms was the opuscule De unitate et uno, attributed to Boethius in the editions of the 1500s and even in Migne (PL 63, 1076 ff.). In the Commentary on the Sentences (l. I, dist. 24, q. I, a. 1; ed. Mandonnet, vol. I, Paris 1929, p. 576), St. Thomas expressly attributes it to Boethius; but already in the Quodlib. IX, q. III, a. 6; ad 2: "Liber ille non est Boethii, unde non oportet quod in auctoritatem recipiatur"; in his mature years the distrust takes on an explicit critical note: "Liber de unitate et uno non est Boethii, ut ipse stilus indicat" (Q. de spir. cr. a. 1 ad 21; ed. L. W. Keeler, Rome 1936, p. 18, 21). It is known that the opuscule is a compilation made by D. Guadissalvi (cf. P. Correns, Baeumhers Beit., I, 1, Münster in W. 1891). The same must be said of the other opuscule De spiritu et anima, attributed to St. Augustine by the same supporters of the plurality of forms (and as such in: PL 40, 7), which St. Thomas soon suspects to be spurious ("Liber ille non est Augustini, nec est multum authenticus": De Spir. cr. 3 ad 6. And further on, a. 1 ad 2: "Liber De spiritu et anima est apocryphus, cum enim auctor ignoretur; et sunt ibi multa vel falso vel improprie dicta; quia ille qui librum composuit, non intellexit dicta sanctorum a quibus accipere conatus fuit". Ed. cit. L. W. Keeler, p. 46, 14 and 144, 5). He comes close to identifying the true author in the Q. De anima, a. 9 ad 1 and esp. a. 12, ad 1: "Liber iste De spiritu et anima non est Augustini, sed dicitur cuiusdam Cisterciensis fuisse, nec est multum curandum de his quae in eo dicuntur". In fact modern criticism attributes it to Alcher of Clairvaux (v.). Likewise the work De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus is restored to Gennadius of Marseilles (Quodl. XII, a. 10), who had great authority in the Middle Ages, and the opuscule De mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae attributed to St. Augustine is rejected by St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 45, a. 3, ad 2). In the 3ᵃ part of the Sum. Theol. St. Thomas cites directly the works of St. Cyril of Alexandria; in l. IV C. Gent. he cites the acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, in the Q. De Un. Verbi Incarnati and in the III pars he also cites the acts of the Second Council of Constantinople, only recently discovered (cf. III, q. II; aa. 1, 2, 3...) by St. Thomas himself; and the growing importance that St. John Damascene has in Thomist theology must be emphasized. The Angelic Doctor, as in the knowledge of the genuine text of Aristotle and of his Greek commentators in philosophy, so in theology in the knowledge of the Greek Fathers and of the councils, surpasses all his contemporaries and not them only (cf. J. Backes, Die Christol. der hl. T. v. A. u. die griech. Kirchenwiter, Paderborn 1931, p. 324 ff.). It is to this novelty of method and of problems that the sudden and undisputed fame is due that greeted him, a young bachelor, in Paris "(ita) ut omnes etiam Magiasque videretur excedere" (G. di Tocco, Vita..., ed. cit., c. XIV, p. 81).

IV. THE DOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES

1. The structure of knowledge

Both a pure Platonism and a pure Aristotelianism are incompatible with the Christian faith, according to which the world is created by God and therefore has its own consistency of reality and truth and is not a mere realm of shadow and appearances, but is also created by God according to the divine "Ideas" and made for His glory: one may affirm that the whole Thomist work revolves around this central theme. It is in this world, therefore, that man must first of all know the truth and see the very reflection of God. However, the soul of man, endowed with the principle of knowing which is the intellect, is according to Christianity of a supramundane nature and of divine origin, so that man by way of intelligence is said to be "in the image of God"; it is with this biblical principle that Greek patristics and St. Augustine distinguished in man an empirical and contingent knowledge through the experience of the sensible world (ratio inferior) and an absolute knowledge of the first unchangeable truths attained through divine illumination (ratio superior). Thus the human spirit in its higher part, when it purifies itself and draws near to God, participates in His absolute truth (cf. St. Augustine, 83 Quaestiones, Q. 46: De ideis: PL 40, 29) and withdraws from the contingency of corruptible things.

Nevertheless it was to Aristotle's advantage (as to that of Heraclitus, the Stoics... who had direct resonances in patristic literature) to consider this sensible world impregnated with the divine λόγος: the "substantial form," which is the act of material substances, is said to be "something divine" (cf. Physic. I, 9, 192 a 16), in agreement with the Christian doctrine according to which in creatures there is found a "similitude" of the divinity and that man can and must from sensible things rise to the knowledge of God (Wis. 13, 1; Rom. 1, 19). The same Aristotelian doctrine of the agent intellect (νοῦς ποιητικός: De An. III, 5, 430 a 10), which was the principal scandal of medieval Augustinianism, in fact conferred on man a consistency and ontological dignity that is required by the very Christian notion of person as a conscious and responsible agent. Again, the Aristotelian world arranged according to a marvelous hierarchy of perfection, from inorganic beings up to intelligent man, to the pure intelligences and to God, a thought that draws all things to itself – heaven and earth – as "object of love" (ὡς ἐρώμενον: Metaph., XII, 7, 1072 b 3), insinuated a "presence of God" to the world and of the world to God that fully justifies this phenomenon (perhaps the most complex in the history of Catholic culture): that the official Doctor of the Church radically changed course with respect to the patristic tradition. Thus, in Aristotelianism, the "concept of truth" as "conformity" of the intellect with the real (cf. Metaph., II, 1, 993 b 31) is brought down to earth and into the human mind itself and not deferred to the indefinite, but directly commits each person before being and can ground in the moral order the responsibility of merit and demerit that lies at the foundation of Christian ethics and eschatology. Finally, and deepening this metaphysics of the Aristotelian act, the Aristotelian notion of substance (v.) with its two elements of subsistence (οὐσία) and of inherence (ὑποκείμενον) showed itself particularly suited to explaining how the individual real could at one and the same time remain continuous and consistent in its being and yet follow a cycle of development through material and spiritual accidents. And this is most necessary in the Christian conception of human development and also corresponds to the Christian concept of "history" as the effective development on this temporal world of the divine plan of salvation of humanity (cf. E. Hoffmann, Platonismus u. Mittelalt., ed. cit., p. 72 ff.). The situation is therefore as if an Aristotelianism of structure found itself of itself in fundamental consonance with the presuppositions of Christianity on the structure of finite being: in this sense it is no wonder that the Platonic predominance in patristics provoked almost all the Trinitarian and Christological heresies.

The Aristotelian realism of St. Thomas corresponds to this maturity attained by Christian consciousness, which considers it a greater title of honor for divine Omnipotence that the creature too be endowed with true reality and its own activity (cf. C. Gent., III, 21 and 69; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, 105, 5, etc.): thus man has in his intellect the immediate principle of his understanding and not in divine illumination, which is evidently presupposed. In the early writings of St. Thomas there is still a trace of Augustinian extrinsicism in the affirmation that the "first principles" both of knowing and of moral action "pre-exist" in us naturaliter, as the semina of the sciences and of the virtues, and are therefore quodammodo innata (cf. De Ver., q. 14, a. 2; In II Sent., dist. 24, q. 2, a. 3 and passim). But through more direct contact with the Aristotelian text St. Thomas soon grasps the importance of the doctrine of ἐπαγωγή (cf. Post. Anal., II, 19, 99 b-100 b; Metaph., I, 1, 980 b 25-981 a 30), understood as the progressive conquest that the human intellect makes of truth in the fermenting of experience. This process, which Aristotle describes in rapid sketches, St. Thomas deepened with the help of the Greek and Arab tradition (cf. H. A. Wolfson, The internal senses in lat., arab. and hebr. philos. texts, in The Harvard theol. rev., 28 [1935], p. 69 ff.). The fundamental principle of Aristotelian gnoseology is that the only form of intuitive and direct knowledge that attains existence is given by sense: colors, sounds, tastes... are for man the first attestation of the presence of being to consciousness, and it is symptomatic that Aristotle refers to this presence for the indirect foundation of the "principle of contradiction" (cf. Metaph., IV, 3, 1010 b ff.). This process of the experimental induction of the intelligible presents three main stages, which correspond to the three "objective planes" of human consciousness. 1) There is the first formal synthesis through the so-called "common sensibles" (cf. De Anima, II, 6, 418 a 17 ff., III, 1, 425 b 2 ff.), which organize the immediate contents of experience into immediate perceptual unities, both static and of movement (perception of figures, of numbers, of the state of rest and of motion...). St. Thomas insisted energetically, against the interpretation of the Averroist current, on vindicating these first syntheses for the perception of the external senses, and thus the continuity between cognitive syntheses and the immediate attestation of the real in sensation was assured. — 2) There follows the real synthesis of the concrete values of lived life, which St. Thomas calls intentiones, as distinct from the neutral contents of the preceding spheres, which are called formae. It is in this zone that ἐπαγωγή properly unfolds, because within the sphere of direct sensation (proper and common sensibles) one can speak of development only in a secondary way and in dependence on the higher spheres. This development of real syntheses comes to constitute the object in the concreteness of the accumulation of experience, and is therefore entrusted to the work of the "internal senses," which St. Thomas divides into two groups: the formal senses (common sense and imagination) and the intentional senses (cogitative and memory with reminiscence; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 78, a. 4). The key faculty of Thomist gnoseology is the cogitative, barely hinted at by Aristotle but developed by the Greek-Arab tradition and especially by Averroes. To the cogitative, also called ratio particularis, the following functions in fact belong: a) to apprehend the contents of value or intentiones insensatae (Sum. Theol., loc. cit.); b) to judge concerning common sensibles and proper sensibles (De Ver., q. I, a. 11); c) to prepare the phantasma from which the intellect may abstract knowledge of the essence (C. Gent., II, 60; cf. ibid., cc. 73, 80, 81); d) to perceive in the concrete those fundamental ontological notions (reality, substance, cause, relation... and the other predicaments) which the intellect then grasps in the universality of abstraction (Comm. in II De An., lect. 13, n. 396). On this basis St. Thomas holds that the proper object of the human mind is the essences of material things. 3) The real knowledge of corporeal essences through the "conversion to phantasms," which constitutes the constitutive moment of the process of abstraction proper to the human intellect: "Unde natura lapidis vel cuiuscumque materialis rei, cognosci non potest complete et vere nisi secundum quod cognoscitur ut in particulari existens. Particulare autem cognoscimus per sensum et imaginationem: et ideo necesse est ad hoc quod intellectus actu intelligat suum objectum proprium quod convertat se ad phantasmata ut speculatur naturam universalem in particulari existentem" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 84, a. 7). In reality, for St. Thomas: a) it is through experimentum (the Aristotelian ἐπαγωγή), in which the cogitative is exercised, that the human intellect ascends from individual facts and experiences to knowledge of the universal and to the very formulation of the first principles (cf. In II Post. Anal., lect. 20; ed. Parm., t. XVIII, p. 224 b. And earlier, l. I, lect. 4 c.: "Universale non cognoscitur sensu, sed ex pluribus singularibus visis in quibus multoties consideratis [= experimentum] invenitur idem accidere, accipimus universalem cognitionem." Ibid., p. 171 a); it is through the cogitative that the human intellect perceives indirectly singular substances... my friend Peter (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 86, a. 1; Q. De An., a. 20 ad 1 sec. ser.), and there is accomplished that reflexio which assures and maintains the indirect but nonetheless immediate contact of the intellect and of human consciousness as such with the reality of the external world; c) It is again through this cogitative, and by now one understands it, that the human intellect is inscribed in concrete reality, has disposal over particular things and can exercise moral judgment, because it is the cogitative that supplies the "minor" of the prudential syllogism (De Ver., q. 10, a. 5 and ad 2). The Thomist cogitative therefore effects the connection between intellect and sense both in the ascending and in the descending function, and likewise between the deliberating will and the concupiscible and irascible appetite: in it, therefore, there comes to be gathered what forms the matter of the higher actualizations of the spirit, science and virtue. Thus St. Thomas did not choose between the two members of the Platonism-Aristotelianism alternative (as E. Hoffmann would have it, art. cit., p. 67), but welcomed their opposing demands of transcendence and immanence on a higher plane through the notion of participation. In fact the cogitative is capable of performing the marvelous functions just indicated insofar as it "participates" in intelligence through a certain form of functional continuity: "Cogitativa est quod est altissimum in parte sensitiva, ubi attingit quodammodo ad partem intellectivam ut aliquid participet eius quod est in intellectiva parte, infimum scilicet rationis discursum secundum regulam Dionysii" (De Ver., q. 14, a. 1, ad 9).

At this point, the first phase of the prevalence of Aristotelian immanence is followed by the phase of Platonic prevalence in the sense of the ontological transcendentalism indicated above. The human intellect and the first principles, both of the speculative order (intellectus properly so called) and of the practical sphere (synderesis), attain absolute value insofar as they are a "participation of the divine light in us and of the eternal law" (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃ, q. 91, aa. 2-3). St. T[homas], in order to indicate this which might be called the "transcendental moment" of human knowing, also has recourse to the term that would enjoy fortune in mystical literature, scintilla animae (cf. In II Sent., dist. 39, q. 3, a. 1. Cf. on this matter: H. Willms, De scintilla animae, in Angelicum, 14 [1937], p. 194 ff.). The originality of the Thomist doctrine of knowledge (and of the corresponding doctrine of the human act, insofar as both move upon the platform of the "cogitativa") consists in having first of all held firm and developed the Aristotelian principle of the immanence of the act along the whole line: humanity, and likewise the soul and understanding and value and feeling... constitute the reality and the substantial or operative act of the individual substance. At the same time, however, every act, form and lower activity is anchored to that which is higher as its participation, so that each has in this relationship its metaphysical ground, and in general every reality and perfection is something participated which must be founded in the absolute perfection by essence, which is God. Both moments, let it be well noted, are equally constitutive of the Thomist synthesis: the Aristotelian moment, insofar as things first of all are and operate, not by participation or according to mere derivation, but because they are endowed with their own principles in the ontological order... It is these principles that God has given to things which constitute them and make them act. Nevertheless there is also the second moment: beyond this first, which may be called partecipatio causalis, common to all Christian philosophy, there is in St. T[homas] also the more intimate moment of a partecipatio formalis of Neoplatonic derivation which will attempt to impose itself in exclusive form with Eckhart. First of all, the expression that the agent intellect with the first principles is "a participation of the divine light in us" (cf. De Ver., q. 10, a. 6; De spir. creat., a. 10) does not have a purely causal meaning, because it is through the intellect, as the supreme apex of the mind, that man "attains" God and remains in a certain continuity with Him. Then, and this second moment follows and completes the first, the intellect in every judgment of truth obtains its definitive certainty only by divine power. We are therefore beyond both Platonism and Aristotelianism, and the late St. T[homas] reached a formula pregnant with meaning: God helps man to understand not only (1) insofar as He proposes objects to him or (2) increases the light of his intelligence, but also (3) because the natural light that makes him intelligent comes from God "et (4) per hoc etiam quod cum Ipse sit veritas prima, a quo omnis alia veritas certitudinem habet, sicut secundae propositiones a primis principiis in scientiis demonstrativis, nihil intellectus certum fieri potest, nisi virtute divina, sicut nec conclusiones fiunt certae in scientiis nisi secundum virtutem primorum principiorum" (Comp. Theol., c. 219; ed. De Maria, III, p. 185. Cf. Sum. Theol., 1°, 105, 3. Again: Expos. in Joan., c. 1, lect. 1, n. 33, ed. R. Cai, Turin 1952: a text worth a treatise!). When care is taken that the Thomist doctrine of abstraction, in which the nucleus of Thomist realism is expressed, be placed between these two poles — that of the cogitativa which gathers the experience of lived life because it participates in intelligence, and that of intelligence itself which attains the absolute truth of essences because it is guaranteed in its certainties by the "presence" or the assistance of divine truth — the Thomist doctrine escapes the accusation of "naturalism" made by the followers of medieval Augustinianism and by modern idealism.

2. The structure of being. The emergence of the act (polemic against Augustinianism and Averroism)

Medieval Augustinianism had constituted, under the authority of the great African Doctor, a synthesis of elements of very heterogeneous origin, but tenaciously connected by virtue of a jealous tradition that had developed the consequences of its preference for Plato over Aristotle. In metaphysics it admitted a certain actuality of prime matter; then it identified potency or receptivity with matter, so that matter enters into the essence of every creature: in corporeal creatures corporeal matter, in spiritual ones spiritual matter (universal hylomorphism). Moreover, and consequently, since genus as an indeterminate logical element corresponds to matter, which is the indeterminate ontological element, it admitted in every substance as many matters and as many forms as there are logical genera and corresponding differences present in its notion: for example, in man, those of substance, body, living being, animal, rational, and, in the individual, Peter..., in all therefore at least 6 matters and as many forms (multiplicity of substantial forms).

The methodological principle of this exaggerated realism is the direct correspondence between the logical order and the ontological order: the genus is matter and the difference is form, the parts of the definition are also the parts of things. Someone, for example, H. Meyer, T. v. A., Bonn 1938, p. 79, has dared to direct against St. T[homas] himself the same accusation of "parallelism" between the logical order and the ontological order. Cf. C. Fabro, Logica e Metafisica. A proposito di alcune crit. recenti al realismo tom., in Acta Pont. Acad.

S. Th. Aq., 12 (1946), p. 128 ff. Moreover, it suffices to read the critical exposition and the refutation of Avicebron of absolute precision that St. Thomas gives in the De Subst. sep., (cc. 5-8). The "first moment" of Thomist metaphysics is the Aristotelian concept of act in the sense of "perfection" in itself and for itself, hence as ontological affirmation and positivity: act is then by its very nature "prior" to potency (Metaph., IX, 8, 1049 b 4 ff.), whether act is understood as operative activity (ἐνέργεια ἔργον: loc. cit., 1050 a 21-23) or whether it indicates the form that is the first quiescent act (ἐντελέχεια) from which operation originates and to which it returns. In this way, although it must be said that corporeal essences are composed of two principles, matter and form, which are the "parts of the essence" (Metaph., VII, 10, 1034 b 2 ff.), nevertheless the essence in its metaphysical aspect gravitates toward the form that is the act (ibid., VII, 11, 1036 b 12). St. Thomas accepted without reservation this "primacy of act" and identified the true direct responsible party for the opposing position in the Arab-Jewish philosopher Ibn-Gēbhirōl (Avicebron, v.), who explained the reality of beings by "resolving" it into potency rather than into act, as Plato and Aristotle had done. With the concept of act, emerging above potency, St. Thomas can demolish the fundamental principle of exaggerated realism: genus and difference are "concepts" that are unified in the definition of the species and can therefore not indicate distinct realities: as expressive concepts, the one and the other indicate formalities. In the definition, which must be in itself a unity of genus and difference, they indicate the same single specific nature but in different ways: the genus in the indeterminate element and the difference in the determining element, the species in the whole of the synthesis (cf. In VII Metaph., lect. 9, n. 1463). Therefore the logical composition of genus and difference is not in itself and by itself an argument for materiality, but this must result by another route, namely from the data of experience. But even in material substances, genus and difference as elements of the definition can be said to correspond to the matter and form of the concrete substance only indirectly, that is, "proportionally" (cf. De ente et essentia, cap. 3, ed. Baur, Münster in W. 1926, p. 24, 6): that is, the genus, which is the indeterminate element of the definition, corresponds to matter, which is the purely potential principle, and the difference, which is the specifying element, corresponds to form, which is the actual principle. For, since on the other hand it is evident that absolutely spiritual substances exist, the genus and difference of their definition no longer indicate two opposed ontological principles but express the same formal reality considered first in its indeterminacy and then in the distinctive character of individual spirits. Thus the Angels or pure intelligences can be said to be composed of genus and difference without this entailing any matter whatsoever: for subsistent spiritual forms are endowed with the "power of understanding," which can receive universal intelligible forms without any limit, and therefore they receive act in a manner diametrically opposed (per oppositam quandam rationem) to matter, which receives only individual forms (De Spir. creat., a. 1 ad 2 and ad 24). The Angels (and the human soul) are therefore simple in the essential order, that is, they are forms subsistent in themselves: they are composed in the entitative order only, that is, of substance and accidents, of essence and act of being.

In this way St. Thomas gave a new concept of act and potency, because act is posited in its metaphysical purity as "perfection" = affirmation of being, and potency as "capacity to receive" (perfection) = negation as privation. Hence two capital consequences for St. Thomas: a) potency is not spoken of in only one way, that is, only as prime matter, but in as many ways as there are forms of being a "subject" of act, and everything that receives and conditions act is potency. Potency is not only prime matter, but also, for example, the human body, complex as it is: "Esse subjectum non consequitur solam materiam quae est pars substantiae, sed universaliter consequitur omnem potentiam" (De subst. sep., cap. 7; ed. De Maria, p. 231); b) prime matter, which is pure potency, is only a subject and therefore has no act, and all its actuality comes from form, so that not even God can make matter exist without form (Quodl. III, q. I, a. 1).

From the new concept of act (and potency) derives the "second" moment of Thomist metaphysics, namely the thesis most opposed during St. Thomas's lifetime, that of the unity of substantial form in all bodies, including living beings and man himself endowed with a spiritual soul, and consequently the admission that the spiritual soul is in itself and immediately the substantial form of the human composite. A plurality of "forms," even if ordered and subordinated to the spiritual soul, and even the admission of only an intermediary form (forma corporeitatis), would destroy the essential unity of man, because the spiritual soul as the ultimate form would be a merely perfective and therefore accidental form. To the theological difficulty, the principal cause of the controversy, that the body of Christ "in triduo mortis" separated from the soul could not, on the Aristotelian position, be called any longer the body of Christ except "equivocally" (cf. De An., II, 412 b 21), St. Thomas expressly accepts the consequence but sees no harm in it on the dogmatic level, because the dead body of Jesus, although separated from the soul, remained always united hypostatically to the divinity of the Word (cf. Quodl. III, q. II, a. 5 and ad 1). The identical rational soul, the sole substantial form, confers on man not only spirituality but also the lower ontological degrees: "Sic ergo dicimus quod in hoc homine non est alia forma substantialis quam anima rationalis, et quod per eam homo non solum est homo, sed animal et vivum et corpus et substantia et ens" (De spir. cr., a. 3; ed. Keeler, p. 44, 1 ff.). Therefore the intellective soul is virtually the lower forms, that is, it contains also the sensitive and vegetative powers that operate through the body (cf. Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 76, aa. 3-5): thus Aristotle affirms of geometric figures that the higher figure, for example the square, contains the lower, the triangle, and that essences are "like numbers," which differ according to addition or subtraction of unity (cf. De An., II, 3, 414 b 28; Methap., VII, 6, 1043 b 34).

In this "third" moment of the Thomist metaphysics of act, there arises the defense, against the capital thesis of Averroism (v.), of the personal individuality of the spiritual principle. The refutation unfolds in two moments: 1) phenomenological, which is self-consciousness understood as the individual awareness that each person has of being himself, the particular individual N. N., the one who understands, wills, loves, etc.; hic homo intelligit. The intellect (and the will) is act, an individual perfection upon which depend all the other values of the individual as a man who is a person: this self-consciousness stands at the foundation of the whole of human life, of the duties and rights of each person as an individual man. Therefore it is a matter of "grounding" this fact on metaphysical grounds. 2) metaphysical, insofar as the consciousness of understanding (act second) — which is an absolute "prius" in the spiritual life — can be explained only by admitting that each individual man is endowed with his own individual spiritual soul (act first) which is at one and the same time the substantial form of the body and emerges above the body with spiritual functions: the act second (understanding) can be attributed to the individual only insofar as the act first (the substantial intellective principle) also belongs to him; De Unit. intell. c. Averroistas, c. 3 § 80; ed. L. W. Keeler, p. 50 ff.). Evidently the spiritual soul is the substantial form of the body insofar as it is the principle of the vegetative and sensitive functions and not insofar as it is the principle of the intellective functions with which it emerges above the body and is a form subsisting of itself (cf. op. cit., § 60; ed. cit., p. 38). The positive immateriality of understanding gives proof of the absolute spirituality of the human soul: since it is endowed with an operation proper to itself, which transcends the body, it is a form subsisting of itself to which therefore esse belongs directly (and not in common in the composite, as with material forms), and this being it communicates to the body. Thereby the immortality of the soul is proved with metaphysical rigor: if the human soul, because it is a spiritual form, is the immediate and per se subject of the act of being, this esse belongs to it in a definitive and inseparable manner: "Esse autem per se convenit formae quae est actus... Impossibile est autem quod forma separetur a seipsa; unde impossibile est quod forma subsistens desinat esse" (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 75, a. 6; cf. ibid., q. 50, a. 5).

The "fourth" moment of Thomist metaphysics is the affirmation of the real distinction of essence and act of being (esse) in all creatures, which is the conclusion of the new concept of act: this is today considered the keystone of the whole of Thomist thought. Presented in the early works in direct dependence on the extrinsicist metaphysics of Avicenna, in the mature works it imposes itself with the most perfect formula of the "primacy of act" through the notion of participation in two stages: a) Pure perfection (perfectio separata) can be only one, and being is the first perfection and the act of all acts (Quodl. II, a. 3; Sum. Theol. 1°, q. IV, a. 1 ad 3 and a. 2); subsistent being therefore is only one, and this is God, who is being by essence. b) All creatures are then beings by participation insofar as the essence participates in esse, and the essence is therefore potency with respect to esse, which is the ultimate act of every reality (cf. In VIII Physic., lect. 21, ed. Parm. t. XVIII, p. 532: a text very well known in the Averroist school). In this way St. Thomas can, with the notion of participation, overcome Augustinianism, because he demonstrates that the soul and the created intelligences (Angels), although simple in essence, are composite as creatures in the order of being. Again with the same notion of participation he can vindicate, against Averroism, thanks to ontological composition, the absolute dependence of the intelligences on God through creation and conservation (Sum. Theol. 1°, q. 44, a. 1 and ad 1; ibid., qq. 104 and 105). The formula of participation finally provides the formula for expressing the analogy between creatures and the Creator: "Non dicitur esse similitudo inter Deum et creaturas propter convenientiam in forma secundum eamdem rationem generis aut speciei, sed secundum analogiam tantum, prout scilicet Deus est ens per essentiam, et alia per participationem" (Sum. Theol. 1°, q. 4, a. 3, ad 3). In this last conception of St. Thomas, esse is no longer the accidens of Avicenna, but is the immanent act of the substance, esse substantiale, which is the proper effect of divine causality (Quodl. XII, q. V, a. 5).

A double corollary of the Thomist metaphysics of act is the explanation of the multiplication of individuals within the same species (predicamental participation) through the principle of individuation, which is indicated in the potential part of the essence considered in the determination of "corporeity" (materia signata quantitate), and the doctrine of the principle of subsistence of beings by participation, which is referred to esse as "actus substantiae": "Proprie esse... attribuitur soli substantiae per se subsistenti" (Quodl. IX, q. II, a. 3, and ad 2: "Esse est id in quo fundatur unitas suppostiti"). Pure spiritual substances (Intelligences according to the philosophers, Angels according to theology), lacking the principle of individual multiplication, which is matter, are each the entire species. In his last works St. Thomas gave full satisfaction to Simplicius's thesis of the fundamental agreement between Plato and Aristotle (cf. De Subst. sep., c. 3): thanks to the notion of participation, which at one and the same time provides the ultimate foundation of the doctrine of act and potency and surmounts the obstacle of Greek dualism. The Thomist synthesis is absolutely original: it indeed welcomes the metaphysical nucleus of Platonic transcendence (the notion of creation, the composition of esse and essence, the theory of analogy), which is welded to the act of Aristotelian immanence (the unity of the substantial form, the intellective soul as substantial form of the body, the doctrine of abstraction, v.).

In the field of morals the polemical aspect that clarifies Thomist progress is more in the background, but it is no less real, as has been shown especially by the fundamental researches of D. O. Lottin. The "natural law" (v.) is no longer conceived, as in earlier Scholasticism, in the form of an innate disposition of the will or of a special faculty of the soul, but it consists in the "habitus primorum principiorum" of practical reason: it is these principles that constitute the "natural law," which is defined as a "participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura" (Sum. Theol., 1°-2°, q. 91, a. 2); in the practical sphere it has a foundational function analogous to that of the first principles of theoretical reason in the speculative field (cf. ibid., 1ᵃ-2ᵃc, q. 91, a. 3 ad 1). The natural law therefore constitutes the foundation of "synderesis," which is the habitus of the first moral principles and consequently presupposes it (ibid., 1ᵃ-2ᵃc, q. 94, a. 1 and ad 2). In elaborating the structure of the human act, St. Thomas, while not abandoning the Augustinian doctrine of intentio and frui, deepens and develops the elements of the Aristotelian doctrine concerning usus and consensus. Accordingly, in the formation of the moral judgment, synderesis supplies the universal premise ("non est furandum") and the ratio particularis, or cogitative power (v.), presents the concrete situation on which a decision must be made ("hoc est furtum"): the conclusion is the business of "conscience" (v.), which must apply the universal precept to the particular case. In any event, in the ethics of St. Thomas the natural order receives its full recognition, and in harmony with Aristotelianism the proximate rule of "morality," according to which an act is to be called good or bad, is "right reason" applied to the object according to the perfect formula: "Actus moralis recipit speciem ab obiecto secundum quod comparatur ad rationem. Ed ideo dicitur communiter quod actus quidam sunt boni vel mali ex genere, et quod actus bonus est actus cadens supra debitam materiam, sicut pascere esurientem; actus autem malus ex genere est qui cadit supra indebitam materiam, sicut substrahere aliena: materia enim actus dicitur objectum" (De Malo, q. 2, a. 4, ad 5). And since it falls to practical reason to order acts to the ultimate end, there can be no concrete acts (in the individual) that are in themselves indifferent: for either the act is ordered by deliberating reason to the ultimate end or it is not; in the first case the act is good, in the second bad (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃc, q. 18, a. 9 corpus and ad 3). This principate that reason holds by nature over human acts stands out also in the characteristic thesis of Thomist morality concerning the sinfulness of the so-called first-first movements of the lower appetite: "Ratio praeveniens ipsum potest eum imperare vel etiam impedire; in potestate hominis fuit ipsum cohibere" (Quodl. IV, a. 21; cf. ad 2). At this point, therefore, the will enters the scene, as the moving principle of the moral life and hence as the proper subject of the moral virtues: throughout this whole subject St. Thomas makes use, with sure judgment, of the advances of his predecessors and always arrives at some original insight, drawing inspiration not only from Aristotle but also from Cicero and Macrobius, both in general theory and in the treatment of the individual virtues, which have their natural center in "prudence." Entering more particularly into the field of the doctrinal problems of natural law, the Thomist treatment not only rises above those of his predecessors and contemporaries but represents the most complete synthesis of Roman law with the Christian conception. It is therefore not surprising that the Thomist principles of the treatises de justitia and de legibus were praised by Grotius, and that one of the most esteemed modern cultivators of the philosophy of law, Ihering, confessed that he would not have written his essay Der Zweck im Recht (2nd ed., Berlin 1884) had he known the treatment of St. Thomas, in whom "the principles of this subject are set forth with perfect clarity and in the most pregnant form," especially as regards the fundamental question of the subordination of law to morality (cf. B. C. Kuhlmann, Der Gesetzesbegriff beim hl. Th. v. A., Bonn 1912, p. vi ff.).

Also in sociology, in economics and above all in politics, the principles of St. Thomas guided the revival of Catholic thought against the attacks of liberal laicism and Marxist socialism, in defense of the higher values of the human person (an approximation between St. Thomas and Marx was even attempted by G. Hohof; on the theory of "value" cf. G. W. Plechanov, La quest. fondam. del marxismo, Italian trans. Milan 1947, p. 145 ff.).

3. The theological method: reason and faith

St. Thomas is by now credited with the merit of having been the first to conceive theology as a "science" in the rigorous sense. In fact, according to Fr. Chenu (La Theol. comme science au XIIIᵉ siècle, 2nd ed., Paris 1943, p. 9 ff.), he knew how and dared to lay down clearly the principle of an integral application of the procedures of science to the data of Revelation, thereby constituting an organic discipline in which Scripture, the article of faith, is no longer the very matter, the subject of theological exposition and research, as in the sacred doctrine of the 12th century, but constitutes the principle known beforehand, from which in theology one works and proceeds according to all the laws and requirements of the Aristotelian demonstratio: "Ipsa quae fide tenemus, sunt nobis quasi prima principia in hac scientia, et alia sunt quasi conclusiones" (In Boeth. de Trin., q. II, a. 2; ed. De Maria, p. 298; cf. ad 4 and ad 5). In theology, therefore, we believers, in the condition of wayfarers (in statu viari), seek some understanding of the supernatural mysteries insofar as, on the unshakable foundation of faith, which is a "participation" in the knowledge of God and of the blessed who comprehend, we proceed to further knowledge: "... Venimus in cognitionem aliorum secundum modum nostrum, scilicet discurrendo de principiis ad conclusiones" (ibid.). The problem of whether theology can be a "science" appears from the beginning of the 13th century in William of Auxerre, Preposition, Alexander of Hales: the Dominican Roland of Cremona also poses it in explicit terms, but resolves it negatively (cf. E. Filthaut, Roland v. Cremona und die Anfänge der Scholastik im Predigerorden, Vechta i. O. 1936, p. 52 ff.). Theology therefore obtains the character of a science insofar as St. Thomas applies the Aristotelian theory of the "subordination" of the sciences (cf. Post. Anal. I, 2, 72 a 14-20 and 13, 78 b 35-39): while some sciences have immediately evident principles, others instead start from principles that are proved by another, higher science "sicut perspectiva procedit ex principiis notificatis per geometriam, et musica ex principiis per aritmeticam notis" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 1, a. 2). Theology therefore has its certainty from this dependence of its own, through faith, on the "scientia Dei et beatorum." This constitutes the consolidation of the distinctive character of Scholasticism according to the "Credo ut intelligam" of St. Anselm: "Fides est in nobis ut perveniam ad intelligendum quae credimus" (In Boeth. de Trin., q. 2, a. 2, ad 7; ed. De Maria, p. 300). The method of theology is therefore principally recourse to faith, that is, the argument from the "authority" of divine Revelation, which for the believer constitutes the most effective criterion of truth (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2): the function of reason, when theology has recourse to philosophy and the other human sciences, is instrumental in nature: "... utitur eis tamquam inferioribus et ancillis" and more by condescension than by necessity (ibid., a. 5, ad 2), and this redounds to the advantage of reason itself insofar as "qui utuntur philosophicis documentis in Sacra Scriptura, redigendo in obsequium fidei, non miscent aquam vino sed convertunt aquam in vinum" (In Boeth. de Trin., q. 2, a. 3 ad 5; De Maria, III, p. 340). In this way the philosophical concepts that are taken up by theology transcend the meaning of the historical systems (Platonic, Aristotelian...) to which they belong and obtain a higher evidence and certainty insofar as they have been elevated to a higher order: for example, the concepts of "nature, person, relation, cause." In this theological extension of a precise philosophical term to dogma, one can arrive at the so-called "conclusio theologica." The principal object therefore (subiectum in St. Thomas's terminology) of theology is God, because in it everything is treated but solely in relation to God... "vel quia sunt ipse Deus vel quia habent ordinem ad Deum ut ad principium et ad finem" (ibid., a. 7). In the Thomist doctrine of the relations between faith and reason there is shown the positive influence of the Aristotelian conception of reality in the rigorous distinction between the two orders of Grace and nature, each of which is endowed with its own principles within its own sphere; unlike the tradition of the Augustinian school. Taking his cue from St. Augustine, already P. Lombard (III Sent., q. 24) had posed the problem "whether it was possible concerning one and the same object and under the same aspect to have both science and faith" (Utrum aliquid possit esse simul creditum et scitum), and the Franciscan school (Alexander of Hales, Odo Rigaldus, St. Bonaventure, Matthew of Aquasparta) and the first Dominican school (Roland of Cremona, R. Fishacre, Hugh of St. Cher, Bombolognus of Bologna) and St. Albert the Great himself (cf. M. Grabmann, De quaest. « Utrum aliquid possit simul esse creditum et scitum » inter scholas Augustin. et Aristotelico-Thom. med. aevi agitata, in Acta Hebd. Augustin. Thom., Turin 1931, p. 110 ff.) always gave an affirmative answer. St. Thomas, on the other hand, from his earliest writings takes a negative stance (according to the Aristotelian principle that every science has its own principles that give evidence of its own object (cf. In III Sent., dist. 24, q. unica, a. 2, qc. 1, 2 and 3; De Ver., q. 14, a. 9). In its most mature form (Sum. Theol., 2ª-2ªᵉ, q. 1, aa. 4-5) St. Thomas specifies the opposition between the two forms of assent: 1. the assent of science, which proceeds from the intrinsic evidence of the object, and the assent of faith, which proceeds from the will that moves the intellect to assent to the mysteries proposed for belief that transcend every created intellect. 2. Although in the act of faith the evidence of the object is lacking, there is nevertheless the extrinsic evidence of Revelation: "Non enim crederet, nisi videret ea esse credenda vel propter evidentiam signorum, vel propter aliquid huiusmod" (ibid., a. 4 ad 3). As for the so-called praeambula fidei, that is, those truths that in themselves are of the natural order but are also found revealed (for example, the existence of God and of the moral law, Providence, the spirituality and immortality of the soul... Cf. Sum. c. Gent., I, 3-5) and that the majority of the faithful hold by faith, they cease to be an object of faith when someone understands their philosophical arguments. "Idem non potest simul et secundum idem esse scitum et creditum, quia scitum est visum, et creditum est non visum" (ibid., a. 5, ad 4). The clear Thomist distinction between faith and reason, in comparison with the Augustinian school, also emerges from the polemic aroused by the Aristotelian text on the eternity of the world. For the Augustinian theologians the problem of the world's beginning coincided with that of its dependence on God, so that a world that had been "ab aeterno" would for that very reason be uncaused. St. Thomas contests the Averroists' claim of a rational demonstrability of "creatio ab aeterno" and refutes the error of an eternal uncaused world (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 46, a. 2 ad 1). To the Augustinians, on the other hand, appealing to a text of St. Augustine (De civ. Dei, X, ch. 31), he shows at length in the De aetern. mundi the rational possibility of a "creatio ab aeterno" and declares in the most categorical manner that the temporal beginning of the world is an article of faith: "Mundum non semper fuisse, sola fide tenetur et demonstrative probari non potest, sicut et supra de mysterio Trinitatis dictum est" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 36, a. 2; Quod., III, a. 31).

With the clear distinction of the two domains, of reason and of faith, St. Thomas opened up the possibility of the development of theology as a science in the strict sense and of what was later called the "evolution of dogmas" (v. DOGMA), inasmuch as theological reflection can, with the aid, for example, of appropriate rational concepts, make explicit what was previously only implicit (cf. Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 1, a. 7; Utrum articuli fidei secundum successionem temporum creverint). But the work of the theologian's reason reflecting on the principles of faith is watched over and guided by the supreme magisterium of the Church, which is the visible bond of the unity of the Mystical Body: "Non enim potest esse unum corpus, si non fuerit unum caput; neque una congregatio si non fuerit unus rector" (C. error. Graec., ch. 31; ed. De Maria, III, p. 435; esp. pp. 453-58 the rigorous demonstration of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff). The originality of St. Thomas's work therefore lies in the project, boldly carried out, of setting the principles of Aristotelianism within the climate of Christian Revelation (... "secundum quod est consequens ad positiones Aristotelis" (De subst. sep., c. 15; ed. De Maria, III, p. 255), of having reflected on dogma according to the sound naturalism of Aristotle (... "secundum vera philosophiae principia quae consideravit Aristoteles" (De spir. cr., a. 3; ed. L. W. Keeler, p. 42, 14). Hence the label of intellectualism that is frequently applied to Thomism, in contrast to the Augustinian school, whose voluntarist tendency affirms the primacy of the will over the intellect, the affective-practical character of theology, and places the essence of final beatitude in joy rather than in contemplation.

But the accusation is unfounded: in reality, if in Thomism the first moment is entrusted to the object and therefore to the intellect (specification of the powers and of the sciences by their respective objects), the second moment is attributed to the subject who is perfected, through his acts, in the possession of the object. Therefore theology is certainly a speculative science, but virtually it is also practical; it therefore also treats of human acts, but only insofar as "per eos ordinatur homo ad perfectam Dei cognitionem" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 1, a. 4). Moreover, if faith is the beginning of salvation, the true principle of the entire supernatural organism is for St. Thomas sanctifying Grace through charity (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 23, a. 8; Utrum charitas sit forma virtutum). In this regard, it may be observed that, on the contrary, it is precisely St. Bonaventure who — if we look at principles — is on this point quite vague and less inclined to affirm the pre-eminence of charity, inasmuch as he states categorically (drawing on William of Auxerre) that the acts of faith, hope and charity "sunt aequalia in ratione merendi quando sunt informata gratia. Tantum enim ipsa charitas est meritoria in suo actu, quantum et fides in uno et eodem homine" (In III Sent., dist. 25, dub. 4, ed. Quaracchi, p. 553; ed. minor 1941, p. 546 b). Finally, St. Thomas, although affirming the superiority of the intellect over the will (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82 a. 3) and affirming that beatitude consists essentially in the contemplation of the divine essence (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 3, a. 4), nevertheless reserves to the will the delectatio, the fruitio, the gaudium of happiness; and in the Lectura in Matthaeum the Saint has given us the formula that can eliminate every useless dispute, and precisely by appealing to Aristotle: "Notandum quod secundum Philosophum, ad hoc quod actus contemplativi faciant beatum duo requiruntur: unum substantialiter, scilicet quod sit actus altissimi intelligibilis; alius formaliter, scilicet amor et delectatio" (Exp. super ev. Matth., c. V, lect. 1; ed. Parm. t. X, p. 49 b).

The sense of Aristotelian concreteness increasingly leads Thomist theology to value finite reality even within the economy of the supernatural life. While traditional theology conceived habitual sanctifying Grace as identical with charity and considered it an extrinsic gift of divine liberality received in the soul, St. Thomas defines in the Sum. Theol. (1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 110, a. 1) Grace as a "participation" of the divine nature (II Pt. 1, 4) and therefore conceives it as the formal cause of justification inherent in the essence of the soul as its intrinsic quality, that is, an entitative "habitus" (ibid., n. 2); for the former he uses the term "gratia actualis" (cf. Lectura in Ioan., c. IX, lect. 1, n. 5; ed. R. Cai, Turin 1952, p. 243 b; cf. E. Filthaut, op. cit., p. 136). Thus the ontological status of the supernatural order conforms to that of nature, so that Grace no longer derives by mere extrinsic addition but — in harmony with the Aristotelian doctrine of substance — by a form of intrinsic derivation "ex potentia oboedientiali" in which the soul, under the action of God, develops toward the supernatural life: "Et secundum hoc etiam gratia creari dicitur ex eo quod homines secundum ipsam creantur, id est novo esse constituuntur ex nihilo, id est non ex meritis, secundum illud Philip. 2, 10" (Sum. Theol., 1°-2°, q. 110, a. 2, ad 3). Consequently, the sacramental character too is defined as a quality inherent in the soul (Sum. Theol., 3°, q. 63, esp. aa. 1 and 4).

In St. Thomas, therefore, Aristotelian immanence and Platonic transcendence coexist in just balance, whereas the Augustinian school was closed within a timorous extrinsicism which, begun by P. Lombard, was exacerbated in nominalist theology and reached catastrophe in the Lutheran theory of extrinsic justification. Like Grace, which is its root, charity too and all the infused virtues, both theological and moral, are operative qualities ("habitus") inherent in the subject. The supernatural order in its structure cannot be less than the natural order, and if natural activities proceed from the sciences immanent in the subject, the same must be admitted for supernatural acts; all the more so since "nulla virtus habet delectationem ad actum suum sicut caritas nec aliqua ita delectabiliter". Charity and all the infused virtues are therefore not reduced to transient motions of the Holy Spirit, but are realities present in the soul elevated to the supernatural order: just as the powers actuate the soul in the natural order, so too do the infused virtues, on the foundation of sanctifying Grace for the supernatural order (Sum. Theol., 2°-2°, q. 23, a. 2: Utrum caritas sit aliquod creatum in anima). The transcendental aspect must integrate, not suppress, the immanence of operative principles, because every finite perfection (life, wisdom...) is a participation in the divine perfection which is such by essence... "et sic etiam caritas qua formaliter diligimus proximum est quaedam participatio divinae caritatis". The reality is that the Augustinian school interpreted formal causality in function of efficient cause, whereas the problem must be posed in the inverse sense: "Hic modus loquendi consuetus est apud Platonicos, quorum doctrinis imbutus fuit Augustinus: quod quidam non advertentes ex verbis eius sumpserunt occasionem errandi" (ibid., ad 1). And just as for the essence of sanctifying Grace St. Thomas expanded the Aristotelian metaphysics of substance, so for the efficacy of the Sacraments he overcomes the uncertainties of his earlier works, where he had defended the traditional doctrine of dispositive causality, and applies the metaphysics of the subordination of causes: God is the principal perfective cause and the Sacrament is the instrumental perfective cause, that is, the "separated instrument" which draws its efficacy from the "conjoined instrument" which is the Humanity of Christ (cf. Sum. Theol., 3°, q. 62, aa. 1-5). The new doctrine sprang from the synthesis of the Aristotelian distinction between animate and inanimate instrument, that is, between the slave and any "separated" tool (Polit., I, 4, 1254 a 15-17) and the doctrine of St. John Damascene on the Humanity of Christ considered as "instrument of the divinity" (ἐργύνον τῆς θεότητος: De Fide Orth., III, 19: PG 94, 1080 b; cf. c. 15, 1060 a).

Therefore, while acknowledging the constant prestige that St. Augustine exercises over St. Thomas, especially in the theological field, nevertheless the most original developments of Thomist theology and in particular of Christology and of the whole economy of salvation depend on a more direct and profound knowledge of the Greek Fathers. Thus the aforementioned doctrine of Damascene on the causality of the Humanity of Christ, St. Thomas finds already explicitly formulated in St. Cyril of Alexandria and in St. Athanasius himself, and he is the first to recognize the formula that passed into the Acts of the Third Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (680-81; Denz-U, 291-92) with the authority of the aforesaid two Fathers: even the citation that these Acts make of St. Leo the Great recurs twice in the III Pars (q. 19, a. 1 and q. 43, a. 2). Now it must further be noted that St. Thomas is the first in the West to make use of these Acts for theological reflection (cf. Th. Tschipke, Die Menschheit Christi als Heilssorg der Gottheit, unter bes. Berücksichtigung der Lehre des hl. Th. v. A., in Freib. Theol. Stud., Heft 55, Friburgo in Br. 1940, p. 188 ff.).

It is with this rigorous distinction of the two orders that St. Thomas can affirm the absolute transcendence of the mysteries of faith, for which reason is absolutely powerless and can exercise only an extrinsic propaedeutic and apologetic function under the guidance of Revelation (cf. Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 32, a. 1). The Saint therefore rebukes the presumption of those who, following the old school, wished to give arguments to prove the mysteries and thus to show their intrinsic rationality, because this would be a cause of grave confusion and would provoke the mockery of unbelievers (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 46, a. 1). According to this criterion of theological sobriety, both for the existence of the mysteries of faith and for the exposition of their content, for the choice of appropriate terms and for the correspondences that may obtain among the principal mysteries (Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist), the first and principal source is divine Revelation. This was rigorously applied by St. Thomas with regard to the existence of the whole created supernatural order, or of what has been called the "motive" of the Incarnation. To the more widespread tendency of the Augustinian tradition (cf. Alex. Al., Sum. Theol., 3°, q. 2, membr. 13 and Albert the Great himself: In III Sent., dist. 20, a. 4), which received its historical formula with Duns Scotus, St. Thomas opposed the solid methodological criterion: "Ea quae ex sola Dei voluntate proveniunt, supra omne debitum creaturae, nobis innotescere non possunt nisi quatenus in Sacra Scriptura traduntur per quam divina voluntas nobis innotescit". Now in Scripture and in the patristic tradition the Incarnation of the Word is always presented as the merciful work of God to raise man from sin... "ita quod peccato non existente, incarnatio non fuisset", even if the divine omnipotence, absolutely speaking, could have ordained the Incarnation prescinding from sin (Sum. Theol., 3°, q. 7, a. 3). On the orientation of patristic theology on this point and its relations with the Thomist position, v. A. Spindeler, Cur Verbum caro factum? Das Motiv der Menschwerd. u. das Verhältnis der Erlösung zur Menschw. Gottes in den christolog. Glaubenskämpfen des viert. u. fünft. Jahrh., in Forsch. z. christl. Dogmengesch.; Bd. XVIII, 2, Paderborn 1938, p. 28 ff. On the progress that the Summa Theologica represents on this point, and also on other points of theological matter, with respect to the youthful Commentary on the Sentences, the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter of Tarentaise also had a direct influence (cf. H.-D. Simonin, Les écrits de Pierre de T., in Innocent V, P. de T., Roma 1943, p. 145 ff.). The distinction of the two orders of nature and Grace inspires the intimate articulation of Thomist Christology: for example, the necessity that the soul of Christ too be elevated with habitual Grace and be endowed with the virtues in their respective powers (Sum. Theol., 3°, q. 7, aa. 1-2), the admission in Christ of an acquired "experimental knowledge", besides the beatific and the infused knowledge (ibid., q. 12, a. 1-2).

V. THOMISM

1. Lines of historical development

The controversy aroused by the doctrinal innovations of Thomist Aristotelianism, far from disarming the most representative exponents of the Augustinian school of the University of Paris, Franciscans and seculars, after the death of the Saint, was sharpened, and it was thought to renew with greater breadth the condemnation of Averroism (already struck in 1270, thanks especially to the definitive critique made by St. T.) by including certain Thomist theses. The condemnation was made, again through the agency of Bishop Tempier, on 7 March 1277 (cf. Chart. Un. Paris., t. I, no. 473, pp. 543-55) and comprises fully 219 propositions, among which those concerning the unity of the world (aa. 34, 77), the individuation of material and immaterial substances (aa. 27, 82, 96, 191), and the localization of separate substances (aa. 69, 218, 219) have been recognized as Thomist. Cod. E. 5532 of the Bibl. naz. of Florence, ff. 128ʳ, 128ᵛ, considers nos. 124, 129, 156, 163, 173, 187, 212, 218 also Thomist (cf. J. Hofmans - A. Pelzer, Etud. sur les manusc. de Godefroid de Fontaines, in Les philos. Belges, XIV, Louvain 1937, p. 211, note).

However, it must be recognized that these incriminated articles treat of rather secondary doctrinal points of Thomism, and there is lacking in them the explicit formulation of the very thesis of the unity of substantial form on which the public Parisian disputation of 1270 concentrated its fury and which was at the center of the bitter controversies that followed the death of the Saint: this censure was removed on 14 Feb. 1325, after the canonization of the Saint, by the Bishop of Paris Stephen Bourret, who on that occasion delivered a eulogy of St. T. (Chart. Un. Paris., II, no. 838, p. 280 ff.). At the announcement of the condemnation of 1277, St. Albert M., heedless of the weight of his years, presented himself at Paris to defend his great pupil (cf. the ample and moving testimony of Bartholomew of Capua in the Processo di Candidi s. T., ed. M. H. Laurent, no. 82, in Fontes..., fasc. vi, p. 382 ff.).

Immediately after the condemnation of 1277, however, the Roman Curia ordered the Bishop of Paris to suspend the effects of that condemnation and to make a precise inquiry into the authors of the individual propositions and their exact sense (cf. the letter of John XXI to the Bishop of Paris, in: A. Callebaud, J. Pecham et l'Augustin, Aperpus historiques [1263-85], in Arch. Franc. Hist., 18 [1925]). The Parisian condemnation had the effect of drawing together the forces of the Dominican Order around the doctrine of St. T., which was very soon proclaimed the official doctrine of the Order. Already the General Chapter of Milan (June 1278) and that of Paris (June 1279: Chart. Univ. Paris, t. I, no. 481, p. 566 ff.) recommended to provincials, visitors and priors that they severely punish (acriter) the friars who might presume to criticize the doctrine and the writings of St. T. In the raging of the polemic, first the General Chapter of Paris (June 1286) and then that of Saragossa of 1309 expressly ordered superiors to strive with all their might that all teaching friars teach and at least defend the doctrine of St. T. and to salutarily chastise the recalcitrant (the ordinance was applied, for example, in the Chapter of Arezzo of the Roman Province in 1315 with regard to a certain fr. Uberto Guidi, who was removed from his chair and condemned for ten days to bread and water; cf. M. H. Laurent, Fontes..., fasc. vi, p. 663 ff.). The obligation to follow the doctrine of the Saint and to explain his text in the school was proclaimed in the General Chapters of Metz (1313) with the official declaration: «Cum doctrina venerabilis doctoris fr. Thome de Aquino sanior et communior reputetur et eam Ordo noster specialiter prosequi teneatur, inhibemus districte...». The ordinance is repeated in the following Chapters of London (1314) and expressly of Bologna (1315) with the recommendation also to collect at the general Studia of the Order all the works of the Saint (Chart. Univ. Par., t. II, no. 704, p. 166 and no. 717, p. 173 ff.). At Paris meanwhile, around this time, Giovanni di Napoli O. P. defended the question: Utrum licite possii doceri Parisius doctrina Sancti Thomae quantum ad omnes eius conclusionis», where he examines the following articles of the condemnation of 1277: 79, 81, 124, 129, 156, 173, 187, 212, 218 (cf. the ed. of C. Jellouschek, in Xenia Thom., t. III, Rome 1925, p. 88 ff.).

The direct struggle against Thomist doctrines was conducted especially by the Franciscan Order, stronghold of Augustinianism, under the pretext of the theological consequences that were feared from Thomist Aristotelianism; it was therefore nothing but the continuation of the polemic waged against the Saint especially in the last years of his life. The most active representative of this movement proved to be the Englishman fr. John Pecham (v.), colleague and adversary of St. T. at Paris, then lector at the Roman Curia and finally Archbishop of Oxford. To him is due in large part the disputation held at Paris in 1270 in which, among others, the Thomist thesis of the unity of substantial form was condemned in a special way, which forms the nucleus of this polemical direction, and Pecham claims even to pose as defender of St. T. against his own confreres because, according to him, «etiam a fratribus propriis argueretur acute» (Letter to the Bishop of Lincoln of 1 June 1285, Apud M. H. Laurent, Fontes..., fasc. vi, p. 643). In the Parisian disputation of 1270, according to fr. Roger Marston who was present, «...haec opinio - of the unity of form - fuit excommunicata solemniter tamquam contraria Sanctorum assertionibus et doctrinae et praecipue Augustini et Anselmi» (QQ. Disp., ed. Bibl. Fr. M. E., VII, Quaracchi 1932, p. 116 ff.). However, a line of defense of the doctrines of St. T. was already taking shape in the Dominican Order, perhaps also under the stimulus and authority of St. Albert M., as is the case with Giles of Lessines (cf. M. De Wulf, Le de Unis. formae de Gilles de Lessines, in Les philos. Belges, I, Louvain 1902; cf. spec. p. 79 ff.). The writing of Giles is from 1278 and is directed against the Dominican Kilwardby of the old Augustinian school. Giles, after the condemnation of Averroism of 1270, had immediately informed Albert M., who responded with the treatise: De quindecim problematibus, of which the last two, proposed for condemnation but not condemned, concerned the Thomist doctrines of the unity of form in bodies and the simplicity of the angels (cf. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, II, 2nd ed. Louvain 1911, p. 29 ff.; see also F. Van Steenberghen, Le «De quindecim problemat.» d'Albert le Grand, in Mél. A. Pelzer, Louvain 1947, p. 415 ff.).

Pecham took strength from the fact that this thesis had been proscribed not only at Paris but also by his predecessor at Oxford, the Dominican Robert Kilwardby (v.), on 18 March 1277, immediately after the Parisian condemnation (cf. Chart. Un. Par., I, p. 588 ff.: propositions 15-30 In naturalibus, concern all the points of Thomist metaphysics; spec. prop. 17: «Quod nulla potentia activa est in materia»; prop. 26: «Quod vegetativa, sensitiva et intellectiva sint forma simplex»; prop. 27: «Quod corpus vivum et mortuum est aequivoce corpus», to be integrated with propositions 28 and 30: «Intellectiva (forma) unitur materiae primae». The condemnation caused a certain stir and is recalled by Occam himself (cf. the note of M. H. Laurent, Fontes, fasc. vi, p. 617 ff. For the historical development of the controversy, v. D. A. Callus, The condamnation of St. Th. at Oxford, Westminster 1946, p. 11 ff. On the anti-Thomism of Kilwardby, v. E. M. F. Sommer-Seckendorff, Studies in the Life of R. K., Rome 1937, spec. p. 159 ff.).

The action and influence of Pecham did not, however, prevent a growing favor for the doctrines of St. Thomas from spreading among the Franciscans. This alarmed the authorities of the Order, who rushed to take countermeasures: for this purpose Brother William De la Mare was charged with listing and refuting all Thomist theses contrary to the Order's doctrinal tradition, and thus was born the Correctorium fratris Thomae (between 1277 and 1279: Callebaud). The General Chapter of the Friars Minor at Strasbourg in 1282 ordered that the reading of St. Thomas's Summa Theologica be permitted only to friars "notabiliter intelligentes" and with the obligation to accompany it with the reading of the "declarations" of De la Mare (cf. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, I, 1st ed. Louvain 1898, p. 402). In all likelihood the Correctorium is the elaboration of a previous list of errors attributed by De la Mare to St. Thomas contained in Cod. 174 (ff. 552-58 v) of the Biblioteca comunale of Assisi following the Correctorium itself (cf. F. Pelster, Das Ur-Correct. W. de la Mare, Eine theol. Zensur zur Lehre des hl. Th., in Gregorianum, 38 [1947], p. 220 ff.).

The Correctorium in substance did nothing but codify the official teaching that the Order had accepted as early as the time of St. Bonaventure (A. Callebaud, art. cit., p. 467 ff.). The Dominicans called it Corruptorium and rebutted its arguments with a series of polemical writings, the principal of which bear the title Correctorium Corruptorii and are designated by their initial word. The first of these Correctoria seems to be the Quare, whose author is already indicated in the sixteenth-century editions as Giles of Rome (recently the attribution has been contested between two English Dominicans, Richard Knapwell and Thomas of Sutton: cf. F. Pelster, Thomas von Sutton u. das Correct. « Quare detraviati », in Mél. Pelzer, Louvain 1947, p. 441 ff.); it is the most complete and consists of 118 articles drawn from the principal works of St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 1a, 1a-1ac, 2a-2ac; QQ. disp. de ver., De an. and De pot., QQ. Quodl. and In I Sent: many questions are repeated) and has the advantage of containing the text of De la Mare (P. Glorieux prepared the critical edition of it in Bibl. Thom., IX, Le Saulchoir, Kain 1927). The Correctorium Circa is the work of the Dominican John of Paris and contains the first 60 articles up to Sum. Theol. 1a-2ac inclusive; its composition seems contemporary with the preceding one, if perhaps it does not even precede it, that is, between 1282 and 1284, while Fr. Pelster places it around 1300, according to its editor J. P. Müller (Le Correct. corruptorii « Circa » de J. Quidort de Paris, in Stud. Anselm., XII-XIII, Rome 1941, cf. p. xxxiv ff.). There follows, around 1290, the Correctorium « Quaestione » (unpublished) of Merton College Cod. 167, which seems to be attributable to William of Macklefield or to Hugh of Billom. The authorship of the Correctorium « Sciendum », also unpublished, is contested between Robert of Colletorto and Robert of Oxford: but Durandellus and John of Parma also aspire to it; it stands for Robert of Colletorto, P. Bayerschmidt, R. v. Collotorto Verfasser des Correctoriums « Sciendum »?, in Divus Thomas (Freiburg, 17 [1939], p. 311 ff.).

Before 1300, between 1286-87, he placed the Apologeticum veritatis contra Corruptorium of the Dominican Ramberto de' Primadizzi of Bologna, which has the merit of having broadened the field of discussion with other adversaries of St. Thomas, such as the Franciscans Matthew of Acquasparta and Richard of Middleton and above all Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome himself. Its composition is fixed (in agreement this time with Fr. Pelster) by the editor J. P. Müller in 1299 (cf. Studi e testi, Vatican City 1943, p. xxvi); it comprises only 16 questions that all refer to the Summa Theologica and follows step by step the text of De la Mare.

The names of Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome (v.) recall the intricate and most consequential phase in the early anti-Thomist polemic. As for Giles of Rome, whom tradition passed off as a faithful Thomist, the study of the manuscripts has shown instead that, especially in theological matters, he often figures among the opponents (cf. G. Bruni, Egidio Rom. e la sua polem. antitom., in Riv. di fil. neosc., 26 [1934], pp. 239-51; see at p. 245 the list "Egidius contra Thomen" of Cod. Vat. lat. 772, which contains no fewer than 73 points of divergence regarding only the first book of the Sentences). Bruni has edited from the same Codex the Impugnationes contra Fratrem Egidium contradicentem Thome super primum Sententiarum of a fervent Dominican who has not yet been identified (in Bibl. Augustin. M. Aevi, Vatican City 1942). In the struggle against Henry of Ghent, however, Giles defends the Thomist thesis of the real distinction of essence and act of being, but with personal arguments and introducing the terminology of esse essentiae and esse existentiae, of esse generis and esse speciei, which reveals an ontological realism that is foreign to St. Thomas and that took a first decisive step onto the slippery slope of formalist realism: this led to "reifying" the principles of being, confusing the ideas of not a few Thomists on the important question, down to Suárez, and which persists through his work down to our own day (cf. E. Hocedez, Aegidii Rom. Theorem. de esse et essent. Introd., Louvain 1930, p. [116 ff.]). This "inflection" of Thomist realism depends in Giles on a personal doctrine of participation of his own.

The principal wall of the opposition, against which for almost twenty years Giles and the majority of the Thomists had to batter, was precisely Henry of Ghent (v.), a figure of the first rank and very influential in Paris: thrust and counter-thrust in the polemic over the distinction between essence and existence of the two masters follow one another without cease, polarizing the intellectual life of the end of the 13th century and pushing into second place the other points of controversies (v. J. Paulus, Les disputes de H. de Gand et de Gilles de Rome sur la distinct. de l'essence et de l'exist., in Arch. d'hist. doctr. et litt. du m. d., 15-17 [1940-42], p. 324 ff.). Faced with the purely logical distinction of concrete and abstract and with the massive real distinction of Giles, which ended by conceiving essentia and esse as "res et res," as "duae res," Henry devised the intermediate way of the "distinctio secundum intentionem," inasmuch as the "esse existentiae" of the creature cannot be conceived by the intellect except as dependent on God, and therefore "essentia" and "esse" are not "duae res" but "duo respectus"; the "essentia" is related to God as to an exemplary cause and the "esse" to God as to the first efficient cause, and consequently existence and essence are distinguished not because they form a real composition but only because they indicate a different relation of dependence on God, that is, according to our way of understanding (J. Paulus, H. de Gand, Essai sur les tendances de sa métaph., Paris 1938, esp. pp. 278-91). The solution has its immediate reflection not only in the metaphysical determination of the concept of "creature" within the boundaries of Christian philosophy, but also in the arduous theology of the hypostatic union in Christ. On the polemical question: Utrum sit duplex vel unum esse in Christo, Henry directly combated the Thomist position that affirms in Christ a "duplex esse naturae" and a single "esse subsistentiae," and from his criticism originated the various anti-Thomist positions on this point (Scotus, Tifano, Suárez...) down to our own day. Henry attributes an "esse actualis existentiae" also to the human nature of Christ — while he denies in Christ, a divine person, an "esse absolutum subsistentiae," since the divine Person is constituted by the "esse ad aliquid" (cf. the fundamental study of P. Bayerschmidt, Die Seins- u. Formenmetaph. des H. v. Gent in ihrer Anwendung auf die Christol., in Beitr. Baeumkers, XXVI, 3-4, Münster in W. 1941, p. 81). Every real composition of essence and "esse" is denied, in an even more radical way than Henry, by the contemporary secular master Godfrey of Fontaines, who was likewise bound to the Gilesian terminology of "esse essentiae" and "esse existentiae," while he energetically defended the Thomist thesis of the pure potentiality of matter, protesting against the detractors of St. T.: "Aliqui doctrinam non modico fructuosam cuiusdam doctoris famosi, cuius memoria cum laudibus esse debet, ut in pluribus impugnantes, vel deinde contra dicta sua procedentes, ad diffamationem personae pariter et doctrinae opprobria magis quam rationes inducere consueverunt" (M. De Wulf-A. Pelzer, Les quatre premiers Quodl. de G. de F., Quodl. I, a. 4, in Les Philos. Belges. II, Louvain 1904, p. 7).

In the Dominican Order, after the official pronouncements in favor of Thomism, the struggle against Thomist innovations was reduced to initiatives soon repressed by authority. After the Kilwardby episode, the most sensational case is that of Durandus of St. Pourçain. The researches of J. Koch have dispelled the legend, which has come down to us, of a primitive adherence of Durandus to Thomism and demonstrated that he, together with his master James of Metz, is linked to the old Augustinian school of the Order, hostile to the acceptance of Aristotelianism and close, for example, in the theory of "modes," to Henry of Ghent (J. Koch, Jakob von Metz O. P., der Lehrer des Durandus a s. Porciano, O. P., in Arch. d'hist. doctr. et litt. du m. d., 4-5 [1929-30], esp. p. 192 ff.). This conservative secessionist direction was energetically repressed by the authorities of the Order. The soul of this defense against the whole tendency of Henry of Ghent, James of Metz and Durandus was Herveus (v.) Natalis: the first was attacked thoroughly in the Quodlibeta (Venetian ed. of M. A. Zimara 1513), the second in the Correctorium Frat. Jacobi Metensis (cf. J. Koch, art. cit., p. 194 ff.); the third especially in Quodl. II, of 1308, qq. 3, 7 and 8; Quodl. IV of 1310, qq. 4 and 14, with other special dissertations and a body of polemical writings rediscovered and studied by Koch: Reprobationes excusationum Durandi of 1314, Correct. super dicta Durandi of 1315, De artic. pertinent. ad IV ll. Sent. Durandi of 1314-15 and the Evidentiae cont. Durandum super ll. IV Sent.; the Def. doctr. s. Th. is his, and seems written no later than 1307 (cf. J. Koch, Durandus de s. Porc., Forschungen zum Streit um Th. v. A. zu Beginn des 14. Jahrh., I, Beitr. Baeumkers, XXVI, 1, Münster in W. 1927, esp. p. 211 ff.). Other Thomists identified by Koch, who polemicized against Durandus, are: Peter of Palude, James of Lausanne, John of Naples, who is the prince of the defenders of St. T. throughout this storm, Bernard Lombard and the unknown but strong Thomist Durandellus. The Order by its own authority published a first list of 191 errors of Durandus's Commentary on the Sentences on July 3, 1314, collected by P. of Palude and G. of Naples, to which Durandus responded with the "Excusaciones"; a second list soon followed of fully 235 articles in which Durandus departs from St. T., and it must be placed between 1316-17, and Durandus was put outside the doctrinal tradition of the Order.

In this polemic the figure of Scotus comes to the fore, on whom Occam directly depends, and who attacked with open weapons the foundations of Thomism both in philosophy and in theology (cf. Fr. Hoffmann, Die erste Kritik des Ockhamismus durch den Oxford. Kanzler J. Lutterell, Breslau 1941, p. 14 ff., 23 ff., 75 ff., passim); but it seems that Durandus too depends on Scotus himself, certainly for sacramental theology (cf. J. Koch, Die Verteidigung der Theol. des hl. Th. v. A. durch den Dominikanerord. gegen. Durandus de s. Porc. O. P., in Xen. Thom., III, Rome 1925, p. 251). On the other hand, the researches of Fr. Balic for the critical edition of Scotus have established that the principal source on which he depends is Henry of Ghent, that is, the coryphaeus of medieval anti-Thomism, who remains the principal point of reference for the majority of the philosophical and theological doctrines with which the renewed Augustinian school energetically attempted, not without notable successes, to hold back the advance of Thomism (cf. I. D. Scotus, Op. Omnia... ad fidem Cod. ed., Rome 1950, t. I, esp. p. 1667 ff.). In this accumulation of polemics of the first half-century after the death of St. T. there came to be formed and crystallized that doctrinal tradition which has taken the name of "Thomism."

For a critical judgment on the historical formation of Thomism, note must be taken of the fact that among the very first disciples of St. T. and the first supporters of Thomism there are no slight oscillations: let the position of one of St. T.'s pupils, the secular master Peter of Auvergne, serve as an example, who places the principle of individuation in form and on whom James of Metz and Durandus depend (cf. J. Koch, Jakob v. Metz..., op. cit., p. 211 ff.). The very champion of Thomism and general of the Order, Herveus Natalis, assimilates Thomist doctrines only gradually and denies that cornerstone of Thomist metaphysics which is the real distinction between essence and act of being; it is denied also by Bernard Lombardi O. P. For Bernard of Trilia (d. 1292), who has a reputation as a faithful Thomist, the real distinction is a "positio probabilis" (cf. G. André, Les Quodl. de B. Trilia, in Gregorianum, 2 [1921], p. 252). Analogous oscillations have been found also in various doctrines both philosophical and theological (for those, for example, concerning the metaphysics of relation, v. A. Krempel, La Doctr. de la relation chez st Th., Paris 1952, p. 20 ff. and passim, who speaks of a "demi fidélité des premiers adeptes").

The most mature fruit of the first century of Thomist polemics is the work of Capreolus (d. 1444, v.), the "Princeps thomistarum": his Defensiones theol. Divi Th. Aqu. (new edition by Paban-Pègues, Tours 1900 ff.) give an exact panorama of the situation of the School in the 15th century, after the struggle that Thomism had sustained and continued against its principal adversaries, and contain all the key theses of the School. Capreolus too follows principally the work of Durandellus, and the main line of Thomism, established with him, continues in the 16th century with the Hungarian Peter Niger (d. 1492) and with the Italians Paolo Soncinas (d. 1494), Chrysostom Javelli (d. c. 1534), and Peter of Bergamo, author of the Tabula aurea, which is the first "index thomisticus." F. Silvestri of Ferrara (v.), commentator on the S. c. Gent., is equal to Capreolus in fidelity to St. Thomas but often surpasses him in synthetic and speculative vigor. These figures of the first rank have remained almost eclipsed by the overbearing authority of Cajetan, which was reinforced by the fluid systematicity of the Spaniards who followed him, such as D. Bañez (v.)

and John of St. Thomas (v.), in whom the formalistic and excessively systematic tendency often takes the place of the original sobriety of the Thomist text, to which the older current adheres. Oscillations that are well-nigh inevitable when one considers first of all the predominantly polemical formation of Thomism; then the fact that until the end of the 15th century the official text of teaching, even for the Dominicans, was the book of Sentences of the Lombard, and only in the 16th century, through the Belgian P. Crockaert, teacher of F. de Vitoria (v.), was the Summa Theologica introduced as a school text; and finally the absence of study of the sources and of critical method, so that not a few Thomists relied on spurious opuscules, preferring them to the authentic texts. It is no wonder, then, if the Thomists of the 14th-16th centuries, for example, when it comes to defending the real distinction between essence and the act of being, often have recourse to the terms and arguments of Giles of Rome rather than to those of St. Thomas (thus John of St. Thomas himself makes extensive use of the spurious Summa totius logicae, which contains the formula that has disconcerted, not entirely without reason, the adversaries of the real distinction and has shaken those Dominicans who have equally denied it, beginning with the aforementioned Herveus Natalis down to Father A. Lepidi (d. 1921): "In creaturis esse essentiae et esse actualis existentiae differunt realiter ut duae diversae res"; ed. De Maria — who also takes the opuscule as authentic! — vol. I, p. 23). Another explicit example is in the Quodlibeta Alverii ord. praed. (which it has not yet been possible to identify) of a miscellaneous Codex of the Biblioteca Antoniana of Padua from the 14th century (Scaff. XIII, no. 295): in Q. XIX, Utrum esse et essentia differant realiter (fol. 19 tb) the three well-known opinions that seem by now canonized are set forth, and the author declares himself unreservedly for the third ("probabilior"), which defends — like Henry of Ghent and later Suárez — the distinction merely of modes of signifying and rejects the arguments for the real distinction, including that of participation (ibid., ad tertium, v.b.). The uneasiness created in the Thomist school on this point is found again in the very position of D. Bañez (v.), who knows and sets out the three sentences that had been fought over for three centuries and for each of them indicates some Dominican representative (1). In the first, among the deniers of the real distinction, forgetting the principal ones, that is, the Averroists, who would have shown him by contrast the true position of St. Thomas, he places at the head of the deniers Herveus Natalis, followed by nominalists of every stripe. The second sentence (the one that would later be Suárez's), which defends the intermediate distinction ("sec. intentionem") of Henry of Ghent "ex natura rei," has as its champions Scotus and Alexander of Hales, or rather the Franciscan minister general A. Bonini of Alexandria (cf. C. Fabro, Una fonte antitom. della metaf. suarez., in Div. Thomas Plac., 30 [1947], pp. 57-68), along with Nifo and the Dominican D. Soto. The third sentence holds that the essence is distinguished from "esse tamquam res a re, ita ut non solum haec propositio sit falsa in sensu formali: essentia est esse (= the second sentence), sed etiam haec: essentia est res quae est esse" (D. Bañez, Schol. Comment. in Prim. Partem..., q. 3, a. 4; Lyons edition 1588, col. 140). As supporters of this position are cited Capreolus, Cajetan, Soncinas and Javelli. But Bañez seems to move with difficulty: the sentence attributed to St. Thomas is judged "multo probabilior et ad rem theologicam magis accomodata," and Bañez for his part accepts it. But — and here lies the crux for the problem we are touching on — Bañez also passes as a probable sentence that of Scotus (and of Soto), that is, that of the principal adversary of St. Thomas, Henry of Ghent: "Sententia tamen Scoti et magistri Soto potest probabiliter sustineri et argumenta quae contra illam fiunt ab assertoribus tertiae sententiae (that is, the Thomist one, mark well!) poterunt hoc exemplo dissolvi"... (ibid., col. 141). A similar attitude had been taken a century earlier by Peter Niger, an excellent Thomist, regarding the position of Herveus, according to whom "esse essentiae et esse existentiae differunt secundum diversos modos significandi per modum verbi et per modum nominis significatorum." And he concluded: "Opinio doctoris huius nolo impugnare quia satis rationabilis videtur et in nullo videtur dictis Sanctorum et philosophorum contraria sed consonaque rationi. Est tamen alia solemnis opinio scil. Doctoris sancti," etc. (Clypeus Thomist., q. XXXII; Venetian edition, per Simonem de Luere, 1504, fol. 56 vab.). It is not by chance that in the prolix discussions of Niger and Bañez there is missing any deepening of the Thomist concept of act and of "esse" in function of the notion of participation, as had instead already been pointed out by the adversaries, the Averroists, and by Alexander of Alexandria himself. A more rigorous fidelity to the terms of St. Thomas is found in the secular master G. Versor, for whom "esse est aliud ab essentia vel natura angeli..." and the Thomist arguments are reported with sober precision (QQ. in XII Metaph., q. XII, Cologne, Quentell 1493, fol. 106 vb-107 ra). To this slippage of Thomism toward formalism must also be attributed the theses widespread in the Thomist school of an act of "esse" proper to accidents and the consequent thesis, almost official in contemporary Thomism, of the primacy of the analogy of proportionality over the analogy of attribution; in all probability also the thesis attributed to Cajetan of the "terminus substantialis" as constitutive of subsistence (accepted by Bañez himself, loc. cit., col. 125-27) and the conception of "relatio trascendentalis" (cf. A. Krempel, op. cit., p. 646 ff.), which have enjoyed the favor of much Thomism from the 17th century onward, betray the formalist and nominalist infiltrations to which, for historical objectivity, it has been wished to call attention.

If it is true that the work of St. Thomas has always enjoyed, down the centuries, the favor of the Apostolic See, this did not prevent the other schools from continuing their own tradition, and in the great universities, until the irruption of modern thought, there coexisted with the Thomist chair the chairs that defended the doctrines of Scotus, Durandus, Gregory of Rimini... Indeed, toward the end of the 14th century, when with Peter of Ailly nominalism gained the upper hand in the University of Paris, the Dominicans were expelled from the schools from 1387 until 1403. The most distressing episode was the attack by the Spanish Dominican John of Montesono against the defenders of the Immaculate Conception, going so far as to maintain that "qui credit B. Virginem esse conceptam sine peccato originali, esse expresse contra fidem ..." and therefore "peccat mortaliter" (cf. the Propositions X-XIII, condemned on 12 July 1391, in Chart. Univ. Paris, vol. III, Paris 1894, p. 486, historical note; see the 14 propositions condemned in nos. 1557 ff., p. 493 ff.; see further on, no. 1572, p. 518, the retraction of Montesono). Perhaps this very stiffening of the Dominican Order in denying the Marian privilege also contributed not a little to hindering the understanding and diffusion of Thomism in the Catholic schools and to allowing theological formalism and nominalism, which had made themselves ardent champions of that privilege, to gain a foothold or prestige. In the field of the more strictly philosophical doctrines, the opposition to Thomism on the part of Averroism (v.) continued until the 16th century with the explicit or tacit appeal to Siger of Brabant: the thesis of a substantial "conversion" of Siger to Thomism, proposed by F. van Steenberghen (cf. Les oeuv. et la doctr. de S. de Br., Brussels 1938, p. 150 ff.) was strongly opposed by B. Nardi (Il preteso tom. di Sigieri di Br., in Giorn. crit. d. fil. it., 17 [1936], p. 26 ff., which also had the assent of E. Gilson: cf. Bull. Thom., 6 [1942], p. 16 ff.). Nevertheless it is beyond doubt that the Thomist critique of the De unit. intell. pushed Siger to revise his formulas and to acknowledge the incompatibility of the thesis of the unity of the intellect with Christian doctrine. Hostility against St. Thomas is systematic in Siger's successor as coryphaeus of Averroism, John of Jandun, and it is prolonged in the Italian Averroism of the Renaissance, resorting also to alliances with the schools of Augustinian (Scotist) and nominalist tendency. Much debated in recent years (Busnelli, Nardi) has been Dante's adherence to Thomism, but it is beyond doubt that in the substance of the problems the Poet draws his inspiration from St. Thomas, even if the very character of his work leads him to remain open to the most varied influences: in Florence, in the 14th century, the great Parisian controversies can have had only a very faint echo if in Dante's Paradise St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas and Siger — that is, the standard-bearers of the three currents in contention — celebrate in eternal joy that accord in truth which they did not have in speculating on earth and which their disciples made ever less possible in the schools. A nucleus of opposition to Thomism, albeit of reduced proportions, was also Albertism (v. SCOLASTICA), which had a period of notable activity in Paris and Cologne between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th, with infiltrations even among the Thomists themselves, as for example in Dominic of Flanders O.P., who is at times in polemic against the integral Thomism of G. Versor (cf. L. Mahieu, Dominique de Flandre. Sa métaph., Paris 1942, p. 21 ff.).

With the rise of the Society of Jesus the diffusion of Scholasticism (v.) took on new vigor and the study of St. Thomas obtained the place of honor in the primitive constitutions of St. Ignatius, but these were subsequently modified after the death of the Saint, and thought was even given to the composition of a new "Summa Theologica," entrusted to Father Laynez (see the documentation in P. Garin, Thèses certes. et thèses thom., Paris n.d., p. 24 note). Worthy of note is a movement of integral Thomism within the Society, on the occasion of the Molinist controversy, through the work of John Azor and Benedict Pereira, who expressly diffused the Thomist thesis of physical premotion (cf. A. Michelitsch, Die Kommentar zur Summa Theol. des hl. Th. v. A., Graz 1923, pp. 35 ff., 59-61, 102 ff.), but it was an isolated phenomenon soon repressed by General Acquaviva: of good Thomist inspiration is the work of Silvestro Mauro (1619-87), which nevertheless could not compete with that of Suárez, which obtained the almost total adherence of the schools of the Society. In the Dominican Order the Thomist doctrines received particular impulse from the expositions, still appreciable today, of Goudin, of Genevold and, at the beginning of the last century, of the Italian S. Roselli, whose Summa philosophica (3rd ed., Bologna 1857-59) was probably the first seed for the rebirth of Thomism. Nevertheless it must be recognized that this distinguished work is not immune to rationalist infiltrations, such as, for example, the adoption of the Wolffian division of philosophy and of the Leibnizian principle of "sufficient reason" (cf. op. cit., p. II, Metaph., q. 6, a. 1; vol. II, p. 98 ff.), which would have a massive influence in neo-Scholastic and also neo-Thomist manualism, as can be seen in the complicated discussions on the value of the principle of causality (cf. C. Fabro, Per la difesa crit. del principio di causa, in Riv. di filos. neosc., 38 [1936], p. 121 ff.).

2. Thomism and the ecclesiastical magisterium

The encyclical Aeterni Patris (v.) of Leo XIII recalled the Catholic forces to unity under the guidance of St. Thomas. The efficacy of the pontifical injunction is attested by the prompt adhesions of the Catholic episcopate, of the teachers and cultural bodies and of the major Superiors, among which should be noted that of Father P. Beckx, general of the Society of Jesus, who assured the Pontiff that he had returned to enjoin upon all "with greater warmth" the observance of the new dispositions, "changing some professors who seemed less suited to the purpose" (J. J. Berthier, S. Th. A. Doctor Communis, Rome 1914, p. 600). Leo XIII's mind was that the Franciscans too should follow St. Thomas, and he made his will clear with the grave words: "Discedere inconsulte ac temere a sapientia Doctoris Angelici res aliena est a voluntate nostra, aedemque plena periculis... Sanctum itaque sit apud omnes beati Francisci alumnos Thomae nomen: vereantur non sequi ducem quem bene scripsisse de se Jesu Christus testabatur" (letter of 27 Nov. 1898, to the Minister General of the Order. Apud J. J. Berthier, op. cit., p. 264).

The work of Bl. Pius X was directed at stimulating the systematic study of Thomist doctrines, above all in order to confront modernism (v.), which was convulsing Catholic truth from its roots: the pressing invitation appears in the encyclical Sacrorum Antistitum of 1 Sept. 1910 and is developed with peremptory insistence in the motu proprio Doctoris Angelici of 29 June 1914 (AAS, 6 [1914], pp. 336-341). For a greater clarification of his will, the Bl. Pontiff had published on 27 July by the Sacred Congregation of Studies a list of 24 points or "theses" of the the philosophy of Thomism, ordering that these "pronuntiata maiora sancte teneantur" by all schools of philosophy (ibid., 383 ff.): these were the last doctrinal documents of his pontificate. With Benedict XV, fidelity to Thomist doctrines passed into the legislation of the Church: in fact the CIC establishes that all Catholic schools follow the principles of St. T. in theology and philosophy (cann. 580 § 1 and 1366 § 2), and the prescription was reaffirmed in the apostolic constitution Deus scientiarum Dominus of 1931 and by Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis. The General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. V. Ledochowski, on 9 March 1915 obtained from Benedict XV that the thesis of the real distinction between essence and the act of being be left free within the Society (cf. the documents in: F. Ehrle, La Scolast. e i suoi compiti odierni, Ital. trans., Turin 1935, p. 108 ff.). Nevertheless it is by now beyond doubt that this thesis belongs to the essence of Thomism and is the mature fruit of those "pronuntiata maiora" from which Blessed Pius X warned it was dangerous to depart (motu proprio Doctoris Angelici of 29 June 1914; cf. the commentary of T. Pègues, Intorno a s. T., una controv. recente, Toulouse-Paris 1918; where in the appendix, p. 33 ff., Fr. Pègues set against the 24 Thomist theses an equal number of theses drawn predominantly from the Disp. Metaph. of Suárez). The publication of the 24 theses marks the high theoretical level reached by contemporary Thomism, to which one must turn for every historical-critical deepening of the doctrines.

3. Thomism and modern thought

There is still lacking an adequate comparison between authentic Thomist thought and modern thought, both with respect to the general orientation of problems and with regard to the various systems of thought that arose in opposition to the scholastic tradition. Usually the work of St. T. is involved in the generic condemnations of scholasticism by modern culture, stimulated first by the hostility spread by the Reformation and then by the new "principle of immanence." The major conflicts against the revival of Thomism came in France from traditionalism (v.) and ontologism (v.) and in Germany from the idealist-leaning group of Hermes, Günther, Frohschammer. For example, the traditionalist Bautain wrote to the dean of the theological Faculty of Tübingen asking support in the struggle against rationalism and the old scholasticism in order to defend the sacred cause of faith against reason; to which, however, the great Moehler (v.) responded energetically, that "St. T." and in general the scholastic theologians were right when they affirmed that the truths of reason that God exists and the rational consideration that Christ merits faith are "preambula fidei" and not "articula (sic!) fidei," but that this does not conflict with the position of St. Anselm, of St. Gregory Nazianzen when these say that faith is the foundation of knowing (letter of 26 Feb. 1835, in J. A. Moehler, Ges. Aktenstücke u. Briefe, I, Munich 1928, p. 308).

The revival of scholasticism (v.), willed by Leo XIII, had the immediate effect of discouraging any direct synthesis between Christian faith and modern thought: in particular, there is insistence on presenting the thought of St. T. as its explicit antithesis, thanks to the clear distinction of the relations between reason and faith and to the assumption of Aristotelian ontological realism both for the structure of being and of knowing. L. Feuerbach chose Thomist speculation as the type of metaphysical theologism which, masked as Hegel, had to be eliminated in order to recover natural man in his authenticity (cf. the extensive Thomist citations in: Das Wesen des Christentums. Erläuterungen..., in Sämtl. Werke, ed. Bolin-Jodl, VI, Stuttgart 1903 p. 336 ff. Feuerbach gives many texts translated directly from the major works of St. T.). The opposition between Thomism and modern thought was declared recently by R. Eucken and, in the Catholic field, by I. Hessen, who accuses Thomist gnoseology of formalist abstractionism (Abbildrealismus; cf. I. Hessen, Die Weltanschauung des hl. Th. v. A., Stuttgart 1926, p. 20 ff.). In Italy it fell to G. Saitta to defend the thesis that the substratum and the meaning of the whole philosophical and theological speculation of St. T. lies in the defense of ontological monotheism insofar as this serves as a platform for the political doctrines concerning the temporal power of the Church and the pontifical primacy (cf. Il cavatt. d. filos. tom., Florence 1934).

However, on several occasions an attempt has been made to bring St. Thomas and Kant closer together in a "positive sense": the problem that has polarized the greatest effort of this first century of the return to Scholasticism is the one raised by Kant concerning the foundation of the objectivity of knowledge, which seemed radically compromised by Kantian apriorism. The objective value of human knowing in Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy is founded by means of intentionality, that is, the essential reference that the act of knowing — and with the act the "species" or subjective means of knowing — has to the reality it represents. According to a recent interpretation, Fr. Sertillanges has emphasized the affinities between the metaphysical and moral conceptions of Kant and St. Thomas: the impossibility of a "regressus in infinitum" in causes (the Second Way) finds a counterpart in the Kantian principle of the Second Antinomy, that "given the conditioned, the entire series of conditions is also given, and therefore the Unconditioned itself." Likewise concerning the eternity of the world, the conception of "noumenal freedom" and the "kingdom of ends," Kant would express in other terms the same Thomist conception (cf. S. Th. d'A., IV, Paris ed. 1925, vol. I, pp. 149, 281; vol. II, pp. 284, 300 ff., 311, 314). St. Thomas and Kant would constitute two analogous and complementary moments of Western consciousness: just as St. Thomas revolutionized Catholic theology with the clear distinction between reason and faith, so with Kant modern philosophy distinguished the knowledge of reality as it is the object of science and of metaphysics. The Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon, between science and pure philosophy (metaphysics), according to others connects back to the ancient distinction of Greek thought between nature (φύσις) and convention (νόμος); it is preserved on a higher plane by St. Thomas in the spiritual climate of the 13th century as an essential element of the "philosophia perennis," with the clear distinction between reason and faith. The significance of Kantian speculation lies in having given the true concept of modern science, in which man — with his "hypotheses," projects, anticipations... — is no longer passive but active: this fundamental nucleus (basic) of Kantianism is valid in itself, apart from the complex philosophical construction that Kant added to it, and can accord well with Thomist realism (thus G. Ardley, Aquinas and Kant. The Foundations of Modern Sciences, London 1950, pp. 3 ff., 71 ff.). In Italy, A. Carlini approached the theoretical problem more decisively; he sees in Kant the one who continued and completed the direction opened by St. Thomas, whose position lies beyond every rationalism and pure fideism: indeed, for the Angelic Doctor, faith and reason are clearly distinguished but not separated; the "intellectus," despite appearances, is no longer the Aristotelian Nous and opens itself to new problems unknown to Aristotle, and in the end it wants to be the whole soul in what is most spiritual in it; so that the Thomist position, like the Kantian one, falls strictly speaking neither within intellectualism nor within voluntarism (cf. S. T. d'A., Ragione e fede, Bari 1949, pp. 49, 149, 162 ff., 219 ff.). Carlini is further of the opinion that St. Thomas does not give a peremptory character, that is, demonstrative in the rigorous sense, to the famous Five Ways: once the gnoseological problem is placed at the center of Kantianism and is not resolved into pure subjectivism, as idealism later did, the two positions correspond to each other (ibid., pp. 124 ff., 171 ff.). In particular Carlini, like Sertillanges, has emphasized the enormous importance that the argument from creation has in St. Thomas, inasmuch as he purified it from any intrusion of a "naturalistically understood causality," and St. Thomas would have been the first to hint at the famous antinomies on which modern criticism would later lever (ibid., p. 101 ff.). Finally, in this connection one must also recall the Thomist theory of freedom, which must be understood as valid not only in the field of action but also in the sphere of thought as a fundamental attribute of spirituality (ibid., p. 123). In a more limited perspective, G. Zamboni, interpreting the Kantian Ich denke psychologically as the act of consciousness, proceeded to elaborate, with explicit Thomist references, a "gnoseology of the act," according to which it is only in the self-consciousness of the I, in inner experience, that man directly perceives the act of being, which he then in a second moment extends also to the "qualified surfaces" of external experience (cf. especially La gnoseol. di s. T. d'A., Verona 1934). It is not difficult to discern in the two preceding interpretations the influence, moreover explicitly declared, of Rosmini. The Belgian Jesuit G. Maréchal, on the other hand, followed more closely the Kantian transcendental method; to him we owe a theory of the "intellectual dynamism of objective knowledge" that should satisfy the exigency of Kant's "transcendental I" (cf. Le point de départ de la métaph., cahier V: Le thom. devant la philos. critique, Louvain-Paris 1926. For a programmatic exposition, see Le dynam. intellect. dans la connaissance. object., in Rev. néos. de philos., 28 [1927], p. 137 ff.). The human intellect, which is neither creative like the divine intellect nor intuitive like the angel's, but discursive, must seek the real and objectify it — affirm it as real — through the act of judgment; now since the relation between our knowing and the object cannot be that of cause and effect (reserved to God), it will necessarily be that of an "active tendency" of the faculty toward the object as toward its end. The affirmation of the Absolute Real is for the finite spirit of man the necessary condition a priori of the objectivity of knowledge itself. The two moments then are: a) the active tendency, natural and necessary, of the intelligence toward the real contains the implicit affirmation of God (who therefore takes the place of the empty Kantian "I think"); b) this active tendency of the intelligence toward the vision of God is the only means of explaining the objectivity, that is, the reference to the real, of the content of our thought. Some disciple of Maréchal has explained this transcendental dynamism of human consciousness by attributing to the movement or influence of the "will" upon the intelligence the intentional function of knowing (Hayen). Nevertheless it must be observed that for St. Thomas knowing does not resolve itself into a relation, but is a "mode of being" and a positive perfection of the subject that has its real term in the immanent "species," and it is through and within the "species" as similitudo that the intentional reference, that is, objectification, is accomplished: in Thomism the fundamental process that permits the reference from thought to the real is "reflexio," which is accomplished through the "conversio ad phantasmata," and then the corresponding Kantian doctrine is rather the theory of "transcendental schematism" (developed in this sense, with a tacit appeal to Aristotle, by M. Heidegger, in Kant u. das Problem der Metaph., 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main 1950). Maréchal's position reflects the principal preoccupation of Neo-Scholasticism, that of wanting to "justify" the existence of the external world (the "bridge" problem) and of arriving at a foundation for the existence of the thing in itself (substance, cause...), which was the stumbling block of the Kantian dualism of phenomenon and noumenon, of which post-Kantian philosophy, and especially Hegel, had rid itself by affirming the priority of absolute being (of consciousness) over the act of knowing and thus demonstrating the contradictory nature of the notion of knowing as a "means or instrument" with respect to being, and therefore the insubstantiality of the so-called "critical problem" as an introduction to being (cf. Hegel, Phän. d. Geistes, Einleitung: Von der Erfahrung des Bewusstseins, ed. Jo. Hoffmeister, Leipzig 1937, p. 63 ff.).

The possibility of a critical rapprochement of Thomism to the metaphysics of transcendental idealism seems rather to be suggested "at a distance" by the common principle of the primacy of theory over practice, by the common orientation toward the metaphysics of the Aristotelian act, interpreted according to the ternary dialectic of Proclus, and by the common affirmation of the immanence or "presence" of the Infinite in the finite, so that the finite is wholly "contained" by the Absolute as by the true Being "without predicates," in harmony with the biblical notion of God of Exodus (3:14: "Sum, qui sum") and of St. Paul's discourse at the Areopagus (Acts 17:28), which can recall the ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι of Parmenides (B 6; Diels I, 232, 21). In this sense G. Siewert interpreted Thomism through the exigency of ontological "participation," which assures "exemplary identity" between finite being and the Infinite, which are found in the analogical unity of the single concept of being, by which the absurd Hegelian negation of the positivity of the finite is avoided. Except that participation, as it is considered here, unfolds on this side of Thomist analogy (v.) and therefore leaves one very perplexed. In these or similar attempts of Maréchal and Siewert, the aim is to valorize Augustinian elements certainly present in Thomism, but which do not constitute its most original side, which is given precisely by an integrally Aristotelian concept of the positivity of the finite both in the predicamental order of being (substance and accidents, matter and form) and in the transcendental order (essence and esse, uncreated but creating and conserving causality of God) in the metaphysical direction of the Proclean De Causis (an attempt in this sense is the essay of J. Möller, Der Geist und das Absolute. Zur Grundlegung einer Religionsphilos. in Begegnung mit Hegels Dialektik, Paderborn 1951). If, in fact, one wishes to grasp the meaning of Thomist "participation" and to clarify in its positive and negative aspect the comparison with Hegel's "philosophy of identity," it is necessary to deepen the metaphysical meaning of the Thomist real distinction between essence and participated esse, from which follows the understanding of the "total" dependence of the creature on God; and it is not without importance that, for his conception of being, Hegel appeals to the Dominican Eckhart (cf. Philos. der Relig., ed. G. Lasson, I, Leipzig 1925, p. 257; see now H. Hof, Scintilla Animæ..., Lund-Bonn 1952). It is in these profound motives of the relationship between finite and infinite, of causality and of analogy within the notion of participation, that the relations between St. Thomas and Hegel can be envisaged (cf. E. Przywara, Th. oder Hegel?, in Logos, 15 [1926], pp. 1-20; id., in Humanitas, Nuremberg 1952, p. 735 ff.): a simple resumption of the Aristotelian dualism of act and potency (cf. B. Jansen, Dialektische oder Akt-Potenz-Metaphysik: Hegelrenaissance oder Hegelkritik, in Aufstiege z. Metaphysik, Freiburg im Br. 1933, p. 365 ff.) would renew the innumerable and outdated scholastic discussions on the concept of potency. In particular, the problem of analogy seems to focus the interest of the comparison between St. Thomas, Kant and Hegel, insofar as analogy expresses the dialectic of the relationship that the finite intellect has to the Absolute (cf. E. K. Specht, in Kantstudien, 66 [Cologne 1952], p. 10 ff.).

The theoretical transcendence of Thomism also results from the fact that one can envisage a rapprochement at a distance with the very recent philosophy of existentialism (v.) — an adversary of idealism — in the following principal points: 1. Initial position of integral realism through the concept of "situation" (Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein). 2. The conception of the human intellect as "pure potency," so as to be in "essential openness" toward the real, which it affirms as the intelligible structure of experience (the "conversio ad phantasmata": Sum. Theol., I, 84, 7). 3. The notion of the concrete individual, which affirms itself in existence as reality through freedom and therefore still, in its ultimate root, through the real distinction of essence and esse (cf. C. Fabro, L'Assoluto nel tom. e nell'esistenzialismo, in Salesianum, 13 [1951], p. 185 ff.). The rapprochement of Thomism to Husserlian Phenomenology (v.) has shown the doctrinal affinity in the assimilation of essences through abstraction, to which phenomenological reduction corresponds (cf. E. Stein, Husserls Phänomenologie u. die Philos. des hl. Th. v. A., in Festschr. Husserl z. 70. Geburtstag, Halle 4, S. 1929, p. 315 ff.): in systematic form, within the Thomist metaphysics of act expressed with the doctrine of the analogy of being, E. Stein was able to show the point of "encounter" (Anknüpfung) of the two philosophies as the pure theoreticity of the problem of being (cf. the posthumous Endliches und ewiges Sein, Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, Louvain-Freiburg im Br. 1950, p. VIII ff.).

It is clear that in all these attempts one speaks of "rapprochements at a distance," because the systematic opposition between the two types of thought brought into comparison is out of the question: the systematic principle of the Kantian a priori (Ich denke überhaupt) stands at the antipodes of the Thomist metaphysics of knowledge, which supposes the positivity of immediate experience and its initial structuring in the sensible sphere itself as the foundation of the knowledge of the intelligible. Likewise, the Hegelian dialectic, which takes as its starting point the Spinozian principle of the "non-being" of the finite and annuls the distinction of the two orders, predicamental and transcendental, leads to the negation of the concept of creature and of personal freedom. Thus the comparison of Thomism with existentialism (v.) is still uncertain because of the problematic ambiguity of the new philosophy: but some attempts at rapprochement in a positive sense are already noticeable, first of all thanks to the decidedly realist orientation of existentialism in the priority of being over thought and in the structure of personal freedom in which the two moments of transcendence are manifested. In K. Jaspers the appeal to Thomism has been indicated in the theory of "philosophical faith," insofar as "reason" (Vernunft) does not exhaust the meaning of the being of existence, which remains the object of "freedom" and is therefore realized through faith (cf. B. Welte, Der philos. Glaube bei K. Jaspers u. die Mögliche seiner Deutung durch die thom. Philos., in Symposion, Jahrb. f. Philos., 2 [1949], esp. p. 72 ff. Welte refers in particular to De Verit., q. 24, a. 7). In M. Heidegger, on the other hand, the comparison concerns the structure of the existent, which is man as radical "openness" toward "being itself" (selbst Sein), which some interpreters indicate as God himself (M. Müller, Existenzphilos. im geist. Leben der Gegenn., Heidelberg 1949, esp. p. 71 ff. Cf. id., Sein und Geist. Systemat. Untersuch. über Grundproblem und Aufbau mittelalt. Ontologie, Tübingen 1940, p. 58 ff.).

More fruitful, for a critical evaluation of such comparisons, may prove to be a comparative study of the theology of faith in Thomism and in the founder of existentialism, S. Kierkegaard (v.), insofar as he remains faithful to the principles of Aristotelian realism and of Christian revelation (cf. C. Fabro, Raison et foi dans l'oeuvre de Kierkegaard, in Rev. des sc. philos. et théol., 23 [1949], p. 169 ff.; id., Introd. alla trad. it. del Diario, I, Brescia 1948, p. LXXXVIII ff.). As long, however, as he remains bound to the principle of Protestant immanence and interiority, the new existential concept of "freedom" oversteps into a "possibility of possibility," suspended between nothingness and being, which withdraws the human act from every metaphysical structure and from dependence on the Absolute.

The most solid point for the positive overcoming of idealist subjectivism should be a deeper study of the Thomist metaphysics of spiritual being: according to St. Thomas, spiritual substances, because they are absolutely simple and incorruptible, must be recognized as "necessary" (necesse esse) in a positive ontological sense, even while remaining creatures and therefore caused (ab alio), because contingency in the strict sense is bound to the corruptibility that comes from matter (cf. the decisive texts C. G., II, 30; De Pot., q. V., a. 3; In II Physic., lect. 12-15; Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 2, a. 3; III via; De Spir. cr. a. 5 ad 4. See C. Fabro, Intorno alla noz. tom. di contingenza, in Riv. filos. neosc. [1938], p. 132 ff.). Neo-Scholasticism, on the other hand (and also Neo-Thomism), has accepted the opposite thesis, which identifies contingency outright with the character of creature, as it was defended by Augustinianism and by nominalism according to a crude expression of Henry of Harclay (d. 1327): "Omnis creatura potest non esse et nulla, quantum est ex parte sui, est necesse esse nec determinat sibi esse. Dico ulterius quod omnis creatura aequaliter et aeque potest non esse. Ita Angelus sicut rana" (Apud F. Pelster, H. von Harclay, Kanzler von Oxford und seine Quest., in Misc. F. Ehrle, I, Rome 1924, p. 342). The point in question also constituted one of the master pieces of the already mentioned Parisian disputation of G. of Montesano (cf. Chart. Univ. Paris., t. II, n. 1557, prop. VI-VIII, p. 494; the material of the heated controversy is found in Cod. Burgh. 102 of the Bibl. Vat. cf. A. Maier, Cod. Burghes. Bibl. Vat. [Studi e testi, 170], Città del Vaticano 1952, p. 133 ff.), but then it gradually disappeared from the Thomist school in favor of the Wolffian notion of contingency. Upon that notion the Suarezian formalist extrinsicism had already been founded and is still founded, which with its metaphysical emptiness bears part of the responsibility for having stimulated (albeit always "at a distance") modern subjectivism, just as nominalism had earlier provoked the doctrine of extrinsic justification on the part of the Reformation.

Once one recognizes, as one must, the theological derivation and deviation of the metaphysics of immanence with its various offshoots, the task of the Thomism of the future seems bound to be that of penetrating the exigency of that proclaimed immanence by drawing it within the essential problem of thought, which is the grounding of the finite in the Infinite: thus clarifying its own principles of the "metaphysics of act," not as an isolated cultural figure, but as the perennial substance of human philosophizing in which the shortcomings and deviations of systems vanish. And it is to Thomism, therefore, more than to any other school of Christian thought, that there falls this mission of unifying the human consciousness, from the fragments of its historical becoming, in its universal theoretical structure. - See pl. XXIX.

Encyclopedias: Enc. Ital., XXXIII, pp. 1013-14 (Life and works: F. Pelster): 1014-20 (Thought: M. Grabmann); M. Grabmann, s. v. in LThK, X, coll. 112-21; A. Walz, M.-R. Gagnebet, R. Garrigou-Lagrange, L.-B. Gillon, C. Spien, G. Grenen, Th. d'A., in DThC, XV, coll. 618-761; R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomisme, ibid., coll. 823-1023.

Dictionaries: L. Schuetz, Thomas-Lex., 2nd ed. reprint, New York 1947; J. Deferrari, J. Barry, J. Mc Guiness, A Lex. of S. Th. Aq., based on The Sum. Theol. and select. passages of his other works, 5 fasc. (A-Z), Washington 1948-53.

Life and Works: the fundamental material in Fontes vitae s. Th. Aq. edited by D. Prümmer and M.-H. Laurent, St-Maximin 1924-37 (I-III, the lives of P. Calo, G. di Tocco and B. di Guido; IV-V, Proc. canoniz., VI. Docum.). Of a strictly biographical nature are the researches of A. Toso, T. d'A., Studio crit.-stor. sulla stirpe, la patria e la vita del S. Dott., Rome 1941; for the general public the biographies of R. Diaccini, Rome 1934; I. Tourisano, Turin 1941; J. Maritain, Le Docteur Angelique, Paris 1934; K. Chesterton, S. Th. Aq., London 1943. A solid synthesis of modern critical inquiry on the biography of St. Thomas is A. Walz, S. T. d'A., Rome 1927. For St. Thomas in art, see P. W. von Keppler, Aus Kunst und Leben, 2nd ed., Freiburg im Br. 1906, p. 1 ff.

Editions of the works: A) Complete: among the old ones the fundamental one is the Edit. Piana, ordered by St. Pius V, Rome 1570-71, the basis of the following editions. In the middle of the 19th century the Ed. Parmensis in 25 vols. of the Fiscadori, Parma 1852-73, was of great importance, which for the quality of the text surpasses the later Ed. Vivès in 34 vols. (1st ed. Paris 1871-50; 2nd ed. ibid. 1889-90). Leo XIII in 1880 ordered the new critical edition, called precisely Leonina (Rome 1882, ff.), of which 14 vols. of text have so far been published: I-III, Comm. on the Pertherm, Post. Anal. and Physic. of Arist.; IV-XII, Sum. Theol. with the comm. of Cajetan; XIII-XV, Sum. c. Gent. with the comm. of the Ferrarriensis (also a manual ed. of the text of St. Thomas alone, Rome 1934); XVI, indexes to the two Summae (also a reduced manual ed., Rome 1948). B) Partial. The Sum. Theol. is the most reprinted: among the most recent editions there is the reissue of the Piana edited by the Canadian Dominicans with the particular merit of a cross-checking of explicit and implicit citations against the critical editions of the texts, 3 vols., Ottawa 1941 ff.; for the Opuscula: see the reprint edited by Fr. Mandonnet, 3 vols., Paris 1927; a new critical ed. begun by Fr. Perrier; vol. I, Opuscola philosophica, Paris 1940, has appeared. For the Comm. on the Sentences, see the reprint of the traditional text edited by Frs. Mandonnet and Moos, 4 vols., Paris 1927-47 (the text of vols. III and IV is based on 12 codices and on the principal editions and reaches Distinction XII of book IV). The comm. on Aristotle and on Sacred Scripture are published in the current text by Marietti in Turin (recently also the Comm. on the De div. nom. with the Greek text and ample notes by C. Pera, ibid. 1930, and the latest Thomist comm. on the De coelo et mundo, De gen. et corr. and on the Meteora, edited by R. Spiazzi, ibid. 1952. Of the opuscula the best known is the De ente et essentia: cf. the critical eds. of P. Roland-Gosselin, Le Saulchoir 1927 (with the text of the Paris codices) and of L. Baur, Münster in W. 1927 and 1933 (according to 7 Italian codices and 1 of Basel). Other eds.: L. W. Keeler, De unit. intell., Rome 1936 and Q. disp. de spirit. creat., ibid. 1937; G. F. Rossi, Expos. Salut. Angel., Piacenza 1931; P. Castagnoli, De forma absolut. ibid. 1933; L. Pauson, The Opusc. De prin. nat. v., Freiburg-Louvain 1950; P. Wyser, In Boeth. De Trin. Quaest. quinta et sexta, sec. the Cod. Vat. lat. 5850 (autograph), Freiburg-Louvain 1948; J. M. Wyss, De natura materiae, Louvain 1953.

Modern translations: cf. the list in J. V. Bourke, Thom. Bibl., nos. 1350-61; Som. Teol.: French translation by the Dominicans, Paris-Tournai 1925 (provided with useful introductions and notes in an appendix); German translation by the Dominicans and the Benedictines of Germany and Austria, Salzburg 1933 ff., so far 24 vols. (with notes and critical-doctrinal commentaries). English translation in the form of an excellent anthology by A. C. Pegis, Basic Writings of St. Th. A., 2 vols., New York 1945; Italian translation based on the Leonine text - Florence 1940 ff., so far 5 vols.; Spanish translation Madrid 1947 ff.; Spanish translation Castellani-Quiles, B. Aires 1940 ff. (20 vols.); new Greek translation by J. N. Karmires: Θωμά τοῦ Ἀχωφῆτου Σῶμα ἀναλογικὴ ἐξελικτικὴ ὕνα Ἰ. Ν. Καρβίρη, I. Athens 1935. P. S. Salaville has ready the edition of the Greek version of Demetrius Cydones; Arabic translation by P. Awad, 4 vols., Beyrouth 1887-98. Of the De Unit. intell. Italian translation by C. Ottaviano, Lanciano 1930 and by B. Nardi, Florence 1938; of the De vert. an. Armenian translation, ed. by P. M. A. Van den Oudeurijn, Fribourg (Switzerland) 1942; of the S. c. Gent. Italian translation by P. Puccetti, Florence 1925, German translation, Leipzig 1935; of the Quaest. disp. de Ver. by E. Stein, 2 vols., Breslau 1931-32; 2nd ed., Fribourg in Br. and Louvain 1952. Political writings, edited by A. Passerin d'Entrèves, Bologna 1946.

Recent general studies: J. Olgiati, L'anima di s. T., Milan 1923; J. Rimaud, Thomisme et méthode, Paris 1925; A. Sertillanges, St Th. d'A., 2 vols., ibid. 1925; E. De Bruyne, St Th. d'A., Le milieu, l'homme, la vision du monde, ibid. 1928; J. Maritain, Le Docteur Angelique, ibid. 1930; M. De Wulf, Initiation à la philos. thom., Louvain 1932; G. Manser, Das Wesen des Thom., 3rd ed., edited by P. Wyser 1940 (interpretation of Thomism exclusively in terms of the Aristotelian doctrine of act and potency); A. Horvath, La sintesi scientif. de st T. d'A., Italian translation, Turin 1932; E. Peillaube, Initiat. à la philos. de st Th., Paris 1933; J. Webert, St Th. d'A., Le génie de l'ordre, ibid. 1933; M. Grabmann, Th. v. A., Eine Einführ. in seine Persönlichkeit n. Gadamherzelt, 6th ed., Munich 1935; P. Rousselot, L'Intelllectualism de st Th., 3rd ed., Paris 1936; H. Meyer, Th. v. A., sein System u. seine geistengeschichtl. Stellung, Bonn 1938; A. Silva-Tarouca, Thomas heute, Vienna 1947; A. C. Pegis, Introd. to St. Th. A., New York 1948.

General expositions of St. Thomas's thought: they are found in the treatments of the history of medieval philosophy by Ueberweg-Geyer (Berlin 1928, § 36, p. 419 ff., and pp. 743-57, reasoned bibliography edited by J. Koch), by M. De Wulf (6th ed., II, p. 150 ff.; Italian translation, II, Florence, p. 138 ff.); F. van Steenberghen, in Fliehe-Martin, Hist. de l'Eglise, XIII, Paris 1951, p. 246 ff.

Important studies on St. Thomas and on Thomism: they are found in the following publications: Mélanges Thom., Le Saulchoir 1923; S. T. d'A., Milan 1923; S. T. d'A., Misc. stor. artist., Rome 1924; Acta hebdom. thom., ibid. 1924; Xenia Thom., 3 vols. ibid. 1925; A. Whitacker (and collaborators), S. Th. Aq., Oxford 1925; Misc. tom., Barcelona 1925; Mél. Mandonnet, 2 vols., Paris 1930; M. Grabmann, Mittelalterl. Geistesleben, 2 vols., Munich 1926-37; Hommage à M. De Wulf, Louvain 1938; Mél. Péter, ibid. 1947; Studio Mediev. in hon. R. J. Martin, Bruges 1948 (cf. the complete list in: V. Y. Bourke, op. cit., p. 66 ff.).

Ecclesiastical documents on the doctrinal authority of St. Thomas already collected by Father Bertier (op. cit.) have been supplemented, from Gregory XIV onward, by J. Ude, Die Autorität des hl. Th. v. A. als Kirchenlehrer u. seine Summa Theol., Salzburg 1932, and by P. G. Ramirez, De auctoritate doctrin. s. Th. Aq., Salamanca 1952.

Particular studies: Theory of knowledge: D. Lanna, La teoria della conoscenza in s. T., 2nd ed., Naples 1950; G. Schalemann, Das Kanadprinzip in der Philos. des hl. Th. v. A., Münster in V. 1915 (Beitr. Bäumbers, XIII, 3); J. De Tonquedec, La critique de la connaiss., Paris 1925; W. Schneider, Die Quaest. disp. De ver. des hl. Th. v. A. in ihrer philosophiegeschichtl. Beziehung zu August., Münster in V. 1930 (Beitr. Bäumbers, XXVII, 3); R. Jolivet, Le Thom. et la critique de la connaiss., Paris 1931; J. Maritain, Les degrés de savoir, 3rd ed., ibid. 1932; M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, Essai d'une étude crit. de la connaiss., ibid. 1932; A. Hufnagel, Intuition und Erkenntnis nach Th. v. A., Cologne 1932; G. Siewerth, Die Abtraph. der Erkenntnis nach Th. v. A., I. Die sinnliche Erkenntnis, Munich-Berlin 1933; id., Studien z. Entwickl. der Thomst. Erkenntnisbegriffes an dem Correct. - Quare -, Münster in V. 1935 (Beitr. Bäumbers, XXXI, 4); Y. Simon, Introd. à l'ontologie du connaître, Paris 1934; K. Rohner, Geist in Welt. Zur Metaph. der emll. Erhent. bes Th. v. A., Innsbruck-Leipzig 1939; Fr. Manthey, Die Sprachphilos. des hl. Th. v. A. und ihre Anwendung auf Probl. der Theol., Paderborn-Zurich 1937; L. Habermehl, Die Abstraktionslehre des hl. Th. v. A., Kallmünz 1938; Y. Santeler, Der Platonismus in der Erkenntnislehre des hl. Th. v. A., Innsbruck-Leipzig 1939; J. Ruttmann, Illuminative oder Abstraktive Seinsituation?, Lucerne 1945; P. Hoenen, La théorie du jugement d'après st Th. d'A., Rome 1946 (sets out the development of the problem of knowledge in neo-Thomism); G. Van Riet, L'épistemol. thom., Louvain 1946; J. Alvarez Laso, La Filosofia de las Matemáticas en s. T., Mexico City 1952.

Metaphysics: N. Del Prado, De veris. fundament. philos. christ., Fribourg (Sw.) 1911; J. Durantel, Le retour à Dieu par l'intelligence et la volonté dans la philos. de st Th., Paris 1918; G. Mattiussi, Le XXIV. tesi della filos. di s. T. d'A., Rome 1925; J. Webert, Essai de métaph. thom., Paris 1926; A. Forest, La structure métaph. du concret selon st Th. d'A., ibid. 1932; R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son Existence et sa nature, 6th ed., ibid. 1933; A. Marc, L'idée de l'être chez st Th. et dans la Scolast. postér., ibid. 1933; C. Giacon, Le grandi tesi del tom., Como 1945. - They interpret Thomism in terms of the notion of participation: E. Scheller, Das Priestertum Christi im Anschluss an den hl. Th. v. A., Paderborn 1934 (cf. p. 54 ff.; Die platon. Anteilnahme); G. Soehrgen, Th. v. A. über Teilhabe durch Berührung, in Scientia Sacra, Theol. Festg. f. Kard. Schulte, Cologne and Düsseldorf 1935, pp. 114-141, now in Die Einheit in der Theologie, Munich 1951, pp. 107-39; Jo. Mundhenk, Die Begriffe der Teilhabe - und des - Lichts - in der Psychol. u. Erhent. des Th. v. A., Würzburg 1935; C. Fabro, La noz. metafis. di partecipaz. sec. s. T. d'A., 1st ed., Milan 1939.

2nd ed., Turin 1950; G. Isaye, La théorie de la mesure et l'existence d'un maximum selon st Th., Paris 1940; L.-B. Geiser, La participation dans la philos. de st Th. d'A., ibid. 1942; J. Lagnange, L'univers et l'homme dans la philos. de st Th., 2 vols., Brussels-Paris 1942; H. Van Rooijen (and collaborators), De Thomistische Participatienceren, Nijmegen 1944; J. De Finance, Etre et apte dans la philos. de st Th., Paris 1945; A. Little, The platanic heritage of Thomism, Dublin 1949; H. Lyttens, The analogy between God and the world... by Th. of. A., Uppsala 1952.

Moral and social problems: M. O. Renz, Die Synteresis nach dem hl. Th. v. A., Münster in W. 1911; M. Meier, Die Lehre der Th. v. A. - de pass. an. - in Quellenanalys. Darstellung, ibid. 1912; W. Müller, Der Staat in seinen Beziehungen zur sittl. Ordnung bei Th. v. A., ibid. 1916; J. Hassle, Das Arbeitstho der Kirche nach Th. v. A. und Leo XIII., Freiburg 1923; H. Noble, La conscience morale, Paris 1926; id., Les passions dans la vie morale, 2 vols., ibid. 1932; B. Roland-Gosselin, La doctr. polit. de st Th., ibid. 1928; L. Lebu, La raison règle de la moralité d'après st Th., ibid. 1930; J. Hagenauer, Das - justum pretium - bei Th. v. A., Ein Beitrag z. Gesch. der object. Wertheorie, Stuttgart 1931; E. Kunz, Individuum u. Gemeinschaft beim hl. Th. v. A., Munich 1931; M. Wittmann, Die Ethik des hl. Th. v. A. in ihrem systemat. Aufbau, ibid. 1933; L. Lachance, Le concept de droit selon Aristote et st Th., Paris 1933; G. Della Rocca, Le polit. di s. T., Naples 1934; A. Patrono, Il pensiero polit. di s. T., Genoa 1941; J. Ramirez, De hominis beat. 3 vols., Madrid-Salamanca 1942-47; K. Farner, Christentum und Eigentum bei Th. v. A., Bern 1947; A. Vikopal, La teoria del superfluo sec. s. T. d'A., Italian trans., Brescia 1945; L. Berg, Die Gottesbildlichkeit im Moralsubjekt nach Th. v. A., Mainz 1947; I. Fuchs, Die Sexualistik des hl. Th. A., Cologne 1949; P. Hadrossak, Die Bedeutung des System-gedanbens für die Moraltheol. seit der Thomas-Renaissance, Munich 1950; P. Olgiani, Il concetto di giuridicità in s. T. d'A., Milan 1951.

Reason and faith: Th. Heitz, Essai hist. sur les rapports entre la philos. et la foi de Berenger de Tour à st Th. d'A., Paris 1909; T. Kaeppl, Die Lehre des hl. Th. v. A. vom corpus Christi myst., Freiburg (Switz.) 1929; A. Stolz, Glaubensgrade u. Glaubenslicht nach Th. v. A., Rome 1933; H. Wilms, Die Gottesfreudschaft nach dem hl. Th. v. A., Vechta 1933; M. Grabmann, Verhältnis von Glaube u. Theol. zur Philos. u. weltl. Wissenschaft, Cologne 1934; J. Fehr, Das Offenbarungsprobl. in dialekt u. thom. Theol., Freiburg (Switz.) 1933; G. Turbessi, La vita contemplat., dott. tom. e sua relax. alle fonti, Rome 1944; H. Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez st Th. d'A., Paris 1944; J. Wolf, La justification de la foi chez st Th. d'A. et le P. Rousselot, Brussels-Paris 1946; M. Grabmann, Die theol. Einleitungslehre des hl. Th. v. A., Freiburg in Switz. 1948; A. Well, Die Function des Thomismus in der neueren Theologie, Vienna 1948.

A comprehensive critical history of Thomism is still lacking, one that would gather and coordinate the abundant harvest of materials, following with a historical-critical method the polemical and doctrinal developments. Starting from the fundamental researches of Denille, Ehle, Mandonnet, Grabmann, De Wulf, Koch, Pelzer, Lottin, Pelster, Gilson, Hocedez... and their pupils on the first formation of the Thomist school, it is necessary to reconstruct on the basis of published and unpublished writings the thought of the individual authors, so as to be able to establish the precise relationship that each one has with the work of St. Thomas, both from the point of view of method and of the content of the doctrines.

Cornelio Fabro

VI. ART

St. T. of A. is usually depicted wearing the Dominican habit, with an open book in his hand and a small sun radiating from his breast; his figure is robust and corpulent, his facial features broad and very fleshy. However, depictions of St. T. of A. dressed in the black habit of the doctors are also found; thus he was portrayed by Fra Carnovale in a panel of the Poldi-Pezzoli in Milan. It seems that St. T. of A. was portrayed, while still alive, in a fresco of the convent of S. Maria di Gradi in Viterbo. That painting has been lost: however, since it was copied several times, one may believe that the image of T. of A. as it has been defined in his iconography is linked to the authentic features of the Saint. Depictions of St. T. of A. in art became very frequent from the time of his canonization (1323), first of all in the Dominican churches, where he was represented together with various scenes from his legend, and in the grandiose allegories of his glory as the Angelic Doctor.

Among the numerous fourteenth-century depictions of the figure of St. T. of A., the one on the Dominican tritichetto of the Vatican Pinacoteca is remembered as very typical, held to be the work of the Sienese Lippo Vanni and where in the center St. Dominic is seen, in the left shutter St. Peter Martyr and in the right one St. T. of A. The numerous depictions of St. T. of A., painted by Blessed Angelico, are quite remarkable for fifteenth-century art; among them are remembered the lunette in the cloister of S. Marco in Florence and the figure of the Saint, frescoed among the Doctors of the Church in the Niccoline Chapel of the Vatican Palace.

A scene from the legend of St. T. of A. was painted by Orcagna in the predella of the altarpiece of the Strozzi Chapel in S. Maria Novella in Florence; this altarpiece, dated 1357, shows in its upper part, among other things, Our Lord handing to St. T. of A. the book of knowledge. The exquisite panel by Sassetta, owned by the Vatican Pinacoteca, with St. T. of A. in ecstasy before the Cross, from which he heard the words "You have written well of me, Thomas," seems to be the only scene still preserved of a lost predella with the legend of the Saint.

Among the grandiose allegorical scenes of the glory of St. T. of A., there are cited in the first place the large panel by Francesco Traini (v.), painted around 1345 for the church of S. Caterina in Pisa, and the fresco by Andrea da Firenze in the Spanish Chapel in Florence (ca. 1370). A Glory of St. T., conceived in the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance, was painted in the late fifteenth century by Filippino Lippi in S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.

Witold Wehr