TOMMASO DI YORK

A religious before 1245, he was the favourite disciple of Adam of Marsh, with whom he maintained a lively correspondence. In 1253 he took his doctorate in theology at Oxford, was for some time magister regens of the school of the Friars Minor at that university, and then was appointed professor at Cambridge. He is the author of the first metaphysical summa of the 13th century, the Sapientiale, which has as its continuation the short work Comparatio sensibilium. He is attributed with the famous pamphlet written during the struggle between the Mendicants and the secular clergy: Manus quae contra Omnipotentem (published by M. Bierbaum, V. BIBLICA.), a work often cited, which defends with vehemence the ideal of voluntary poverty, the necessity for friars to earn their bread by manual labour, study, and the full power of the Pope. Two letters of T. of York are published in I. S. Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana (London 1858, pp. 606 ff.). One of his sermons on the Passion is found at Cambridge, in Trinity College (B. 15. 38).