TOMMASO di YORK. - Franciscan theologian, born at the end of the 12th century, died probably at York about 1260.
A religious before 1245, he was the favorite disciple of Adamo di Marisco, with whom he maintained a lively epistolary correspondence. In 1253 he took his degree in theology at Oxford; for some time he was magister regens of the school of the Friars Minor at that University, and was then appointed professor at Cambridge. He is the author of the first metaphysical summa of the 13th century, the Sapientiale, which is continued by the short work Comparatio sensibilism. He is credited with the famous pamphlet composed during the struggle between the Mendicants and the secular clergy: Manus quae contra Omnipotentem (published by M. Bierbaum, V. BIBLICA.), a frequently cited work which vigorously defends the ideal of voluntary poverty, the necessity for friars to earn their bread by manual labor, study, and the full power of the Pope. Two letters of T. di York are published in I. S. Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana (London 1858, p. 606 ff.). One of his sermons on the Passion is found at Cambridge, in Trinity College (B. 15. 38).