Life of St. Thomas Aquinas
Born in 1225, St. Thomas Aquinas came from this noble family and was raised near this famous abbey.
Who were the Counts of Aquino, and what is Monte Cassino?
This unfinished work is Aquinas’s most famous synthesis of theology and philosophy.
What is the Summa Theologiae?
Aquinas taught that the sacraments work by this principle, independent of the minister’s holiness.
What is ex opere operato?
Aquinas famously argued that philosophy and theology are distinct yet harmonious because both have this ultimate source.
What is God (or Divine Truth)?
Aquinas was canonized in this year.
What is 1323?
Against his family’s wishes, Thomas entered this religious order, earning him the nickname “The Dumb Ox.”
What is the Order of Preachers (Dominicans)?
Written primarily for missionaries, this work defends Christian doctrine using reason accessible to non-Christians.
What is the Summa Contra Gentiles?
For Aquinas, this virtue perfects the intellect in practical reasoning.
What is prudence?
This Greek philosopher profoundly shaped Aquinas’s metaphysics.
Who is Aristotle?
This Pope declared Aquinas a Doctor of the Church in 1567.
Who is Pope St. Pius V?
This University city became the primary center of Aquinas’s academic life and teaching career.
What is Paris?
This commentary demonstrates Aquinas’s deep engagement with Aristotle’s philosophy.
What is his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics?
These three virtues have God Himself as their direct object.
What are the theological virtues?
Aquinas holds that the human intellect knows universals by abstracting them from this.
What are phantasms (sense images)?
This 1879 encyclical called for a renewal of Thomistic philosophy.
What is Aeterni Patris?
This fellow Dominican and renowned theologian was Thomas’s teacher and later defended his orthodoxy.
Who is St. Albert the Great?
These short theological writings were often responses to disputed questions at the university.
What are the Quaestiones Disputatae?
Aquinas defines this as “the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law.”
What is natural law?
Aquinas distinguished between essence and this metaphysical principle of being.
What is existence (esse)?
This 20th-century council explicitly recommended Aquinas as a guide for theological formation.
What is the Second Vatican Council?
Aquinas died in 1274 while traveling to this ecumenical council.
What is the Second Council of Lyons?
This liturgical masterpiece was composed for the feast of Corpus Christi.
What are the Eucharistic hymns, such as Pange Lingua and Adoro Te Devote?
This beatitude, for Aquinas, is humanity’s ultimate end.
What is the Beatific Vision?
This term describes Aquinas’s view that words applied to God are neither univocal nor equivocal.
What is analogy (analogical predication)?
After a mystical experience in 1273, Aquinas famously said that all he had written was like this.
What is “straw”?