Social Roles and Feudal War

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 in the castle of Roccasecca near Naples, the seventh son of Count Landulf of Aquino.² At the age of five, he was sent to the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino with an expectation of later joining the monastic order whose respectability and wealth appealed to aristocratic families of the thirteenth century. However, a teenage Thomas was to incur the wrath of his family by opting to join, not the Benedictine monks, but the new mendicant Order of Friars Preachers (Dominicans), established 20 years before. Kept under house arrest by his family for more than 12 months, he never wavered in his commitment to the Dominicans (even his brothers’ sending of a prostitute to his cell did not break his resolve; the 19-year-old Thomas spent the night on his knees praying). After his release from Roccasecca, Thomas went to study with the Dominicans at Cologne. In his lifetime, he was given the nickname ‘the Dumb Ox’ because of his reluctance to speak and his great girth (it is said that a semi-circle had to be cut from the refectory table to allow friars sharing the same bench as him to reach their suppers) but after his death he was called the ‘Angelic Doctor’ on account of his piety and the purity of his intellect.