Ch. 16 - Saint Thomas Aquinas - Page 2

his greatest work, the "Summa
Theologiae," is unfinished--like Beauvais Cathedral.

Perhaps Thomas's success was partly due to his memory which is said
to have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were
unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle
in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by
authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Outwardly
Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his
companions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily"; and in
fashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute
sense of humour. Saint Louis's household offers a picture not wholly
clerical, least of all among the King's brothers and sons; and
perhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now to
abrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting and
hounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised the
company by solemnly announcing--"I have a decisive argument against
the Manicheans!" No wit or humour could be more to the point--
between two saints that were to be--than a decisive argument against
enemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of the
conversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere in
the twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour for
courtiers.

The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. None
but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan--or
even Jesuit--understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him with
authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems in
a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these
great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a
Church Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church
Administrative, both expressing--and expressed by--the Church
Architectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas,
Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens
to stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him or
understand him better than his rivals, but because his order chose
him rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on the
Church; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that
his decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed
his "Summa" among the sacred books on their table; and because
Innocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally,
because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on the
wings of Saint Thomas's genius, human reason has reached the most
sublime height it can probably ever attain.

Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not