Saint Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born between 1224 and 1225, the seventh son of Landulf of the counts of Aquino, in what was then the Kingdom of Sicily. His father was of Lombard descent, his mother Norman: Donna Theodora Galluccio, a noblewoman from a branch of the Caracciolo family. The castle of Roccasecca remains the most widely accepted place of his birth, although some medieval sources have him born in Calabria, in Belcastro. He became a Dominican friar, and his contemporaries were already calling him *Doctor Angelicus*. Today he is recognized as one of the most influential philosophers in Western history and as one of the theological pillars of the Catholic Church: he was the great exponent of medieval Scholasticism, and his thought — Thomism — is the point where Christianity and classical philosophy, that of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, truly met instead of ignoring each other. The list of those he influenced says it all: Dante Alighieri, Leibniz, Pascal and, as late as the twentieth century, Maritain and Gilson. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was a rediscovery so broad that it has a name of its own, Neo-Thomism. He was proclaimed a saint in 1323 by John XXII, counted among the doctors of the Church from 1567 and, in 1880, declared patron of Catholic universities and centers of study. He died at Fossanova, near Priverno, on March 7, 1274, at fifty. If your name is Thomas or Thomasina, today is your name day. A boy who sets out to study and ends up becoming the patron of everyone who studies. Every now and then, things come full circle.