| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Combat | ATK 30 DEF 85 SPR 92 SPD 50 INT 100 |
| Rank | Dominican friar / Doctor of the Church / Scholastic |
| Domain | Systematic theology, Aristotelian philosophy, natural law, the Five Ways |
| Alignment | Holy / Scholastic |
| Weakness | His *Summa Theologica* is unfinished -- after a mystical experience in December 1273 he stopped writing, saying "all that I have written seems like straw to me compared to what has been revealed" |
| Key Act | Wrote the *Summa Theologica* and *Summa Contra Gentiles*, integrating Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. Articulated the Five Ways (proofs of God's existence). Defined the doctrine of transubstantiation in its definitive form. Composed the Eucharistic hymns *Pange Lingua* and *Tantum Ergo* still sung today |
| Source | his own works; also entered in [Saints.md](Saints.md#st-thomas-aquinas) |
“Beware the man of one book.” — attributed to Aquinas
The architect of scholastic theology. Born to Italian nobility (~1225), kidnapped by his family to prevent him joining the new Dominican order (they failed — he escaped), he studied under Albertus Magnus in Cologne and Paris and produced what is still the most ambitious systematic theology ever attempted in the Western tradition. The Summa Theologica is structured as objections, “on the contrary,” answer, and reply to objections — the very shape of medieval intellectual argument. Canonized 1323, declared a Doctor of the Church 1567. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) made Thomism the standard Catholic philosophical and theological framework — a status it largely retained until Vatican II opened up methodological pluralism.
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Combat Radar