Aquinas selected political writings

BIOGRAPHICAL details have little or no bearing upon the interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas's political thought. His scholarly and uneventful life was spent in the comparative seclusion of monastery and classroom. He was born at the Castle of Roccasecca near Naples, towards the end of 1224 or at the beginning of 1225, of a noble and powerful South-Italian family. He received his early education from the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and pursued his studies in the University of Naples. Notwithstanding the bitter opposition of his family, he joined the order of St. Dominic at the age of twenty. A Dominican monk, he was sent to Paris and studied philosophy under Albert the Great, whom he followed to Cologne in 1248. He returned to Paris in 1252 to complete his study of theology, and was admitted to the licentia docendi in 1256-on the same day as his contemporary and fellow-countryman, John of Fidanza, better known to posterity under the name of St. Bonaventura. His teaching in Paris lasted only three years. It was followed by a long period in Italy, in the train of the Papal court. Back in Paris in 1269 he found himself in the turmoil of philosophic controversy. The great struggle between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism had come to a head, and it was St. Thomas who fought the decisive battle. These were the culminating years of his life and activity. He returned to Italy in 1272, a director of the Dominican Studium in Naples. He was not yet fifty when he died -on the 7th of March, 1274—in the monastery of Fossanuova, while he was on his way to the Council of Lyons.