Thomas Aquinas's Rome

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Beginning in 1265 Thomas resided at the Dominican Basilica Santa Sabina in Rome and was tasked with founding another Dominican house of study. He did some of his best writing during this time: he completed the Summa Against the Gentiles, undertook his Summa of Theology, as well as wrote philosophical and theological tracts, and commentaries on the Bible, On the Divine Names, and Aristotle. The course would have three parts. First, students would study key writings composed during Thomas’s Roman sojourn. The central work that we would examine in this list is the Summa Against the Gentiles. It is in the Summa Against the Gentiles that Aquinas engages most directly with other Abrahamic traditions, namely Hebrew thinkers (e.g., Maimonides) and Islamic philosophers (most notably Avicenna, i.e., Ibn Sina, and Averroes, i.e., Ibn Rushd). Moreover, the Summa Against the Gentiles, also bears witness to Aquinas systematically grappling with ancient Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle), as well as the secularizing thesis that he detected in the teachings of his contemporary Parisian philosophers, namely the so-called ‘double- truth’ theory according to which religion and philosophy offer two different sources, methods, and truths (one revealed and the other secular). Second, undergraduates enrolled in Thomas Aquinas’s Rome would obtain a broader context for their studies of Thomas’s works by reading secondary literature on the intellectual and cultural history of Rome in the thirteenth century. I would supplement these readings with fields trips to important historical sites, including Dominican places of worship like Santa Sabina, where Thomas lived and wrote, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and San Clemente, as well as other central sites of Medieval Roman Christianity like the Lateran. Third, I have been in contact with my colleague at the Vatican’s Apostolic Library to incoorporate material pertaining from the Vatican Library for ND undergraduates. The Vatican’s Apostolic Library is one of the most important institutions of culture and learning ever created. It was founded as a public library in the fifteenth century and houses some of the world’s most prized treasures. For example, it houses some of Thomas Aquinas’s personal manuscripts, including his copy of the Summa Against the Gentiles.