Some Anecdotes about St. Thomas Aquinas

One of my FaceBook friends commented the other day that she had trouble liking St. Thomas Aquinas; she couldn’t warm up to him. All of the books she saw focussed on his theology and philosophy, and made him seem like a thinking machine rather than a person.

In part, this is Thomas’ fault. He wasn’t concerned with himself, so he didn’t write about himself; and while others did, they often were concerned with his writings. As a result, we don’t really know that much about him compared with other saints of equal prominence.

Still, I’ve never had trouble relating to St. Thomas as a person. I first met him in G.K. Chesterton’s warm and loving biography, “Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox”, and immediately felt that he was a kindred spirit. I’m a programmer; I spend my days manipulating fine and subtle abstractions in my head. Thomas did much the same, and so I’ve regarded him since as a kind of elder brother. And when I entered the Dominican order, I took him as my patron.

There are a few stories I’ve heard that I’d like to share. In general, I no longer remember where I heard them, though some of them I’ve read multiple times in multiple sources.

Thomas was the younger son of a noble household in Italy, and as a boy was fostered at the Benedictine mother house of Monte Cassino. It was planned that he would become a monk in time, and might even rise to be abbot of Monte Cassino; this was not only possible, it was quite likely given his connections. The Benedictines were wealthy, and having a Benedictine monk in your family was socially acceptable.

Thomas eventually went away to University, and there encountered the new Dominican order, a mendicant order that accepted evangelical poverty and begged daily for their food; but also an order that honored learning. Thomas jumped at it, to the horror and consternation of his family. They kidnapped him, and held him prisoner in the family castle; and legend has it that they tried to seduce him with a prostitute to make him give up his resolve. He drove the prostitute from his room with a flaming brand, prayed for perpetual chastity, and was apparently not troubled by lust ever again.

Thomas was large, and apparently not all that bright looking; he thought much and said little, and as a student under St. Albert the Great was thought by the other students to be a little slow. They called him the “Dumb Ox”. One of them, kinder than the others, offered to help him with an assignment; and Thomas accepted it humbly and then quietly corrected an error in his helper’s work, explaining the subject to him clearly and thoroughly.

This sounds a recurring note in Thomas’ life; he was truly humble from one end to another, in a way I find hard to imitate; he was smarter than most of those around him, but wasn’t inclined to show off.

Once the other friars prayed a trick on him. They gathered by a window and gasped in surprise, and called to him, “Thomas, there’s an angel here!” Thomas rushed to the window; there was no angel, and his brothers all laughed at him. He replied, “I’d have sooner thought there was an angel at the window than that Dominican friars should lie.”

Later in his life, he was traveling from place to place and was expected to be staying at a particular monastery for the night. A dinner was planned in his honor, for he had become quite famous. One of the monks was told to go and gather food and other materials for the feast, and to take someone with him to help; and he grabbed a large, strong-looking friar who seemed to be loitering around the entrance to the monastery with nothing to do. The friar went along quietly, helping as asked; and when they returned some time later the monastery was in chaos. Thomas had arrived, and then he’d seemingly disappeared, and no knew where he’d gone. The monk had drafted the guest of honor. When Thomas was asked why he’d gone with the monk, he said simply that the fellow had asked him. Whatever others thought of him, Thomas didn’t regard himself as anyone special.

One day he had the honor of dining with King Louis of France (the St. Louis). It was a large gather, and Thomas, quiet as usual, was being ignored by all and sundry, when suddenly he pounded his fist on the table and shouted, “And THAT will settle the Manichees!” Apparently he’d gotten to thinking, and profitably. The assembled guests were much taken aback; you didn’t behave like that in the King’s presence. King Louis, on the other hand, simply sent for a writing desk and paper and pen and ink, so that Thomas should be able to record his ideas as soon as possible, lest they be lost.

(I’ve seen samples of Thomas’ writing, by the way. It’s absolutely atrocious, nearly impossible to read.)

In the end, Thomas had a vision of God that led him to say that everything he’d written was as straw in comparison. He died shortly after.

Thomas was a thinker beyond compare, but before that he was a mystic and a lover of God; and I’m certain that God greeted him in Heaven with “Well done, O Good and Faithful Servant!”