The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

In his youth he studied at Paris and at Padua; became a Dominican monk, and, retiring to a convent in Cologne, taught in the schools of that city. He became Provincial of his Order in Germany; and was afterward made Grandmaster of the Palace at Rome, and then Bishop of Ratisbon. Resigning his bishopric in 1262, he returned to his convent in Cologne, where he died in 1280, leaving behind him great fame for his learn ing and his labor.

Milman, History of Latin Christianity, VIII 259, says of him:⁠—

“Albert the Great at once awed by his immense erudition and appalled his age. His name, the Universal Doctor, was the homage to his all-embracing knowledge. He quotes, as equally familiar, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Jewish philosophers. He was the first Schoolman who lectured on Aristotle himself, on Aristotle from Graeco-Latin or Arabo-Latin copies. The whole range of the Stagirite’s physical and metaphysical philosophy was within the scope of Albert’s teaching. In later days he was called the Ape of Aristotle; he had dared to introduce Aristotle into the Sanctuary itself. One of his Treatises is a refutatation of the Arabian Averrhoes. Nor is it Aristotle and Averrhoes alone that come within the pale of Albert’s erudition; the commentators and glossators of Aristotle, the whole circle of the Arabians, are quoted; their opinions, their reasonings, even their words, with the utmost familiarity. But with Albert Theology was still the master-science. The Bishop of Ratisbon was of unimpeached orthodoxy; the vulgar only, in his wonderful knowledge of the secrets of Nature, in his studies of Natural History, could not but see something of the magician. Albert had the ambition of reconciling Plato and Aristotle, and of reconciling this harmonized Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy with Christian Divinity. He thus, in some degree, misrepresented or misconceived both the Greeks; he hardened Plato into Aristotelism, expanded Aristotelism into Platonism; and his Christianity, though Albert was a devout man, while it constantly subordinates, in strong and fervent language, knowledge to faith and love, less a religion than a philosophy.”

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Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor of the Schools. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, VIII 265, gives the following sketch of him:⁠—

“Of all the schoolmen Thomas Aquinas has left the greatest name. He was a son of the Count of Aquino, a rich fief in the kingdom of Naples. His mother, Theodora, was of the line of the old Norman kings; his brothers, Reginald and Landolph, held high rank in the Imperial armies. His family was connected by marriage with the Hohenstaufens; they had Swabian blood in their veins, and so the great schoolman was of the race of Frederick II. Monasticism seized on Thomas in his early youth; he became an inmate of Monte Casino; at sixteen years of age he caught the more fiery and vigorous enthusiasm of the Dominicans. By them he was sent⁠—no unwilling proselyte and pupil⁠—to France. He was seized by his worldly brothers, and sent back to Naples; he was imprisoned in one of the family castles, but resisted even the fond entreaties of his mother and his sisters. He persisted in his pious disobedience, his holy hardness of heart; he was released after two years’ imprisonment⁠—it might seem strange⁠—at the command of the Emperor Frederick II. The godless Emperor, as he was called, gave Thomas to the Church. Aquinas took the irrevocable vow of a Friar Preacher. He became a scholar of Albert the Great at Cologne and at Paris. He was dark, silent, unapproachable even by his brethren, perpetually wrapt in profound meditation. He was called, in mockery, the great dumb ox of Sicily. Albert questioned the mute disciple on the most deep and knotty points of theology; he found, as he confessed, his equal, his superior. ‘That dumb ox will make the world resound with his doctrines.’ With Albert the faithful disciple returned to Cologne. Again he went back to Paris, received his academic degrees, and taught with universal wonder. Under Alexander IV he stood up in Rome in defence of his Order against the eloquent William de St. Amour; he repudiated for his Order, and condemned by his authority, the prophesies of the Abbot Joachim. He taught at Cologne with Albert the Great; also at Paris, at Rome, at Orvieto, at Viterbo, at Perugia. Where he taught, the world listened in respectful silence. He was acknowledged by two Popes, Urban IV and Clement IV, as the first theologian of the age. He refused the Archbishopric of Naples. He was expected at the Council of Lyons, as the authority before whom all Christendom might be expected to bow down. He died ere he had passed the borders of Naples, at the Abbey of Rossa Nuova, near Terracina, at the age of forty-eight. Dark tales were told of his death; only the wickedness of man could deprive the world so early of such a wonder. The University of Paris claimed, but in vain, the treasure of his mortal remains. He was canonized by John XXII.

“Thomas Aquinas is throughout, above all, the Theologian. God and the soul of man are the only objects truly worthy of his philosophic investigation. This is the function of the Angelic Doctor, the mission of the Angel of the Schools. In his works, or rather in his one great work, is the final result of all which has been decided by Pope or Council, taught by the Fathers, accepted by tradition, argued in the schools, inculcated in the confessional. The Sum of Theology is the authentic, authoritative, acknowledged code of Latin Christianity. We cannot but contrast this vast work with the original Gospel: to this bulk has grown the New Testament, or rather the doctrinal and moral part of the New Testament. But Aquinas is an intellectual theologian: he approaches more nearly than most philosophers, certainly than most divines, to pure embodied intellect. He is perfectly passionless; he has no polemic indignation, nothing of the Churchman’s