Christian History Home > Issue 73 > The Dazzling 'Dumb Ox'
The Dazzling 'Dumb Ox'
His family thought he was throwing his life away. His classmates thought he was stupid. They didn't understand.
Ralph McInerny | posted 1/01/2002 12:00AM
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Shortly after Thomas Aquinas died, on March 7, 1274, miracles began to occur near his body. The monks of the Cistercian abbey at Fossanova, where Thomas was buried, feared that the remains might be stolen and taken off to a Dominican resting place.
Jealous of their treasure, the Cistercians took macabre precautions. They "exhumed the corpse of Brother Thomas from its resting place, cut off the head and placed it in a hiding place in a corner of the chapel." That way, if the corpse were taken, the head would still be theirs. His sister was given a hand, a finger of which was to take a grisly trajectory of its own.
The reverent mutilations continued. By the time the canonization process began in 1319, the corpse had been reduced to bones, from which the flesh had been boiled away. In 1396 the bones were moved to the Dominican monastery at Toulouse. The remains were relocated to the church of St. Sernin during the French Revolution, then returned to the monastery in 1974. They rest there today.
A person who knows of Thomas only through his philosophical writings might conclude that his corpse had more interesting experiences than he did. Thomas did spend more hours reading and writing than most of us could imagine, but his life was hardly uneventful.
Black sheep, white habit
Thomas Aquinas was born in the family castle at Roccasecca in 1225. At 5, he began school at Montecassino, the great Benedictine monastery that was almost visible from the promontory on which the family castle stood.
The commanding site of the monastery offered military advantage, and the ongoing struggle between the forces of the emperor and those of the pope made Montecassino unsafe. Thomas was therefore enrolled in the University of Naples, where he first met members of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans.
Like the Franciscans, the Dominicans were a mendicant order whose friars vowed to live faithfully in poverty, chastity and obedience. Dominic had wanted his followers to be well trained for the refutation of heresy, so the order also emphasized education.
Attracted by the Dominican ideal, Thomas joined the order in 1244. This shocked his family. They took him captive and held him for a year, seeking to dissuade him from his decision.
Thomas's family hoped he would become a Benedictine and live at Montecassino, where an uncle had been abbot. That was a respectable ecclesiastical career his brothers could understand. But Thomas would not abandon his more demanding vocation, nor would he consent to merely wear his white Dominican habit under a black cloak while living among the black-habited Benedictines.
His brothers sought to turn Thomas from the religious life by subjecting him to the ultimate test. They sent a woman into Thomas's room to seduce him. The young friar drove her from the room, then fell on his knees. From that moment on, it is said, he suffered no more temptations against purity.
Big ox
The family finally accepted Thomas's choice, and he traveled north to the University of Paris. His peers there might have voted him "most studious," but hardly anyone deemed him "most likely to succeed."
When Thomas attended lectures, he seldom spoke, leading his fellow students to conclude that he was, if not physically, then intellectually, dumb. They nicknamed him "dumb ox."
Thomas's mentor, Albert (who would be called the Great), knew better. He replied that the bellowing of this ox would be heard throughout the world.
Thomas surmounted the academic challenges at Paris. Navigating institutional politics proved more difficult.
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