Note: To participate in the "study" pillar of Dominican life, the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (North Austin/Round Rock) chapter of Lay Dominicans in the Southern (US) Province is currently reading The Dominican Tradition: Spirituality in History one chapter at a time, with one member presenting a reflection of the chapter during the meeting. This last meeting was my turn to present, and the chapter was on Saint Thomas Aquinas. Here then is my reflection. Since it's rather long, I will post a snippit here, and then a link to the rest of it. -----
Saint Thomas Aquinas was quite possibly the greatest thinker who ever lived. There are few philosophers either inside of Christianity or outside of it who can claim to rival the breadth or depth of his intellect. He came into the world during one of the more perilous and more tumultuous times of the Church--though I supposed that it could be argued that there have been few if any ages which were not perilous, tumultuous, or in general fraught with challenges to the Faith.
Saint Thomas was born in 1225 or 1226--just a few years after Saint Dominic had died; indeed, it was during the waning of the power of the Minichees--the Cathar and Albigensians who had ravaged southern Europe--and between the fifth and sixth crusades against the Muhammedans (1217-1221 and 1228-1229, respectively). Actually, the sixth crusade was led by none other than Emperor Frederick II, who was actually Saint Thomas' second cousin.
The importance of the crusades to Christendom were arguably two-fold. First, the Muhammedans were for once placed on the defensive. Since the time of Mohammed himself, they had seemingly been on the offensive against Christendom, having severed the southern half of Christendom--which included many of the intellectual centers of the former Roman Empire. Had the Mohammedans not been checked centuries earlier by Charles Martel at Tours (in the West, AD 732) or at Constantinople (in the East, AD 717), they would surely have overrun all of Europe. Indeed, by the time of St Thomas' birth, they still controlled much of Spain, and indeed in 1211 had brought a large army into Spain which so threatened Europe that Pope Innocent III called for a "Spanish Crusade." Meanwhile, Muhammedan expansion in the east slowly but surely weakened the Byzantine "Eastern Empire," whose please for aide to the Pope and Kings of Western and Northern Europe sparked the crusades to retake Jerusalem. These crusades had been ongoing for the past 120 years before Saint Thomas' birth.
The Crusades themselves marked a sort of time of transition for Christendom. They followed on the heels of the Carolingian Empire, which brought some sense of stability to Christendom--at least against external threats. The so-called Dark Ages which followed after the fall of Rome really were dark, in as-much-as what had been the Western Roman Empire was plagued by a nearly constant string of barbarian invasions: Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Lombards, Moors, Vikings...
Read the whole thing at the Nicene Guys site.
Tags: Saints Catechesis Dominicans
