Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born about 1225 into a noble family at Aquino in southern Italy. At nineteen, against his family's will, he joined the new mendicant order of the Dominicans; his family held him prisoner in a castle for more than a year but could not shake his resolve. He studied under Albert the Great in Paris and Cologne; tall, heavy and silent, he was nicknamed 'the dumb ox of Sicily' by his fellow students, but his teacher foretold that the bellowing of this ox would be heard throughout the world. He devoted his life to uniting the philosophy of Aristotle with Christian faith, and is the greatest representative of scholastic philosophy, honoured by the Catholic Church as the 'Angelic Doctor'.