Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 1: The Person and his Work
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Highly acclaimed as the most reliable, thorough, and accessible introduction to Thomas Aquinas, this first volume in Jean-Pierre Torrell's set of books on the great Dominican theologian has been revised to include a new appendix. The appendix consists of additions to the text, the catalog of Aquinas's works, and the chronology. Each item in the appendix is called out in the original part of the book with an asterisk in the margin. "This is the introduction to Thomas: presenting all the known facts of his life and work, tracing the themes of his writing out of his juvenilia, and following the influence of his thought in the years immediately after his death."--First Things "The most up-to-date biography available."--Choice
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This is a very academic text provides a comprehensive accounting of St. Thomas Aquinas's activities during his short life. The emphasis of the book is on nailing down the dates that Aquinas wrote his various works, with rather less emphasis on Aquinas's life, and even less emphasis on the social and cultural background of his life.
This is not to say that the reader of this book will not gain a valuable insight into Aquinas's life. Torrell offers some insights into Aquinas's family background and into Aquinas' early teaching years in Paris. I've just finished Shadia Drury's execrable book, Aquinas and Modernity, and the information here about the Mendicant Controversy provides a useful mind cleanser for positive misinformation of that book. From Torrell, we learn something about the general strike of students and the desire of the masters of the University of Paris to protect their turf. Interestingly, I just finished Kressman Taylor's “Day of No Return”https://www.amazon.com/Day-No-Return-Kressmann-2003-11-24/dp/B01A1MTST0/ref=cm_cr-mr-title where the main character emphasizes the non-interference policy of the city police at the University of Berlin in the 1930s.
Torrell makes an offhand comment that Aquinas's Commentary on Job and Romans can “be ranked among the most fully finished and most profound” that Aquinas has left us. (p. 201.)
Torrell also makes the interesting point that Aquinas' productivity involved his assistants or students who worked intimately with Aquinas to put his drafts into proper form:
“Every professor who has benefitted from the collaboration of a competent assistant will easily understand the procedure. We would not be going too far, therefore, we believe, in portraying Thomas's collaborators as organized into a veritable workshop for literary production - according to the well-known example of the schools of painting, to say nothing of the “ghost-writers” well known in literary circles. There is hardly any other plausible way to explain Thomas's productivity.” (p. 243.)
Torrell also provides good information on Aquinas's final days and on the 1277 condemnation of certain propositions of Aquinas by the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, and on the politics that led to the walk back of that condemnation.
I found it interesting that we have manuscripts in Aquinas' handwriting. These manuscripts allow us to form a deeper understanding of Aquinas' thought.
This book is a tough slog, probably not for the novice, and, yet, I found it interesting.
