From the 6th of December, in 1273, to the 7th of March following, the day of his death, he neither dictated nor wrote any thing on theological matters. He from that time laid aside his studies, to fix his thoughts and heart entirely on eternity, and to aspire with the greatest ardor and most languishing desires to the enjoyment of God in perfect love. Pope Gregory X. had called a general council, the second of Lyons, with the view of extinguishing the Greek schism, and raising succors to defend the holy land against the Saracens. The ambassadors of the emperor Michael Palaeologus, together with the Greek prelates, were to assist at it. The council was to meet on the 1st of May, in 1274. His holiness, by brief directed to our saint, ordered him to repair thither, and to prepare himself to defend the Catholic cause against the Greek schismatics. Though indisposed, he set out from Naples about the end of January. His dear friend, F. Reynold of Piperno, was appointed his companion, and ordered to take care that he did not neglect himself, which the saint was apt to do. St. Thomas on the road called at the castle of Magenza, the seat of his niece, Francisca of Aquino, married to the count of Cecan. Here his distemper increased, which was attended with a loss of appetite. One day he said, to be rid of their importunities, that he thought he could eat a little of a certain fish which he had formerly eaten in France, but which was not easily to be found in Italy. Search however was made, and the fish procured; but the saint refused to touch it, in imitation of David on the like occasion. Soon after his appetite returned a little, and his strength with it; yet he was assured that his last hour was at hand. This however did not hinder him from proceeding on his journey, till, his fever increasing, he was forced to stop at Fossa-Nuova, a famous abbey of the Cistercians, in the diocese of Terracina, where formerly stood the city called Forum Appii. Entering the monastery, he went first to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, according to his custom. He poured forth his soul with extraordinary fervor, in the presence of Him who noto called him to his kingdom. Passing thence into the cloister, which he never lived to go out of, he repeated these words:[11] This is my rest for ages without end. He was lodged in the abbot's apartment, where he lay ill for near a month. The good monks treated him with uncommon veneration and esteem, and as if he had been an angel from heaven. They would not employ any of their servants about him, but chose to serve him themselves in the meanest offices, as in cutting or carrying wood for him to burn, &c. His patience, humility, constant recollection, and prayer, were equally their astonishment and edification.
The nearer he saw himself to the term of all his desires, the entering into the joy of his Lord, the more tender and inflamed were his longings after death. He had continually in his mouth these words of St. Austin,[12] "Then shall I truly live, when I shall be quite filled with you alone, and your love; {531} now I am a burden to myself, because I am not entirely full of you." In such pious transports of heavenly love, he never ceased sighing after the glorious day of eternity. The monks begged he would dictate an exposition of the book of Canticles, in imitation of St. Bernard. He answered: "Give me St. Bernard's spirit, and I will obey." But at last, to renounce perfectly his own will, he dictated the exposition of that most mysterious of all the divine books. It begins: Solomon inspiratus: It is not what his erudition might have suggested, but what love inspired him with in his last mordents, when his pure soul was hastening to break the chains of mortality, and drown itself in the ocean of God's immensity, and in the delights of eternity.[13] The holy doctor at last finding himself too weak to dictate any more, begged the religious to withdraw, recommending himself to their prayers, and desiring their leave to employ the few precious moments he had to live with God alone. He accordingly spent them in fervent acts of adoration, praise, thanksgiving, humility, and repentance. He made a general confession of his whole life to F. Reynold, with abundance of tears for his imperfections and sins of frailty; for in the judgment of those to whom he had manifested his interior, he had never offended God by any mortal sin. And he said to F. Reynold, before his death, that he thanked God with his whole heart for having prevented him with his grace, and always conducted him as it were by the hand, and preserved him from any known sin that destroys charity in the soul; adding, that this was purely God's mercy to which he was indebted for his preservation from every sin which he had not committed.[14] Having received absolution in the sentiments of the most perfect penitent, he desired the Viaticum. While the abbot and community were preparing to bring it, he begged to be taken off his bed, and laid upon ashes spread upon the floor. Thus lying on the ground, weak in body but vigorous in mind, he waited for the priest with tears of the most tender devotion. When he saw the host in the priest's hand, he said: "I firmly believe that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, is present in this august sacrament. I adore you, my God and my Redeemer: I receive You, the price of my redemption, the Viaticum of my pilgrimage; for whose honor I have studied, labored, preached, and taught. I hope I never advanced any tenet as your word, which I had not learned from you. If through ignorance I have done otherwise, I revoke every thing of that kind, and submit all my writing, to the judgment of the holy Roman church." Then recollecting himself, after other acts of faith, adoration, and love, he received the holy Viaticum; but remained on the ashes till he had finished his thanksgiving. Growing still weaker, amid his transports of love, he desired extreme unction, which he received, answering himself to all the prayers. After this he lay in peace and joy, as appeared by the serenity of his countenance; and he was heard to pronounce these aspirations: "Soon, soon will the God of all comfort complete his mercies on me, and fill all my desires. I shall shortly be satiated in him, and drink of the torrent of his delights: be inebriated from the abundance of his house, and in him who is the source of life, I shall behold the true light." Seeing all in tears about him, he comforted them, saying: Death was his gain and his joy. F. Reynold said he had hoped to see him triumph over the adversaries of the church in the council of Lyons, and placed in a rank in which he might do it some signal service. The saint answered: "I have begged of God, as the greatest favor, to die a simple religious man, and I now thank him for it. It is a {532} greater benefit than he has granted to many of his holy servants, that he is pleased to call me out of this world so early, to enter into his joy; wherefore grieve not for me, who am overwhelmed with joy." He returned thanks to the abbot and monks of Fossa-Nuova for their charity to him. One of the community asked him by what means we might live always faithful to God's grace. He answered: "Be assured that he who shall always walk faithfully in his presence, always ready to give him an account of all his actions, shall never be separated from him by consenting to sin." These were his last words to men, after which he only spoke to God in prayer, and gave up the ghost, on the 7th of March, in 1274, a little after midnight: some say in the fiftieth year of his age. But Ptolemy of Lucca, and other contemporary authors, say expressly in his forty-eighth, which also agrees with his whole history. He was very tall, and every way proportioned.
The concourse of people at the saint's funeral was extraordinary: several monks of that house, and many other persons, were cured by his relics and intercession, of which many instances, juridically proved, are mentioned by William of Tocco, in the bull of his canonization, and other authors. The Bollandists give us other long authentic relations of the like miracles continued afterwards, especially in the translation of those holy relics. The University of Paris sent to the general and provincial of the Dominicans a letter of condolence upon his death, giving the highest commendations to the saint's learning and sanctity, and begging the treasure of his holy body. Naples, Rome, and many other universities, princes, and Orders, contended no less for it. One of his hands, uncorrupt, was cut off in 1288, and given to his sister, the countess Theodora, who kept it in her domestic chapel of San Severino. After her death it was given to the Dominicans' convent of Salerno. After several contestations, pope Urban V., many years after his death, granted his body to the Dominicans to carry to Paris or Toulouse, as Italy already possessed the body of St. Dominick at Bologna. The sacred treasure was carried privately into France, and received at Thoulouse in the most honorable mariner: one hundred and fifty thousand people came to meet and conduct it into the city, having at their head Louis duke of Anjou, brother to king Charles V., the archbishops of Thoulouse and Narbonne, and many bishops, abbots, and noblemen. It rests now in the Dominican's church at Thoulouse, in a rich shrine, with a stately mausoleum over it, which reaches almost up to the roof of the church, and hath four faces. An arm of the saint was at the same time sent to the great convent of the Dominicans at Paris, and placed in St. Thomas's chapel in their church, which the king declared a royal chapel. The faculty of theology meets to assist at a high mass there on the anniversary festival of the saint. The kingdom of Naples, after many pressing solicitations, obtained, in 1372, from the general chapter held at Thoulouse, a bone of the other arm of St. Thomas. It was kept in the church of the Dominicans at Naples till 1603, when the city being delivered from a public calamity by his intercession, it was placed in the metropolitan church among the relics of the other patrons of the country. That kingdom, by the briefs of Pius V. in 1567, and of Clement VIII. in 1603, confirmed by Paul V., honors him as a principal patron. He was solemnly canonized by pope John XXII. in 1323. Pope Pius V., in 1567, commanded his festival and office to be kept equal with those of the four doctors of the western church.
* * * * *
Many in their studies, as in other occupations, take great pains to little purpose, often to draw from them the poison of vanity or error; or at least to drain their affections, and rather to nourish pride and other vices in the heart than to promote true virtue. Sincere humility and simplicity of heart {533} are essential conditions for the sanctification of studies, and for the improvement of virtue by them. Prayer must also both go before and accompany them. St. Thomas spoke much to God by prayer, that God might speak to him by enlightening his understanding in his reading and studies; and he received in this what he asked in the other exercise. This prodigy of human wit, this unparalleled genius, which penetrated the most knotty difficulties in all the sciences, whether sacred or profane, to which he applied himself, was accustomed to say that he learned more at the foot of the crucifix than in books. We ought never to set ourselves to read or study any thing without having first made our morning meditation, and without imploring in particular the divine light in every thing we read; and seasoning our studies by frequent aspirations to God in them, and by keeping our souls in an humble attention to his presence. In intricate difficulties, we ought more earnestly, prostrate at the foot of a crucifix, to ask of Christ the resolution of our doubts. We should thus receive, in the school of so good a master, that science which makes saints, by giving, with other sciences, the true knowledge of God and ourselves, and purifying and kindling in the will the fire of divine love with the sentiments of humility and other virtues. By a little use, fervent aspirations to God will arise from all subjects in the driest studies, and it will become easy, and as it were natural in them, to raise our heart earnestly to God, either despising the vain pursuits, or detesting the vanity, and deploring the blindness of the world, or aspiring after heavenly gifts, or begging light, grace, or the divine love. This is a maxim of the utmost importance in an interior or spiritual life, which otherwise, instead of being assisted, is entirely overwhelmed and extinguished by studies, whether profane or sacred, and in its place a spirit of self-sufficiency, vanity, and jealousy is contracted, and the seeds of all other spiritual vices secretly sown. Against this danger St. Bonaventure warns all students strongly to be upon their guard, saying, "If a person repeats often in his heart, Lord, when shall I love thee? he will feel a heavenly fire kindled in his soul much more than by a thousand bright thoughts or fine speculations on divine secrets, on the eternal generation of the Word, or the procession of the Holy Ghost."[15] Prayer and true virtue even naturally conduce to the perfection of learning, in every branch; for purity of the heart, and the disengagement of the affections from all irregular passions, render the understanding clear, qualify the mind to judge impartially of truth in its researches, divest it of many prejudices, the fatal sources of errors, and inspire a modest distrust to a person's own abilities and lights. Thus virtue and learning mutually assist and improve each other.
Footnotes: 1. St. Thomas was born at Belcastro: on his ancient illustrious pedigree and its branches, which still flourish in Calabria, see Barrius, de Antiquitate et Situ Calabriæ, with the notes of Thomas Aceti, l. 4, c. 2, p. 288, &c, where he refutes the Bollandists, who place his birth at Aquino in Campania, on the border of that province. 2. L. 1, Conf. c. 7. 3. Conf. l. 5, c. 3. 4. Gul. Tocco. Bern. Guid. Antonin. Malvend. 5. Footnote: 2. 2dæ, q. 188, a. 5. 6. The manner of teaching then was not, as it is generally at present, by dictating lessons, which the scholars write, but it was according to the practice that still obtains in some public schools, as in Padua, &c. The master delivered his explanation like an harangue; the scholars retained what they could, and often privately took down short notes to help their memory. Academical degrees were then also very different from what they now are; being conferred on none but those who taught. To be Master of Arts, a man must have studied six years at least, and be twenty-one years old. And to be qualified for teaching divinity, he must have studied eight years more, and be at least thirty-five years old. Nevertheless, St. Thomas, by a dispensation of the university, on account of his distinguished merit, was allowed to teach at twenty-five. The usual way was for one named bachelor to explain the Master of the Sentences for a year in the school of some doctor, upon whose testimony, after certain rigorous public examinations, and other formalities, the bachelor was admitted in the degree of licentiate; which gave him the license of a doctor, to teach or hold a school himself. Another year, which was likewise employed in expounding the Master of the Sentences, completed the degree of doctor, which the candidate received from the chancel for of the university, and then opened a school in form, with a bachelor to teach under him. In 1253, St. Thomas began to teach as licentiate; but a stop was put to his degrees for some time, by a violent disagreement between the regulars, principally Dominicans and Franciscans, and the university which had at first admitted them into their body, and even given the Dominicans a college. In these disputes St. Thomas was not spared, but he for a long time had recourse to no other vindication of himself than that of modesty and silence. On Palm Sunday he was preaching in the Dominican's church of St. James, when a beadle coming in commanded silence, and read a long written invective against him and his colleagues. When he had done, the saint, without speaking one word to justify himself or his Order, continued his sermon with the greatest tranquillity and unconcern of mind. William de Saint-Amour, the most violent among the secular doctors, published a book, On the dangers of the latter Times, a bitter invective against the mendicant Orders, which St. Louis sent to pope Alexander IV. SS. Thomas and Bonaventure were sent into Italy to defend their Orders. And to confute that book, St. Thomas published his nineteenth Opusculum, with an Apology for the mendicant Orders, showing they lay under no precept that all should apply themselves to manual labor, and that spiritual occupations were even preferable. The pope, upon this apology, condemned the book, and also another, called the Eternal Gospel, in defence of the error of the abbot Joachim. who had advanced that the church was to have an end, and be succeeded by a new church which should be formed perfectly according to the Spirit: this heresy, and the errors of certain other fanatics, were refuted by our saint at Rome. In his return to Paris, a violent storm terrified all the mariners and passengers; only Thomas appeared without the least fear, and continued in quiet prayer till the tempest had ceased. William de Saint-Amour being banished Paris, peace was restored in the university. 7. Gul. Tocco. 8. Conclusum est contra Manichæos. 9. The works of St. Thomas are partly philosophical, partly theological; with some comments on the holy scriptures, and several treatises of piety. The elegance of Plato gave his philosophy the greater vogue among the Gentiles; and the most learned of the Christian fathers were educated is the maxims or his school. His noble sentiments on the attributes of the Deity, particularly his providence, and his doctrine on the rewards and punishments in a future state, seemed favorable to religion. Nor can it be doubted but he had learned, in his travels in Egypt and Phoenicia, many traditional truths delivered down from the patriarchal ages, before the corruptions of idolatry. On the other hand, the philosophy of Aristotle was much less in request among the heathens, was silent as to all traditional truths, and contained some glaring errors, which several heretics of the first ages adopted against the gospel. On which account he is called by Tertullian the patriarch of heretics, and his works were procribed by a council of Paris, about the year 1209. Nevertheless it must be acknowledged, by all impartial judges, that Aristotle was the greatest and most comprehensive genius of antiquity, and perhaps of any age: and he was the only one that had laid down complete rules, and explained the laws of reasoning, and had given a thorough system of philosophy. Boetius had penetrated the depth of his genius, and the usefulness of his logic; yet did not redress his mistakes. Human reasoning is too weak without the light of revelation; and Aristotle, by relying too much on it fell into the same gross errors. Not only many ancient heretics, but also several in the twelfth and thirteenth ages, as Peter Aballard, the Albigenses, and other heretics, made a bad use of his philosophy. But above all, the Saracens of Arabaia and Spain wrote with incredible subtilty on his principles. St. Thomas opposed the enemies of truth with their own weapons, and employed the philosophy of Aristotle in defence of the faith, in which he succeeded to a miracle. He discerned and confuted his errors, and set in a clear and new light the great truths of reason which that philosopher had often wrapt up in obscurity. Thus Aristotle, who had been called the terror of Christians, in the hands of Thomas became orthodox, and furnished faith with new arms against idolatry and atheism. For this admirable doctor, though he had only a bad Latin translation of the works of that philosopher, has corrected his errors, and shown that his whole system of philosophy, as far as it is grounded in truth, is subservient to divine revelation. This he has executed through the nicest metaphysical speculations, in the five first volumes of his works. He everywhere strikes out a new track for himself; and enters into the most secret recesses of this shadowy region; so as to appear new even on known and beaten subjects. For his writings are original efforts of genius and reflection, and every point he handles in a manner that makes it appear new. If his speculations are sometimes spun fine, and his divisions run to niceties, this was the fault of the age in which he lived, and of the speculative refining geniuses of the Arabians, whom he had undertaken to pursue and confute throughout their whole system. His comments on the four books of the Master of the Sentences contain a methodical course of theology, and make the sixth and seventh volumes of his works; the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth give us his Summ, Or incomparable abridged body of divinity, though this work he never lived to finish. Among the fathers, St. Austin is principally his guide; so that the learned cardinals, Norris and Aguirre, call St. Thomas his most faithful Interpreter. He draws the rules of practical duties and virtues principally from the morals of St. Gregory on Job. He compassed his Summ against the Gentiles, at the request of St. Raymund of Pennafort, to serve the preachers in Spain in converting the Jews and Saracens to the faith. He wrote comments on most parts of the holy scriptures, especially on the epistles of St. Paul, in which latter he seemed to outdo himself. By the order of pope Urban IV., he compiled the office of the blessed sacrament, which the church uses to this day, on the feast and during the Octave of Corpus-Christi. His Opuscula, or lesser treatises, have in view the confutation of the Greek schismatics and several heresies; or discuss various points of philosophy and theology; or are comments on the creed, sacraments, decalogue, Lord's prayer, and Hail Mary. In his treatises on piety he reduces the rules of an interior life to these two gospel maxims: first. That we must strenuously labor by self-denial and mortification to extinguish in our hearts all the sparks of pride, and the inordinate love of creatures; secondly, That by assiduous prayer, meditation, and doing the will of God in all things, we must kindle his perfect love in our souls. (Opusc. 17 & 18; His works are printed in nineteen volumes folio.) 10. Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma: quam mercedem addipies? Non aliam, nisi te Domine. 11. Psalm cxxxi. 14. 12. Conf. l. 10, c. 28. 13. There is another commentary on the same book which sometimes bears his name, and begins: Sonet vox tua in auribus meis: which was not the work of this saint, but of Hayme{}, bishop of Halberstadt. See Echard, t. 1, p. 323. Touron, p. 714. Le Long. Bibl. Sacra. n. 766. 14. Tibi debo et quod non feci. St. Au{}. 15. St. Bonav. l. de Mystica Theol. a. ult.
SS. PERPETUA, AND FELICITAS, MM.
WITH THEIR COMPANIONS.
From their most valuable genuine acts, quoted by Tertullian, l. de anima, c. 55, and by St. Austin, serm. {}, 283, 294. The first part of these acts, which reaches to the eve of her martyrdom, was written by St. Perpetua. The vision of St. Saturus was added by him. The rest was subjoined by an eye-witness of their death. See Tillemont, t. 3, p. 139. Ceillier, t. 2, p. 213. These acts have been often republished; but are extant, most ample and correct, in Ruinart. They were publicly read in the churches of Africa, as appears from St. Austin, Serm. 180. See them vindicated from the suspicion of Montanism, by O{}, Vindicæ Act. SS. Perpetuæ et Felicitatis.