two books of an independent system of dogmatics, the _Summa theologica_. The latter treatise, which closely follows the work of Alexander of Hales, is incomplete.[305] § 103.6. The greatest and most influential of all the Schoolmen was the _Doctor angelicus_, =Thomas Aquinas=. Born in A.D. 1227, son of a count of Aquino, at his father’s castle of Roccasicca, in Calabria, he entered against his parents’ will as a novice into the Dominican monastery at Naples. Removed for safety to France, he was followed by his brothers and taken back, but two years later he effected his escape with the aid of the order, and was placed under Albert at Cologne. Afterwards he taught for two years at Cologne, and was then sent to win his doctor’s degree at Paris in A.D. 1252. There he began along with his intimate friend Bonaventura his brilliant career. It was not until A.D. 1257, after the opposition of the university to the mendicant orders had been overcome, that the two friends obtained the degree of doctor. Urban IV. recalled him to Italy in A.D. 1261, where he taught successively in Rome, Bologna, Pisa, and Naples. Ordered by Gregory to take part in the discussions on union at the Lyons Council, he died suddenly in A.D. 1274, soon after his return to Naples, probably from poison at the hand of his countryman Charles of Anjou, in order that he might not appear at the council to accuse him of tyranny. John XXII. canonized him in A.D. 1323, and Pius V. gave him the fifth place among the Latin _doctores ecclesiæ_.--Thomas was probably the most profound thinker of the century, and was at the same time admired as a popular preacher. He had an intense veneration for Augustine, an enthusiastic appreciation of the church doctrine and the philosophy which are approved and enjoined by this great Father. He had also a vein of genuine mysticism, and was distinguished for warm and deep piety. He was the first to give the papal hierarchical system of Gregory and Innocent a regular place in dogmatics. His _Summa philosophiæ contra Gentiles_, is a Christian philosophy of religion, of which the first three books treat of those religious truths which human reason of itself may recognise, while the fourth book treats of those which, because transcending reason though not contrary to it, _i.e._ doctrines of the incarnation and the trinity, can be known only by Divine revelation. He wrote two books of commentaries on the Lombard. By far the most important work of the Middle Ages is his _Summa theologica_, in three vols., in which he gives ample space to ethical questions. His polemic against the Greeks is found in the section in which he defines and proves the primacy of the pope, basing his arguments on ancient and modern fictions and forgeries (§ 96, 23), which he, ignorant of Greek and deriving his knowledge of antiquity wholly from Gratian’s decree, accepted _bona fide_ as genuine.