These two, so near in heaven, had been close companions on earth. The youthful Thomas, son of Count d’Aquino in southern Italy, after six years’ study at the University of Naples joined the Dominican Order, and went to Cologne to learn from Albert, who was also of noble family but born in Suabia on the Danube. Together they went to Paris, together returned to Cologne, but after six more years there their paths separated: Albert rose to be Bishop of Ratisbon; Aquinas, after lecturing in Paris, Rome, and Bologna, became a professor at Naples, and died in Italy in 1274. His master survived him by six years, dying at Cologne at the advanced age of eighty-seven in 1280.[122] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [122] Toynbee, _Dante Dictionary_; the source also of many other details given in this chapter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ These two are in the foremost rank among authors of his own time who influenced Dante. He quotes both writers and several of their books by name,[123] and though he never mentions it he was very familiar with the _Summa Theologica_ of Aquinas. To the works of these famous authors he was frequently indebted for astronomical facts, theories, and history, as already noted. Besides this, his reverence for Aristotle, his belief in the essential harmony between religion and science, and his whole attitude towards knowledge, are greatly due to the influence of St. Thomas and his “brother and master,” Albert of Cologne. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [123] Albert in _Conv._ III. v. 113-115, vii. 26-28; IV. xxiii. 125-6; Aquinas in _Conv._ II. xv. 125-6; IV. viii. 3-6, xv. 125-130, xxx. 26-30; _De Mon._ II. iv. 5-8; and see _Purg._ xx. 69. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are also three of Dante’s own fellow-countrymen and contemporaries whose books he is most likely to have read, although he does not mention them:—Brunetto Latini the Florentine, Cecco d’ Ascoli, professor at Bologna, and Ristoro the monk of Arezzo.