Two of these, Aquinas and Bonaventura, we shall meet again as hymn-writers. But first we have to deal with one whose chief claim to recollection is a single great hymn. Thomas of Celano was an Italian at a time when Italy was stirred by the great battle of Pope with Emperor into an intellectual life, which was to culminate in Dante at the close of the century. Exactly in its last year the writing of the _Divina Commedia_ was to begin. The troubles of his time must have come very close to Thomas. His native city of Celano, a town of the old Marsians, was one of the first to suffer under the hand of Frederick II. In 1223 it was forced to capitulate by the Count of Acerra, Thomas of Aquinas, the warlike uncle and namesake of the great theologian. The inhabitants were compelled to leave their houses, taking all their movables, and the place was burned to the ground, only the church of St John being left standing among the ruins. The people, to punish their disloyalty to the Emperor, were transported to Sicily, Malta, and Calabria, whence they returned to rebuild their town after their enemy’s death. How old Thomas was at the time of this calamity, and whether it had anything to do with his becoming a monk of the Order of Francis of Assisi, we do not know. But certainly it is not impossible that the spectacle of this _dies irae_, when the sanctities of his boyhood’s home were left desolate, or even the news of its occurrence in his absence, may have left a permanent impression upon his mind, and may have suggested more or less directly his great hymn. Celano lay in the northern end of the Kingdom of Naples, as it was afterward called, across the Apennines from Rome and slightly north of it. It was not far from the northern boundary of Frederick’s hereditary dominions, across which lay the Umbrian region, where Assisi is situated. At some time and in some way Thomas made his way to Assisi, and came under the influence of the wonderful man whose personality has made the mountain town a place of pilgrimage even for those who are not of the Latin communion.