"Hitherto men have seen in S. Thomas nothing but the pious cenobite, or, at best, the saintly and profound theologian, who theorises in his cloister, scarce deigning to bestow a glance on the age in which he lives. But if we study the real facts of his history, if we put his works in connection with his actions, we see in him one of those active and impressionable minds which keep an anxious watch over the ideas of their time, either to array against them all the fulness of their power, as a dam against their disorderly movements, or to dash into their midst and to master them by guiding them. His was, indeed, an extraordinary genius, whose power contemporary minds were forced to recognize, whether they came to bruise themselves against his logic, or whether they came to submit themselves to his direction. He reigned in both ways, but more by seconding, than by checking, the movements of his age." S. Thomas, "the most saintly of the learned, and the most learned of the saints," sprang from a noble race. His mother, Theodora, was descended from the Caraccioli, a Norman family, and was countess of Hano in her own right. Her ancestors had left Normandy 200 years before, and having driven the Saracens and Greeks out of the plains of Southern Italy, had established themselves at Naples and Messina, and having made prisoner the Roman pontiff, had received the crown from his trembling hands. Landulf, Theodora's husband, of the house of Sommacoli, otherwise called Counts of Loreto, Ditcerra, and Belcastro, belonged to one of the most remarkable families of middle Italy. His father, Thomas, achieved so high a military reputation, that the emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, nominated him Lieutenant-General of the Holy Roman empire, and gave him his sister, Frances of Suabia, to wife. His ancestors had been Dukes of Capua, but when their inheritance was wrested from them, they assumed the title of Aquino, and settled themselves between the Volturno and the Garigliano. In the reign of Otto III., one of these rough warriors took Rocca Sicca from the abbot of Monte Cassino, and levelled it with the ground (996). Thus S. Thomas was nephew of Frederick the First and Henry the Fourth, and cousin of Frederick the Second, and could claim connection with the royal houses of Arragon, Sicily, and France. Yet, noble and illustrious as he was by birth, he was to be made nobler and more illustrious still by the brightness of his virtues and by the splendour of his intellect.