While here, one of the Popes wishing to confer a supreme mark of favor on him, his name was selected for the vacant archbishopric of Naples. The bulls and formal documents creating him Archbishop were already on the way when Thomas was informed of it, and he asked {326} to be allowed to continue his studies rather than to have to take up the unwonted duties of an archbishop. His plea was evidently so sincere that the Pope relented and respected Thomas's humility and his desire for leisure to finish his great work, the Summa Theologiae. He continued to be the great friend of the Popes and their special counsellor. When the Council of Lyons was summoned, a number of important questions concerning the most serious theological problems were to be discussed. Thomas was asked to go to Lyons as the theologian for the Papacy. It was while fulfilling this duty that he came to his death, at a comparatively early age, though not until the Council, consisting of the bishops of all the world, had shown their respect for him, had listened to his words of wisdom, and had acknowledged that he was the greatest scholar of his time and worthy of the respect and admiration of all of them. Because of all that his kindness to them had meant for their uplift, the workmen of Lyons craved and obtained the permission to carry his coffin on their shoulders to his tomb. Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. A careful investigation of his life showed that there was nothing in it unworthy of the highest ideals as a man and a religious. Accordingly he was canonized, and has ever since been considered the special patron, helper and advocate of Catholic students. All down the centuries his teaching has been looked upon as the most important in the whole realm of theology. There has never been {327} a time when his works have not been considered the most authoritative sources of theological lore. At the end of the nineteenth century Leo XIII. crowned the tributes which many Popes had conferred upon Thomas by selecting him as the teacher to whom Catholic schools should ever turn by formulating the authoritative Papal opinion--the nearer to Thomas, the nearer to Catholic truth. When it is recalled that this is the man who gave the great modern impulse to the doctrine of matter and form, who taught the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, and declared with St. Augustine that the Creator had made only the seeds of things, allowing these afterwards to develop for themselves, which is the essence of the doctrine of evolution, it is hard to understand how there should be question of opposition between the Church and science in his time. With regard to the third of these