The appreciation of St. Thomas in his own time is the greatest tribute to the critical faculty of the century that could be made. "Genius is praised but starves," in the words of the old Roman poet. Certainly most of the geniuses of the world have met with anything but their proper meed of appreciation in their own time. This is not true, however, during our Thirteenth Century. We have already shown how the artists, and especially Giotto, (at the end of the Thirteenth Century Giotto was only twenty-four years old) were appreciated, and how much attention Dante began to attract from his contemporaries, and we may add that all the great scholars of the period had a following that insured the wide publication of their works, at a time when this had to be accomplished by slow and patient hand-labor. The appreciation for Thomas, indeed, came near proving inimical to his completion of his important works in philosophy and theology. Many places in Europe wanted to have the opportunity to hear him. We have only reintroduced the practise of exchanging university professors in very recent years. This was quite a common practise in the Thirteenth Century, however, and so St. Thomas, after having been professor at Paris and later at Rome, taught for a while at Naples and then at a number of the Italian universities. Everywhere he went he was noted for the kindliness of his disposition and for his power to make friends. Looked upon as the greatest thinker of his time it would be easy to expect that there should be some signs of consciousness of this, and as a consequence some of that unpleasant self-assertion which so often makes great intellectual geniuses unpopular. Thomas, however, never seems to have had any over-appreciation of his own talents, but, realizing how little he knew compared to {284} the whole round of knowledge, and how superficial his thinking was compared to the depth of the mysteries he was trying, not to solve but to treat satisfactorily, it must be admitted that there was no question of conceit having a place in his life. This must account for the universal friendship of all who came in contact with him. The popes insisted on having him as a professor at the Roman university in which they were so much interested, and which they wished to make one of the greatest universities of the time. Here Thomas was brought in contact with ecclesiastics from all over the world and helped to form the mind of the time. Those who think the popes of the Middle Ages opposed to education should study the records of this Roman university.