Transcript for the Piece Audio version of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

A century before the Black Death swept through Europe, a crisis of another sort was brewing. The long-lost works of Aristotle were suddenly rediscovered. A lot had happened in the meanwhile. Mainly, Christianity. And Aristotle’s works seemed to contradict its key tenets, including that one about a God who created the cosmos. Not surprisingly, the Church initially banned Aristotle’s works.

But we know what happens when you ban books. Before long everyone was reading Aristotle -- and the Church tried a new strategy: to embrace him -- by finding ways to reconcile him with Christian beliefs. And no one was better at that than Thomas Aquinas. By the 14th-century, Aristotle had become required reading at the universities!

Aquinas wrote prolifically, culminating in his great Summa Theologica, a massive work summarizing all of Christian doctrine. He did not, however, complete this work. On December 6, 1273, during Mass, he underwent some mystical experience, upon which he suddenly ceased to write -- explaining that all that he’d written now seemed to him “like straw.” He died just months later, at 49.

A short time after his death, Aquinas was canonized, to become Saint Thomas. His works went on to become the main text to which all the rest of Christian philosophy amounts to just footnotes.

Some straw!