THOMAS AQUINAS

Thomas Aquinas has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the People, Dates, Places and Events category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the entire history of european integration and the future of Europe.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the most important people in whole history of european integration and will probably have influence on the future of United europe, bacause his thinking was useful to speculate on the political models in Middle Age and redefine the sense of studying for scolars and teachers of universities still nowadays.

Thomas Aquinas was born in Aquino, a little town in centre Italy, in early XIII century A.D., right in the epoch of the "guelphs&ghibelines war", when he studied Theology and teached in the most prestigious european university the Sorbonne in Paris and was awarded with the title of "doctor of the christian church" for his phylosific studies on the nature of humankind and the sense of common life in accordance with Christianity. Among the Thomas Aquinas works stands out certanly the opera "Summa Theologica", written at the end of his life speculating on the Aristotle mind, where he defined theology as the oriented realization of life within the natural goals established by God (principium et finis) but responding to own free choise, as the human "political animal" focused on his personal needs and aspirations. In that vision, the State was considered a necessary tool for humankind subordination even if those who follow the commonwealth are considered free and provided of an originary political power; they voluntarily meet under the natural guide of the Rex, then the State itself is naturally inserted into the "order of creation" oriented towards God and guided by his Grace.

In the personal view of Saint Thomas Aquinas the State own a general interest to save through the laws, that he ordered in Lex aeterna ("Order of Creation"), Lex naturalis (rational and learning action of men oriented to wellness) and Lex Humana (human laws needed to give concreteness to the goals useful for wellness and general interests): such a consideration transformed the State in a supreme entity whose object is the policy for guiding community toward its common good, far from the patrimonialistic regime of the medieval kingdoms that, after his fundamental work, became consitutional monarchies considered the optimum by Aristotle. On the same view, the Ecclesiae Christiana became a political congregation of homini polyticus, that he explained in his theory of Corpus Politicum Mysticum useful to reform the Sacer Roman Imperium after the decadence of Frederick II Hohenstaufen, from a christian spiritual missionarian and messianic essence towards the Regnum Christi fili dei where was the Pope at the centre of the world (primus inter pares), in accordance with the guelphist party position and totally received in the reform of the Reich in 1356 A.D..

What is Saint Thomas Aquinas known for? Which mostly influenced the history of european integration had been his "Scholastica" school during the interregnum epoch, when he and his followers speculated many brocardos of phylosofical and christian formulations useful for the new political age coming: over all, the Rex legibus solutus in Vis coactiva de Lex Digna and the legibus alligatus in Vis directiva de Lex Dei, substained by the medieval mottos about the relations between the Imperator and the Justice that summarized with the principy of "duality of Right", a joining of the Natural Right and the Positive Right, produced by the Rex-Imperator. When the figure of Suprema Auctoritas Imperatoris regimen Mundi disappeared (with the estionction of the Staufen dinasty), every late medieval european states defined its specific constitution to legitimate the political power. Moreover, Scholastica restored the aristotelic logic and religious vision of "the Sun that moves everything/everyone" that made him speculate the formula "Fides et Ratio", alias the joining of phylosofical science and faith in God without which is impossible to reach the final Truth (then he tried to mix the Aristotle and Plato thinking): they teached it in the main european universities in Bologna, Paris, Toulouse and Oxford, but provoked the furious revolt of the "modernist" razionalist, solved only with the intervention of the Pope in 1257 A.D..

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