Saint Thomas Aquinas

Thomas was born around 1225 near Aquino, not far from Naples, and died at the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nova on March 7, 1274, at the age of 49, while on his way to the Council of Lyon. After having been an oblate since the age of 5 at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, he entered the newly founded Order of Preachers at the age of 19. He was sent to continue his studies in Paris, where his master was Saint Albert the Great, whom he later followed to Cologne. Very quickly, Brother Thomas proved to be a powerful genius in philosophy and theology, magnificently realizing the ideal of the Order of Preachers: contemplata aliis tradere, “to hand on to others what has been contemplated.” He taught tirelessly until the end of his life, leaving behind a monumental body of work that manifested all the mysteries of the faith in their coherence, based on a few simple and luminous principles, resembling a spiritual cathedral. The holiness of Brother Thomas was solemnly proclaimed by Pope John XXII in 1323. Saint Pius V proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1567.
This icon depicts Saint Thomas in his Dominican habit. His gaze seems fixed on the invisible. On his chest shines what became his iconographic emblem in the 14^th century, the golden sun of Wisdom. In its center, within a circle, the face of Christ can be seen. In his right hand he holds the theologian’s quill, and in his left an open book inscribed with these verses from the hymn Pange Lingua (“Sing, my tongue”) which he composed in honor of the Blessed Sacrament: Verbum caro panem verum Verbo carnem efficit (“The Word made flesh, by His word, makes true bread His flesh”). Pope Urban IV had indeed asked him in 1264 to compose the texts for the Office and the Mass of the Blessed Sacrament.