Muslims in the Horizon of Thomas Aquinas, Part 2

Thomas' Family

Thomas’ father Landulf was a minor knight. His mother Donna Theodora D’Aquino was from Naples and a very remote cousin of Fredrick II. Aquino was the farthest north-western province of the thirteenth-century Kingdom of Sicily. Sicily was ruled by Muslims for close to three centuries (831-1072). Thomas’ brother “Aimo, or Aimone, became a soldier and fought with the army of Frederick II, accompanied him on the fifth crusade, was captured in 1232, was held for ransom on the island of Cyprus, and was eventually released through the intercession of Pope Gregory IX in 1233. From 1233 onward Aimo supported the Pope's cause against Frederick.” His other brother “Rinaldo, or Reginaldo, also served in the Emperor's forces until 1245. In 1240 he is mentioned as valettus imperatoris, i.e., the Emperor's page, a noble youth attending the sovereign's service and being trained-such at least was the custom at Frederick's court-for responsible office in the realm. In 1245, when Frederick II was deposed by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons, Rinaldo changed allegiance and fought with the armies of the Pope against Frederick.” Frederick ordered Rinaldo’s execution in 1246 as a result of an assassination attempt at Capaccio. The Aquinas family considered him a martyr in the cause of faith and church. Thomas was well aware of these incidents and indirectly alluded to them in his later works.

At Monte Cassino 

Thomas’s early education and upbringing was in the Benediction tradition at Monte Cassino, just 110 miles from the Muslim colony of Lucera. “After his fifth birthday," i.e. around 1230 or 1231, his parents brought Thomas to the ancient Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino." As the youngest son in the family, he was brought as an oblate (oblntus); that is to say, he was offered to God in the Benedictine way of life for elementary training, in the practice of the rules, and basic education. Landulf and Theodora had made careful plans for the future of the family; Thomas, it was hoped, would become abbot of Monte Cassino.” During his decade-long stay at Mont Cassino, Thomas witnessed constant warfare between the papacy and the imperial forces of Fredrick II. Their troops continuously fought at various fronts. The popes repeatedly commanded Fredrick to fulfill his vow of the crusade to the Holy Land, but the Emperor was afraid that the papacy would misuse his absence from Italy to consolidate its powers in the neighboring Sicilian areas. “Monte Cassino had been held by imperial troops from about1225 onward. When Frederick II finally fulfilled his vow to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, a papal army under the command of a cardinal invaded the abbey and laid hands upon its valuable treasures to keep them from imperial forces. In 1229, after Frederick's return from the Holy Land, imperial troops with a contingent of Saracens among them invaded Cassinese territory and laid siege to the abbey. The following year, 1230, saw these campaigns ended by the peace of San Germano (present-day Cassino at the foot of the Cassino Mountain), concluded on July 23.”

Tension at Abbey

The decade between 1230 and 1239 witnessed relative calm in the Abbey, but not without simmering tensions. In 1236 the abbot Landulfo Sinnibaldo, a distant relative of the Aquino family, who originally received Thomas at Monte Cassino, died. The Abbey did not receive the replacement for the next three years due to a power struggle between the papacy and Fredrick II. “It was not until February 1239 that the abbey obtained a new abbot. The excommunication of Frederick in March of that same year was the signal for another outbreak of hostilities between the Pope and Emperor. In April the abbey was occupied and fortified by imperial troops. Some of the monks were expelled. In June of 1239 an edict of Frederick's banished from the kingdom all religious born outside its· territory. Only eight monks remained at Monte Cassino. It is obvious that in such circumstances there was no room for young oblates at the abbey.” Thomas came back to his house in Aquino. The abbot encouraged his father to enroll him in the University of Naples to study liberal arts and philosophy. Naples was just 75 miles west of the Muslim colony of Lucera. Thomas’ father was not shy from training his son in the anti-papal camp of Frederick II.

Early Childhood Experiences

Early childhood experiences had lasting effects on life and thoughts of Thomas. “This situation is reflected in the life and writings of Thomas, who has given us two answers to this unfortunate confusion into which the Christian world was plunged. One was doctrinal, the other personal. The doctrinal answer was to be given in one of his earliest works, the Scriptum super Sententias II, dist. 44, in which Thomas states that the Pope, in virtue of his canonical office, is the spiritual head of the Church and nothing else; every other political or worldly accretion to this essentially spiritual authority is a historical accident, which may or may not be there without in any way diminishing the Church's inner spiritual nature. Thomas's personal answer to this problem, the one which surely grew out of his experiences with his own family, was to refuse any position in the Church that would have involved him in temporal transactions, which the Popes and ecclesiastics of his time, especially Innocent IV, considered to be their ordinary and natural business. This is the most likely reason why Thomas refused the offer of the Pope to make him abbot of Monte Cassino, even when allowed to remain a Dominican Friar and wear his habit;' as well as the offer to promote him to the archbishop of Naples with the addition of funds from the monastery of St Peter ad Aram," and finally his firm intention to remain a Friar even if he were to be offered a cardinal's hat.” Likewise, the long presence of Fredrick’s troops, including thousands of Muslims in Monte Cassino, and then their reoccupation of the Abbey by the expulsion of papal forces and monks, would have been traumatically noticed by Thomas.