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Founding
Founding of Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
pontifical university located in the center of Rome, Italy
- 1577 – 1963
- Europe
Founding
pontifical university located in the center of Rome, Italy
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (PUST), also known as the Angelicum or Collegio Angelico (in honor of its patron, the Doctor Angelicus Thomas Aquinas), is a pontifical university located in the historic center of Rome, Italy. The Angelicum is administered by the Dominican Order and is the order's central locus of Thomistic theology and philosophy.
The Angelicum is coeducational and offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in theology, philosophy, canon law, and social sciences, as well as certificates and diplomas in related areas. Courses are offered in Italian and some in English. The Angelicum is staffed by clergy and laity and serves both religious and lay students from around the world.
The Angelicum has its roots in the Dominican mission to study and to teach truth. This mission is reflected in the order's motto, "Veritas". The distinctively pedagogical character of the Dominican apostolate as intended by Saint Dominic de Guzman in 1214 at the birth of the order, "the first order instituted by the Church with an academic mission", is succinctly expressed by another of the Order's mottos, contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere, (to contemplate and to bear the fruits of contemplation to others). Pope Honorius III approved the Order of Preachers in December 1216 and January 1217. On 21 January 1217 the papal bull Gratiarum omnium confirmed the Order's pedagogical mission by granting its members the right to preach universally, a power formerly dependent on local episcopal authorization.
Saint Dominic established priories focused on study and preaching that became the Order's first studia generalia, at the Parisian convent of St. Jacques in 1217, at Bologna in 1218, at Palencia and Montpellier in 1220, and at Oxford before his death in 1221. By 1219 Pope Honorius III had invited Dominic and companions to take up residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina, which they did by early 1220. In May 1220 at Bologna the Order's first General Chapter mandated that each convent of the Order maintain a studium. The official foundation of the Dominican studium conventuale at Rome, which would grow into the Angelicum, occurred with the legal transfer of the Santa Sabina complex from Pope Honorius III to the Order of Preachers on 5 June 1222.
St. Hyacinth of Poland and companions Bl. Ceslaus, Herman of Germany, and Henry of Moravia were among the first to study at the studium of Santa Sabina where "sacred studies flourished".
From its beginning the Santa Sabina studium played the special role of frequently providing papal theologians from among its members. Since its institution in 1218 the office of Master of the Sacred Palace has always been entrusted to a Friar of the Order of Preachers. In 1218 Saint Dominic was appointed as the first Master of the Sacred Palace by Pope Honorius III. In 1246 Pope Innocent IV appointed Annibaldo degli Annibaldi (c. 1220 – 1272) third Master of the Sacred Palace after Saint Dominic and Bartolomeo di Breganze. Annibaldi had completed his initial studies at the Santa Sabina studium conventuale and was later sent to the studium generale at Paris. Aquinas dedicated to Annibaldi the Catena aurea, which he wrote during his regency at the Santa Sabina studium beginning in 1265.
At the general chapter of Valenciennes in 1259 Thomas Aquinas together with masters Bonushomo Britto, Florentius, Albert, and Peter took part in establishing a program of studies for novices and lectors including two years of philosophy, two years of fundamental theology, church history and canon law, and four years of theology. Those who showed capacity were sent on to a studium generale to complete this course becoming lector, magister studentium, baccalaureus, and magister theologiae.
The new formation program outlined at Valenciennes featured the study of philosophy as an innovation. "In the early days there was no need to study philosophy or the arts in the Order; young men entered already trained in the humanities at the university. St. Albert received his arts training at Padua, St. Thomas at Naples; they were prepared to study theology. By 1259, however, it became evident that youths entering the Order were not sufficiently trained; the new ratio studiorum of 1259 established studia philosophiae in certain provinces corresponding to the university faculty of arts."
In February 1265 newly elected Pope Clement IV summoned Aquinas to Rome as papal theologian. That same year in accord with the injunction of the Chapter of the Roman province at Anagni, Aquinas was assigned as regent master at the studium at Santa Sabina:
We assign Friar Thomas of Aquino to Rome, for the remission of his sins, there to take over the direction of studies.
With this assignment the studium at Santa Sabina, which had been founded in 1222, was transformed into the Order's first studium provinciale with courses under Aquinas' direction beginning 8 September 1265 and featuring studia philosophiae as prescribed by Aquinas and others at the 1259 chapter of Valenciennes.
This studium was an intermediate school between the studium conventuale and the studium generale. "Prior to this time the Roman Province had offered no specialized education of any sort, no arts, no philosophy; only simple convent schools, with their basic courses in theology for resident friars, were functioning in Tuscany and the meridionale during the first several decades of the order's life. But the new studium at Santa Sabina was to be a school for the province," a studium provinciale. Tolomeo da Lucca, associate and early biographer of Aquinas, tells us that at Santa Sabina Aquinas taught the full range of philosophical subjects, "teaching in a new and special way almost the whole of philosophy, both moral and natural, but especially ethical and mathematical, as well as in writing and commentary."
While Regent master at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale Aquinas began to compose his monumental work, the Summa theologiae, conceived of as a work suited to beginning students:
Because a doctor of catholic truth ought not only to teach the proficient, but to him pertains also to instruct beginners. as the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 3: 1-2, as to infants in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat, our proposed intention in this work is to convey those things that pertain to the Christian religion, in a way that is fitting to the instruction of beginners.
At Santa Sabina Thomas composed the entire Prima Pars circulating it in Italy before departing for his second regency at Paris (1269–1272).
Other works composed by Aquinas during this period at Santa Sabina include the Catena aurea in Marcum, the De rationibus fidei, the Catena aurea in Lucam, the Quaestiones disputate de potentia Dei, which report the disputations Aquinas held at Santa Sabina, the Quaestiones disputate de anima, which were held during the academic year 1265–66, Expositio et lectura super epistolas Pauli Apostoli, the Compendium theologiae, the Responsio de 108 articulis, part of the Quaestiones disputatae de malo, the Catena aurea in Ioannem, the De regno ad regem Cypri, the Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis, and at least the first book of the Sententia Libri De anima, a commentary on Aristotle's De anima. This work by Aristotle was contemporaneously being translated from the Greek by Aquinas' Dominican confrere William of Moerbeke at Viterbo in 1267.
The so-called "lectura romana" or "alia lectura fratris Thome", a reportatio of the second commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard dictated by Aquinas at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale, may have been taken down by Jacob of Ranuccio while a student of Aquinas there from 1265 to 1268. Jacob later was lector at Santa Sabina and served in the Roman Curia being made bishop in 1286, the year of his death.
Nicholas Brunacci (1240–1322) was among Aquinas' students at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale and later at Paris. In November 1268 he accompanied Aquinas and his associate and secretary Reginald of Piperno from Viterbo to Paris to begin the academic year. Albert the Great, Brunacci's teacher at Cologne after 1272, called him "the second Thomas Aquinas." Brunacci became lector at the Santa Sabina studium and later served in the papal curia. He was a correspondent by letter with Dante Alighieri during the latter's exile from Florence.
After the departure of Aquinas for Paris in 1268 other lectors at the Santa Sabina studium include Hugh Aycelin. Eventually some of the pedagogical activities of the Santa Sabina studium were transferred to a new convent of the Order more centrally located at the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. This convent had a modest beginning in 1255 as a community for women converts, but grew rapidly in size and importance during its transfer to the Dominicans from 1265 to 1275. In 1288 the theology component of the provincial curriculum was relocated from the Santa Sabina studium provinciale to the studium conventuale at Santa Maria sopra Minerva which was redesignated as a studium particularis theologiae. During this period lectors at the Santa Maria sopra Minerva studium included Niccolò da Prato, Bartolomeo da San Concordio, and Matteo Orsini.
Following the curriculum of studies laid out in the capitular acts of 1291 the Santa Sabina studium was redesignated as one of three studia nove logice intended to offer courses of advanced logic covering the logica nova, the Aristotelian texts recovered in the West only in the second half of the 12th century, the Topics, Sophistical Refutations, and the First and Second Analytics of Aristotle. This was an advance over the logica antiqua, which treated the Isagoge of Porphyry, Divisions and Topics of Boethius, the Categories and On Interpretation of Aristotle, and the Summule logicales of Peter of Spain. In 1305 the Minerva studium became one of four studia naturarum established in the Roman province. Iacopo Passavanti, famed preacher and author of the Specchio di vera penitenza, was lector at the studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva after finishing his studies in Paris c. 1333.
The General Chapter of 1304 mandated each of the Order's provinces establish a studium generale to meet the demand of the Order's rapidly growing membership. The studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva was raised to the level of studium generale for the Roman province of the Order by the year 1426 and continued in this roll until 1539. It would again be affirmed as a studium generale in 1694 (see below).
On 7 March 1457, the feast of St. Thomas, humanist Lorenzo Valla delivered the annual encomium in honor of the "angelic doctor." The Dominicans of the Minerva studium generale pressed Valla not only to praise Aquinas but to voice his humanist criticism of scholastic thomism.
Sisto Fabri served as professor of theology at the Santa Maria sopra Minerva studium in the mid-1550s. In 1585 Fabri, who was Master of the Order of Preachers from 1583 to 1598 would undertake a reformation of the program of studies for the Order and for the studium which had been transformed into the College of St. Thomas in 1577. Fabri's reform included a nine-year formation program consisting of two years of logic using the Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain alongside Aristotle's logic, three years of philosophy including the study of Aristotle's De anima, Physica, and Metaphysica, and four years of theology using the third part of Aquinas' Summa for speculative theology, and the second part for moral theology. Fabri also established a professorship for the study of Hebrew at the college.
In 1570 the first edition of Aquinas' opera omnia, the so-called editio piana from Pius V the Dominican Pope who commissioned it, was produced there.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.