G.K. Chesterton's brilliant sketch of the life and thought of Thomas
Aquinas is as relevant today as when it was published in 1933. Then it
earned the praise of such distinguished writers as Etienne Gilson,
Jacques Martain, and Anton Pegis as the best book ever written on the
great thirteenth-century Dominican. Today Chesterton's classic stands
poised to reveal Thomas to a new generation.
Chesterton's Aquinas is a man of mystery. Born into a noble Neapolitan
family, Thomas chose the life of a mendicant friar. Lumbering and shy --
his classmates dubbed him the Dumb Ox -- he led a revolution in
Christian thought. Possessed of the rarest brilliance, he found the
highest truth in the humblest object. Having spent his life amid the
vast intricacies of reason, he asked on his deathbed to have read aloud
the Song of Songs, the most passionate book in the Bible.
As Albert the Great, Thomas's teacher, predicted, the Dumb Ox has
bellowed down the ages to our own day. Chesterton's book will enlighten
those who would consign Thomas to the obscurity of medieval times. It
will confound those who would use Thomas to bolster arid schemes of
Christian rationalism. Rather, it will introduce the wondrous mystery of
the man who, after a life of unparalleled genius, was seized by a vision
of the Unknown and said, I can write no more. I have seen things which
make all my writings like straw.
