Page:A new and general biographical dictionary; containing an historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the most eminent persons in every nation v1.djvu/324

 I N A S. large audience. In the year 1255, he was created in divinity at Paris. He returned to Italy about the year 1263, and was appointed definitor of his order, for the pro- vince of Rome ; and having taught fchool divinity in moil of the univerfities of Italy, he refettled aHaft at Naples, where he received a penflon from king Charles. Here he fpent h:3 timeinftudy, reading of leclures, and the exercifes of piety ; and was fo far from the views of ambition or profit, that he refufed the archbifhopric of that city when it was offered him by Clement IV. Jn 1274, he was fen t for to the fecond council of Lyons, by pope Gregory X. that he might read before them the book which he had written againft the Greeks, Cave's Hift.at the command of Urban IV. ; but he fell ikk on his jour- Lit. p. 6 3 6 'ney, at the monaftery of Foffanova, near Terracina, where he died on the ;th of March, aged fifty years. Sixtus Senenfis gives Aquinas a very great characler : he tells us, that he approached fo nearly to St. Auguftin in the knowledge of true divinity, and penetrated fo deeply into the moft abftrufe fenfe of that father, that, agreeably to the Py- thagorean metempfychofis, it was a common expreffion among all the men of learning, that St. Thomas Aujzuftin's foul had SeehisCcm-trani'migrated into-St, Thomas Aquinas. Rapin fpeaks alfoof parifon be- hj m w j tn high honour, and reprefents him as one of the great tween Plato j m p rovers of fchool-divinity. The lord Herbert of Cherbury, in Ariftolle, his " Life and Reign of Henry VIII." tells us, that one of the principal reafons, which induced this king to write againft Martin Luther, was, that the latter had Ipoken contemptu- cufly of Aquinas. The authority of Aquinas has been always very great in the fchools of the Roman catholics. He was canonized by pope John XXII. in the year 1323; and Pius V. who was of the fame order with him, gave him, in 1567, the title of the Fifth Dodtor of the church, and ap- pointed his feftival to be kept with the fame folemnity as thofe of the other four doctors [A]. Biblioth. lib. iv. p. 308. chap. 5. Oudin, col. 255 [A] Aquinas left a vaft number of four bocks. The tenth, eleventh, and works: they were printed in feventeen twelfth, the Sum of Divinity, with the Commentaries of Cardinal CajetanuJ. volumes in folio, at Venice, in 1490; at Nuremberg, in 1596 j Rome 1570; Venice, 1594; and Cologn, 1612 j and many times alter. The five firft volumes contain his Commentaries .upon the Works of Ariftotle. The fixth and feventh a Commentary upon the four Books of Sentences. The eighth confiftsof Quef- tions in Divinity. The ninth volume The thirteenth conlifts of feveral Com- mencaiies upon the Old Teftament particularly a Commentary upon the Book of job, a literal &nd analogical Expofition upon the firft fifty Pfahn?, an Expofition upon the Canticles, which he dictated upon his death-bed, to the Monks of Foffanova ; Commentaries upon the Pcophecies of Haiah and Je- contains the Sum of the Catholic Faith, remiah, and upon the Lamentations. ike Gentiles j .divided into The fourteenth contains the Commen- tarita