Page:Summa Theologica (2nd rev. ed.) - Volume 1.djvu/32

 Author:Aurelius Ambrosius, and Augustine and Jerome. Others did not hesitate to set forth St. Thomas as a standard and teacher to universities and great schools of learning, saying that they might safely follow him. On this point the words of Blessed Urban V. to the University of Toulouse seem to be most worthy of mention: 'It is our will, and by the authority of these letters we enjoin on you, that you follow the doctrine of Blessed Thomas as true and Catholic, and strive to unfold it with your whole strength.' This example of Urban was followed by Innocent XII. in the University of Louvain, and by Benedict XIV. in the Dionysian College of Granada. To these judgments of the Pontiffs about Thomas there is added, as a crown, the testimony of Innocent VI.: 'His doctrine above all other doctrine, with the one exception of the Holy Scriptures, has such a propriety of words, such a method of explanation, such a truth of opinions, that no one who holds it will ever be found to have strayed from the path of truth; whereas anyone who has attacked it has always been suspected as to the truth.' [sic]

Moreover, Œcumenical Councils, made glorious by the flower of wisdom gathered from the whole world, always strove with great care to give singular honour to Thomas Aquinas. In the Councils of Lyons, of Vienne, of Florence, of the Vatican, you may say that Thomas was present at the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, and almost that he presided at them, contending against the errors of Greeks and heretics and rationalists, with a power from which there was no escape, and with a most auspicious result.

But we now come to the greatest glory of Thomas—a glory which is altogether his own, and shared with no other Catholic Doctor. In the midst of the Council of Trent, the assembled Fathers so willing it, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas lay open on the altar, with the Holy Scriptures and the decrees of the Supreme Pontiffs, that from it might be sought counsel and reasons and answers.

Lastly, another crown seems to have been kept for this peerless man—that is, the way in which he extorts homage.