The newly elected Pope Clement IV had…
1268 CE
The newly elected Pope Clement IV had summoned Aquinas to Rome in February 1265, tto serve as papal theologian.
This same year, he had been ordered by the Dominican Chapter of Agnani to teach at the studium conventuale at the Roman convent of Santa Sabina, which had been founded some years before in 1222.
The studium at Santa Sabina now became an experiment for the Dominicans, the Order's first studium provinciale, an intermediate school between the studium conventuale and the studium generale.
At the Santa Sabina studium, Aquinas teaches the full range of philosophical subjects, both moral and natural.
In 1267, while at Santa Sabina, Thomas, having already written commentaries on Aristotle and the Bible, had begun his most famous work, the Summa theologiae, which he conceived of specifically as suited to beginning students, intended to synthesize Aristotelian logic and Christian theology.
Unlike many of his contemporary theologians, Thomas welcomes the Latin translation of Aristotle's complete writings, although he opposes the radical advocates of Aristotelianism, the so-called Latin Averroists, who claim that something can be true in natural knowledge and false for belief and vice versa.
Like Aristotle, Thomas regards the human being as a complete union of soul and body, and is critical of the Platonic conception of humans as rational souls inhabiting powerless, material bodies that has been incorporated into the traditional Augustinianism.
Thus, the resurrection of the body, in addition to the survival of the soul after death, seems to Thomas philosophically appropriate as well as religiously true.
Thomas also writes a variety of other works, such as his unfinished Compendium Theologiae and Responsio ad fr.
Ioannem Vercellensem de articulis 108 sumptis ex opere Petri de Tarentasia (Reply to Brother John of Vercelli Regarding 108 Articles Drawn from the Work of Peter of Tarentaise).
In his position as head of the studium, Aquinas has conducted a series of important disputations on the power of God, which he compiles into his De potentia.
Aquinas remains at the studium at Santa Sabina until he is called back to Paris in 1268 for a second teaching regency.