Encyclopedia of Philosophy: AQUINAS' LIFE AND WORKS

Among the professors at Paris University in the thirteenth century was the philosopher who more than any other brought Christian philosophy to terms with Aristotle: St Thomas Aquinas.  Thomas was born about 1225 at Roccasecca near Aquino in Italy. He was schooled by the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino and studied liberal arts at the University of Naples. Against the bitter opposition of his family he joined the Dominicans in 1244 and studied philosophy and theology at Paris and at Cologne. He studied under an older Dominican, Albert the Great, a man of enormous and indiscriminating erudition, then newly started on a gigantic project of commenting on Aristotle's works, some of them more than once.