St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval context of his philosophy

St. Thomas Aquinas

The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is already considered a classic. For us to better understand his works, it is best to look into the very context that shaped his works. By contextualizing, this article shall look into the social, economic, and political environment of St. Thomas' times.

Social Environment: The Church in the Society

The social environment in which Aquinas lived is described as a "critical juncture of western culture when the arrival of the Aristotelian corpus in Latin translation reopened the question of the relation between faith and reason, calling into question the modus vivendi that had obtained for centuries" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009, par. 1). It was identified at the time when radical Aristotelianism or "Latin Averroism" became popular in universities and St. Thomas Aquinas worked on scholastically proving its incompatibility with the Christian doctrine (ibid). To any casual observer the works of St. Thomas Aquinas have a very scholastic nature. This demonstrates the marriage of philosophy and religion.

During the middle ages, it was also common for the youngest siblings to trace the path of ecclesiastical service resulting to family loyalties towards the Church and the hierarchy of the Church is reflected in the patriarchal society (University of Calgary Applied History Research Group, 1997).

On Politics: The Divided Government

The government during Aquinas' time was described in terms of the division between the royalties and Church, the nobles and the cities -- they all divided power among themselves. The nobility worked together with the urban citizens in order to limit the powers of the royalty. The Crown, on the other hand, joined the municipal/city governments to weaken the forces of the feudal (Minlan, 2007).

The principles of the feudal society also maintained that the King depends on himself for a living but if the King is in need of what can be called as some sort of non-feudal revenue, he makes an agreement with the taxpayers (ibid).

There were certain upheavals during Aquinas time. Peasant resistance was common in France. Unity was not achieved among the lordships which is why attempts towards the subordination of these peasants failed. This resulted to the non-existence of free labor. Rent on customary tenancy was also paid in money terms which added to further decline of real feudal revenue (Das, 2005).

The lords, as I have mentioned earlier, were also not united to the extent that they waged wars among themselves. Fiefdoms were at stake on these wars which was even magnified by the fact that there is an absence of central powers to control these wars (ibid).