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Thomas Aquinas and The Interlinking of Sanctity and Doctrine, From One Centenary to Another

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Marc Millais OP
Translated by
Matthew Jarvis OP
Marc Millais OP*
Affiliation:
Leonine Commission, Paris
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

From 1923 to the present day, various studies have increasingly analysed the beginnings of the cult of Thomas Aquinas, as well as the authenticity of his works. Over the last century, the reception of Thomas Aquinas between these two poles of sanctity and the authority accorded to his works has shown itself to be a significant pairing, of which this article unpacks some important stages.

Keywords

Thomas Aquinaslists of writingscanonisationsanctityholinessThomism
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 104 , Issue 1114 , November 2023 , pp. 715 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

One of the immediate consequences of the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas in Avignon on 18 July 1323 was a letter by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Bourret, dated 14 February 1325.Footnote 1 After pointing out that some had thought that the condemnations issued by his predecessors targeted the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas – referring above all to the condemnations of 1277 by Bishop Stephen TempierFootnote 2 – Bourret acknowledged a request that he remedy ‘the unjust denigration of the reputation and the doctrine of Blessed Thomas, the concealment of the truth, and the dishonour, as it were, of the holy Roman Church’Footnote 3 and to respond to the request of the theologians he had delegated, ‘so that we may open up the way of truth, by which in the aforementioned articles, insofar as they may concern the doctrine of Blessed Thomas, we guarantee the honour and reverence due to the holy Roman Church and to the aforementioned saint’.Footnote 4 There follows a lengthy reminder of the authority of the Roman Church which has just been exercised in the canonisation of Thomas: ‘the most holy Roman Church, mother and teacher of all the faithful, founded on the utterly solid confession of Peter the vicar of Christ, on which depend, as the universal measure of Catholic truth, the approval and condemnation of doctrines, the dispelling of doubts, the determination of what is to be held and the refutation of errors, [this holy Roman Church therefore] has recently decided to inscribe in the list of holy confessors the above-mentioned venerable and eminent doctor whose light illumines the Church, as the moon is lit by the sun, and by a well conducted debate and a preliminary examination of his life and doctrine she has declared him commendable to the whole world as regards his pure life and sound doctrine’.Footnote 5 Then the bishop's decision recalls the various opinions and advice he sought and concludes: ‘I judge by the grace of God that the said blessed confessor never expressed, taught or wrote anything that was definitely contrary to faith or good morals…from the sure knowledge that we have from the present [commissioners and masters of theology]…we totally annul the condemnation of the aforementioned articles and the sentence of excommunication, insofar as they touch or seem to touch the doctrine of the aforementioned Blessed Thomas'.Footnote 6 These extracts suffice to illustrate the constant interlinking of sanctity of life and doctrinal soundness, both authenticated by pontifical ecclesial authority – or specifically episcopal authority in the case of this document. On this 7th centenary of the canonisation of Thomas, and in a completely different context from that of the early 14th century, this double polarity of sanctity of life and doctrinal orthodoxy appears to be relevant as ever. We propose to verify this by looking at how, in the course of the last century, though the doctrinal authority of Thomas Aquinas no longer needed defending, two areas of research – namely on the canonisation of Thomas on the one hand and on the corpus of his works, in particular the question of their authenticity, on the other – have continued to challenge and respond to each other.

In 1923, the 6th centenary took place in a very fertile context for Thomistic thought. The movement launched in the second half of the 19th century by various researchers, theologians and philosophers, and given impulse at the highest level by Pope Leo XIII, bore much fruit in the 1920s. Whether in journals, monographs or edited volumes, that centenary gave rise to numerous publications, often very substantial in terms of both quantity and quality.Footnote 7 One of those contributions took a close look at the documentary evidence from the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas, starting as it were at the apex of his official cult. The reason for this was the discovery by Marie-Thérèse Porte in Toulouse, in the holdings of the Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, of the original bull of canonisation.Footnote 8 Angelus Walz published an edition accompanied by a diplomatic reproduction in the highly official Analecta ordinis praedicatorum.Footnote 9 To our knowledge, this is the only scholarly publication of a document concerning the canonisation of St Thomas in the period around 1923. One would be astonished at this, if this publication were not part of a publishing project that had somewhat ground to a halt at this time, concerning documents relating to the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas.

Indeed, a good dozen years earlier, Thomistic research had experienced a major turning point in 1910 with the publication by Pierre Mandonnet of Des écrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin.Footnote 10 Mandonnet, then a professor in Fribourg (Switzerland), renewed the approach to the question of the authenticity of the works of Thomas Aquinas, not simply through internal criticism, drawing on elements such as style and doctrine, but also through external criticism, using the ancient lists of the writings of Saint Thomas. Among these, the one delivered by Bartholomew of Capua during his deposition at the process in Naples in 1319 seems particularly significant. The process in Naples involved ecclesiastics, scholars, and members of the Angevin administration, the most important of whom was Bartholomew of Capua, who bore the ancient title of logothete and was, after the princes, the most important person in the Angevin kingdom of Naples. His deposition, the longest of all those given at the Naples process, emblematically includes a list of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, which Mandonnet describes as an ‘official catalogue’.Footnote 11 It was indeed included in the legal act of the canonisation process and was issued by the most important figure in the Kingdom of Naples, who was also one of the key players in the process. The authoritativeness of this list has since been re-evaluated, but Mandonnet gave weight to this hagiographic and legal document and included it in his reflections on the authenticity of Thomas's works, and hence in his research on Thomas's doctrine: in this way, he valued this type of literature, which was a priori outside the immediate field of Thomist doctrinal studies, and thus gave it new weight.

At that time, the canonisation processes of Naples in 1319 and Fossanova in 1321, although known from the two manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, had not been published or made widely available.Footnote 12 At the same time as Mandonnet's Des Écrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin was being published, another project was taking shape, still under the direction of the Revue thomiste, and would begin publication in 1911: the Fontes vitae sancti Thomae entrusted to Dominique Prümmer, a professor at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) like Mandonnet. The Fontes as a whole had a continuous pagination (677 pp. in total), but were published in short sections in the Revue thomiste, and again in fascicules when each textual unity was completed. Thus the first issues of the Vita S. Thomae by Peter Calo appeared in 1911 and were collected in fascicules in 1912. The project began with the three lives of Thomas in the following order: those of Peter Calo, William of Tocco and Bernard Gui. At the time of the centenary in 1923, publication had been halted since 1914, but would be resumed at the end of 1924 with the completion of the life by William of Tocco, which was published in fascicule form in 1925, and that by Bernard Gui in 1927, then in fascicule form in 1928. After Prümmer's death, the project was taken over by M.-H. Laurent, who published the two processes from 1932 to 1936, which appeared in fascicules in 1935 and 1937, plus a fascicule of historical documents also in 1937. This was the first time that the two processes had been published together, since Laurent not only published the entire Naples process, but also the editio princeps of the Fossanova process.Footnote 13 This work of the Fontes historiae sancti Thomae remains to this day the only work of its kind, and despite its obvious limitations it is still a helpful resource.Footnote 14

At the same time as the Fontes were being published, a discovery was made that called into question the priority given to Bartholomew of Capua's list. In 1931, setting aside the prestige of Thomas's canonisation process and the court of Naples, Martin Grabmann published two lists of Thomas's writings discovered in the library of the Metropolitan Chapter of Prague, one in a manuscript of English origin and the other in an Italian manuscript.Footnote 15 The Italian list is incomplete and might seem to be a list in progress, were it not blighted by a certain disorderliness and the presence of apocrypha.Footnote 16 The English list includes only authentic and carefully ordered works: it strikes the researcher by its authenticity and authority. This list is copied from the flyleaves of a Commentary on the First Book of the Sentences of Thomas Aquinas, flyleaves on which a determinatio by Robert Winchelsey on the divine relations is also copied by the same hand. Robert was present in Paris in 1267 and became an enthusiastic hearer of Thomas's lectures in his second Parisian teaching period. He also twice disputed a series of questions on the Trinity at Oxford, where he was Chancellor of the University in 1288, and then at St Paul's in London, where he taught between 1289 and 1293 before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (15 February 1293).Footnote 17 The totally uncontaminated and careful presentation of this list, as well as its Parisian roots via this master who was a disciple of Thomas, make it a very reliable witness to the earliest Thomism in Paris.

With Grabmann's edition of the English list from Prague, research into the authentic writings plunges us into the academic milieu of Paris and thus as close as possible to some of Thomas's output, his aura and influence. When Hugues-Vincent Shooner took up the issue again with his doctoral thesis, defended in 1974, on the Listes anciennes des écrits de Thomas d'Aquin [Ancient lists of the writings of Thomas Aquinas], he distinguished four groups of lists: one group of tax lists, which occupy a place between the production of Thomas's works and their distribution by exemplar and pecia, under the economic control of the University of Paris (charging for the rental of peciae); two groups, which come from lists either of the Prague and Bartholomew of Capua types, or from the studium in Cologne; and finally a last group, which is that of Thomas's biographers.Footnote 18 Into the academic research on the authenticity of Thomas's works, Shooner thus reintegrates the hagiographic literature directly linked to the canonisation of 1323 with Guillaume de Tocco and Bernard Gui, but also the Historia ecclesiastica nova by Ptolemy of Lucca composed around 1315, which is not only the first biographical text of some length on Thomas Aquinas, but also provides a list of his writings, as if to speak of Thomas one must also take into account his works. One benefit of this thesis is that it shows how far the question of the lists of the works of Thomas cuts across the whole field, from the rental rates of the items in the tax lists for copying the works of Thomas to the text of William of Tocco propagating the portrait of a scholar and saint.Footnote 19

Shooner edited the sections of the texts that included the lists relevant to his research, but he also explored their manuscript tradition, such as William of Tocco's Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino at the heart of Thomas's canonisation process. Following this, Claire le Brun-Gouanvic published the first critical edition of the entire Ystoria.Footnote 20 This text is the counterpart to the two processes at Naples and Fossanova, with which it constitutes the full dossier that was sent to Avignon. The Ystoria includes not only a biography which unfolds in the style of a treatise super virtutibus, but also a collection of miracle stories. The whole work draws both on the processes and on the personal research by William de Tocco. One of the rich fruits of her publication is that Claire le Brun-Gouanvic enables us to grasp the reasons why a double process was held.

Already in 1981, André Vauchez had clearly noticed that the canonisation of Thomas came at a time when there was a shift in how holiness was investigated, away from miracles and towards the virtues of the candidate. And he also noted that while this procedure enjoyed powerful ecclesiastical and political support and that it would be swift and ultimately successful, paradoxically the canonisation process of Thomas Aquinas was one of the few in this period in which further investigation was requested.Footnote 21 The critical edition of the Ystoria has made it possible to clarify the sequence of the investigation, and of the launch of the Fossanova process in particular. Tocco, accompanied by the bishop of Viterbo, had visited Fossanova in 1319 and had collected, in an informal way and without authorisation, a number of miracle stories at this site of Thomas's burial. There followed the Naples investigation from 21 July to 18 September 1319. By February 1320, the full Thomas dossier was in Avignon. It should be noted that during this year of 1320, the Order of Preachers paid close attention to this process and that year's General Chapter in Rouen made provision for its funding.Footnote 22 Apparently there was a pause in the process in that same year of 1320. The miracle stories edited by Claire le Brun-Gouanvic reveal that Tocco, at the end of 1320 or the beginning of 1321, personally undertook a new attempt in Avignon and presented the curia with the miracle stories he had collected during his visit to Fossanova in 1319.Footnote 23 Yet the Pope, presumably judging this collection to be insufficient, gave his authorisation for a formal investigation onsite in Fossanova. This took place from 10 to 26 November 1321 at the Cistercian abbey and consisted mainly of a long series of miracles which, it must be admitted, abstracting from the names of places and people, could apply to stories from around the tomb of any miracle-working saint. This turning point in 1320/1321 appears to be particularly significant for the ongoing process of canonising Thomas Aquinas.Footnote 24 On the one hand, all those involved have a very strong interest in pursuing the process, but the delay between February 1320 and November 1321 might seem surprising unless we bear in mind the shift in how sanctity, as epitomised by canonisation, was represented: no longer that of a scholar turned bishop like Saint Thomas de Cantilupe, canonised precisely in this year 1320, but that of a ‘pure intellectual’, a doctor like Thomas Aquinas.Footnote 25 In terms of form, however, the witness accounts in the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas suggest that it unfolded in a similar way to that of this other Saint Thomas.Footnote 26

Even this limited documentary research on Thomas in the century that has elapsed since 1923 shows that the tension between sanctity of life and concerns of an intellectual and doctrinal nature remains as fruitful today as it was in the past. The search for objective bases for the authenticity of Thomas Aquinas' writings has led us to revisit the way in which his sanctity was established and regulated by the ecclesiastical authorities, who, like many scholars and researchers, took into account the teaching of this holy doctor. This dual polarity of sanctity of life and doctrinal issues, as well as what was at stake in the representation of sanctity, added impetus to the process in one of its critical phases. At the end of this piece, as if echoing what has just been said, we are perhaps reminded of that adage often repeated and expressed in various forms, playing on the assonance and parallelism of construction between miracula and articula, linking the sanctity of life and the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, but also highlighting this new type of sanctity.Footnote 27 The phrase as such is not found in the two accounts of the canonisation.Footnote 28 Only the anonymous account of the canonisation speaks of miracles at the end of the pontifical preaching on 14 (or 16) July 1323 and ends the summary of the sermon with: ‘In the same way, no fewer than three hundred miracles have been attributed to him’. A compilation of documents concerning the Dominican convent of Toulouse and Saint Thomas Aquinas by Jean-Jacques Percin published in 1693 adds: ‘and he had done as many miracles as he had written articles’.Footnote 29 But the compilation is careful to add this final phrase in italics, to indicate either that it is a phrase from John XXII himself or that it is an addition taken from elsewhere.Footnote 30 This formulation is found in a text of Jean Gerson independently of its mention in the pope's sermon, but it is attributed to the pope. This short work was written in defence of the Carthusian Order, which, in the eyes of its detractors, produced too few miracles.Footnote 31 Gerson contrasts this with the glory of confessors which does not consist in their miracles, sometimes extremely rare if truth be told, but in their teachings which are like so many wonders. This is true of the great Latin doctors he cites as examples: Augustine, Gregory, Jerome and others. And he adds: ‘Moreover, when some people objected to the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas on the grounds that he had not performed any miracles during his life, or not many, the Pope said that this should not be taken into account and added that he had performed as many miracles as he had resolved questions’.Footnote 32 Two comments are necessary: firstly, this text must be dated earlier than 1415 and was written in Paris;Footnote 33 secondly, Gerson's way of presenting this anecdote, linking pontifical authority with the doctrinal prestige of Thomas Aquinas in a felicitous expression, operates in the manner of an exemplum. Gerson's latest editor, Palémon Glorieux, points out that this short work could very well be ‘an extract from an ordinary lecture by Gerson in which, following a method he favoured, he would have allowed himself this digression in praise, and defence, of the Carthusian monks’.Footnote 34 If it is indeed from a lecture, this exemplum, which is condensed into a well-made formula using the ‘tot …quot’ echo, presupposes that it is already known to some extent by his student audience. It is reasonable to think that the phrase was known and had been transmitted whether orally or in some writings, over the period running from 1323 to 1415, such that it retained its relevance in the ears of students to whom its terms were familiar (the pope, the canonisation, the study of Thomas Aquinas and his sanctity), if the anecdote itself was not also known to them. Although the expression cannot be drawn directly from an utterance of John XXII at Thomas's canonisation, at least it expresses clearly the novelty signified by his elevation to the altars, as well as the constant interlinking of his holy life and sound doctrine that happened not only at the end of the Middle Ages, but also as soon as research began on that event itself and on the corpus of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, saint and doctor, doctor and saint.Footnote 35

References

1 There is no critical edition of this letter. On its textual tradition, see Maier, A., ‘Der Wiederruf der ‘articuli parisienses’ (1277) im Jahr 1325’, Archivum fratrum praedicatorum XXXVIII(1968), pp. 13-19Google Scholar. We have followed the text given in Chartularium universitatis parisiensis, H. Denifle É. Chatelain ed, t. ii sect. prior (Paris : ex typis fratrum Delalain 1891), pp. 280-281 §838. The text alone of this edition is reproduced in Fontes vitae sancti Thomae, D. Prümmer M.-H. Laurent ed, (Toulouse Saint-Maximin: Revue thomiste, [1912-]1937), pp. 666-669. The text of the CUP is taken from the ms. Cambridge, Univ. Library Ji.III.10 f. 39 which is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) witnesses to this letter quoted at the end of the Responsiones ad 19 articulos ex parte Beatitudinis Apostolicae missos fratri Armando rectori sacri palatii. On Armand de Belvézer, his Responsiones and the mention of the letter, see the presentation and notes by Bonino, S.-Th., ‘Autour d'Armand de Belvézer. Le thomisme en France au XIVe siècle’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 96 (2012), pp. 239-248Google Scholar.

2 Among the many publications on these articles of 1277, see first and foremost the edition and commentary of La condamnation parisienne de 1277: Nouvelle édition du texte latin, traduction, introduction et commentaire par D. Piché avec la collaboration de Cl. Lafleur, ‘Sic et Non’, (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1999). Among recent studies on this period 1277-1325, see R. Saccenti, ‘Correctoria, Correctoria corruptorii, Beatificatio. L'ordine domenicano, l'eredità di Tommaso d'Aquino e Giovanni XXII’, in Giovanni XXII Cultura e politica di un papa avignonese, Centro italiano di studi sul basso medioevo Academia tudertina eds, (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 2020), pp. 329-353.

3 « … doctrine ac fame beati Thome predicti injustam denigrationem, veritatis occultationem et sancte Romane ecclesie aliqualem deshonorationem … » CUP ii/1, p. 280.

4 « … veritatis viam aperiremus, per quam in predictis articulis, in quantum doctrinam beati Thome predicti tangere possunt, et sancte Romane ecclesie ac predicti sancti honorem ac reverentiam servaremus. » CUP ii/1, p. 280.

5 « … sacrosancta Romana ecclesia, fidelium omnium mater et magistra, in firmissima Petri, Christi vicarii, confessione fundata, ad quam velut ad universalem regulam catholice fidei pertinet approbatio et reprobatio doctrinarum, declaratio dubiorum, determinatio tenendorum, et confutatio errorum, prefatum doctorem eximium et venerabilem, cujus doctrina fulget ecclesia[m] ut sole luna[m], nuper sanctorum confessorum cathalogo adscribendum decrevit, diligenti discussione et examinatione prehabita super vita ipsius et doctrina, ipsumque quoad vitam puram ac doctrinam salubrem orbi terrae commendabilem predicavit … » CUP ii/1 p. 280.

6 « … comperto per Dei gratiam, dictum confessorem beatum nil unquam sensisse , docuisse seu scripsisse, quod sane fidei vel bonis moribus adversetur … supradictam articulorum condempnationem et excommunicationis sententiam, quantum tangunt et tangere asseruntur doctrinam beati Thome predicti, ex certa tenore presentium totaliter annullamus… » CUP ii/1, p. 281.

7 Among these we may cite by way of example the edited volumes published by two major institutions: Mélanges thomistes publiés par les dominicains de la province de France à l'occasion du VIe centenaire de la canonisation de saint Thomas d'Aquin (18 juillet 1323), Bibliothèque thomiste iii, (Le Saulchoir, Kain (Belgique): Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 1923), 408 pp.; Xenia thomistica a plurimis orbis catholici viris eruditis praeparata quae sancto Thomae Aquinati doctori communi et angelico anno ab eius canonizatione sexcentesimo devotissime offert reverendissimus pater Ludovicus Theissling sacrae theologiae professor magister generalis ordinis praedicatorum, edenda curavit P. sadoc Szabó, O.P. apud ‘Angelicum’ Institutum pontificium internationale in Urbe regens, 3 volumes, (Romae: Typis polyglottis vaticanis, 1925), 567+610+625 pp. The Bulletin thomiste, founded in 1924, reported on the centenary: see Bulletin thomiste 1(1924), pp. 29-32 for the chronicle, as well as all the bibliographical notes.

8 The manuscript now bears the following call number: Toulouse, Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, 112 H 29 (1). Marie-Thérèse Porte, who died in 1958, was a secular tertiary of the Order of Preachers and then a Dominican nun in the monastery of Dax under the name of Sœur Diane du Christ. It was under this name that a piece of her research in the Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne was published posthumously : du Christ, Sœur Diane, Un foyer de spiritualité dominicaine au XVIIe siècle : le monastère Sainte-Catherine de Sienne de Toulouse, (Toulouse: Privat, 1976)Google Scholar. The preface by C. Tournier mentions his discovery of the bull of John XXII, a discovery published on 5 June 1923 by G. Loirette, the departmental archivist, p. 7, n. 1. See also Bulletin thomiste 1(1924) p. 17 §5 and Walz, A., ‘De bulla canonizationis sancti Thomae aquinatis’, Analecta sacri ordinis fratrum praedicatorum 16 (1923), p. 173-192Google Scholar + 1 facsim. The Toulouse discovery is mentioned on p. 174 with only the name of the department archivist.

9 He published his edition of the bull twice: once with a critical introduction and notes in the Analecta SOP (see previous note), and the other with the text alone appended to an article on the history of the canonisation; see Walz, A., ‘Historia canonizationis sancti Thomae de Aquino’, Xenia thomistica vol. iii, pp. 105-172Google Scholar, followed by ‘Bulla canonizationis S. Thomae Aquinatis a Ioanne XXII P.M. emanata’, pp. 173-188.

10 It is in fact a series of articles that appeared in the Revue thomiste in 1909-1910, first collected in a separate volume, Fribourg : Albertinum, 1910, 142 pp. The same year saw the publication of the definitive edition: P. Mandonnet, Des écrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin, second revised edn, (Fribourg (Switzerland): Imprimerie de l'œuvre de Saint-Paul, 1910), 158 pp. Details of the articles in the Revue thomiste that gave rise to this work can be found in Mélanges Mandonnet, Études d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale du moyen âge, tome i, ‘Bibliothèque thomiste XIII’, (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1930), p. 10 §31.

11 This name was commonly used until M. Grabmann's publication in 1931: see, for example, A.-D. Sertillanges, S. Thomas d'Aquin, ‘Les grands philosophes’, t. i, (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910) p. 7-9, which reproduces the ‘Official catalogue of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas drawn from the Process of Canonisation’ referring to the very recent work of P. Mandonnet. On the list of Bartholomew of Capua, see the study and edition of its deposition by Robiglio, A. A., La sopravivenza e la gloria, Appunti sulla formazione della prima scuola tomista (sec. xiv), ‘Sacra doctrina’, (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2008) pp. 73-103Google Scholar.

12 These are the mss. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 3112 and 3113.

13 He thus fulfilled the wish of scholars and researchers as expressed, for example, by Taurisano, I., ‘Discepoli e biografi di S. Tommaso’, in S. Tommaso d'Aquino O.P., Miscellanea strorico-artistica, (Roma: Società tipografica A. Manuzio, 1924), p.154Google Scholar, n.2. It should be remembered here that the editio princeps of the record of the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas by the Bollandists in the first volume of Acta sanctorum Martii only includes the Naples process and even then in a truncated form, especially of the ‘official catalogue’, as the Jesuit fathers had access to the mutilated ms. Archivum Generale OP X 2877.

14 The first limitation is that Prümmer gives temporal priority to the life of Peter Calo, whereas critical analysis shows that it assumes that the lives by Tocco and Gui are complete, with the exception of a few elements specific to Calo. Another limitation of the work, which in our opinion is more serious, is that apart from the appendix, the reader is only given complete texts: the lives and the processes. Earlier and fragmentary sources on the life of Thomas are left out, such as the Vitae fratrum, the Bonum universale de apibus by Thomas of Cantimpré, the Annales and the Historia ecclesiastica nova by Ptolemy of Lucca.

15 The first edition of these lists is as follows: Grabmann, M., Die Werke des hl. Thomas von Aquin, Eine literarhistorische Untersuchung und Einführung, Zweite völlig neugearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters’ Band XXII Heft 1-2, (Münster im Westf.: Verlag der aschendorffchen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1931), pp. 88-96Google Scholar under the subtitle ‘Zwei unedierte Prager Kataloge der Werke des hl. Thomas von Aquin’. Under the same serial number in the Beiträge there is (1) an earlier edition of this work with the title Die echten Werken etc. in 1920, (2) an enlarged edition in 1949 with the same title as in 1931, (3) this last version republished identically with a preface and a bibliographical supplement in 1967.

16 For the presentation of these two lists, we follow closely H.-V. Shooner, Listes anciennes, Doctoral thesis, Ottawa 1974, pp. 44-47, 82-83. The full reference for this thesis can be found in note 18 below.

17 It should be noted that Robert Winchelsey, an intellectual who became a pastor, was the subject of two requests for canonisation made to John XXII, but which did not result in the opening of a formal process: Vauchez, A., La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1198-1431), Recherches sur les mentalités religieuses médiévales, 3rd edition, (Rome: École française de Rome, 2014), p. 79Google Scholar n. 22 for the pope's response in 1318 to Thomas of Lancaster's request and p. 93-98 for the royal request of 1326-1328. A. Vauchez discusses the Franco-Angevin ‘lobby’ (pp. 94-95) for canonisations during the Avignon period, with the only exception for England being that of Thomas de Cantiloupe, Bishop of Hereford, in 1320. These two intellectual and university-educated bishops are representative of the gradual ‘appreciation of erudition’ [valorisation de la culture] which led to the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas: A. Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident …, p. 463-464 for Thomas de Cantiloupe and more generally p. 455-472 ‘Crise du modèle évangélique et valorisation de la culture’.

18 Listes anciennes des écrits de Thomas d'Aquin by Hugues-V. Shooner. Thesis presented for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) in Theology, Collège dominicain de philosophie et de théologie, Ottawa, March 1974, 330 pp. This thesis has not been published.

19 We are thinking here of the very appropriate expression ‘Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge’ [the power of lists in the Middle Ages], the title of three volumes published by the Sorbonne, Paris, from 2019 to 2023, which explore the variations on this theme.

20 Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino by Guillaume de Tocco (1323), Critical edition, introduction and notes by Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, ‘Studies and texts 127’, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), 298 pp. Previous editions (Acta sanctorum and Prümmer in Fontes) had access to different manuscripts and achieved a fairly limited output: see Ystoria … pp. 77 and 79.

21 For the various influences on the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas, see A. Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident …, pp. 92-93, 467-468 among many other references and on the tension between miracles and virtues pp. 63-64 and on the complementary process for Thomas p. 64 n. 81. On the issues involved in the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas, in addition to older studies such as L. V. Gerulaitis, ‘The canonization of Saint Thomas Aquinas’, Vivarium V (1967) pp. 25-46, and Walz, A., ‘Papst Johannes XXII und Thomas von Aquin, Zur Geschichte der Heiligsprechung des Aquinaten’, in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274-1974 Commemorative Studies, Volume i, (Toronto Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), pp. 29-47Google Scholar, and the important introduction to the edition of the Ystoria sancti Thome by C. le Brun-Gouanvic, see also the recent and convincing studies by A. Vauchez, ‘La politique de la sainteté de Jean XXII promus et “recalés”’, in Giovanni XXII Cultura e politica di un papa avignonese, Centro italiano di studi sul basso medioevo Academia tudertina ed, (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 2020), pp. 293-309Google Scholar and the summary by Tilatti, A., ‘La canonizzazione di Tommaso d'Aquino come crocevia di intenzioni eterogenee’, in Fra trionfi e sconfitte: politica della santità dell'Ordine dei predicatori, Viliam Štefan Doci & Gianni Festa eds, Institutum historicum ordinis praedicatorum Romae Dissertationes historicae XXXIX, (Rome: Angelicum University Press, 2021), pp. 61-82Google Scholar.

22 Quoted by A. Vauchez, La sainteté …, p. 78 n. 21. The exact reference is as follows: Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis praedicatorum, vol. ii, Reichert, B. ed, ‘Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica tomus IV’, (Romae: Typographia polyglotta S.C. de propaganda fide, 1889), p. 123Google Scholar, l. 22-27.

23 See Ystoria p. 14-16 and p. 247-248 §lxxi ‘De nova inquisitione miraculorum in curia et ordinata’.

24 And undoubtedly particularly trying for William of Tocco, as perhaps witnessed to a priori by the passage from Ystoria … cap. 28, p. 152-153 l. 2-35, the chapter mentioned in the introduction, p. 14.

25 For Thomas de Cantilupe see A. Vauchez, ‘La politique de la sainteté …’, p. 299 and n. 13 with references to La sainteté en Occident. These two events, the General Chapter of Rouen and the canonisation of Thomas de Cantilupe, are not, to my knowledge, mentioned by le Brun-Gouanvic.

26 The two accounts of Thomas's canonization (see Fontes … p. 513-518) allow us to compare the ceremony fairly closely with that of Thomas de Cantilupe: Schimmelpfennig, B., Die Zeremonienbücher der römischen Kurie im Mittelalter, (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1973), p. 164-166Google Scholar §XIa ‘De canonisatione sancti Thome’. See also A. Vauchez, ‘La politique de la sainteté’, pp. 302-304. On pp. 306-307, the reader will find details and references concerning developments in the formula of canonisation during this period.

27 It is found in various forms: for example, in Thomas Pègues' edition of the Summa theologiae published between 1926 and 1935, where it is placed in the introduction (p. vii-xxx): ‘Quot articulos scripsit tot miracula fecit! Effatum Iohannis XXII’ in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Summa theologica de novo edita cura et studio collegii provinciae tolosanae eiusdem ordinis apud S. Maximinum, Prima pars, (Parisiis: sumptibus Andreae Blot editoris, 1926), p. vii.

28 See the synopsis of the two testimonies, Fontes … p. 513-518.

29 ‘Item quod inventa fuerunt de eo miracula non minus trecentis et quod tot fecerat miracula quot scripserat Articulos’. The italics are found in the edition in Monumenta conventus tolosani ordinis FF. Praedicatorum primi, ex vetustissimis manuscriptis originalibus transcripta et ss. Ecclesiae patrum placitis illustrata … Scriptore F. Joanne Joacobo Percin, (Tolosae: apud Joannem et Guillelmum Pech … sub signo Nominis Jesu, juxta Conventum FF. Praedicatorum, 1693), 2nd part, p. 229b, §2, ‘Caput xxxvii Canonizatio Almi doctoris ex nostro mss. V. de V.’. The final mention is to be understood from one verso page to another of the manuscript then in the convent of the Jacobins in Toulouse, transcribed by the author. Although the manuscript transcribed here, as elsewhere in this work, is Toulouse Bibliothèque municipale 610 pp. 80-82, it does not include the final phrase noted in italics by Percin.

30 Italics are also used for this same portion of text in Gerson's edition a few years later: Joannis Gersonii Doctoris Theologi & Cancellarii Parisiensis Opera omnia … opera & studio M. Lud. Ellies du Pin …, tomus secundus … pars prima, (Antwerpiae: Sumptibus Societatis, 1706), col. 712.

31 See the presentation of this work in Glorieux, P., ‘Gerson et les chartreux’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale XXVIII (1961), pp. 130-131Google Scholar.

32 J. Gerson, Œuvres complètes, Glorieux, P. ed., vol. X L’œuvre polémique (492-530), (Paris: Desclée & Cie, 1973), p. 41Google Scholar : « Inter ipsos confessores sanctos haec fuit differentia : nam qui scripserunt multa ad fidei illuminationem et magna sententia et doctrina pollebant, pauciora aut quasi nulla fecerunt miracula, praecipue in vita, quia habebant probationem sanctitatis in eminentia doctrinae; sic Augustinus, Gregorius, Hieronymus et similes. Unde cum in canonizatione sancti Thomae de Aquino, opponeretur a quibusdam quod non fecerat miracula in vita, vel non multa, dictum est per papam non esse curandum; et adjecit quoniam tot miracula fecit quot quaestiones determinavit. »

33 For the date see P. Glorieux, ‘Gerson et les chartreux’ …, p. 130 and Gerson, Jean, Œuvres complètes, introduction textes et notes par Mgr Glorieux, vol. X L'œuvre polémique (492-530), (Paris: Desclée & Cie, 1973), p. xiGoogle Scholar and 40.

34 P. Glorieux, ‘Gerson et les chartreux’ …, p. 131.

35 The author would like to express his deep gratitude to Matthew Jarvis OP, who kindly translated this article from French to English.