(1) The printed editions of this letter differ in several particulars; the Latin text which we here offer is frankly a composite version with no claim to critical accuracy, though based mainly on the version edited by the late hr I’. Mandonnet, O.P. (S. Thomae Aquinatis Opnscula Omnia, Vol. IV. p.535; Paris, 1927). The translation which we present attempts to render freely in English the sense which seems most probable in the general context. of the letter.

(2) “Hardly doubtful"; i.e. those works whose authenticity is not completely established, but concerning which there is little reason for doubt.

(3) “And although I am busied about many matters, I have taken care to reply to you so soon as opportunity offered, lest I should fail the request of your charity."

(4) “Having read your letter, I have found therein a numerous multitude of points, concerning which your charity requires me to reply within four days."

(5) “Lest I be lacking in respect to your charity, although I am busied about many matters."

(6) “It would have been easier for me to reply had it pleased you to write the reasons on account of which these said points are asserted or attacked.”

(7) “Such, Reverend Father, are the replies which, as they occur to me at present, should be made to the points which you have sent; although many of them lie outside the boundaries of the competence of theology. But what my professional office in no way required of me has become a duty to me by reason of your command."

(8) Not only because of the content of the letter, but also because St. Thomas addresses Brother John in the second person singular. In all his other letters he uses the second person plural, as seems to have been already usual in the 13th. century when addressing superiors or equals.

(9) All references in the text are to the Summa Theoloqica unless otherwise stated.

(10) “By setting forth signs . . . helps . . . instruments.”

(11) “By setting forth the order of premisses to conclusions.”

(12) “One man is said to teach another in so far as he expounds to another, by means of signs, the process of reasoning which he has in himself made by his own natural reason, in such a way that the natural reason of the pupil, by means of these signs set forth to him, and using them as a sort of instrument, attains to knowledge of what had been unknown to him.”

(13) Recalling the opening words of Aristotle's Metaphysics: “By their very nature all men desire knowledge.”

(14) “The body weighs down upon the soul.”

(15) ‘‘The soul is the form of the body,” i.e. the intrinsic vital principle whereby living and organic bodies are differentiated from non-living matter.

(16) The “locutorium”, the place for speaking, or “parlour”.

(17) “Who alone teaches within man, and as the Supreme Teacher.”

(18) “Speech about God.”

(19) “Speech to God.” “Oratio” means speech, but standing alone is also the ordinary Latin word for prayer.

(20) “Friendship.”

(21) “In Divinity the imagination is to be transcended“—the third of the Aristotelian degrees of abstraction.

(22) “Respectfully interpreted.’’

(23) i.e. its “doubts”, its “it seems that it is not so”, “but on the other hand” and “reply”—the formulas used throughout the Summa, following the normal procedure of scholastic disputations.

(24) “The True is the G-ood of the intellect”.

(25) “Those who wish to discover the truth should previously, i.e. before they set to work, doubt well, that is to say they should examine thoroughly what can be doubted” (concerning the point at issue).

(26) These historians have in fact been thoroughly refuted on historical grounds by P. Mandonnet and his editors in their Saint Dominique.

(27) “Honeatiim”—what ia good in itself.

(28) The “bad infinity” of Hegel.

(29) The suffering of loss of God, infinite because irremediable loss of the Infinite, and corresponding to the aversion from God in mortal sin; contrasted with the “poena sensus”, the positive suffering, of its nature finite, resulting from the positive attachment to the creature in the sin (I-II.87.4 etc.).

(30) “through a glass in a dark manner” (Douai version).

(31) “means of proof”, i e. middle terms in arguments.

(32) St. Thomas’s derivation of “sapientia”, a “tasting” or “relishing” kind of knowledge (cf. BLACKFRIARS, Jan.1943, p.13).