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Brief Lives

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Hilarius Bogbinder discovers the surprisingly revolutionary views of one of the Catholic Church”s most revered philosophers.

Thomas Aquinas was the greatest theologian in the middle ages.” Thus read an ultra-short biography of the Dominican Friar and philosopher St Thomas de Aquino (1225-1274), printed at the end of the Danish Hymn Book (when I was a boy growing up in rural Denmark my parents would take me to church every Sunday, and during the very long sermons my mother would give me the hymn book to read). It is perhaps surprising that a Catholic thinker like Thomas was included in the official hymn book of a Lutheran Protestant country, where it was a common insult to be described as ‘Catholic in the head’ (a euphemism for being raving mad). Nevertheless, the congregation would happily sing Thomas’s hymn, ‘Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory’ (or in the original Latin, Pange, lingua, gloriosi).

That the philosopher also found time to write hymns is perhaps surprising.

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