Humble Servant of Truth by Margaret O'Reilly

Author:Margaret O'Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbera Foundation

8

THE EAGLE SOARS

The future held a promise of hope for the Lady Theodora d’Aquino in her final days, but Pope Alexander IV was not as sanguine in his. He lay on his deathbed at Viterbo the next year, 1261, utterly demoralized by the state of the world that had been in his charge for seven years.

Despite all of the pontiff’s efforts, his power had been usurped by Manfred Hohenstaufen under his spurious claim to the crown of Sicily. He was gaining momentum in Lombardy and Tuscany. Since disloyal magistrates in Rome had formed an alliance with the illegitimate heir to the Hohenstaufen empire, the dying pope was no longer safe even in his own See.

At the University of Paris, the beacon of higher learning within Pope Alexander’s jurisdiction, there was a growing antagonism to the teaching Magisterium. How easily the consortium of teaching masters disregarded his advice and warnings—at home and abroad, the pope’s authority was challenged. The clergy of England had grown bitterly resentful of the papacy, especially when its politics required their financial backing. In central Europe, the Tartars were on the move and all of Alexander’s attempts to unite Christians against that barbarian threat had proved futile.

Fifty years earlier, Alexander’s predecessor on the papal throne, Innocent III, had received a vision of a tottering church held up by one small man in rags. That vision seemed to Alexander to have been prophetic of the time in which he lived; the Church was crumbling at last. He clung to Christ’s promise that, “The gates of hell would not prevail against it,” yet it was difficult for this Vicar of Christ to imagine how it would be restored. Would the growing legions of mendicants who followed in the footsteps of “The Poor Man of Assisi” really be strong enough to secure its foundations, as Pope Innocent’s vision seemed to suggest? When Pope Alexander IV left the world, his only sure hope was in the mercy of God.

Within a few months of Alexander’s death, an intrepid Pope Urban IV assumed the Chair of Peter and took in hand the affairs of Church and state. He, too, looked hopefully to the burgeoning orders of religious mendicants. With his approbation, all available Dominican leaders met that year in the picturesque central Italian town of Orvieto.

Built atop a bluff of volcanic stone one thousand feet high, it overlooked miles of cypress-lined Umbrian plains in every direction, an ideal setting in which to contemplate heaven and the immensity of the world in need.

As preacher general, Thomas traveled the two hundred miles from Naples to attend the chapter meeting in that city, and there he was directed by his order to remain. The newly constructed priory of San Domenico in Orvieto required a lector, and the Holy Father wanted a spiritual advisor and theologian-in-residence.

Thomas’ duties as lector there coincided well with his work on the Summa Contra Gentiles. The material treated in his writing was the basis of a complete theological formation, providing ample matter for his lectures.

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