The Friar and the Cipher by Lawrence Goldstone Page B

Naples had been created by imperial fiat for the express purpose of finding talented boys and training them to be civil servants. In those days, this meant the study of law. Frederick even appointed his own chief judge as a professor and paid other qualified legal professionals to teach. It was the only school in Europe funded not by the students but by the state.
    The arts program in which Thomas enrolled was therefore heavily weighted to law, which became his first discipline, just as math and science had been Bacon's. Because this was Frederick's school, however, it also taught the
libri naturales
and the related Arabic commentaries—Michael Scot's translations were available in Naples years before they came to Paris—and Aquinas studied these as well. But he would always come at natural philosophy from a lawyer's point of view, and it does not appear that he had much if any mathematical training. In 1241, midway through Thomas's stay in Naples, Gregory IX died just as Frederick's armies were closing in on Rome.
    Thomas stayed at the University of Naples until 1244, long enough to incept as a master of arts, although he never actually earned his degree. Instead, like Albertus Magnus twenty years before him, he fell under the spell of the Friars Preachers.
    A deeply religious man, Aquinas had never given up the notion of going into the Church, but the Benedictine order was not what he was looking for. Although the studious side appealed to him, it was too removed from participation in Church and social policy. Years later, he would write in his
Summa Theologica
, “the highest place among religious orders is held by those which are ordained to teaching and preaching, which functions belong to and participate in the perfection of bishops.” “Teaching and preaching”—that was certainly the Dominicans. They had been in Naples since 1227, no doubt lured by the presence of the university. In 1231 they were given a church and priory, and it was here, in 1244, that the nineteen-year-old Thomas entered the order.
    The Dominicans were naturally pleased with this new aristocratic recruit, but having an Aquino around the priory was a mixed blessing. The Friars Preachers were by now known to be the pope's men and thus only barely tolerated by Frederick. The order had already had one irate noble Italian family aligned with the emperor break in and take back a son who had pledged to become a Dominican novitiate.
    The friars decided that the best course of action would be to get Thomas out of town, so they assigned him to the University of Paris. The master general of the order himself, John of Wildeshausen, the man who had sent Albertus Magnus to Paris to take the Dominican chair at the university, undertook to escort Thomas to France. Naturally, they walked.
    It is here that great events of state collided with a small family drama to produce a saint.
     
    AFTER GREGORY DIED IN 1241, the civil authorities in Rome understood the urgent need for a papal successor. To ensure the prompt participation of the cardinal-electors, they had them rounded up by soldiers and harried through the streets to the meeting place, one older cardinal apparently dragged by his hair.
    The election was headquartered in a ruin of a building, and all ten cardinals were herded into a small suite of rooms and locked in. The soldiers were lodged in the rooms directly upstairs. The structure was so decayed that the floors were rotting, which was convenient for the soldiers, since they could use the holes in the floor as toilets. This made the cardinals' bedroom in effect the soldiers' bathroom. Add to these foul conditions the sweltering heat of August, and it should come as no surprise that all ten cardinals fell ill and three died.
    Despite what must have been a strong incentive toward a swift choice, it took two months to pick Gregory's successor. Finally the remaining cardinals chose one of their own, but his rule lasted exactly seventeen days before he