Thomas Aquinas, who has likewise been brought under the imputation of
magic, was one of the profoundest scholars and subtlest logicians of
his day. He also furnishes a remarkable instance of the ascendant
which the friars at that time obtained over the minds of ingenuous
young men smitten with the thirst of knowledge. He was a youth of
illustrious birth, and received the rudiments of his education under
the monks of Monte Cassino, and in the university of Naples. But, not
contented with these advantages, he secretly entered himself into the
society of Preaching Friars, or Dominicans, at seventeen years of age.
His mother, being indignant that he should thus take the vow of
poverty, and sequester himself from the world for life, employed every
means in her power to induce him to alter his purpose, but in vain.
The friars, to deliver him from her importunities, removed him from
Naples to Terracina, from Terracina to Anagnia, and from Anagnia to
Rome. His mother followed him in all these changes of residence, but
was not permitted so much as to see him. At length she spirited up his
two elder brothers to seize him by force. They waylaid him in his road
to Paris, whither he was sent to complete his course of instruction,
and carried him off to the castle of Aquino where he had been born.
Here he was confined for two years; but he found a way to correspond
with the superiors of his order, and finally escaped from a window in
the castle. St. Thomas Aquinas (for he was canonised after his death)
exceeded perhaps all men that ever existed in the severity and
strictness of his metaphysical disquisitions, and thus acquired the
name of the Seraphic Doctor.
It was to be expected that a man, who thus immersed himself in the
depths of thought, should be an inexorable enemy to noise and
interruption. We have seen that he dashed to pieces the artificial man
of brass, that Albertus Magnus, who was his tutor, had spent thirty
years in bringing to perfection, being impelled to this violence by
its perpetual and unceasing garrulity. [173] It is further said, that
his study being placed in a great thoroughfare, where the grooms were
all day long exercising their horses, he found it necessary to apply a
remedy to this nuisance. He made by the laws of magic a small horse of
brass, which he buried two or three feet under ground in the midst of
this highway; and, having done so, no horse would any longer pass
along the road. It was in vain that the grooms with whip and spur
sought to conquer their repugnance. They were finally compelled to
give up the attempt, and to choose another place for their daily
exercise. [174]
It has further been sought to fix the imputation of magic upon Thomas
Aquinas by imputing to him certain books written on that science; but
these are now acknowledged to be spurious. [175]