St Simeon the New Theologian, telling the story of a young man called George writes: “For love for what he sought separated him from the world, and creaturely things and all affairs, and made him entirely of the Spirit and light. Yet all the while he lived in the middle of a city and was responsible for a house and occupied with slaves and free men, doing and achieving all the things that pertain to the present life.”

With only a little modification, this description applies equally well to Aquinas, at least if we accept the accounts of him handed down to us by his early biographers. Given to rapture and religious ecstasy, supposedly “bound with a bond of chastity that shall never be loosened” (Gui, Chapter 7) he spent his active life in an entirely urban context as writer, teacher, administrator and advisor. He wined and dined with kings; he had the ear of the papacy and highest nobility as well as the offer of the loftiest ecclesiastical preferment. The Lives of the Brethren says that : “One day somebody asked Master Jordan ‘What Rule do you follow’? He replied, ‘The Rule of the Friars Preachers. And this is their Rule: to live an upright life, to learn and to teach’.” We need to see Aquinas as a man whose rule shows itself in his life and its handling of study and teaching. In this respect, although he doubtless represents ideals common to more than one religious order, common to many Christians indeed, Aquinas is typically Dominican. The Prologue to the Primitive Constitutions observes that: “Our Order was established particularly for the sake of preaching and the salvation of souls, and that our whole study should be principally and earnestly devdted to our being useful to the souls of others.