Ever since St. Thomas completed his Sentence-Commentary in 1252 Thomism has enjoyed a unique place in catholic philosophy and theology, ultimately coming to dominate it. Yet although St. Thomas's contribution to Thomism was essential, at least part of the reason for its success was due to a series of gifted and sometimes brilliant commentators and interpreters of Thomism who defended and extended its influence and range. Indeed, so successful were these commentators that in the period between the Leonine revival of Thomism signalled by Aeterni patris (1879) and the beginning of Vatican II (1962) it became quite common in the Church to discuss theological and philosophical topics in terms of St. Thomas's great commentators and to adduce support for one's view by favouring one or other of them. It is to this Thomist intellectual tradition that Romanus Cessario OP and Cajetan Cuddy OP turn in their book Thomas and the Thomists. They offer an introduction to Thomism that charts its development from its beginnings with St. Thomas to its pinnacle in the pre-conciliar Church and beyond that to its current state today.
The book is divided into two parts both of which proceed in historical succession. The first part consists of three chapters that focus on St. Thomas's life and work. Chapter one examines Thomas's intellectual formation and his first term as a Master of Theology in Paris. Chapter two continues the story focusing on the period from St. Thomas's departure from Paris in 1259 up to and including his second term as Master there in 1272. The third chapter discusses the final years of St. Thomas's life and outlines the initial critical reaction to his work.
The second and larger part of the book consists of seven chapters focusing on the Thomists who came after St. Thomas, as well as their contribution to the defence, dissemination, and extension of Thomism. In the first of these chapters, chapter four, the Yorkshireman William Hothum (d. 1298), a Dominican and Archbishop of Dublin, who had served for two separate periods as the English Dominican Prior Provincial, emerges as an interesting and important early figure in the defence of Thomism. Holding fast to St. Thomas's thesis of the unicity of substantial form, Hothum provided high-level ecclesiastical support to those Dominicans such as Richard Knapwell (d.c. 1288) who had opposed the Franciscan attack on Thomism led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, as well as Peckham's successor in his Parisian chair, William de la Mare.
Chapter five identifies the role of Catherine of Siena in the spread of Thomism and provides context for the dissemination of Thomism by commenting on the rise of Scotism in Paris. Its main focus, though, is a discussion of John Capreolus (1380–1444), a son of the Province of Toulouse who became the first of the great Thomist commentators. His magisterial work Defensiones theologiæ Divi Thomæ Aquinatis exerted an extraordinary influence on Thomists, perhaps only second to that of St. Thomas himself. Chapter six focuses on Peter Crockaert's attempt to replace The Sentences of Peter Lombard as the principal theological text book in Paris with St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae. It also discusses the second of St. Thomas's great commentators, Tommaso de Vio Gaetani (Cajetan) (1469–1534). Cajetan's remarkable work Commentaria in Summam Theologiae S. Thomae Aquinatis would prove possibly even more influential on Thomists than Capreolus's work had. Indeed Cajetan's commentary would go on to be reprinted in the Leonine edition of the Summa Theologiae. The chapter also draws attention to Silvester of Ferrara's (1474–1528) commentary on the Summa contra Gentiles, which similarly would go on to be reprinted in Leonine edition of the Summa contra Gentiles.
Chapter seven discusses the development of the Jesuit Thomism of Suarez and Molina. It focuses on its difference from Dominican Thomism and outlines the clash between Molina and Banez on grace and freedom. The chapter also considers the third of the great Thomist commentators John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas) (1589–1644) whose Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus and Cursus theologici in Summam theologicam D. Thomæ would become almost as influential in the Thomist tradition as Capreolus's and Cajetan's works had. Chapter eight considers the Thomist response to modernity. It devotes particular attention to the work of Charles René Billuart OP (1685–1757) and it points out how important the institutional support of the Dominican Order was to the success of Thomism in this period. Chapter nine discusses the extraordinary impact on the Church of the Leonine revival of Thomism and chapter ten focuses on post-Vatican II developments up to the present day. In particular it draws on the work of the Dominican Cardinal Georges Cottier to identify some of the perennial features of Thomism: confidence in reason, courage of the truth, the truth of things, and wisdom.
Overall what emerges from the book is an intellectual tradition of extraordinary vitality, confidence, and insight. This tradition has had a profound impact on the Church and is still relevant and active today, and Cessario and Cuddy's book offers a useful point of entry into that tradition.
