One of the immediate consequences of the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas in Avignon on 18 July 1323 was a letter by the bishop of Paris, Stephen Bourret, dated 14 February 1325.^{Footnote 1} After pointing out that some had thought that the condemnations issued by his predecessors targeted the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas – referring above all to the condemnations of 1277 by Bishop Stephen Tempier^{Footnote 2} – Bourret acknowledged a request that he remedy ‘the unjust denigration of the reputation and the doctrine of Blessed Thomas, the concealment of the truth, and the dishonour, as it were, of the holy Roman Church’^{Footnote 3} and to respond to the request of the theologians he had delegated, ‘so that we may open up the way of truth, by which in the aforementioned articles, insofar as they may concern the doctrine of Blessed Thomas, we guarantee the honour and reverence due to the holy Roman Church and to the aforementioned saint’.^{Footnote 4} There follows a lengthy reminder of the authority of the Roman Church which has just been exercised in the canonisation of Thomas: ‘the most holy Roman Church, mother and teacher of all the faithful, founded on the utterly solid confession of Peter the vicar of Christ, on which depend, as the universal measure of Catholic truth, the approval and condemnation of doctrines, the dispelling of doubts, the determination of what is to be held and the refutation of errors, [this holy Roman Church therefore] has recently decided to inscribe in the list of holy confessors the above-mentioned venerable and eminent doctor whose light illumines the Church, as the moon is lit by the sun, and by a well conducted debate and a preliminary examination of his life and doctrine she has declared him commendable to the whole world as regards his pure life and sound doctrine’.^{Footnote 5} Then the bishop's decision recalls the various opinions and advice he sought and concludes: ‘I judge by the grace of God that the said blessed confessor never expressed, taught or wrote anything that was definitely contrary to faith or good morals…from the sure knowledge that we have from the present [commissioners and masters of theology]…we totally annul the condemnation of the aforementioned articles and the sentence of excommunication, insofar as they touch or seem to touch the doctrine of the aforementioned Blessed Thomas'.^{Footnote 6} These extracts suffice to illustrate the constant interlinking of sanctity of life and doctrinal soundness, both authenticated by pontifical ecclesial authority – or specifically episcopal authority in the case of this document. On this 7th centenary of the canonisation of Thomas, and in a completely different context from that of the early 14th century, this double polarity of sanctity of life and doctrinal orthodoxy appears to be relevant as ever. We propose to verify this by looking at how, in the course of the last century, though the doctrinal authority of Thomas Aquinas no longer needed defending, two areas of research – namely on the canonisation of Thomas on the one hand and on the corpus of his works, in particular the question of their authenticity, on the other – have continued to challenge and respond to each other.

In 1923, the 6th centenary took place in a very fertile context for Thomistic thought. The movement launched in the second half of the 19th century by various researchers, theologians and philosophers, and given impulse at the highest level by Pope Leo XIII, bore much fruit in the 1920s. Whether in journals, monographs or edited volumes, that centenary gave rise to numerous publications, often very substantial in terms of both quantity and quality.^{Footnote 7} One of those contributions took a close look at the documentary evidence from the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas, starting as it were at the apex of his official cult. The reason for this was the discovery by Marie-Thérèse Porte in Toulouse, in the holdings of the Archives départementales de la Haute-Garonne, of the original bull of canonisation.^{Footnote 8} Angelus Walz published an edition accompanied by a diplomatic reproduction in the highly official Analecta ordinis praedicatorum.^{Footnote 9} To our knowledge, this is the only scholarly publication of a document concerning the canonisation of St Thomas in the period around 1923. One would be astonished at this, if this publication were not part of a publishing project that had somewhat ground to a halt at this time, concerning documents relating to the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas.

Indeed, a good dozen years earlier, Thomistic research had experienced a major turning point in 1910 with the publication by Pierre Mandonnet of Des écrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin.^{Footnote 10} Mandonnet, then a professor in Fribourg (Switzerland), renewed the approach to the question of the authenticity of the works of Thomas Aquinas, not simply through internal criticism, drawing on elements such as style and doctrine, but also through external criticism, using the ancient lists of the writings of Saint Thomas. Among these, the one delivered by Bartholomew of Capua during his deposition at the process in Naples in 1319 seems particularly significant. The process in Naples involved ecclesiastics, scholars, and members of the Angevin administration, the most important of whom was Bartholomew of Capua, who bore the ancient title of logothete and was, after the princes, the most important person in the Angevin kingdom of Naples. His deposition, the longest of all those given at the Naples process, emblematically includes a list of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, which Mandonnet describes as an ‘official catalogue’.^{Footnote 11} It was indeed included in the legal act of the canonisation process and was issued by the most important figure in the Kingdom of Naples, who was also one of the key players in the process. The authoritativeness of this list has since been re-evaluated, but Mandonnet gave weight to this hagiographic and legal document and included it in his reflections on the authenticity of Thomas's works, and hence in his research on Thomas's doctrine: in this way, he valued this type of literature, which was a priori outside the immediate field of Thomist doctrinal studies, and thus gave it new weight.

At that time, the canonisation processes of Naples in 1319 and Fossanova in 1321, although known from the two manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, had not been published or made widely available.^{Footnote 12} At the same time as Mandonnet's Des Écrits authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin was being published, another project was taking shape, still under the direction of the Revue thomiste, and would begin publication in 1911: the Fontes vitae sancti Thomae entrusted to Dominique Prümmer, a professor at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) like Mandonnet. The Fontes as a whole had a continuous pagination (677 pp. in total), but were published in short sections in the Revue thomiste, and again in fascicules when each textual unity was completed. Thus the first issues of the Vita S. Thomae by Peter Calo appeared in 1911 and were collected in fascicules in 1912. The project began with the three lives of Thomas in the following order: those of Peter Calo, William of Tocco and Bernard Gui. At the time of the centenary in 1923, publication had been halted since 1914, but would be resumed at the end of 1924 with the completion of the life by William of Tocco, which was published in fascicule form in 1925, and that by Bernard Gui in 1927, then in fascicule form in 1928. After Prümmer's death, the project was taken over by M.-H. Laurent, who published the two processes from 1932 to 1936, which appeared in fascicules in 1935 and 1937, plus a fascicule of historical documents also in 1937. This was the first time that the two processes had been published together, since Laurent not only published the entire Naples process, but also the editio princeps of the Fossanova process.^{Footnote 13} This work of the Fontes historiae sancti Thomae remains to this day the only work of its kind, and despite its obvious limitations it is still a helpful resource.^{Footnote 14}

At the same time as the Fontes were being published, a discovery was made that called into question the priority given to Bartholomew of Capua's list. In 1931, setting aside the prestige of Thomas's canonisation process and the court of Naples, Martin Grabmann published two lists of Thomas's writings discovered in the library of the Metropolitan Chapter of Prague, one in a manuscript of English origin and the other in an Italian manuscript.^{Footnote 15} The Italian list is incomplete and might seem to be a list in progress, were it not blighted by a certain disorderliness and the presence of apocrypha.^{Footnote 16} The English list includes only authentic and carefully ordered works: it strikes the researcher by its authenticity and authority. This list is copied from the flyleaves of a Commentary on the First Book of the Sentences of Thomas Aquinas, flyleaves on which a determinatio by Robert Winchelsey on the divine relations is also copied by the same hand. Robert was present in Paris in 1267 and became an enthusiastic hearer of Thomas's lectures in his second Parisian teaching period. He also twice disputed a series of questions on the Trinity at Oxford, where he was Chancellor of the University in 1288, and then at St Paul's in London, where he taught between 1289 and 1293 before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury (15 February 1293).^{Footnote 17} The totally uncontaminated and careful presentation of this list, as well as its Parisian roots via this master who was a disciple of Thomas, make it a very reliable witness to the earliest Thomism in Paris.

With Grabmann's edition of the English list from Prague, research into the authentic writings plunges us into the academic milieu of Paris and thus as close as possible to some of Thomas's output, his aura and influence. When Hugues-Vincent Shooner took up the issue again with his doctoral thesis, defended in 1974, on the Listes anciennes des écrits de Thomas d'Aquin [Ancient lists of the writings of Thomas Aquinas], he distinguished four groups of lists: one group of tax lists, which occupy a place between the production of Thomas's works and their distribution by exemplar and pecia, under the economic control of the University of Paris (charging for the rental of peciae); two groups, which come from lists either of the Prague and Bartholomew of Capua types, or from the studium in Cologne; and finally a last group, which is that of Thomas's biographers.^{Footnote 18} Into the academic research on the authenticity of Thomas's works, Shooner thus reintegrates the hagiographic literature directly linked to the canonisation of 1323 with Guillaume de Tocco and Bernard Gui, but also the Historia ecclesiastica nova by Ptolemy of Lucca composed around 1315, which is not only the first biographical text of some length on Thomas Aquinas, but also provides a list of his writings, as if to speak of Thomas one must also take into account his works. One benefit of this thesis is that it shows how far the question of the lists of the works of Thomas cuts across the whole field, from the rental rates of the items in the tax lists for copying the works of Thomas to the text of William of Tocco propagating the portrait of a scholar and saint.^{Footnote 19}

Shooner edited the sections of the texts that included the lists relevant to his research, but he also explored their manuscript tradition, such as William of Tocco's Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino at the heart of Thomas's canonisation process. Following this, Claire le Brun-Gouanvic published the first critical edition of the entire Ystoria.^{Footnote 20} This text is the counterpart to the two processes at Naples and Fossanova, with which it constitutes the full dossier that was sent to Avignon. The Ystoria includes not only a biography which unfolds in the style of a treatise super virtutibus, but also a collection of miracle stories. The whole work draws both on the processes and on the personal research by William de Tocco. One of the rich fruits of her publication is that Claire le Brun-Gouanvic enables us to grasp the reasons why a double process was held.

Already in 1981, André Vauchez had clearly noticed that the canonisation of Thomas came at a time when there was a shift in how holiness was investigated, away from miracles and towards the virtues of the candidate. And he also noted that while this procedure enjoyed powerful ecclesiastical and political support and that it would be swift and ultimately successful, paradoxically the canonisation process of Thomas Aquinas was one of the few in this period in which further investigation was requested.^{Footnote 21} The critical edition of the Ystoria has made it possible to clarify the sequence of the investigation, and of the launch of the Fossanova process in particular. Tocco, accompanied by the bishop of Viterbo, had visited Fossanova in 1319 and had collected, in an informal way and without authorisation, a number of miracle stories at this site of Thomas's burial. There followed the Naples investigation from 21 July to 18 September 1319. By February 1320, the full Thomas dossier was in Avignon. It should be noted that during this year of 1320, the Order of Preachers paid close attention to this process and that year's General Chapter in Rouen made provision for its funding.^{Footnote 22} Apparently there was a pause in the process in that same year of 1320. The miracle stories edited by Claire le Brun-Gouanvic reveal that Tocco, at the end of 1320 or the beginning of 1321, personally undertook a new attempt in Avignon and presented the curia with the miracle stories he had collected during his visit to Fossanova in 1319.^{Footnote 23} Yet the Pope, presumably judging this collection to be insufficient, gave his authorisation for a formal investigation onsite in Fossanova. This took place from 10 to 26 November 1321 at the Cistercian abbey and consisted mainly of a long series of miracles which, it must be admitted, abstracting from the names of places and people, could apply to stories from around the tomb of any miracle-working saint. This turning point in 1320/1321 appears to be particularly significant for the ongoing process of canonising Thomas Aquinas.^{Footnote 24} On the one hand, all those involved have a very strong interest in pursuing the process, but the delay between February 1320 and November 1321 might seem surprising unless we bear in mind the shift in how sanctity, as epitomised by canonisation, was represented: no longer that of a scholar turned bishop like Saint Thomas de Cantilupe, canonised precisely in this year 1320, but that of a ‘pure intellectual’, a doctor like Thomas Aquinas.^{Footnote 25} In terms of form, however, the witness accounts in the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas suggest that it unfolded in a similar way to that of this other Saint Thomas.^{Footnote 26}

Even this limited documentary research on Thomas in the century that has elapsed since 1923 shows that the tension between sanctity of life and concerns of an intellectual and doctrinal nature remains as fruitful today as it was in the past. The search for objective bases for the authenticity of Thomas Aquinas' writings has led us to revisit the way in which his sanctity was established and regulated by the ecclesiastical authorities, who, like many scholars and researchers, took into account the teaching of this holy doctor. This dual polarity of sanctity of life and doctrinal issues, as well as what was at stake in the representation of sanctity, added impetus to the process in one of its critical phases. At the end of this piece, as if echoing what has just been said, we are perhaps reminded of that adage often repeated and expressed in various forms, playing on the assonance and parallelism of construction between miracula and articula, linking the sanctity of life and the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, but also highlighting this new type of sanctity.^{Footnote 27} The phrase as such is not found in the two accounts of the canonisation.^{Footnote 28} Only the anonymous account of the canonisation speaks of miracles at the end of the pontifical preaching on 14 (or 16) July 1323 and ends the summary of the sermon with: ‘In the same way, no fewer than three hundred miracles have been attributed to him’. A compilation of documents concerning the Dominican convent of Toulouse and Saint Thomas Aquinas by Jean-Jacques Percin published in 1693 adds: ‘and he had done as many miracles as he had written articles’.^{Footnote 29} But the compilation is careful to add this final phrase in italics, to indicate either that it is a phrase from John XXII himself or that it is an addition taken from elsewhere.^{Footnote 30} This formulation is found in a text of Jean Gerson independently of its mention in the pope's sermon, but it is attributed to the pope. This short work was written in defence of the Carthusian Order, which, in the eyes of its detractors, produced too few miracles.^{Footnote 31} Gerson contrasts this with the glory of confessors which does not consist in their miracles, sometimes extremely rare if truth be told, but in their teachings which are like so many wonders. This is true of the great Latin doctors he cites as examples: Augustine, Gregory, Jerome and others. And he adds: ‘Moreover, when some people objected to the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas on the grounds that he had not performed any miracles during his life, or not many, the Pope said that this should not be taken into account and added that he had performed as many miracles as he had resolved questions’.^{Footnote 32} Two comments are necessary: firstly, this text must be dated earlier than 1415 and was written in Paris;^{Footnote 33} secondly, Gerson's way of presenting this anecdote, linking pontifical authority with the doctrinal prestige of Thomas Aquinas in a felicitous expression, operates in the manner of an exemplum. Gerson's latest editor, Palémon Glorieux, points out that this short work could very well be ‘an extract from an ordinary lecture by Gerson in which, following a method he favoured, he would have allowed himself this digression in praise, and defence, of the Carthusian monks’.^{Footnote 34} If it is indeed from a lecture, this exemplum, which is condensed into a well-made formula using the ‘tot …quot’ echo, presupposes that it is already known to some extent by his student audience. It is reasonable to think that the phrase was known and had been transmitted whether orally or in some writings, over the period running from 1323 to 1415, such that it retained its relevance in the ears of students to whom its terms were familiar (the pope, the canonisation, the study of Thomas Aquinas and his sanctity), if the anecdote itself was not also known to them. Although the expression cannot be drawn directly from an utterance of John XXII at Thomas's canonisation, at least it expresses clearly the novelty signified by his elevation to the altars, as well as the constant interlinking of his holy life and sound doctrine that happened not only at the end of the Middle Ages, but also as soon as research began on that event itself and on the corpus of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, saint and doctor, doctor and saint.^{Footnote 35}