ABSTRACT
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is perhaps the archetype of medieval monks who quietly toiled away at their books by candlelight. But his career would have taken a very different turn if his family had gotten their way. They were a noble family from Aquino, Italy and had planned a respectable career for Thomas as the abbot of Monte Cassino monastery (the one founded by Benedict, see Chapter 12). Thomas had no taste, however, for what would have been a more formal and bureaucratic post in the hierarchy of the church, and instead wanted nothing but a life of study as a friar in the relatively new order of Dominicans. These were not the most respectable monks in the eyes of the gentry, as they depended on begging for their existence. So after declaring his intentions and leaving for Rome, his family kidnapped him and imprisoned him in a castle tower where he was kept for two years as they tried to persuade him to give up this crazy notion.
