A man stopped St. Thomas's sermon to read an attack

ANAGNI, October 5, 1256 AD — On Palm Sunday in 1256 AD, Saint Thomas Aquinas was preaching in the church of Saint-Jacques in Paris. A university officer, Guillot, walked in and stopped the sermon. Guillot read out a letter from teachers at the University of Paris. It attacked the friars, and St. Thomas most of all. St. Thomas said nothing while Guillot read. Then he went on with his sermon.

St. Thomas was a Dominican friar who taught theology at the University of Paris. He was thirty-one. The university’s other teachers didn’t belong to any religious order. They wanted the Dominicans and the Franciscans out of its teaching posts. They could also refuse the friars their degree, the doctorate, and they had been keeping it from St. Thomas. The friars wanted to go on teaching and to take their degrees. The decision was the Pope’s.

One of the teachers who wrote the letter was William of Saint-Amour. He said the friars had no right to teaching posts at all. Some friars lived by begging and did no work with their hands. William and his followers taught that those friars could not get to heaven by studying alone. William put his case in a book, The Perils of the Last Times.

The friars were afraid

Messengers from the King of France, Saint Louis IX, carried William’s book to Pope Alexander IV at Anagni. The Pope chose four cardinals to examine it. He also asked the head of the Dominicans, Humbert of Romans, to have the order’s experts in theology study it. The Pope said he wanted St. Thomas among them. Humbert called St. Thomas from Paris to answer the book.

At Anagni, Humbert handed St. Thomas the book at a meeting of the friars. The friars cried. They were afraid their order could not stand up to such powerful enemies. St. Thomas took the book and asked them to pray for him. When he had read it, St. Thomas told the friars: “Have no fear, my brethren, for I have examined it, and find it to be captious, perfidious, and erroneous.” He wrote his answer quickly.

In Anagni Cathedral, the friars’ defenders read their answers to the book in front of the Pope. St. Thomas read his for the Dominicans. So did his old teacher, Saint Albert the Great. Saint Bonaventure read for the Franciscans. His degree at Paris had been held up too.

A book in the fire

The four cardinals reported that the book attacked the power of the Pope, the bishops and the friars who beg for God’s sake. They said it was turning people away from giving alms and from joining religious orders. Pope Alexander IV accepted St. Thomas’s answer. He said it was true to the Catholic faith.

On October 5, 1256 AD, the Pope condemned William’s book for ever. His judgment was read out aloud in the cathedral. Then William’s book was burnt while the Pope watched. Anyone who owned a copy had eight days to burn it or be excommunicated.

The Pope also ordered that the friars be allowed to take the doctorate. It was the degree the Paris teachers had been keeping from St. Thomas.

The men the university had sent to argue its side complained about the burning. They kept asking for the judgment to be taken back. Instead, they had to sign it.

On October 23, two teachers who had been on William’s side came to the Pope’s palace at Anagni. In front of everyone, they gave up their fight against the friars. They swore to preach that friars who give their lives to preaching and study may live on alms. Those friars did not have to work with their hands. The two teachers also swore to welcome the Dominicans and the Franciscans into the university. They named two friars: St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.