Sanctifying Truth

15 Wisdom and Wisdom’s Fruits newly founded Friars Preachers or Dominicans. Since Thomas’s death almost a century before, on 7 March 1274, his body had been in the possession of the Cistercian monks of Fossanova, the Italian abbey where Thomas died while journeying north from Naples toward Lyons to serve as a peritus at the fourteenth ecumenical council, known as Second Lyons. Liturgical feasts of course celebrate more than past events. We venerate the saints because they are alive today inChrist. In the case ofThomas Aquinas, the Church venerates him as her Common Doctor. Many official texts confirm this title, but the Code of Canon Law , paragraph 252, suffices to establish Aquinas’s preeminent place among the Doctors of the Christian Church. The Code invokes his name in the ablative absolute, sancto Thoma praesertim magistro , when it ordains that students learn about the mysteries of salvation—Saint Thomas, especial- ly, being the magister , the master. 1 In other words, Saint Thomas enjoys primacy of place as a guide to the study of theology. Oftentimes we find the image of Saint Thomas placed among those of the ancient Fathers of the Church, those Doctors of the Church from both East and West whom the Church recognizes as the carriers of the apostolic tradition: Saints Ambrose,