Thomas Aquinas was so large and quiet that his classmates called him the Dumb Ox. His teacher Albert the Great replied that the bellowing of this ox would be heard throughout the world — and he was right. Aquinas produced the most comprehensive synthesis of faith and reason in Western intellectual history, mapping everything from the existence of God to the ethics of just war in a system so thorough that the Catholic Church still treats it as its official philosophy.

This episode traces Aquinas from his aristocratic Italian family through his defiance of their plans for his career, his years studying under Albert the Great, and the Summa Theologica that attempted to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology.

• Aquinas’s aristocratic family and their attempt to prevent him from joining the Dominican order
• The “Dumb Ox” nickname and his years studying under Albert the Great in Cologne
• The Summa Theologica — the most ambitious intellectual project of the medieval world
• The Five Ways, the Just War theory, and why Aquinas still dominates Catholic philosophy