A wealthy 13th-century Italian nobleman rejects a guaranteed path to power, is kidnapped and imprisoned by his own brothers for a year, chases away a hired temptress with a burning log, and escapes through a window with his mother’s help. That rebellious teenager was Thomas Aquinas. This deep dive follows his journey from the Abbey of Monte Cassino to the University of Naples, where he encountered Aristotle and the mendicant Dominicans, and on to Paris, where classmates dismissed him as the dumb ox.

We explore his friendship and rivalry with Bonaventure, his radical claim that faith and reason grow together, the structure of the Summa Theologiae, and how he navigated the crisis of Averroism by insisting that truth cannot contradict truth. We also examine the five ways and the argument for a prime mover, the mystical experience of December 1273 that led him to call his writings straw, and his lasting influence on natural law, the principle of double effect, modern medical ethics, and even James Joyce.

• How a strategic family plan for a powerful abbot became a rebellion for poverty
• Albertus Magnus and the prophecy that the dumb ox would bellow across the world
• The Summa’s method of stating opponents’ arguments before dismantling them
• The prime mover argument and why grace perfects nature rather than destroying it
• Natural law, double effect, and why Aquinas still shapes secular ethics today