Thomas Aquinas
13th-century Dominican theologian and the principal liturgical poet of Corpus Christi.
Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Italian Dominican friar, theologian, and philosopher whose synthesis of Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle is one of the most influential intellectual achievements in Western history. His Summa Theologica, written between 1265 and 1274, is the foundational systematic theology of the Latin Catholic tradition and a touchstone of Western philosophy. Aquinas was canonized in 1323, declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567, and named the Common Doctor (Doctor Communis) of the Catholic Church. Beyond his theology, Aquinas was one of the great liturgical poets of medieval Christianity. In 1264, Pope Urban IV commissioned him to compose the liturgical office for the new feast of Corpus Christi, and he produced four Eucharistic hymns (the Pange Lingua, Sacris Solemniis, Verbum Supernum, and Adoro Te Devote) and a sequence (the Lauda Sion) that together constitute one of the great achievements of Latin religious poetry. The Pange Lingua and its excerpt the Tantum Ergo, the Verbum Supernum and its excerpt the O Salutaris Hostia, and the Adoro Te Devote remain in continuous use in Catholic worship today, more than seven hundred and fifty years after Aquinas wrote them.