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 1 ...