Intellectual Powers of the Middle Ages – James Walsh
St. Albert the great, Roger Bacon, St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas, form among themselves, so to speak, a complete representation of all the intellectual powers: they are the four doctors who uphold the chair of philosophy in the temple of the Middle Ages. They were not exempt from the ignorances and erroneous opinions of their day, yet they did much to overcome them and succeeded better than is usually acknowledged in introducing the era of modern thought. They realised in its plenitude the practical wisdom so often dreamed of by the ancients – the abstinence of the disciples of pythagoras, the constancy of the Stoics, together with humility and charity, virtues unknown to the antique world. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas left the castles of their noble ancestors to seek obscurity in the cloisters of St. Dominic; the former abdicated, and the later declined, the honors of the church. It was with the cord of St. Francis that Roger Bacon and St. Bonaventure girded their loins; when the last named( St Bonaventure) was sought that the Roman Purple might be placed on his shoulders, he begged the envoys to wait until he finished washing the dishes of the convent. After having broken the bread of the word, they were seen distributing the bread of alms. The poor knew the and blessed their names.
All Ye Doctors and Saints of God, Pray for Us.
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