St Thomas and the Meretrix April 12, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
This is one of the great scenes from Catholic hagiography. St Thomas of Aquinas has just been kidnapped by his own family and locked up in a room with a naked woman. OK, yes, yes, we can backpedal a moment…. Thomas was born to a noble Campanian clan and as a younger son, the youngest in fact, was sent to become a monk at famous Monte Cassino. However, aged nineteen, something went wrong and Thomas fell in with some bad-uns, namely the Dominicans, a group of happy clappy, witch-burning maniacs that had just been founded. Hearing that Thomas was heading up to Rome to join the new order: the family intervened. Their tactic was a double one: first they would send armed men to save Thomas from himself: he would be extricated by force from the Dominican brothers riding north. Then, they would – and here their tactics perhaps left something to be desired… – shut Thomas in a room with a harlot. Thomas would, of course, succumb to the magnificent woman sent to seduce him and he would return to earth with a bang. He would then, after this carnal experience, recognize that the Dominicans would not give him easy access to naked women and return to his monastery, Monte Cassino, where such women were clearly available on tap. Yes, the logic is a little tortuous isn’t it… But Thomas’ family seemed to lack his admirable clarity of thought. In any case, the first part of the strategy worked because it involved force and Italian noble families were very good at force in the Middle Ages. The second part went rather less well. Thomas, who was your classic asexual cold thinker, lost his normally remarkable cool, picked up a log and chased the poor seductress from the room with it: it may have been his only violent act; in fact, knowing Thomas it may have been the only time he ever raised his voice. Thomas then returned to the room where angels succored him and gave him a g-cord of virtue (we are going to pass rapidly over this). The picture above is Velazquez (allegedly, some disagreement) and in it Thomas is enjoying the company of the angels. Note that for the first ten minutes dense Beach thought that the person to Thomas’ left was the harlot trying her wicked ways and that the angel standing above was Thomas’ better counsel: that Thomas had dropped the log and was wondering whether this Dominican lark was really worth the trouble. But, no, the person to Thomas’ left is also an angel. The harlot, poor thing, is running out of the room at the back. Beach has never felt so sorry for a harlot – she seems to slip into the same category as Doubting Thomas on the road, or Judas getting the noose ready…
Anything else on Thomas’ encounter with ‘woman’: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
