Aquileia; it became a naval station and, probably, the seat of the corrector Venetiarum et Histriae; a mint was established here, the coins of which are very numerous, and the bishop obtained the rank of patriarch. An imperial palace was constructed here, in which the emperors after the time of Diocletian frequently resided; and the city often played a part in the struggles between the rulers of the 4th century. At the end of the century, Ausonius enumerated it as the ninth among the great cities of the world, placing Rome, Mediolanum and Capua before it, and called it “moenibus et portu celeberrima.” In A.D. 452, however, it was destroyed by Attila, though it continued to exist until the Lombard invasion of A.D. 568. After this the patriarchate was transferred to Grado. In 606 the diocese was divided into two parts, and the patriarchate of Aquileia, protected by the Lombards, was revived, that of Grado being protected by the exarch of Ravenna and later by the doges of Venice. In 1027 and 1044 Patriarch Poppo of Aquileia entered and sacked Grado, and, though the pope reconfirmed the patriarch of the latter in his dignities, the town never recovered, though it continued to be the seat of the patriarchate until its formal transference to Venice in 1450. The seat of the patriarchate of Aquileia had been transferred to Udine in 1238, but returned in 1420 when Venice annexed the territory of Udine. It was finally suppressed in 1751, and the sees of Udine and Gorizia (Görz) established in its stead. Its buildings served as stone quarries for centuries, and no edifices of the Roman period remain above ground. Excavations have revealed one street and the north-west angle of the town walls, while the local museum contains over 2000 inscriptions, besides statues and other antiquities. The cathedral, a flat-roofed basilica, was erected by Patriarch Poppo in 1031 on the site of an earlier church, and rebuilt about 1379 in the Gothic style by Patriarch Marquad. The narthex and baptistery belong to an earlier period. Of the palace of the patriarchs only two isolated columns remain standing. The modern village (pop. 2300) is rendered unhealthy by rice-fields.
See T. W. Jackson, Dalmatia, Istria and the Quarnero (Oxford, 1887), iii. 377 seq.; H. Maionica, Aquileia zur Römerzeit (Görz, 1881), Fundkarte von Aquileia (Görz, 1893), “Inschriften in Grado” (Roman inscriptions removed thither from Aquileia) in Jahreshefte des Österr. Arch. Instituts, i. (1898), Beiblatt, 83, 125. (T. As.)
AQUILLIUS, MANIUS, Roman general, consul in 101 B.C. He successfully put down a revolt of the slaves under Athenion in Sicily. After his return, being accused of extortion, he was acquitted on account of his military services, although there was little doubt of his guilt. In 88 he acted as legate against Mithradates the Great, by whom he was defeated and taken prisoner. Mithradates treated him with great cruelty, and is said to have put him to death by pouring molten gold down his throat.
Diodorus Siculus xxxvi. 3; Appian, Mithrid. ii. 17. 21; Vell. Paterculus ii. 18; Cicero, Verres, iii. 54, De Officiis, ii. 14, Tusc. v. 5.
AQUINAS, THOMAS [Thomas of Aquin or Aquino], (c. 1227–1274), scholastic philosopher, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Universalis, was of noble descent, and nearly allied to several of the royal houses of Europe. He was born in 1225 or 1227, at Roccasecca, the castle of his father Landulf, count of Aquino, in the territories of Naples. Having received his elementary education at the monastery of Monte Cassino, he studied for six years at the university of Naples, leaving it in his sixteenth year. While there he probably came under the influence of the Dominicans, who were doing their utmost to enlist within their ranks the ablest young scholars of the age, for in spite of the opposition of his family, which was overcome only by the intervention of Pope Innocent IV., he assumed the habit of St Dominic in his seventeenth year.
His superiors, seeing his great aptitude for theological study, sent him to the Dominican school in Cologne, where Albertus Magnus was lecturing on philosophy and theology. In 1245 Albertus was called to Paris, and there Aquinas followed him, and remained with him for three years, at the end of which he graduated as bachelor of theology. In 1248 he returned to Cologne with Albertus, and was appointed second lecturer and magister studentium. This year may be taken as the beginning of his literary activity and public life. Before he left Paris he had thrown himself with ardour into the controversy raging between the university and the Friar-Preachers respecting the liberty of teaching, resisting both by speeches and pamphlets the authorities of the university; and when the dispute was referred to the pope, the youthful Aquinas was chosen to defend his order, which he did with such success as to overcome the arguments of Guillaume de St Amour, the champion of the university, and one of the most celebrated men of the day. In 1257, along with his friend Bonaventura, he was created doctor of theology, and began to give courses of lectures upon this subject in Paris, and also in Rome and other towns in Italy. From this time onwards his life was one of incessant toil; he was continually engaged in the active service of his order, was frequently travelling upon long and tedious journeys, and was constantly consulted on affairs of state by the reigning pontiff.
In 1263 we find him at the chapter of the Dominican order held in London. In 1268 he was lecturing now in Rome and now in Bologna, all the while engaged in the public business of the church. In 1271 he was again in Paris, lecturing to the students, managing the affairs of the church and consulted by the king, Louis VIII., his kinsman, on affairs of state. In 1272 the commands of the chief of his order and the request of King Charles brought him back to the professor’s chair at Naples. All this time he was preaching every day, writing homilies, disputations, lectures, and finding time to work hard at his great work the Summa Theologiae. Such rewards as the church could bestow had been offered to him. He refused the archbishopric of Naples and the abbacy of Monte Cassino. In January 1274 he was summoned by Pope Gregory X. to attend the council convened at Lyons, to investigate and if possible settle the differences between the Greek and Latin churches. Though suffering from illness, he at once set out on the journey; finding his strength failing on the way, he was carried to the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova, in the diocese of Terracina, where, after a lingering illness of seven weeks, he died on the 7th of March 1274, Dante (Purg. xx. 69) asserts that he was poisoned by order of Charles of Anjou. Villani (ix. 218) quotes the belief, and the Anonimo Fiorentino describes the crime and its motive. But Muratori, reproducing the account given by one of Thomas’s friends, gives no hint of foul play. Aquinas was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII., and in 1567 Pius V. ranked the festival of St Thomas with those of the four great Latin fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory. No theologian save Augustine has had an equal influence on the theological thought and language of the Western Church, a fact which was strongly emphasized by Leo XIII. (q.v.) in his Encyclical of August 4, 1879, which directed the clergy to take the teachings of Aquinas as the basis of their theological position. In 1880 he was declared patron of all Roman Catholic educational establishments. In a monastery at Naples, near the cathedral of St Januarius, is still shown a cell in which he is said to have lived.
The writings of Thomas are of great importance for philosophy as well as for theology, for by nature and education he is the spirit of scholasticism incarnate. The principles on which his system rested were these. He held that there were two sources of knowledge—the mysteries of Christian faith and the truths of human reason. The distinction between these two was made emphatic by Aquinas, who is at pains, especially in his treatise Contra Gentiles, to make it plain that each is a distinct fountain of knowledge, but that revelation is the more important of the two. Revelation is a source of knowledge, rather than the manifestation in the world of a divine life, and its chief characteristic is that it presents men with mysteries, which are to be believed even when they cannot be understood. Revelation is not Scripture alone, for Scripture taken by itself does not correspond exactly with his description; nor is it church tradition alone, for church tradition must so far rest on Scripture. Revelation is a divine source of knowledge, of which Scripture and church tradition are the channels; and he who would rightly
