His story
His noble family locked him up at home to stop him becoming a Dominican friar, but he joined the friars all the same. At Cologne his fellow students took his silence for slowness, but his teacher Albert the Great said, “We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.” He became the great teacher of Paris and wrote the Summa Theologiae, which was still unfinished when he died in 1274.
His feast days
28 January: His feast in the Catholic Church.
7 March: The day he died, his feast until 1969, in the Catholic Church.
The General Roman Calendar since 1969; The Roman Martyrology, 1916, 7 March
Why people ask St Thomas Aquinas
Students and exams
Pope Leo XIII made him the patron of Catholic universities, colleges and schools in 1880.
Where it comes from
Who wrote it
Credited to St Thomas, though no one knows for sure that he wrote it. The oldest list of his works that names it dates from about 1413, 139 years after his death, and Pope Leo XIII granted an indulgence for it as his prayer in 1880.
In Latin
Creator ineffabilis, qui de thesauris sapientiæ tuætres angelorum hierarchias designastiet eas super cælum empyreum miro ordine collocasti,atque universi partes elegantissime disposuisti.
Tu inquam, qui verus fons luminis et sapientiæ dicerisac supereminens principium,infundere digneris super intellectus mei tenebrastuæ radium claritatis,duplices, in quibus natus sum, a me removens tenebras,peccatum scilicet et ignorantiam.
Tu, qui linguas infantium facis disertas,linguam meam erudias,atque in labiis meis gratiam tuæ benedictionis infunde.
Da mihi intelligendi acumen, retinendi capacitatem,addiscendi modum et facultatem, interpretandi subtilitatem,loquendi gratiam copiosam;
ingressum instruas, progressum dirigas, egressum compleas,tu, qui es verus Deus et homo.Qui vivis et regnas in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
From The Raccolta (London, 1910 edition), no. 52, pp. 47-48, the text Pope Leo XIII indulgenced in 1880.
