The cranium of St Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian whose work still influences Catholic thinking, has been moved to the Dominican convent of Toulouse for the start of three years of celebrations for milestones in the biography of the Doctor of the Church.
The convent in Toulouse in southwestern France, where the Dominican order was founded in 1215, received the half-skull on 27 January in a new gold-plated reliquary from the nearby Church of the Jacobins.
The 700th anniversary of his canonisation on 18 July 1323 is only the first of three the Order of Preachers will celebrate.
In 2024 comes the 750th anniversary of the saint’s death in 1274 and the 800th anniversary of his birth in 1225 will be marked the following year.
During that time, the relic will also be taken on tour to Dominican convents and monasteries around Europe.
“We were happy to see a brother again after seven centuries,” said Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès, a French Dominican and retired Vatican librarian who attended the Mass at the start of the ceremonies, on local television.
“He came back to us.”
It was a moving experience for the Dominicans to welcome the cranium of one of Catholicism’s leading thinkers.
“St Thomas is for us an intellectual example, but also a brother and a friend who accompanies us in our preaching, our way of thinking, including with modernity,” Brother Marie-Arnaud of the Toulouse community told Famille Chrétienne.
St Thomas Aquinas, who was born in central Italy and taught at Cologne, Paris and Rome, was originally buried in the abbey near Rome where he died.
His remains were transferred in 1369 to the Dominicans’ Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse.
During the French Revolution, his remains were kept safe in the city’s Basilica of Saint Sernin while the Dominican church was requisitioned for use as a barracks and later a storehouse.
The deconsecrated Church of the Jacobins was restored in 1974 and the remains were returned to what is now a museum.
“At that time, the bones were preserved in vinegar. They were all red,” recalled Archbishop Bruguès, who saw the relics when they were moved in 1974.
During the three-year anniversary series, spiritual, intellectual, cultural and artistic activities will be organised in the saint’s honour.
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