Thomas Aquinas and His Girdle

How Aquinas fended off a seductress with a hot poker

St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps best known for troubling to come up with five different proofs of God's existence, had a lot to live up to even before he was born. He wasn’t yet a twinkle in anybody’s eye when a prophetic monk turned up at the family castle announcing to his mother that she was pregnant and that her yet to be born son was destined for greatness. Not just any kind of greatness, mind you, but a divine greatness as a Dominican friar “of such sanctity of life and splendour of knowledge that the like will not be found in all the world in his age.” (LTA, p. 28)

His mother, clearly a woman not easily impressed, replied only that she was not worthy of such a son, but if that was God’s will, then so be it.

Thomas, born in 1225, enjoyed a childhood not untypical for a boy born into Italian nobility in the High Middle Ages. When he was five years old, he was packed off to the prestigious Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, presumably in the hope that he would eventually come to serve the Church in a manner that would bring honour to his family.

Trouble is, you can’t buck a hagiographic prophecy, meaning that Thomas inevitably rejected the reasonable life of a Benedictine monk, choosing instead to join the Dominican order. This was not good news for his family. The upmarket Benedictines were thoroughly respectable types, bringing honour and prestige to a family, and providing the aspiring devotee with stability and a comfortable monastic existence. The Dominicans, in comparison, were disreputable–a mendicant or begging order, embracing radical poverty and an itinerant, ascetic lifestyle. Not the sort of thing with which any noble family wanted to be associated.

There is some suggestion that Thomas’s mother was reconciled to her son’s new career path, but, according to his biographer, William of Tocco, this all changed when Thomas pulled a disappearing act. Infuriated that she hadn’t been able to contact him, Thomas’s mother instructed her other sons to kidnap him.

William of Tocco tells us what happened next:

[I]t happened that they found their brother resting next to a spring of water with four friars of the Order. At once, they rushed upon him like foes rather than brothers, yet they did not prevail to strip him of the Dominican habit, to which he clung manfully. Anxious that their youthful brother might suffer some injury from the altercation, these men finally dismissed the other friars and sent their brother, arrayed as he was, to their mother under close guard. (LTA, p. 41)

Thomas ended up confined at his mother’s pleasure in the family castle at Roccasecca. His brothers set about disabusing him of his Dominican tendencies. But Thomas was resolute, spending his time studying the Bible, writing logical treatises, converting his sister, and clinging on to his preacher’s habit in the face of attempts to remove it. Frustrated at Thomas’s intransigence, the brothers hit upon a cunning plan to lure him away from the path of righteousness–the sort of plan that “seldom failed to bring down citadels, to grind boulders to dust, and to uproot the cedars of Lebanon by its tempest.” (LTA, p. 47)

They brought him a woman, “the loveliest girl that they could find, adorned with the seductive arts of a courtesan, so that she might lure him into sin by her looks, caresses, teasing gestures, and any other wiles that she could summon.” (LTA, p. 47)

But Thomas wasn’t for turning. Though a stimulus arose in his flesh, Thomas drank deep from the reservoirs of his own righteousness to resist the temptations of earthly pleasure. Sparing not a moment to consider how the young woman might have found herself in this situation, he seized a hot poker from the fire, with which he chased the chastened girl from his chamber.

Exhausted by his own piety, he scrawled the holy Cross upon the wall of his chamber, offered up a prayer for virginity, and fell into a deep sleep, during which he dreamt of girdles.

William of Tocco, ever reliable, gives us the lowdown:

And behold, two angels were sent to him from Heaven, assuring him that the Lord had heard the prayer of him who had attained victory in so bitter a conflict. Then, binding him tightly round by the loins, they said: “Behold, we gird you on behalf of Almighty God, as you have requested, with the girdle of chastity, which can never be loosened henceforth by any attack. That which human virtue cannot obtain is now granted to you by the munificent gift of divine Grace. (LTA, p. 48)

In the face of angels and girdles, Thomas's family finally realised that he was a lost cause, and he was allowed to escape, trotting off to Napes, Rome, Paris and, finally, Cologne, where he took up a professorial position and was ordained to the priesthood.

References

The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas (D. M. Foley, Trans.). (2023). Angelus Press. (LTA)