Thomas Aquinas And Religion Essay

This course dove into medieval history and touched on all of the most critical elements of the period giving a well-rounded look into the lives and cultures of the middle ages. As the class moved forward it became evident that religion is central to understanding the people, advances, and set backs of this period. We learned how inseparable the middle ages and religion are due to how completely it consumed the people, affected the art, and furthered academics. Since, there is a tendency to teach about history and literature separately from religion and since religion possessed a dominant position in every aspect of a medieval person’s life, while many of us had already looked into the period we missed some crucial cultural context allowing

us to operate under incomplete or incorrect understandings. The ability to incorporate religion into this course also allowed for a very realistic view of the world today and how much past superstitions and religions have affected modern culture.
One of the most powerful examples for the effect of religion on medieval society, and as a parallel to today’s society, put forth in class was Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas made an enormous effort to make logic and religion work together, ultimately choosing to drop his logical writing and commit himself to pursuing salvation. Aquinas’s efforts to link logic and his religion parallel today’s continued efforts to force religion into the sciences or to attempt the reverse. But his struggle also acted as a direct view into medieval western Christian culture; the western Christians repeatedly encountered problems in the academic realm with fitting Christianity and higher thinking together which, would occur for far longer than Aquinas’s time. But, if one looks at the struggle in less educated groups it mirrors Aquinas’s except, rather than fitting logic and religion together there is an effort to combine religions or religion and superstition together. Second to Aquinas as an example for religion’s effect was what I discovered whilst researching my presentation topic. I had been under the impression that, as in modern times, the medical focus would be anatomical or chemical. However, as most aspects of medieval culture are, the world of medicine was focused on the spirit. This spiritual focus remained through the middle ages and was catered to by humourism, astrology, and Christianity. While medicine’s focus did indeed limit it in some ways on a physical level, there were still great

advancements made in the use of medicinal plants, hospitals, and views on disease.
So, through this course I gained a more realistic view of religion’s effects on science, medicine, and academia of the middle ages. But more importantly, I was able to learn more about how people of the time actually lived and I was introduced to writers of the time, many of whom I had believed to be from earlier or later periods. The introduction to these writers allowed for a more accurate view of how medieval society was changing, as well as how much humanity has actually progressed. Finally, the amount of mental fortitude it would take to be a devout follower and how much the church was willing to adapt in order to survive was one of the most interesting insights of this course. The adaptions of the church allowed it to continue to survive and to spread over Europe. By surviving the church saved many of the important written documents from this period and from ancient writers while the spread across Europe allowed it to have such a strong continued effect on society. Knowing just how important religion is to the past and in more modern continued attitudes, behaviors, and written texts allows me to see just how important it is not to remove religion entirely; because, by being ignorant of its importance there is no difficulty in completely misreading a situation or an entire society.