L’Aquinate beato. Tentativo di contestualizzazione storico-filosofica del Tommaso del Cielo del Sole

Dante’s relationship with the doctrinal legacy of Thomas Aquinas has been the subject of extensive and intense discussions among scholars. If it is evident that the Florentine poet directly knew some of Aquinas’s significant works, however, the way in which he confronts the thought of the Dominican doctor is debated. Beyond the controversies on Dante’s Thomism or Averroism, Thomas Aquinas plays a central role in the complex narrative and doctrinal system of the Divine Comedy: more precisely, Dante organizes the cantos of the Heaven of the Sun as a long dialogue between the pilgrim poet and the Dominican master. This contribution focuses on the portrait of Aquinas that Alighieri traces in this part of
his work, highlighting its doctrinal relevance and stressing the relationship of the “beatification” of Aquinas in the Comedy – which precedes the one that John XXII proclaimed in 1323 – with the cultural and political project carried out by Dante.