How Thomas Aquinas Wrote the Summa: Insights from His Handwriting and Habits

Aquinas's Remarkable Discipline and Concentration

• 🧠 Aquinas was known for his exceptional discipline and powers of concentration, to the point of being unaware of his surroundings when deeply focused.
• ♟️ He possessed an extraordinary ability to multitask, reportedly dictating to multiple secretaries simultaneously on different works, akin to a chess grandmaster playing multiple games at once.

Rigorous Work Ethic and Production

• 📈 During his peak production years in his 40s, Aquinas produced an astonishing 16 large folio pages per workday, demonstrating immense energy and focus on high-level philosophy and theology.
• ✍️ While not using modern footnotes, his method involved summarizing arguments and synthesizing complex ideas, showcasing his brilliant thinking.

Insights from Aquinas's Handwriting

• 📜 Although famously illegible, Aquinas's handwriting provides clues to his working methods, likely due to his speed.
• 🖋️ Analysis of his handwritten texts, particularly from his early commentary on the Sentences, shows how frequently he sharpened his quill pen, indicating the duration of his work periods and instances of interruption.
• 📝 He sometimes made obvious mistakes in his own handwriting, such as writing "Therefore, God does not exist," highlighting the human element and the need for editorial interpretation.

Innovative Note-Taking and Organization

• ✂️ Research suggests Aquinas used scraps from bookmaking workshops as a system of note cards to organize quotations and materials from Church Fathers for his academic work.
• 📚 This method allowed him to efficiently manage and utilize a vast amount of source material for his prolific writings.

Anecdotes and Historical Attestations

• 🦷 A unique story, attested in early biographies, recounts Aquinas praying to remove an extra tooth that impeded his speech, then carrying the tooth as a reminder of God's mercy.
• 📿 He also carried a relic of St. Agnes, to whom he had great devotion, and credited her with healing his companion, Reginald of Piperno, from a severe fever.
• 👑 Towards the end of his life, Aquinas was a renowned professor in Naples, paid by the king, and promised a dinner for his students on St. Agnes' feast day, a promise he fulfilled only once before his death.