Philosophers 13th century
Thomas Aquinas (Italian: Tommaso d'Aquino, also called Aquinas, alias Doctor Angelicus) was an Italian poet and theologian, philosopher, and major medieval scholastic.
Thomas Aquinas is one of the most important theologians in the history of Western civilization, given the extent of his influence on the development of Roman Catholic theology since the fourteenth century. As a theologian, in his two masterpieces, Summa theologiae and Summa contra gentiles, he created the classical systematization of Latin theology, and as a poet, he wrote some of the most serious and beautiful Eucharistic hymns in the church liturgy. Thomas Aquinas is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as the foremost Western philosopher and theologian and canonized as a saint.
Joachim of Fiore, also known as Joachim de Fiore, and Gioacchino da Fiore, was an Italian mystic, theologian and philosopher of history, a great medieval thinker with a beautiful symbolic imagination.
Fiore was a prolific writer and explored the hidden meaning of the life of the apostles and the scriptures. At the end of the twelfth century Joachim had a high international reputation.
After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he became a Cistercian monk and by 1177 had become abbot at Corazzo, Sicily. He retired to the mountains to lead a contemplative life, and in 1196 he founded the Order of San Giovanni in Fiore. In his Book of the Harmony of the New and Old Testaments, Fiore set forth a theory of history and traced correspondences in the Old and New Testaments. In "An Exposition of the Apocalypse" he explored the symbols of the Antichrist, and in "The Ten-String Psalter" he set forth his doctrine of the Holy Trinity. A man of vivid imagination, he was proclaimed a prophet and condemned as a heretic.
