Licentiate Thesis (2019): The Rite of the Sacrifice of the Altar in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas in Comparison with Pope Innocent III and St. Albert the Great
Creators: name: Witkowski, Dominik Pascal
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Thomas Aquinas
Albert the Great
Innocent III
Theology
Thomism
Fundamental Theology
Systematic Theology
Eucharist
Holy Mass
Sacrifice of the Mass
Mystagogy
STL Thesis
Liturgy
Scholastic Theology
Medieval Theology
Dominican Studies
Thomistic Studies

description: This STL thesis, submitted in October 2019 at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Licentiate in Sacred Theology, investigates the theology of the rite of the Mass (Missae sacrificium) in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (III, q. 83), in comparison with De sacro altaris mysterio of Pope Innocent III and De mysterio missae of St. Albertus Magnus.

The work offers a systematic theological reading of Aquinas’s Eucharistic thought and situates it within the medieval theological tradition. Particular focus is placed on the theology as laid out by Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae: A systematic contextualization demonstrates the analogical application of the principles of Sacra Doctrina for Sacred Scripture, Sacramentology, and the liturgical rites of the Holy Mass. The spiritual senses of Sacred Scripture are set in analogical proportion to spiritual senses in the liturgy.

The study integrates Aquinas's doctrine of anthropology, epistemology, his theory of the human act, religion, general sacramentology, scriptural and eucharistic signification, and his mystagogical Expositio Missae in ST III, q. 83, a. 4 and 5 on the liturgical rites of the Holy Mass.

The thesis, in its main part, discusses Aquinas's mystagogy of the Eucharistic liturgy following the structure of the contemporary Roman or Curial Ordo Missae as supposed in ST III, q. 83, a. 4, in comparison with Pope Innocent III, whose De sacro altaris mysterio is considered an important influence for 13th-century spiritual theology of the liturgy, and De mysterio missae of St. Albert the Great, which represents a different approach to liturgical mystagogy.

A historical-theological contextualization is able to trace common features of liturgical exegesis to a proposed philological-theological school represented by theologians such as Florus of Lyon or Albert the Great, and a symbolic-spiritual school, as represented by Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas. The schools are analyzed, compared, and discussed. The conclusion offers a demonstration of why Aquinas's systematic parallelization of scriptural, sacramental, and eucharistic signification is able to offer a solution to the age-old problem of how to justify a spiritual sense in the liturgy.

The thesis was submitted for the Thomistic Section of the Faculty of Theology for the Lectio Coram held October 3, 2019. It is Thomistic and systematic theology, with elements of Thomistic philosophy, liturgical history, as well as fundamental and in particular liturgical theology. This 2019 version precedes the author’s doctoral dissertation, defended in 2023, and is shared for scholarly documentation purposes. A publication of the doctoral dissertation is in progress.