Life and Times
Saint Thomas Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century, a tumultuous century filled with intellectual, ecclesiastical, and military conflicts. He lived from 1225 to 1274. I intend first to give a sketch of his life and his times and then to go on and look at his thought as recorded for us in an enormous number of volumes. We have sufficient information about Thomas's life to get a vivid picture of the kind of man he was and where and how he lived his life. He was born in a little town called Rocca Secca (dry rock). If you were to come down the old Roman road from Rome to Naples you would have seen then as you see now, high on a mountain, the magnificent white tile of the monastery of Monte Cassino which figured in Thomas's life. If you went west from about that point, you would come within twenty kilometers to a town, Rocca Secca. This is a modern town, and if you stop you are really not in Thomas's native city. If you turned and looked to the north there would be a small mountain, and you would see another town half way up that mountain. You might think, there is the town, that's the old town where Thomas lived. You would have to go up to the top of that mountain, and if you did you would see the ruins of the castle in which Thomas Aquinas was born and in which he lived the first five years of his life.
At the age of five he was taken to the monastery of Monte Cassino to begin his education. He stayed at Monte Cassino until about the age of fourteen, and then, as was to happen later, notably during the second World War, military conflict broke out in the vicinity. It was not considered safe for him to remain there, so he was sent down to the new University of Naples, which had been founded by Frederick II, the emperor, who was usually in conflict with the Pope. Thomas's brothers, military men, were on the side of the Emperor against the Pope. It's very confusing for us in many respects now to look back and think of the Pope as a secular as well as a spiritual ruler, a man with armies and a man who sent his troops into combat. It's a little difficult nowadays to think of the Swiss Guard going into combat any place.
At the University of Naples Thomas met members of a new religious order, one that had been founded by Saint Dominic, a Spaniard, a so called Order of Preachers, but more familiarly known as Dominicans, or in the LatinDominicanes. And that was sometimes broken up into two words, Domini and canes, Dogs of the Lord. They were a mendicant order like the Franciscans who had been founded about the same time. Thomas's family was appalled when at the age of nineteen he joined the Dominican Order.
He then started north with a band of his fellow friars in order to continue his education at Cologne and in Paris. But his family was so irate about his joining this ragtag bunch of Dogs of the Lord that they took him into custody, and for a year he was under house arrest by his family, who were trying to persuade him not that he shouldn't have a religious vocation but that if he was going to have one he should go to Monte Cassino. An uncle of his had been Abbot of Monte Cassino. No doubt the family thought that some such elevation as that lay ahead for Thomas. But Thomas was adamant in his Dominican vocation. After an episode in which his brothers put him to the ultimate test and introduced a woman of easy virtue into his room, and he drove her out, they decided, I suppose, that he was serious, and they let him go.
He rejoined the Dominican Friars and went north, perhaps first to Paris. We're not sure of this. But we do know that he was at Cologne studying with the great German Dominican, Albert the Great. It was there that Thomas's knowledge of Aristotle, which had begun at Monte Cassino and then expanded enormously at Naples, was consolidated. Albert was one of the great students of Aristotle in the thirteenth century. Indeed, he wrote a paraphrase of the whole Aristotelean opus.
After Cologne Thomas went to the University of Paris, and there he began and completed his work for the Master's of Theology. After that he was given one of the Regent Professorships that the Dominicans held at Paris -- they had two. Thomas would have taught at the Convent of Saint James, the Dominican convent named for the street on which it stood, the road of Saint James leading to Saint James of Compostela, a great pilgrimage route in the Middle Ages. Thomas would have lectured in the convents; students would have come to him. As you will see, the University of Paris was not an enormous number of buildings put up just for that purpose, but existed in such places as the Dominican convent and the cathedral school at Notre Dame and so forth.
After a three-year stint as a professor at the University of Paris, Thomas was sent by his order back to Italy, and there is a nine- or ten-year period during which we find him at various places in Italy, in Orvieto for example, and in Viterbo. Finally, at the end of the ten years he is teaching at Santa Sabina in Rome, the great Dominican house, which of course is still there. It's sometimes thought that he was a member of the Papal Force. The popes were out of Rome because of the military situation and were in semi-exile in Orvieto and Viterbo, little towns north of Rome. Thomas did indeed become quite friendly with Pope Urban IV, but it doesn't seem to be the case that he was actually a member of the Papal Curia.
At the end of those ten years, this Italian interlude, Thomas was teaching at the Dominican house of Santa Sabina in Rome, and from there he was called back to Paris in an unusual assignment, a second three-year stint, as a Regent Professor of Theology at the University of Paris. For reasons that we will see this was a very intellectually tumultuous time, and it's doubtless the case that he was brought back there in order to confront difficulties that had arisen because of the influx of the writings of Aristotle in Latin translation. He taught for three more years and then, in 1272, he returned to Italy and to Naples. It was when he was on a trip from Naples to the Council at Lyon, a council had been called there, that Thomas fell ill. He stayed first with a niece, and then he was moved to the Cistercian Abbey at Fossanova. It is there, on March 7, 1274, that he died.
The role that Monte Cassino played early in Thomas's life leads us to the larger question of what medieval education consisted of. Thomas happens to have existed or lived at a time when a traditional medieval understanding ofeducation was suddenly disrupted by the introduction of the new learning to which I've already referred. The traditional medieval view dated from the Dark Ages, from the time of a man called Cassiodorus. Though a layman, he founded a monastery in Italy called Vivarium and there wrote an Institutiones, or a constitution for those Monks, in which he laid out the relationship between secular learning on the one hand and sacred learning on the other.
Secular learning was summed up, for Cassiodorus, in the seven liberal arts. Those arts were divided into a trivium and a quadrivium, a threefold way and a fourfold way. The parts of the trivium were grammar, rhetoric and logic. And those of the quadrivium, the fourfold way, were arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Fourfold way and threefold way -- ways to what? Ways to wisdom. And where is wisdom to be found? In Sacred Scripture. So the arts were intended to be studied as a propaedeudic to the study of Scripture. This was, we might say, an establishment of a modus vivendibetween secular learning and sacred learning that was to last well into the twelfth century.
What can we acquire by means of our own natural capacities? Even the pagans had discovered that the liberal arts were studied in terms of certain authors, authority, so that Prician and Donatus, for example, would be the authors to study for grammar. Aristotle was the author studied for logic, Cicero for rhetoric, and so on. In the Dark Ages, when this was beginning, monasteries like Monte Cassino looked like fortifications, and they were placed so that they could be seen from a long distance, but they could also look out and see if any trouble were coming. In these very uneasy times monasteries were the custodian of such fragments of classical learning as had been shored against the ruin of the Roman Empire and the demise of the Roman system of education, which had of course spread across Europe, but with the Barbarian invasion had collapsed and disappeared. In the Dark Ages the monasteries were getting a recovery of that learning. What is noteworthy is that classical learning, secular learning, is seen in terms of a complementarity with Sacred Scripture, with the truths that had been revealed to us by God in the Bible. This twofold layer, we can surmise, is precisely what Thomas would have been introduced to as a young boy at Monte Cassino, the three R's.
The trivium gives us, by derivation of the word, "trivial", as we might say "ABC". These were the most elementary first steps of education, but they led on to the arts of the quadrivium and ultimately to the study of the Bible. The education that Thomas was introduced to at Monte Cassino, I'm suggesting, was the traditional medieval understanding of the relationship between secular learning and sacred learning. So he would have been instructed in the arts. These are fragments of classical thought. If we look back at the writings of Plato and Aristotle, we see arts that function so prominently through the early Middle Ages to be a very slender sample of what had been achieved in the classical Greek period. From the Dark Ages on medievalists could not look at all the writings of Plato and all the writings of Aristotle: one, they weren't just sitting on shelves, and two, they would have been in Greek.
Boethius, a contemporary of Cassiodorus, had set out to translate into Latin all of the writings of Aristotle and all the writings of Plato. This tells us something. This tells us that knowledge of Greek, which was the common language, is fading away, and if the achievement of Greece is to be passed on and understood in Europe it has to be put into the language dominant in Europe, that is Latin.
Now this project of Boethius would have been enormous under any circumstances. He was a busy politician as well as a scholar. And as it happens he did not complete very much at all, a few works of Aristotle, so that from the fifth and sixth century on through the twelfth, the name Aristotle would have been linked to a logical work such as theCategories, or the logical work On Interpretation. And that would be it. And as far as Plato went, little or nothing was known of Plato directly. There was a partial translation of the dialog of Plato's called the Timaeus, probably the least difficult dialog of Plato. But that would have been Plato. Of course through the Church Fathers Greek and Latin knowledge of ancient philosophy was gotten indirectly. Book eight for example of Saint Augustine's City of God is devoted to a sketch of philosophy.
When we talk about books we should remind ourselves that we are talking about manuscripts, that is handwritten documents, so that if a book were to be had someone was going to have to sit down and copy it out word for word. One of the things that was done in monasteries, in a room called the scriptorium, was copying manuscripts so that these could be traded with other places for works that one did not have. So you would get a gradual building up of the library holdings of a monastery by copying, trading and so forth. You can imagine the possibilities for mistakes in that kind of copying. We don't do this sort of thing any more, but if you ever did sit down and copy out something by hand you would probably find that you had skipped a sentence or that you had misspelled a word or made one kind of mistake or another. If you think of this as being copied and being copied and being copied and copied and so forth, you can see that over centuries you could get a very flawed document that professed to be, say, the Categories of Aristotle, or On Interpretation of Aristotle.
It's not until the invention of printing that we get anything like copies which are identical with the type set by the printer. But in this older fashion of disseminating learning there were mistakes and variations in manuscripts, which has led toa great scholarly task in modern times where a scholar will gather together all of the existing extant copies of a particular work and compare them and try to see which of them derives from which, if that's possible. Often the scholar will end up with six or seven or more copies of the work which don't seem to be derivative from one another. He then has to establish a critical edition: that is, what is the best reading of this work, choosing among the variations in the copies that he has. When we read Aristotle, we do it in English translation; it's done from a Greek text which was established in just this way. But there are gaps of centuries between, say, the lives of Plato and Aristotle and the oldest Greek manuscript of their work.
In the early Middle Ages the knowledge of Greek all but faded away. Boethius was competent in both languages anddid, in part at least, achieve what he undertook in translating Aristotle into Latin. Boethius also wrote an arithmetic and a work on music, and these function in the arts of the quadrivium in medieval education. My point is that there is something very conservative and traditional about medieval education from the beginning. It's as if one is looking back to a golden age and is trying to retrieve it to a degree that this is possible given the difficulties that I've already mentioned. All of this is seen in the schema that we find in the Institutions of Cassiodorus: all of this learning, this secular learning, is seen as subservient to the understanding of Scripture and of course in the monastery to the liturgical path.
Those monks who devoted their lives to the chanting of the Hours and the Liturgy of the Mass in the abbey chapel would of course have to be learned to be able to understand and appreciate these prayers that they were offering up. By and large, as you may know, the Psalms make up the Hours of the Office, as it was called, the Opus Dei, the work of God, that was the principle prayer life of the monk. The education in the monastery was aimed at the formation of these choir monks. But a few children of the nobles such as Thomas Aquinas would be admitted into a monastic school and would live a religious life while they were there, but need not be seen as candidates for membership in the order .
So the education of Thomas at Monte Cassino, we can surmise, is pretty much the same thing that had been going on from the Dark Ages, from the sixth century, in Cassiodorus. There were of course variations from school to school in terms of which of the arts was emphasized as opposed to the others, and grammar became what we would call literary criticism, so that the Latin classics would be read under the heading of grammar. It wasn't just syntax and vocabulary, but it was a matter of textual interpretation of great works of literature as well.
When Thomas went to Naples he came into a university situation where all of that was now beginning to crumble. The reason for the loss of the hegemony of the liberal arts was the arrival in Latin translation towards the end of the twelfth century and in the thirteenth century of treatises of Aristotle. These were accompanied by Arabic commentaries by men who were known as Averroes and Avicenna, and this was terribly important as we will see. If you look at some of these early texts you will see a page, and Aristotle's text will be in the middle, and then the commentary will bracket it, so that to read Aristotle originally was to read him through the lens of various commentaries.
This was an extremely important development that Thomas had to confront in his own life. But what we have to see is the excitement that was generated by the arrival of this vast new library of books -- books like the Politics of Aristotle, the Ethics of Aristotle, the Metaphysics of Aristotle, On the Soul of Aristotle. We can imagine someone saying: "Where does this fit in our schema of secular learning, the seven liberal arts?" It doesn't. There had to be a rethinking of the soul, a recognition of the soul of secular learning as represented chiefly by Aristotle and by these Arabic commentators on Aristotle. There was no way in which that could be fused into the seven liberal arts. So the conflict of secular learning, of philosophy, we might say, is remarkably expanded. And Thomas at Naples, where some of the translation was going on and many of these newly translated texts were coming into use, would have become aware of this expansion of the horizon of secular learning, and it was to characterize his art.
I mentioned that when Thomas went north to study with Saint Albert in Cologne he consolidated his knowledge of Aristotle. We can see that in monastic education he would have become acquainted with some logical writings of Aristotle. When he goes to Naples these other treatises of Aristotle are suddenly on the table and causing, as you can imagine, great intellectual excitement. When he goes to Cologne he is working with a great Dominican educator who paraphrased the whole of Aristotle -- in Latin of course -- and assimilated it in that way. At Cologne Thomas was the assistant of Albert the Great. Albert commented there on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, and the edition that we have of Albert's commentary is said to be the work of his assistant Thomas Aquinas, that is the editing of it. He was later to write his own commentary on the Ethics, and it's interesting to compare that of Albert that he edited and his own later commentary.
When we talk about the transition from liberal arts tradition to the university it is better to think of it in terms of the University of Paris rather than of Naples. Paris was the place where Thomas was ultimately educated and where he taught, as I've mentioned, for six years, two three-year stints, as a Regent Professor in the Dominican house in Paris. The twelfth century is said to have had the great misfortune of being followed by the thirteenth century, which pretty well eclipsed it for a long time in the eyes of scholars. This has been remedied in more recent years, and the liveliness and excitement, intellectual excitement, of the twelfth century is being more and more realized. When we think of a century that begins with Saint Anselm and take it through Abelard, Hugh of Saint Victor, and John of Salisbury, and so forth, we realize that these are men who, if they didn't have to compete with such giants of the thirteenth century as Bonaventure and Thomas and Scotus and later Ockham, would have loomed larger than they do.
John of Salisbury is an interesting case. He was an Englishman who came to Paris to study in the twelfth century. Already Paris was a magnet drawing people interested in learning. They had monastic schools, the Convent of Saint Victor, home of the Augustinian Monks of Saint Victor, the order that eventually Martin Luther would belong to. They had a house in Paris and great scholars there who drew students from all over. It was on the left bank in the so called Latin Quarter, because Latin was the language of these scholars who were coming in from all kinds of countries, and the teaching and learning was done in this common language rather than in the vernacular.
There was also the cathedral school at Notre Dame. When towns began to form and when life settled down to some degree, learning shifted to the city, around the seat or the chair of the bishop, his cathedra, his cathedral church. What we had here was a reprise of liberal arts education and the study of Scripture. The cathedral school aimed at training priests for that bishop. In Paris in the twelfth century there was the cathedral school at Notre Dame on the island in the Seine, and then on the left bank you had these monastic schools. You had on the bridges of Paris little shops where people taught logic. I suppose you just leaned over the counter and took a course in logic from someone in this way. It was a very exciting time. John of Salisbury has provided us with an account of what it was like to be a student in Paris in the twelfth century, and it was indeed very exciting.
What happens as we move into the thirteenth century is that, as an organic development out of cathedral and monastic education, the university arises. The university is first of all a corporation. It's not a campus, although it was on the left bank basically. It's not a lot of buildings, it is a corporation of the masters and students of Paris. Students were seen as apprentices who would go through a more and more specified set of years of training and reach a point when they would be themselves recognized as masters of the craft. This is the origin of the university as a kind of training ground for future masters.
Now, as I've already mentioned, the hegemony of the liberal arts is disturbed by the arrival of this new learning. And the university from its very inception, from the very reception of its charter from the pope at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is a cockpit of conflict and argument as to the relationship between this new learning, Aristotle, in effect, on the one hand, and the Christian faith on the other. The liberal arts tradition had, as I mentioned, established the modus vivendi between reason and faith, between secular learning and sacred learning. All that was now exploded by the arrival of all of these new treatises and commentaries, new ideas, new suggestions as to the analysis of physical objects and the nature of the cosmos, the destiny of man, where did it all come from, and so forth.
Here you had in philosophical works by pagan authors answers to these questions that in the liberal art tradition wouldhave been put off to the study of the Bible. You would look for answers to those big questions in Scripture. Now you had, as it were, a rival teaching on these big questions, what is a human being, what is right, what is wrong, what is the purpose of human life, is death the end for a human being, how did the cosmos get here, and so forth. In theMetaphysics of Aristotle and the Physics of Aristotle and his various cosmological works you have these things discussed. And it looks as if they are rival to the views derived previously from Scripture.
So too with respect to morality. The Nicomachean Ethics, one of the first of Aristotle's books to be translated into Latin, available already in the last quarter of the twelfth century, is addressing the question of what is the purpose of human life. In the light of that purpose how do we appraise actions as good or bad? Is this something that is compatible with the Christian view of life? Are Aristotle's statements about the cosmos and the first cause of the cosmos compatible with the teachings derived from Sacred Scripture?
Of course everyone in the educational system was a clerk, was a cleric, had at least tonsure setting him off from the laity. This was one of the functions of the incorporating of the masters and students of Paris. It gave them a legal status. They were no longer to be treated simply as citizens in Paris, but they were students of the university, and you have the beginning of town-gown disputes, some of them quite bloody in the twelfth century when students went out, as students of course no longer do, to get drunk and to run up bills in taverns and get into fights. If they were students they could not be arrested by the civil authorities. They would be taken into custody and be judged by members of the university. So that corporation was a very important step for the status of the member of the university. But the more interesting thing is this intellectual conflict between, on the one hand, the Christian understanding of what life is all about and, on the other hand, this new and surprising philosophical teaching on such matters.
From the very beginning there is a wariness about it. These translations were made in Toledo in Spain as well as in other centers and then came into the centers of learning of the West. We have a translation of Averroes' commentary on the De Anima that was made at Toledo, and in the preface to it we realize that there were Jewish scholars and Muslim scholars and Christians in a team, in a translating team, and it looks as if they translated first of all into the vernacular Spanish and then into Latin. And those were the texts that entered into the educational system.
Of course the Arabs had already translated Aristotle into Arabic. So the translation was initially not from the Greek but from Arabic to perhaps vernacular Spanish then into Latin. Almost immediately after that kind of translation had begun translations were made from the original Greek texts that had survived, so they get sometimes rival translations of the same work of Aristotle. It's exciting when we look at these centers and the effort that went into producing these translations and the eagerness with which people sought to get hold of copies of them. That kind of excitement I think is very good.
Deriving from this was problem that I mentioned: how does this comport with what we believe? All of these people were clerics, all Christian believers, so this isn't some alien sort of problem that is being visited upon them, it is a problem that would have surged up in them themselves. There were restrictions at Paris in reading Aristotle, and often this is misunderstood to mean that you couldn't have a copy of Aristotle and you couldn't in the privacy of your own home, in a plain brown wrapper, say, read the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Instead, what this means is that you could not base a course, a lecture course, on the writings of Aristotle.
That prohibition was lifted. But it tells us of the concern of scholars as to the compatibility of the new learning of writings of Aristotle in all their amplitude on the one hand, and Christian learning. You might say that this is the central issue in the thirteenth century. How do we find a new modus vivendi between this expanded front of secular learning, philosophy, now, in all its amplitude? How do we decide what the relationship is between that on the one hand and Christian faith and the interpretation of that faith over the centuries that had become traditional? The central issue then that arose in the thirteenth century because of the arrival of this new learning was how does it compare with what believers believe. As I say, all the masters and students were Christian believers, so that this was their problem not somebody else's problem. They addressed it in somewhat different ways. Some felt that there was clear conflict between teachings of Aristotle and the Christian faith and consequently it was a waste of time to mull over what he had to say.
The place within the university in which the new learning, Aristotle, would have been studied and lectured on would have been the arts school. Now I mentioned that when Thomas was bound to the University of Naples he was fourteen years old. People entered the university at that age and they worked towards a Master of Arts, and they did this in a faculty, a kind of entry faculty of the university called the Faculty of Arts. The very title suggests an effort to suggest continuity with the liberal arts tradition. When one received the Master of Arts he became eligible to move into one of the higher faculties. There were three: Theology, Medicine and Law. Different universities became more famous for one of these upper faculties than for others.
When we see the emergence of the University of Paris out of those twelfth-century antecedents, the monastic school and the cathedral school at Notre Dame, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, suddenly all over Europe, and with a rapidity that is astounding, universities were established. Maps have been prepared that show these dots representing universities spreading across the map of Europe and of course into England with the formation of the Universities of Oxford and then Cambridge. This thirteenth-century phenomenon spurred out, we might say, as much by this new learning as anything else.
The arena in which this confrontation with the new learning took place would have been principally the arts college. Buttheologians like Thomas Aquinas became interested in the way in which Aristotle was being viewed by some of the Masters of Arts at the University of Paris. We can summarize the difficulty that confronted people with respect to the thought of Aristotle in terms of what were called the errors of Aristotle. The first one had to do with the origin of the world. Aristotle taught that the world had always been, that it made no sense to talk about the world as coming into being, and by way of a change. That looks to be flat out contradictory to the revelation in Genesis that in the beginning God created heaven and earth. They seem to have a contradictory opposition. Either the world is eternal or it is not. Aristotle taught it was eternal. The believer holds, on the basis of the Scripture, that it isn't. Therefore Aristotle must be wrong.
Another error had to do with the immortality of the soul. Aristotle was taken by the Arabic commentators Averroes andAvicenna to be saying, when he analyzed human intellection, that this is not a material change going on, this is an immaterial or spiritual activity. On that basis he would say that this intellect or this soul that has such an intellect cannot cease to be, cannot corrupt. Now what Averroes said Aristotle was saying was not that your soul and mine will not corrupt. It's not a matter of personal immortality, but that there is a soul somewhere, an intellect that thinks through us, without which we could not think, and that is what is immortal or incorruptible. But you and I, presumably, on this understanding, would simply cease to be entirely at death, and that would be the end of it. You can see that this is totally incompatible with Christian belief. The Christian lives his life in the certainty that he will persist in existence beyond his life, and indeed the quality of that future life depends on how he comports himself here and now in this time. So he is constantly looking ahead to his destiny beyond this life. And it's a personal one. It's not just man that will survive but you and I and all other individuals. That's the Christian belief. Aristotle, on the Averroistic interpretation, is in effect denying that. One of those views has to be right and the other wrong. The believer is holding what he holds on the basis of the authority of God revealing, therefore he rejects this philosophical proposal.
Finally a third one had to do with whether or not God knows the world. Aristotle in the twelfth book of the Metaphysicsgives a description of God as thought thinking itself. The suggestion seems to be that it would be demeaning for God to be occupied with things below him. On this basis it was taken that he didn't know what was going on in the universe, didn't want to know. It would have been demeaning for God to take note of the universe. That on the one hand, and on the other the Christian belief that his eye is on the sparrow and the very hairs of our head are numbered, we are named by our own name by God, and so forth. One of these has to be wrong.
These were the problems, among many others, that were raised by the introduction of the writings of Aristotle. In the arts faculty at Paris there were bumptious Masters of Arts who wanted to maintain what is called by historians the two truth spirit. There is a lot of dispute about this, but what they clearly seem to be saying was, it is possible to hold philosophically a certain thing to be true and to hold its opposite to be true on the basis of Christian faith. So that where you had a contradictory opposition p or not p they were saying: in philosophy p is true, and in faith or the religious believer not p is true.
This brought theologians like Thomas Aquinas into the fray with great energy. Thomas has a number of polemical works directed precisely against these interpretations. He has a little work On the Eternity of the World. He has another one On the Uniqueness of Intellect, is there only one mind that thinks through us and so forth. And what we find in Thomas is not that he sees a conflict here where others have seen one. In the case of personal immortality he disputes the Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle. You see, that isn't what that text means. You can't read the text that way. Not only in the relevant chapters in the third book of De Anima but also in the totality of Aristotle's writings that interpretation of Averroes is simply wrong. Thomas, in that little work I mentioned On the Uniqueness of Intellect, gives a textual refutation of that interpretation of Aristotle.
So what emerges from this is that there isn't a problem. Aristotle wouldn't teach something in conflict with the faith. And Thomas does much the same thing with the question of God's knowledge, and argues that what Aristotle was addressing is that God does not derive his knowledge from creatures as if they were the causes or occasions of His knowledge. And of course Thomas's creation here would be, they are because God thinks of them, and so if He wasn't thinking of them they wouldn't be there. So as an interpretation of Aristotle, Thomas would not see any big conflict here.
Eternity of the world is a much trickier one. There is no doubt that Aristotle thought that the world had always been; there is no doubt that it is Christian belief that the world had a beginning in time, that time had a beginning. In the beginning God created. What Thomas suggested here was that the eternity or non-eternity of the world is undecideable on a philosophical basis, and the only way it is decided for us is on the basis of revelation. In accepting the Bible we accept that the world had a beginning in time. Thomas's view was if we didn't have that we wouldn't know one way or the other. But that doesn't seem to address the problem whether Aristotle taught that the world had a beginning in time.Thomas would say either those are probable reasons, that is there is nothing necessary about them, or if Aristotle thought these were necessary he was just wrong.
So Thomas' reading of Aristotle is a very careful one, and we can see that it's animated by the underlying assumption that there is a complementarity between the new learning and the Christian faith. There is no incompatibility between what the human mind can learn about the world and ourselves on its own and what we have been told in Scripture, what revelation tells us. These are complementary. Sometimes there seems to be a conflict, but it's an apparent conflict, if reason is being used properly, and not a real conflict. This is a kind of a charter for the role of secular learning alongside Christian faith which is a new modus vivendi. We'll be looking at it in some more detail as we go on. This is a great achievement of Thomas, and it was done in terms of a great controversy, the Latin Averroistic controversy.
Chesterton in his little book on Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox, zeroes in on this as the central achievement, and rightly so. Thomas Aquinas reestablished in a very tumultuous time the complementarity of faith and reason, of secular learning and of sacred learning. We are struck by the fact that a man who was functioning as a theology teacher at Paris during his second stay there from 1269 to 1272, lecturing and writing while working on the Summa Theologiaeamong other things, is writing commentaries on twelve works of Aristotle. This has to be seen as a kind of moonlighting; this wasn't part of his task as a Regent Master of Theology. But it emphasizes or brings home to us how terribly important Thomas saw this problem to be and how important it was to be sure that there was a conflict between philosophy and the faith, not to run to the conclusion that there was such a conflict.
Of course what angered him was the suggestion of these young masters in the arts faculty, the so called Latin Averroists, followers of the Averroistic interpretation on the immortality of the soul. What angered him was the impious suggestion that God would have proposed for our acceptance as true in revelation something we could know to be false, since we could know its contradictory in philosophy to be true if the Latin Averroists were right. This is a violation of the most fundamental principle of human thinking and indeed of existence, that you can't get both sides of contradiction simultaneously true. Things cannot be and not be at the same time. This is the underpinning of that logical rule. But the Latin Averroists seem to have this insouciant notion that they could hold as true their interpretation of Aristotle, which was in conflict with the faith, and hang on to the faith as well. Thomas sees this as impious because it would be suggesting that God is saying, believe this, even though you can know the opposite is true.


Why We Smoke and How We Stop
JOSEPH HENRY PRESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dying to quit : why we smoke and how we stop / Janet Brigham.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-06409-0 (alk. paper)
1. Cigarette habitPsychological aspects. 2. Cigarette habit
Prevention. 3. TobaccoPhysiological effect. I. Title.
Photographs by Harry Heleotis, New York City.
Copyright 1998 by Janet Brigham. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
This book is dedicated
to those who are dying to quit.
[Table of Contents]
Copyright 1998 National Academy Press


Novel Effect is a free, award-winning app that brings your books to life with music, sound effects, and character voices — custom-made to celebrate the tone of each story. As you read aloud, Novel Effect follows the sound of your voice and responds at just the right moment. Skip pages, pause to talk about the illustrations, or re-read your favorite parts and the app will keep up with you wherever you are in the book. Add an interactive, screen-free dimension to hundreds of kids books you know and love. Perfect for bedtime, in the classroom and library, or wherever story time takes you!


There are many option trading books worthreading. Before you consider one, youshould have a basic understanding oftechnical and fundamental analysis. Ibelieve you need to be a good stock trader before you can become a good optiontrader.
Here are a few of my favorite optiontrading books in order of complexity.
Options:Essential Concepts, Third Edition by The Options Institute. The Options Institute wasformed by the various option trading exchanges to educate retail and institutionalclients. This option trading book givesan overview on the history, pricing, strategies, floor operations and MarketMaking. It is easyto read and it provides an excellent foundation.
Optionsfor the Stock Investor, by James Bittman. Thisoption trading book goes through many of the basicoption trading concepts and the terminology.James is an instructor at The Options Institute and he has decades of experience. He is one of the most knowledgeable authorsin the industry.
OptionsAs a Strategic Investment, by LawrenceMcMillan. In short, this book is known by many as the “option trading Bible”. I have read it cover-to-cover manytimes. It is detailed andcomprehensive. It explains every optiontrading strategy and every option pricing concept. If you read it and understand half of it, youwill know more than 90% of the people engaged in option trading.
McMillanon Options, Second Edition by LawrenceMcMillan. Larry is one of the foremost authoritieson option trading. In this option tradingbook he rolls up his sleeves and dives into some of his favorite option tradingstrategies. He uses examples to illustrate his approach.
OptionVolatility and Pricing: Advance Trading Strategies and Techniques, by SheldonNatenberg. This option trading book gets intoserious option trading strategies and you need to have a good understanding ofthe basics.
As I mentioned before, to be a good optiontrader, you need to be a good stock trader first. Start with basicbooks on technical and fundamental stock analysis and then work your way up.


One shot: Scott Nicholson
Posted by Randolph Carter on August 27, 2009
What do you do for a living?
I am a library scientist as an Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. I also run the Library Game Lab of Syracuse where we study the intersection of gaming and libraries. In the past, I have been a network administrator, a reference librarian, and a statistical modeler for Citigroup.
Would it be possible for you to give us a brief overview of your gaming background?
I’ve been gaming for over 30 years. Board games have always been my primary interest. That said, I’ve spent considerable amount of time with RPGs (lots of Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer Fantasy, Earthdawn) and livescale roleplaying with the foam-sword wielding International Fantasy Gaming Society. I’ve always had consoles from the Atari 2600 on up. I’ve done computer gaming through my Commodore 128, Amiga, and PCs, handheld gaming, and even worked for Wizards as a Netrep for The Imagination Network answering Magic: The Gathering questions. My first professional design was as a co-author on Call of Cthulhu Live, 1st edition.
As someone who collects board games, would you know how many you actually own?
Around 1000. I tend to sell games frequently; I probably sell a hundred board games a year through auctions and markets at conventions. If I try a game and don’t see a time where that would be the game I would pull out, I sell it. I’m not a collector for the sake of a collection.
If possible, list all the MMOs you’ve played extensively.
Everquest, where I focused on a Bard and juggling spells World of Warcraft, on and off from the beginning. I find that I need to have people I enjoy talking with – the game itself isn’t enough to keep me playing. I’ve played around with many of the others, but those are the only two that I would consider that I played extensively.
Can you recall that first MMO “wow!” moment?
I think it would be logging onto Everquest, running around, and realizing that all of these other people running around were controlled by other players. Back then, this was a big deal.
At your peak, how much time per week would you say you spent gaming? How about now?
This is a difficult question, as I’m doing quite a bit of work related to gaming. So, for me, I am typically spending much more time working on things related to gaming than I am actually gaming. I do the Board Games with Scott video cast, and those episodes can take 30-40 hours to do. I also host the Games in Libraries Podcast, and am a voice on the On Board Games podcast.
For my work, I’m doing presentations and workshops on gaming, as well as writing books on the topic. I taught a class via YouTube this summer where I prepared one video every day on the topic, and that created several weeks where I was working on gaming topics for 80-100 hours a week.
So, my life is so entwined with game-related experiences that it’s hard to pull it all apart.
Would you care to share an amusing and/or interesting anecdote from your gaming days?
I think the funniest things are happening now, as many folks know about Board Games with Scott. About half of the time that I travel somewhere and visit a game shop, someone knows me. This summer, I was in Utrecht at a game shop. While I was shopping, someone recognized me. We chatted for a while, and then when he left, the shop owner asked how he knew me. I explained about my show, and the shop owner looked at me like I was crazy. The next person who came in the door looked at me, and exclaimed, “It’s celebrity day! It’s Scott Nicholson!”
Because there aren’t a lot of known faces in the board game world. Having one means I get recognized a lot.
You’re a major proponent of gaming in libraries. Could you take a minute and explain what the movement is and how you got involved in it?
Just a minute? I do a full-day workshop on it. Libraries have been supporting gaming since the 1850s. The games have taken different forms over the decades, but it’s been there. Now as more people are engaged with gaming, the engagement with the libraries and gaming is growing. Many libraries host gaming events where people can play board, card, computer, or console games with each other. Games are a form of entertainment media, and as they replace books and movies as a primary form of entertainment, the libraries are fulfilling that need.
Many public libraries are community hubs and the games allow members of the community who may never interact to enjoy spending time with each other.
I got engaged with it about 3 years ago. I saw that the growing focus was on video games in libraries as “gaming in libraries” and I knew that there was a much wider variety of game types that libraries have been and could use to meet their goals. I got involved to study it as a professor, gather evidence on the phenomenon, and explore when gaming is appropriate and how it can be most effectively used as a library service.
Do you see a way that MMOs could be incorporated into this?
They already are. Some libraries are running World of Warcraft or Runescape events where they get a group of people together in a computer lab, log on at the same time, and teach a group how to play an MMO. When you have a group of players all sharing the same physical space and in-game space, social interactions go on between those players.
Another area of research exploration is understanding the information structures that support World of Warcraft. To play the game, it requires significant use of information resources and development of strong searching and other information literacy skills. By drawing connections between these skills and general information seeking skills, librarians can help players become better searchers by tapping the skills they have developed to play the game.
There also is a Libraries and Librarians Guild on Aerie Peak in World of Warcraft. This is akin to an always-running library conference, where players in the guild chat about real-world events in librarianship while grinding away.
While Second Life is not an MMORPG in the same sense as WoW, there is a significant library presence there. At the Info Island, there is most likely at least one reference librarian always on. Anyone needing help can visit the Second Life Alliance Library space and get assistance with information.
Are you at all concerned that board gaming may become a thing of the past due to the popularity of video games especially with our younger gamers?
Concerned? Not really. Board Games are a form of entertainment media. They provide face-to-face interaction, and that is the element that is missing in video games. Many folks who stare at a screen all day like to play an analog game to get back to these in-person social connections.
I see analog and digital games merging through surface computing. These tables would allow people to enjoy the face-to-face experience with the convenience of a digital game. But I like fiddling with my bits (during games), so I’ll miss that!
You’ve recently created your own board game entitled Tulipmania 1637. Would you mind explaining what the game is about?
Tulipmania was the first well-known bubble market. It happened in the Netherlands in the 1600’s and almost completely ruined the Dutch economy. I learned about it at the Tulip museum in Amsterdam, and thought.. “Hey, that should be a game!”. I like economic games, and so set to designing a game. When I hit a design quandary, I did research on what really happens in a bubble stock market as to provide a realistic view on this phenomenon.
How difficult of a process was it for you in creating the game and then finding a publisher?
Oh, it was very easy to create a bad game. Making it into a good game was the tough process. What really helped was a convention I attended with many strong boardgamers who were willing to be honest about my game. Too many people playtest only with family, friends, or their local group and don’t get the quantity of feedback from objective experienced gamers needed to improve the game. Every night, I printed a new board and new cards. During this event, a publisher saw the game and decided to take a copy with him.
You wake up to a world where you are the head of a company developing an MMO. You have unlimited funds and resources available to you. Please describe the kind of game you would make.
I would create a game that combines the gameplay of an MMO with the resources available through digital library services in a steampunk modern world. During the play of the game, players would be required to learn various tools to do research in real resources. As they play, they would become much stronger at searching, recognizing untrustworthy information resources, and generally improve their information literacy skills. Perhaps I’d call it “Beyond Google” as a key lesson to teach is that Google is not the place where people should finish their searching.
At least, that’s the library science professor in me, as part of that funding could then fund my Library Game Lab for a very long time.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with this gamer audience?
Reach out to your local library and volunteer to help with their gaming programs (or start one)! Many libraries are interested, but don’t have the gaming expertise needed to do it well. As you know, you can make a lot of mistakes in selecting games, and you can help libraries avoid those mistakes.
To learn more, check out my free Gaming in Libraries course.
Are you a researcher? I’ve got all of my game-related publications at the Library Game Lab of Syracuse.


Hebrew Lite (Palm OS 4.x) is intended for people who want "read-only" Hebrew on their Palm powered device, and it includes free registration for Luach - the Integrated Jewish Calendar. This version is intended for devices running Palm OS 4.x and lower.
Hebrew Lite is perfect for use with the Luach and Omer applications and for reading Hebrew Doc files. You can download Hebrew Lite and use if for 30 days before you need to register. For additional information, and installation instructions see the Hebrew Lite web page


Welcome to the ART GALLERY's online collections database
The Art Gallery's Collections Database makes the collection more excessible for students, scholars, and the general public. As our mission indicates we seek to "inspire, instruct, challenge, encourage inquiry, and promote scholarship." We hope that by making it easier for everyone to access our collection we move closer to our goal. Any questions regarding objects included in the online database can be addresse to the Collections Manager at email@example.com.
Please use the menu items at the left to begin browsing the collection.
Last updated: 9/19/2012


In recent years the biological sciences have generated very large, complex data sets whose management, analysis and sharing have created unprecedented challenges. The development of ontologies, originally driven by the invention of the semantic web, has been critical in handling this data and permitting interoperability between databases and between applications. The book emphasizes computational and algorithmic issues surrounding bio-ontologies, and additionally offers a number of exercises and tutorials designed to help readers use software such as Protege and applications designed especially for OBO ontologies, including the Ontologizer, which was developed by the authors. The book provides readers with the foundation to use ontologies as a starting point for new bioinformatics research projects or to support current molecular genetics research projects. By supplying a self-contained introduction to OBO ontologies and the Semantic Web, it bridges the gap between both fields and helps readers see what each can contribute to the analysis and understanding of biomedical data.
The first part of the book defines ontology and bio-ontologies. It also explains the importance of mathematical logic for understanding concepts of inference in bio-ontologies, discusses the probability and statistics topics necessary for understanding ontology algorithms, and describes ontology languages, including OBO (the preeminent language for bio-ontologies), RDF, RDFS, and OWL (the languages of the Semantic Web).
The second part covers significant bio-ontologies and their applications. The book presents the Gene Ontology; upper-level ontologies, such as the Basic Formal Ontology and the Relation Ontology; and current bio-ontologies, including several anatomy ontologies, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Sequence Ontology, Mammalian Phenotype Ontology, and Human Phenotype Ontology.
The third part of the text introduces the major graph-based algorithms for bio-ontologies. The authors discuss how these algorithms are used in overrepresentation analysis, model-based procedures, semantic similarity analysis, and Bayesian networks for molecular biology and biomedical applications.
The fourth and final part of the book describes the ontology languages of the Semantic Web and their applications for inference. It covers the formal semantics of RDF and RDFS, OWL inference rules, a key inference algorithm, the SPARQL query language, and the state of the art for querying OWL ontologies.


The Concept of the Soul in Ancient Egyptian Religion and Culture
The ancient Egyptians, one of the world's most enigmatic and enduring civilizations, possessed a rich and intricate belief system that encompassed various aspects of life, death,
and the afterlife. Central to this belief system was the concept of the soul, which played a pivotal role in shaping their religious practices,
social structure, and cultural identity.
The Components of the Egyptian Soul
In ancient Egypt, the soul was not a singular and uniform entity; rather, it comprised several distinct components, each with its unique characteristics and functions. The most prominent of these components included the "ka," "ba," "akh," and "ren."
The Ka: The Ka was often described as the "vital essence" of an individual. It represented the life force or the energy that sustained a person throughout their lifetime.
The Ka was believed to be present from birth and throughout one's life, residing in the body.
Upon death, it would continue to exist and needed to be nourished through offerings of food and drink in the afterlife.
The Ba: The Ba was a distinctive aspect of the soul, often depicted as a bird with a human head. It was the personality or individuality of the person.
The Ba could move freely between the living and the afterlife, bridging the gap between the two realms. It allowed the deceased to maintain contact with
the living, visit sacred places, and partake in the offerings presented by their loved ones.
The Akh: The Akh was the transfigured or glorified state of the soul. Achieving the Akh was the ultimate goal of the Egyptian afterlife, as it represented
a state of enlightenment and divinity. The deceased would become an Akh if they passed the judgment of the gods and were deemed worthy. The Akh could exist
in the presence of the gods and was often associated with the luminous and eternal aspects of the soul.
The Ren: The Ren was a person's true name, believed to be intimately connected to their existence. In Egyptian culture, knowing a person's name granted power
over them, which is why individuals had both a public name and a secret name. The Ren was an enduring aspect of the soul, and it needed to be remembered and
preserved to ensure one's continued existence in the afterlife.
The Evolution of the Concept of the Soul
The concept of the soul in ancient Egypt evolved over millennia, reflecting changes in religious beliefs, social structures, and cultural influences.
The earliest evidence of Egyptian beliefs in the soul dates back to the Predynastic period, around 3100 BCE, where primitive ideas of an afterlife
and funerary rituals began to emerge.
With the development of a centralized state and the advent of the Old Kingdom, these beliefs became more sophisticated,
and the pyramid texts, the earliest funerary texts, were created. These texts provided guidance for the deceased in their journey to the afterlife and reflected
the complex nature of the Egyptian soul.
During the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040-1640 BCE), the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead (also known as the Book of Coming Forth by Day) further refined the concept of the soul.
These texts provided detailed instructions for the deceased on how to navigate the afterlife, emphasizing the importance of ethical conduct, the judgment of the soul, and
the ultimate goal of achieving the Akh.
The New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BCE) marked a significant phase in the development of the Egyptian soul. The concept of the Akh became increasingly prominent,
reflecting the desire for a more elevated and divine existence in the afterlife. The New Kingdom also saw the widespread practice of mummification, as Egyptians believed that
preserving the body was essential to ensuring the soul's journey to the afterlife.
Influence on Funerary Practices
The concept of the soul had a profound influence on the funerary practices of ancient Egypt. Funerary rituals were a crucial aspect of Egyptian culture,
as they were seen as the means to secure a successful transition to the afterlife. These practices included mummification, the construction of elaborate tombs, the
recitation of funerary texts, and the provision of offerings.
Mummification was a complex process aimed at preserving the body for the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that the soul needed a physical anchor in the afterlife, and a well-preserved body was essential for this purpose. The process involved the removal of internal organs, the treatment of the body with preservatives, and the wrapping of the corpse in linen bandages.
The construction of tombs, particularly the grand pyramids, served as both a physical resting place for the deceased and a point of contact between the living and the dead. The deceased's soul could return to the tomb to receive offerings from family members and continue its journey in the afterlife.
Funerary texts, such as the Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead, were recited during burial ceremonies to guide the soul through the afterlife. These texts contained spells, prayers, and instructions for the deceased, emphasizing the importance of moral conduct, reverence for the gods, and the judgment of the soul.
Offerings of food, drink, and other items were presented to the deceased to nourish the Ka and Ba. These offerings were left in tombs or presented at the individual's burial site, ensuring that the soul would have sustenance in the afterlife.
The significance of the soul in funerary practices extended to the construction of elaborate burial objects, including statues, stelae, and personal items, which were intended to accompany the deceased and provide a sense of continuity between the worlds of the living and the dead.
The concept of the soul in ancient Egyptian culture was a multifaceted and dynamic element that played a central role in shaping the civilization's religious beliefs, social structure, and cultural practices. The Egyptian soul, composed of the Ka, Ba, Akh, and Ren, represented different aspects of an individual's identity and journey in the afterlife. Over the course of Egypt's long history, the concept of the soul evolved, becoming more complex and refined, with an increasing emphasis on achieving the transcendent state of the Akh.
Funerary practices in ancient Egypt, deeply rooted in the concept of the soul, were elaborate and meticulously designed to ensure a successful transition to the afterlife. From mummification to the construction of grand tombs and the recitation of funerary texts, these practices reflected the Egyptians' unwavering commitment to preserving the soul and ensuring its eternal existence.
The enduring legacy of the Egyptian concept of the soul is evident in the art, literature, and religious practices of ancient Egypt. It continues to captivate our imagination and offers a profound insight into the beliefs and values of this remarkable civilization that thrived along the banks of the Nile for millennia.


For centuries, Long Island's beaches have provided sustenance, relaxation, and inspiration. The coastline is renowned for its sandy Atlantic Ocean surf beaches, calm bayfront beaches, and rugged north shore Long Island Sound beaches. First inhabited by Native Americans, the area was called Sewanhacky ("Isle of Shells") in reverence to the offerings received where the water met the land. Drawing from the archives of local libraries, historical societies, museums, and private collections, Long Island Beaches presents a curated selection of vintage postcards illustrating the diversity of Nassau and Suffolk Counties' beautiful shores. Rare photographs and maps accompany the postcards to provide historical context. Through extensive research, author Kristen J. Nyitray documents a facet of Long Island's social and cultural history and the lure of its picturesque beaches.


“Lim’s enthralling novel succeeds on every level: as a love story, an imaginative thriller, and a dystopian narrative.”
“[Lim] comes into her own here, with prose that’s elegant and haunting, somehow managing to be both unsentimental and deeply moving at the same time. A devastating debut. ”
In September 1981, Polly and Frank arrive at the time travel terminal at Houston Intercontinental Airport. One will travel, and one will stay.
An Indie Next Pick & Indigo Best Book of the Month, and recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Publisher’s Weekly, CBC, Maclean’s Magazine, the Millions, Chatelaine, Red Magazine, Hello Giggles, Book Riot, Syfy.com, and more!
America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, Polly will do whatever it takes to save her lover, even if it means risking everything. She agrees to a radical plan—time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. If she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.
But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a divided America, with no status and no money, Polly is desperate to find Frank. But as danger mounts and her search demands unthinkable sacrifice, she must ask herself: what does it cost to hold on to the past, and what does it cost to let it go?
An Ocean of Minutes is a timely exploration of migration and the wrenching love story of two people who are at once mere weeks and many years apart.
“A beautiful debut exploring how time, love, and sacrifice are never what they seem to be.”
“Amidst the breathtaking world Thea Lim has created in An Ocean of Minutes is a profound meditation on the inhumanity of class and the limits of love. It takes immense talent to render cruelty both accurately and with honest beauty – Lim has pulled it off. This is a story about the malleability of time, but at its core lives something timeless.”
“An Ocean of Minutes is a time machine into the future of this moment. Gripping and graceful, it's dystopian love story as told by a visionary. Thea Lim's novel reads like the birth of a legend.”
“An Ocean of Minutes offers that rare combination of a provocative speculative setting, masterfully elegant writing, and a story that moves and haunts long after the last page. Thea Lim is an enormously talented writer.”
“A strikingly imaginative time-travel story unlike anything I've ever read, rich with pinpoint emotional insight and fierce, vivid observations about a future that's already our past.”
“An Ocean of Minutes is a buoyant, compelling tale ranging from the everyday beauty of falling in love to a frightening vision of a dystopian present day. Ms. Lim's imagination is boundless and dynamic, from her narrative arc to the small details that animate and anchor her prose. I would recommend An Ocean of Minutes to anyone looking to be drawn in and enchanted by a truly unique story.”
“An Ocean of Minutes draws comparisons with The Time Traveller's Wife. But this tale of a woman sent 13 years into the future to save the man she loves, cuts deeper and more true. Heart-breaking and haunting.”


Since 1964, St. Rose of Lima School has been educating children, encouraging them to reach for their highest goals. Today, St. Rose of Lima is a community of almost 300 students from Kindergarten through 8th grade. The school’s bright and dedicated staff guides our students to learn, discover, and thrive.
The history of St. Rose of Lima School is deeply woven into the roots of Simi Valley itself. St. Rose of Lima Church, established in 1921, was originally located at a now-historic site in Strathearn Park, where the primary building still stands. The parish had a wide reach, and is community grew quickly. By the late 1950s, the church’s pastor, Father Patrick McDonagh, realized that the community needed more spiritual and educational support to meet current and future needs. He and his parishioners had a vision of creating a larger church and an adjoining school, along with supporting facilities such as a rectory and a parish hall. Once the master plan was set, parishioners began pledging funds immediately.
Growing to Serve a Dynamic Community
In January 1964, after much prayer and patience, the church and school’s groundbreaking ceremonies took place. St. Rose of Lima School officially opened its doors on September 14, 1964, serving 213 students. The brand new parochial school was staffed by the Sisters of Notre Dame and one lay teacher. Sister Mary Rose Anthony (Sister Rose) was appointed as the school’s founding principal. She continued to serve the school in various capacities for more than 50 years.
The school’s formal dedication was celebrated on June 16, 1968, led by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal McIntyre. The parish hall was completed in 1975, giving the community a place to gather for social events and celebrations.
The community grew at such a rapid pace that an expansion was soon in the works. In 1990, the school received a new wing, a project headed by then-pastor, Father Michael Bunny. The expansion added a music room, a library, a faculty lounge, and adult and youth ministry centers to the school.
Leading Toward the Future
Father Joseph Shea became the pastor of St. Rose of Lima in July 2008. Following an intensive search, John Sanders was appointed principal of the school in August 2010. Mr. Sanders, an award-winning teacher and principal, brought a wealth of skills, qualifications, and experience to the school at both the elementary and middle school levels. Mr. Sanders has great expertise in math and science programs, research-based instructional strategies, hands-on science instruction, behavior management, and improving student learning. With a proven track record of success, Mr. Sanders is driving St. Rose of Lima to new heights, focusing on technology improvement, professional development, and innovative learning initiatives. He has already implemented an Accelerated Reader Program, Panther Positives Program, and Art Masters Program. He has also administered intensive teacher training in Thinking Maps and Research Based Learning Differences between boys and girls. He is spearheading St. Rose of Lima’s plan to become a leading-edge 21st Century school. Technology upgrades include wireless Internet access, LCD projectors, document cameras, and wireless tablets.
Students and their families know St. Rose of Lima School as a school with outstanding academics, a strong spiritual base, and a welcoming, supportive community. Thanks to an amazing staff, the school has a well-earned reputation as a place where students receive an excellent high school-preparatory education complemented by Catholic values and all the extras—in a nurturing, family environment. St. Rose of Lima School continues to thrive in its efforts to meet the needs of students, families, and the community.


[Caterina] strapped on her cuirass, one of the very few made for a woman in that age. It was as expertly crafted as her luxurious gowns had been in her youth; the steel was shaped to her curves and reinforced to prevent crushing or compressing her breasts. It was also streamlined so that she could wear it underneath her clothes. Tiny plates fit perfectly together to allow for a wide range of movement. The delicate floral pattern incised on the front was the only concession to ornament, and on the upper left plate Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Caterina’s patron saint, was etched into the steel.
— Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli, p. 217


Prior to the mid 17th Century, the inhabitants of this village had all belonged to an agricultural community, seeking what meagre living they could, from the land. For whatever reason, in about 1650 various people with connections in London began to buy land and settle around Stoke Golding.
Of these, surely Sir Henry Firebrace must be Stoke Golding’s most illustrious resident and benefactor, and a white marble monument to him is on the wall of the Lady Chapel in the Parish Church.
The family of Firebrace are supposed to be originally Norman, deriving their name from Fier à brás or Brás de Fer, which translates as “Strong of arm,” but when the family first came to England cannot be determined. From records of 1682 it appears that Henry was the sixth and youngest son of Robert Firebrace of Derby.
It is said he was born in Derby in 1619 and at 20 he was an apprentice to a money broker in All Hallowes, Barking. In 1643, Basil, Earl of Denbigh, who had estates near Monks Kirby in Warwickshire was appointed Commander in Chief of the Midlands District and Firebrace was chosen as Secretary to the Court and Council of War. It is believed he acted between Denbigh and the King and he became a friend and confidant of the latter.
He married Elizabeth, daughter of Daniel Dowell of Stoke Golding, in 1645 and they lived in St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe in London. In 1647 he was gazetted to serve in the King’s household, “at the Back Stairs”, and when Charles I was imprisoned by Cromwell in Carisbrooke Castle, on the Isle of Wight, he was “Page of the Bedchamber”.
He assisted in the King’s first attempt to escape imprisonment and he later took on the post of “Clerk of the Kitchen”. No doubt due to his allegiance to the King and the help he gave to his escape attempts, one of which ended with the King becoming stuck in a window, he was dismissed by the Sovereign’s gaolers. He returned to the mainland where he continued to write, offering help by providing a boat to carry the King from the island and horses along a proposed escape route, but these efforts were to no avail. Some of the letters between them are reproduced in “The History and Antiquities of Leicestershire” by J. Nichols, dated 1801.
When King Charles I was about to be executed and was on the scaffold, it is said that he gave Sir Henry Firebrace a ring which contained a portrait of His Majesty in diamonds.
Through marriage, the Firebrace family became related to the Earl of Denbigh and that ring was passed down from the Firebrace side of the family to the Denbighs, in whose possession it still remains.
On the restoration in 1660, Sir Henry was able to secure a position with the court of King Charles II as “Chief Clerk of the Kitchen”. He received further advancement and became a senior official in the King’s Household in 1680. He received his Knighthood in 1685, becoming Clerk Comptroller Supernumerary of the Royal Household and Assistant to His Majesty’s Officers of the Green Cloth.
His first wife had died and he married twice more. When his third spouse, Mary Dalton of Leatherhead, died in 1687 she was buried in Westminster Abbey.
His advancement continued and by 1685 he was Clerk Ordinary in the Court of King James II. However, long before then, he had made provision for his later life, for in 1678 he had bought a large country house in Stoke Golding. His connections had obviously begun long before, with his marriage to his first wife, a member of a Stoke Golding family. And so it was that, in 1689, upon the accession of William and Mary, he decided to retire to his country seat in this village.
His residence, which was called the Old Hall, was an imposing building standing opposite the church on what was, in those days, a bridle path to Dadlington. The house survived until 1850, when it was demolished by the Baxter family to make way for the Men’s Reading Room, which is now the school caretaker’s house. A wall bordering the Old Hall remained for even longer, known as Crinkle Crankle wall because of its shape; it was only demolished in living memory. A set of steps led from the house to the church.
No doubt the village people were pleased that such a wealthy and well connected member of the gentry had decided to live in their midst.
He settled well into his new life away from the Royal Court in London, buying property in Wykin and then a house and almost three hundred acres of land in Sutton Cheney, but he lived mainly in the Old Hall.
He spent the last two years of his life in these idyllic surroundings until his death, aged 72, on 27th January 1690/91. He was buried in the chancel of the Church and his offspring erected a white marble memorial, which is now in the lady chapel. The plaque, in Latin, recounts his life at court. His eldest son, Henry Firebrace D.D., who was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, continued to live in the Old Hall until his death in 1708, for Henry senior’s will, made in 1680 bequeathed his house in Stoke and other property there and at Sutton Cheney to him, and thence to his second son, Basil, for Henry junior remained a bachelor.
That second son was Sir Basil Firebrace Bart., who was the father of the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of Denbigh and Charles Firebrace who had King Charles II as his Godfather.
Other bequests in the will were, “To my daughter Susanna Hall, widow £100 together with £100 which I lately lent her: To my daughter Elizabeth £100: To my most worthy Aunt Mistress Hester Hodges, a spinster, of Somerset House, £20 to buy her a gold ring”. This grand lady, too, had Royal connections and founded Stoke Golding’s Grammar School.
Sir Henry must have loved the village he had come to live in, and the people and the church too, for he and his second son, Basil, gave to the church various items of communion plate which, although safely stored away are still in the possession of the church authorities.
These gifts are listed as follows:-
A silver cup and cover of twelve and a half ounces dated 1688. The Latin inscription shows the cup to have been gifted for the use of the church in 1689.
A seven ounce silver cover paten with a foot and a Latin inscription which translates as the Church of Stoke Golding HF A.D. 1689.
A forty three ounce silver flagon with a Latin inscription which states that the flagon and dish were given by Sir Basil Firebrace to the Church of Stoke Golding 1689.
A silver dish of 8.8ounces with a foot. It is inscribed in Latin which translated shows it was gifted to the Church of Stoke Golding B.F. A.D.1689.
Although Sir Henry and his family have long departed and his grand house, the Old Hall has been demolished, his life and achievements will be long remembered by reason of the marble memorial in the church and by his splendid and generous gifts of silver to the Church and the people of Stoke Golding.


UK UWMN 2001 Publications
Beaumont, W. R. C. & McDonnell, N. (2001) Acid Waters Monitoring 2000 Report on Fish Studies. 1-18. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Dorset.
Evans, C. D. & Monteith, D. T. (2001) Chemical trends at lakes and streams in the UK Acid Waters Monitoring Network, 1988-2000: Evidence for recent recovery at a national scale. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 351-366.
Evans, C. D., Cullen, J. M., Alewell, C., Kopacek, J., Marchetto, A., Moldan, F., Prechtel, A., Rogora, M., Vesely, J. & Wright, R. (2001) Recovery from acidification in European surface waters. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 283-297.
Evans, C. D., Harriman, R., Monteith, D. T. & Jenkins, A. (2001) Assessing the suitability of Acid Neutralising Capacity as a measure of long-term trends in acidic waters based on two parallel datasets. Water Air and Soil Pollution, 130, 1541-1546.
Evans, C. D., Jenkins, A., Helliwell, R., Ferrier, R. & Collins, R. (2001) Freshwater Acidification and Recovery in the United Kingdom. 1-80. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford.
Evans, C. D., Monteith, D. T. & Harriman, R. (2001) Long-term variability in the deposition of marine ions at west coast sites in the UK Acid Waters Monitoring Network: impacts on surface water chemistry and significance for trend determination. The Science of The Total Environment, 265, 115-129.
Freeman, C., Evans, C. D., Monteith, D. T., Reynolds, B. & Fenner, N. (2001) Export of organic carbon from peat soils. Nature, 412, 785.
Harriman, R., Watt, A. W., Christie, A. E. G., Collen, P., Moore, D. W., McCartney, A. G., Taylor, E. M. & Watson, J. (2001) Interpretation of trends in acidic deposition and surface water chemistry in Scotland during the past three decades. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 407-420.
Jenkins, A. & Cullen, J. M. (2001) An Assessment of the potential impact of the Gothenburg Protocol on surface water chemistry using the dynamic MAGIC model at acid sensitive sites in the UK. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 529-541.
Jenkins, A., Ferrier, R. C. & Helliwell, R. C. (2001) Modelling nitrogen dynamics at Lochnagar, NE Scotland. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 519-527.
Monteith, D. T., Evans, C. D. & Patrick, S. (2001) Monitoring acid waters in the UK: 1988-1998 Trends. Water Air and Soil Pollution, 130, 1307-1312.
Monteith, D. T. (2001) Proceedings of the 16th meeting of the ICP Waters Programme Task Force in Riga, Latvia, October 18-20 2000. Lyulko, I, Berg, P., and Skjelkvåle, B. L. 1-40. NIVA, Oslo, Norway.
Monteith, D. T. & Evans, C. D. (2001) United Kingdom Acid Waters Monitoring Network. 1-24. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, London.
NEGTAP. (2001) Transboundary Air Pollution: Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone in the UK. 1-314. Department For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), London.
Wright, R. F., Alewell, C., Cullen, J. M., Evans, C. D., Marchetto, A., Moldan, F., Prechtel, A. & Rogora, M. (2001) Trends in nitrogen deposition and leaching in acid-sensitive streams in Europe. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5, 299-310.
Page last modified: 12 March 2010
Page published: 12 March 2010


Today is Uzeyir Hajibeyov’s birthday
He is a prominent Azerbaijani composer, music-scientist, publicist, dramatist, pedagogue, and public figure, founder of modern Azerbaijani professional music and national opera.
In 1920, the composer’s name was included in the list of 59 people to be shot. As a result of the efforts of Uzeyir Hacibyov’s brother-in-law, Hanefi Teregulov and Nariman Narimanov, the list was canceled and the composer’s name was removed.
Uzeyir bey Hacıbeyov used the signatures of “U”, “Filankes”, “Behmankes” in his works and writings. He is the first person to record more than 300 folk songs in Azerbaijani music history. His brothers Zulfugar Hajibeyov and Jeyhun Hajibeyli, his friends from seminary, intellectuals of that time, Azerbaijani masters Huseyn Arablinski, Huseyngulu Sarabski, Abdurrahimbey Hagverdiyev, Hanafi Teregulov, and others helped him to compose a national opera in Azerbaijani language.
In 1921, U.Hajibeyov organized the first music school for Azerbaijani students in Baku – Azerbaijan State Turkish Music School (later it turned into a technical school). In 1927 he published the first collection of “Azerbaijani Turkish folk songs” with Muslim Magomayev. Uzeyir Hajibeyov is also the founder of the first folk instruments orchestra under the Azerbaijan Radio Committee in 1931.


World economy: Transformations & transitions
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A6 Reading Log Book
Single A6 size notebook (146x103mm), hand constructed by myself with 48 pages of pre-printed 90gsm paper and a 280gsm typographic design board cover, bound with 2 staples.
A really useful little log book for any book lover to keep a record of the books they have read and still need to read. Complete with space to make a few notes and assign a rating out of 5 once completed. At the back is a page to list any interesting authors that they might like to explore.
Each book can hold details for 48 books.
Available in a kraft card cover with white pages, comes complete with a matching style card bookmark.
Ideal stocking filler for any book lover!


|BrainStem® Command Reference||Index|
Basic Command Structure
The commands for the BrainStem architecture are listed here. All BrainStem commands are structured the same. The first byte is the command code and the subsequent bytes are data for the command.
Commands are sent between modules on the IIC bus wrapped in a packet structure. This same packet structure is used on the host-to-stem link .
Commands can be issued from the host using the aStem Library from within C or C++. They can also be issued to modules explicitly using the Console for debugging, testing, and interactive use.


Welcome, teachers. This page contains resources and activities for students regarding Juristac, Amah Mutsun history, and related subjects. There are two sets of materials available.
Below you will find six lesson plans in PDF format that are tailored to a high school learning level. Although these materials were developed with high school standards in mind, they can easily be adapted for use in many different grade levels and instructional settings.
There are also seven “mini lessons” designed for use by upper elementary-aged students. These PowerPoint-based lessons provide engaging activities and can serve as an introduction to the issues surrounding Juristac for readers of any learning level.
We invite and encourage your feedback and stories of classroom experiences while teaching with these materials. Please contact us by email at curriculum [at] protectjuristac.org.
Juristac curriculum: Activities and study guides
The following activities and exercises are aligned with the English Language Arts (ELA) and History/Social Studies Common Core State Standards. In these activities, you will find opportunities to engage your students in meaningful research into local history, reflective discussion, critical thinking, and persuasive writing. We have prepared a Standards Alignment Guide (PDF, 3 pages) that provides a detailed list of standards aligned with the activities and a chart outlining which standards are covered by each assignment.
Amah Mutsun Youth Walk for Juristac MINI-LESSON Slideshows
Learn more about the Amah Mutsun and Juristac through these seven engaging multi-media slideshow-based lessons that follow the route of the Youth Walk for Juristac.
Additional resources for educators
This list will be expanded periodically. Email us if you are looking for resources around a particular topic related to Juristac or the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band that you are not finding here.
- Amah Mutsun Tribal Chairman Valentin Lopez’s Perspective on Juristac by Stanford Journalism—3 minutes, 2020.
- Juristac: A short film by Ariel Bobbett— 4 minutes, 2018.
- Here and Now— by Bay Area Open Space Council, 2015. 18 minutes. Documents the work of the Amah Mutsun Land Trust and Tribal Stewardship Corps.
- Excavating the past; Improving the future— UC Berkeley, 2018. 4 minutes. Portrays ongoing collaboration between the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and UC Berkeley archaeologists and anthropologists.
- UMUNHUM by Plus M Productions, 2017. 11 minutes. Featuring the story of the return of the Amah Mutsun to their sacred mountain in Santa Clara County, Mt Umunhum.
- Beyond Recognition: “A film exploring the quest to preserve one’s culture and homeland in a society bent on erasing them”—featuring one of the Amah Mutsun’s neighboring tribes, the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. 25 minutes, 2014. Available via streaming and DVD.
- Telling the Truth About California Missions, Classroom Edition (featuring Valentin Lopez, Elias Castillo, Mark Day)
- Videos from December 2018 Protect Juristac panel in Morgan Hill
- Additional videos on this Protect Juristac YouTube playlist
Wildlife corridors / landscape linkages
- Stuart Weiss presentation on wildlife impacts of the proposed Sargent Quarry (Dec. 2018 video)
- Bay Area Critical Linkages Map
- Critical Linkages: Bay Area and Beyond (Report – 50mb PDF):
- Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan
Amah Mutsun and Ohlone
- Rekindling The Old Ways: The Amah Mutsun and the Recovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (Bay Nature article)
- Contemporary Ohlone History (article)
- Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today— by Randall Milliken, Laurence H. Shoup, and Beverly R. Ortiz. National Park Service, 2009. Individual chapter PDFs on NPS website
- “No Somos Animales”: Indigenous Resistance and Perseverance in Nineteenth Century Santa Cruz— by Martin Adam Rizzo. Unpublished dissertation, September 2006.
- Justice for Juristac: Using International and Comparative Law to Protect Indigenous Lands— article in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law (2020)
- Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary, mutsun-inkiS inkiS-mutsun riica pappel— full 677 page PDF of dictionary available for free download.
- The Case of California’s Amah Mutsun by E. Richard Hart, published in the journal Western Legal History, 2003 — a scholarly review of the legal history of the dispossession of Mutsun people from their ancestral lands, with a focus on the case of Rancho Juristac (Sargent Ranch)
- An Eco-Archaeological Study of Late Holocene Indigenous Foodways and Landscape Management Practices at Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve, San Mateo County, California
- Ohlone elders and youth speak: Restoring a California Legacy
Related curriculum resources
- Standing on Sacred Ground film series teaching resources from the Berkeley-based Sacred Land Film Project: Teacher’s Guides and Discussion Guides
- California’s First Mass Incarceration System: Franciscan Missions, California Indians, and Penal Servitude, 1769–1836. Benjamin Madley, 2019 (34 pages)
- California Indian History Curriculum Coalition (CIHCC) resource list
- Run4Salmon 4th Grade Curriculum
- The East Bay Regional Park District’s Native Peoples Map Brochure by District Naturalist Beverly R. Ortiz
Distance instruction tips for educators
- Zoom: Getting Started With Breakout Rooms (within a Zoom class or meeting)
- Canvas Conferences (BigBlueButton) support: How to create and manage breakout rooms | How to share a YouTube video within a conference
- Blackboard Collaborate: How to use Breakout Groups
- D2L: Breakout Rooms overview
- Zoom 101 for Teachers
- Tips & Tricks for Teachers Educating on Zoom (2 page PDF from Zoom)