Church of the Jacobins (Tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas)

The Story

The Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, a masterpiece of southern French Gothic built by the Dominicans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, holds the relics of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor and the most influential theologian in the history of the Catholic Church. His reliquary rests beneath an altar in the great brick church whose famous "palm tree" vaulting has drawn admiration for centuries. Thomas (c. 1225–1274) entered the young Order of Preachers against his noble family's wishes and studied under St. Albert the Great. His vast body of work — above all the Summa Theologiae — brought faith and reason into a synthesis that the Church has never ceased to draw upon. He died at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova on March 7, 1274, while traveling to the Second Council of Lyon, and was canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323. In 1368 Pope Urban V ordered that the saint's remains be given to the Dominicans of Toulouse, the city where the order had been founded by St. Dominic's first companions; the relics arrived in solemn procession on January 28, 1369 — the date now kept as his feast. During the French Revolution the relics were sheltered in the Basilica of Saint-Sernin, and in 1974, on the seventh centenary of his death, they were returned to the Jacobins, where they remain. Declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope St. Pius V in 1567 and patron of Catholic schools and scholars, Thomas continues to draw students, teachers, and pilgrims to Toulouse, where the Church honors a mind wholly placed at the service of divine truth.

Church Recognition

St. Thomas Aquinas was canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope St. Pius V in 1567; his relics were translated to Toulouse by order of Pope Urban V in 1369 and rest today in the Church of the Jacobins.

Catholic Teaching

The shrine of the Angelic Doctor celebrates the harmony of faith and reason taught by the Church (CCC 156–159), the vocation of theology in service of the Word of God (CCC 94), and the veneration of relics within the communion of saints (CCC 946–962, 1674).

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The Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse holds the relics of the Angelic Doctor.

Go Deeper

Visit the official Couvent des Jacobins website at https://jacobins.toulouse.fr; read the Summa Theologiae or an introduction such as G.K. Chesterton's Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, and see St. John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio and the Catechism of the Catholic Church on faith and reason (CCC 156–159).