William of Tocco

Wilhelm von Tocco (* around 1240 ; † around 1323 ) was an Italian monk .

Nothing is known about the family circumstances of Wilhelm von Tocco. A presumed aristocratic origin was last seen as unlikely. After he had joined the Dominicans at an unknown time - he made his profession in Benevento - he was sent to study theology in Naples , where he studied with Thomas Aquinas from 1272 to 1274, among others . 1289 William was prior of the Dominican convent in Naples. In the last decade of the 13th century until 1301 he was often active as Inquisitores heretice pravitatis . In Benevento he was elected prior in 1297 and remained in that position until 1319.

Wilhelm finished his Vita of Thomas Aquinas around 1320 , for which he may have been collecting material for some time. In the years 1318 to 1321 he campaigned emphatically for the canonization of Thomas and therefore stayed several times in Avignon , where the Pope resided at that time. Wilhelm's Thomas biography is particularly interesting because of his warm character, his sympathy for an important philosopher and his subtle characterization of the protagonist. All of the theologian's writings are also listed in the vita. For a long time, Wilhelm's biography was the basis for all other Thomas biographies. At the beginning of the 15th century it was the basis of a Thomas panegyric that was written and delivered by an anonymous speaker at the Council of Basel . Willehad Paul Eckert (the editor of the German edition of Wilhelm's Thomas biography) calls the early Thomas biographies, including that of Wilhelm von Tocco, “purposeful transformations of real life” and judges them: “In the effort to incorporate the image of the sacred in Even the oldest biographers largely obscured the image of the person Thomas to draw colors that were as bright as possible. ... The original features under the painting can only be recognized with difficulty. "

literature

Giulia Barone: W. v. Tocco . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 9, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89659-909-7 , column 189 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Conclusion p. 28 of the article: Willehad Paul Eckert: Stylization and reinterpretation of the personality of St. Thomas von Aquino through the early biographers , in: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 18 (1971), pp. 7–28.