SOURCE: "The Golden Wisdom" in Aquinas's Search for Wisdom, The Bruce Publishing Company, 1965, pp. 220-30.

In the following excerpt, Bourke discusses Aquinas's reputation in the half-century following his death.

"We earnestly exhort you, venerable brethren, to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas," wrote Pope Leo XIII in 1879.¹ This is one of the best known quotations from the famous letter which touched off the modern revival of interest in Aquinas' personality and thought. Pope Leo reviewed the repeated approvals of Thomism that are found in the words of nearly all the Roman pontiffs in the years since his canonization.² He also spoke with sorrow of the neglect into which the golden wisdom had fallen in Christian schools. The encyclical Aeterni Patris ended with a challenge to modern Catholic scholarship to adopt and carry on the spirit of St. Thomas' scholarship in the present day.

We do not propose...