Thomas Aquinas dies at Fossanova

1274

Struck by a low-hanging branch while riding to the Council of Lyon, the Dominican theologian whose Summa Theologiae was trying to reconcile Aristotle with revelation died in a Cistercian monastery. His last work, the Summa, was left unfinished, which he had already predicted. After a mystical experience near the end of his life, he reportedly declared that all he had written seemed to him like straw.