Santa Sabina Convent

Title

Santa Sabina Convent

Subject

Dominicans

Description

The park to the southwest of Santa Sabina offers a great view of the large, active Dominican convent. Disguised in a modern facade, the medieval section of the convent still stands towards the Tiber paired with a more modern extension towards the street. Every Dominican convent doubled as a school for training mendicant preachers and Santa Sabina’s school is particularly significant in this tradition. It was here in 1265 that Thomas Aquinas established a new school for the entire province specializing in the study of theology, the first of its kind in the Dominican system.

In time this program would come to be known as a studium provincale, a part of Dominican education which served as an intermediate step between the basic curriculum offered to the friars by their convent lector and the advanced curriculum offered at universities. Thomas Aquinas’ program ran for two years, during which time he wrote the Summa Theologiae, a controversial synthesis of theology and philosophy which eventually revolutionized the way Dominicans taught the subject. Santa Sabina remained the center of the Dominican theology in Rome until later in the 13th century, when it was replaced by the more centrally located Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Creator

Todd Johnson (2020)

Source

Mulchahey, Marian Michèle, Michele Mulchahey, and Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. "First the Bow Is Bent in Study-- ": Dominican Education Before 1350. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998.

Date

1265

Identifier

santasabinaconvent_2019

Coverage

Spatial Coverage

Piazza Pietro D'Illiria, 1, 00153 Roma RM

Description

The park to the southwest of Santa Sabina offers a great view of the large, active Dominican convent. Disguised in a modern facade, the medieval section of the convent still stands towards the Tiber paired with a more modern extension towards the street. Every Dominican convent doubled as a school for training mendicant preachers and Santa Sabina’s school is particularly significant in this tradition. It was here in 1265 that Thomas Aquinas established a new school for the entire province specializing in the study of theology, the first of its kind in the Dominican system.

In time this program would come to be known as a studium provincale, a part of Dominican education which served as an intermediate step between the basic curriculum offered to the friars by their convent lector and the advanced curriculum offered at universities. Thomas Aquinas’ program ran for two years, during which time he wrote the Summa Theologiae, a controversial synthesis of theology and philosophy which eventually revolutionized the way Dominicans taught the subject. Santa Sabina remained the center of the Dominican theology in Rome until later in the 13th century, when it was replaced by the more centrally located Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Creator

Todd Johnson (2020)

Date

1265

Coverage

1200s

Source

Mulchahey, Marian Michèle, Michele Mulchahey, and Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. "First the Bow Is Bent in Study-- ": Dominican Education Before 1350. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998.

Geolocation