What do we know of the prayer-life of Aquinas? This book by the Dominican Paul Murray contains a surprising number of fresh, illuminating and unexpected answers to this question.

Aquinas today is still almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that he was also a master of the spiritual life, a life-long teacher of Scripture, and a very considerable poet.

The three main sections of the present study, ‘Aquinas: Man of Prayer’, ‘Prayer Considered: Soundings in the Biblical Commentaries’, and ‘Poet of the Eucharist: The Hymns and Canticles of Aquinas’, explore not only Aquinas’s actual practice of prayer, but also cast new light on the decidedly contemplative character of his theology and on his quite unique genius as a poet.