Angels give a supernatural belt to the chaste Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was initially placed in the monastery of Monte Cassino, near his home, as a boy in the capacity of oblate, i.e. offered as a prospective monk. However, he chose to join the Friars Preachers, a new order that implied a great change from traditional forms of monasticism, and included the necessity to beg alms. His feudal-minded family considered this a dishonour and opposed his plans. They eventually had him abducted and locked him up in the family castle in 1243. The young man resisted all forms of family pressure and harsh methods to divert him from his vocation: deprivation of freedom, isolation, and physical violence. They even hired a beautiful and skilled prostitute in Naples to seduce him and presumably to make him renounce his life of celibacy. But heaven intervened: angels appeared and gave Thomas a belt, to seal his heroic chastity.

The Temptation of Saint Thomas, Diego Velázquez, 1632 / © Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Les raisons d'y croire :

The story of the "angelic belt" brought from Heaven to Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) appears in the account of his first biographer, William of Tocco, written in 1323.

Tocco's biography was used in the canonisation process. The experts in charge of its investigation were serious people, prudent, even suspicious regarding mystical phenomena, especially the materialisation of objects, which could be attributed to the devil.

A very humble man, Thomas hid the existence of the belt. He revealed its existence and the circumstances in which he had obtained it only to his confessor on his deathbed. Given his deep and sincere faith, it is highly unlikely that Thomas would have deliberately lied moments before facing God.

Thomas always taught that the supernatural should not overshadow the natural - a very wise attitude, which leads us to conclude that he was not prone to delusions.

The girdle was in fact discovered on the body of Saint Thomas Aquinas immediately after his death. It was placed in a sumptuous reliquary and was the object of veneration by the Dominicans, who for a long time considered it to be one of the most precious relics of the order. This is why we know where and how this object has been preserved throughout history. Kept in the convent of Fossanova, south of Rome, where Thomas died on 7 March 1274, it was one of the rare treasures rushed to safety when French revolutionary troops invaded in 1799. These precautions saved the relic, which was transported to the convent of San Domenico in Chieri, in Piedmont, where it remains to this day.

From the outset, the object intrigued the first people who saw it: astonished, they testified that, worn directly against the skin without ever having been removed for thirty years, this belt remained dazzling white, even shiny. Admittedly, over the centuries, this extraordinary brightness eventually faded, but that is by no means the only mystery surrounding this "angelic girdle".

The belt was subjected to various analyses during the 20th century, which, far from providing answers, raised new questions that remained unsolved. The fabric, thought to be made of very fine, high quality linen threads, turned out not to be linen, cotton, silk or any other known plant or animal fibre, but an unknown material. This brings to mind Saint Catherine Labouré's statement about the dress of Our Lady, which she touched on 19 July 1830, saying that it looked like heavy silk, but that no such silk was woven in this world.

Another physical impossibility is that the belt measures 1.56 metres, but weighs only a few grams, something that is scientifically baffling.

The belt contains fifteen knots, like the fifteen mysteries of the rosary, dear to the Dominicans. After X-ray examination, these knots appear to be extraordinarily complex, so that they can neither be undone nor reproduced identically. The angels had told Thomas that these knots symbolised his unassailable chastity and the perpetual virginity that God granted him.

Synthèse :

Born c. 1225 into a noble family near Naples, Thomas was destined for the Church because of the astonishing protection he enjoyed as a child. One summer day, lightning struck the cradle in which he was sleeping with his sister; while the little girl was killed, he escaped unharmed. His parents wanted him to become abbot of Monte Cassino, where they sent him to study. At the age of sixteen, Thomas made another choice: to join the Friars Preachers, an order founded thirty years earlier by Dominic de Guzman as a reaction against the ostentatious wealth of certain Church leaders. Dismayed by this dishonourable choice, his parents sent him to study in Naples, in the hope that the temptations of the big city would distract the teenager from this "fad". But Thomas's vocation only grew stronger.

On his father's death in 1243, thinking he was now safe from his father's threats, Thomas joined the Dominicans and took his first vows. But his family had not given up. While his mother took steps in Rome to have his vows annulled, his elder brother Reynald, now head of the family, decided to use more brutal methods. Warned that the Aquinas were going to attack the Neapolitan convent to take their son away from it, his superiors sent him to Rome, then, realising that the family had a long arm, sent him on his way to Paris. Warned of this, his brothers placed henchmen on the roads leading to France with orders to arrest the young man and bring him back to them. Thomas was handed over to his brother who, faced with his refusal to leave the Dominican habit, tore it from him by force, beating him and leaving him almost naked in public. The young man made no move to defend himself, but gravely declared: "It is a shameful thing to want to take back from God what has been given to Him." He was then locked up in the family's castle, in complete isolation. This incarceration lasted at least a year, perhaps longer.

Unable to get him to renounce his vows, his brothers paid a lot of money to bring the most beautiful and skilful prostitute they could find from Naples, and then locked her up in Thomas's room, with the mission of robbing him of his virginity and making him break his vow of chastity.

Doubtless the young man feared he might succomb, and to ward off temptation he grabbed a burning coal from the fireplace with his bare hands. The violence of the burn defeated the flames of lust. Before the girl's frightened eyes, without letting go of the ember in his hand, he traced a large cross on the wall with it, before which he knelt and renewed his vow of chastity. He then fell into ecstasy. Angels appeared and said to him: "We have come to you from God to bestow on you the gift of perpetual virginity; he is now giving you the irrevocable gift of it."Then they showed him a white belt tied with fifteen knots that could not be untied, symbolising his heroic chastity.

Thomas thought he was dreaming, but an excruciating pain suddenly twisted his loins and snapped him out of his ecstasy. He was stunned to discover that around his waist was a real belt, one and a half metres long, made of a shiny, silky, light white fabric that he would never take off again. And he would never again be tempted against chastity. After two years in captivity, under pressure from the Pope and the Emperor, his family let him follow his vocation, giving Catholicism its greatest theologian and one of its finest minds.

Aware of his gifts, Thomas never put himself forward, to the point of being considered stupid by his fellow students, who nicknamed him "the great dumb ox". His teacher, the future Saint Albert the Great, discovering his student's humility and the bullying he was subjected to, retorted: "Watch out. When this ox starts bellowing, its roar will shake the world!" This prophecy would come true. But Thomas had other, more spiritual ambitions. In fact, during an apparition, when Christ said to him, "You have written well of me, Thomas; what would you desire as a reward?" he broke into tears and replied: "You alone, Lord, and nothing else!" Of course, this wise answer amounted to ask for everything!

There are many other curious phenomena in the life of Saint Thomas Aquinas. One of his students once saw him levitate in ecstasy and fly up to the crucifix before which he was praying, suspended high above the ground, something even more remarkable that Thomas was a tall, stout man. Although few people witnessed his ecstasies, the Church believed that his dazzling understanding of divine things came directly from above. It was following a rapture that overtook him while he was celebrating Mass, a few months before his death, that Thomas stopped writing, for good, confiding: "All that I have written seems straw compared to what I have just seen."

Anne Bernet is a Church History specialist, postulator of a cause for beatification, and journalist for a number of Catholic media. She has written over forty books, most of them devoted to sanctity.

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

Considering that the holy belt enabled Saint Thomas to be protected and victorious against all temptations of the flesh, in the 17th century a pious association was placed under its invocation: the Angelic Militia, whose members wore a reproduction of Aquinas's belt, which had been in contact with the relic. This association was aimed at boys in Catholic schools, especially seminarians, to help them preserve their purity and respond fully to the divine call. Pier Giorgio Frassati was one of its most famous members.

Aller plus loin :

The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas by William of Tocco, Translated by David M. Foley; Foreword by Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. (Angelus Press, 2023)

En savoir plus :

Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master by Robert Barron, Word on Fire Academic (August 1, 2022)
St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton, Skinner Press (April 22, 2011)
Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work by Jean-Pierre Torrell, The Catholic University of America Press; third edition (April 7, 2023)
The Interior Life of St. Thomas Aquinas by Dr Martin Grabmann, Sophia Institute Press (March 19, 2024)