Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas OP was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, the foremost Scholastic thinker, as well one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the Western tradition. He was from the county of Aquino in the Kingdom of Sicily.
Thomas was a proponent of natural theology and the father of a school of thought known as Thomism. Central to his thought was the doctrine of natural law, which he argued was accessible to human reason and grounded in the very nature of human beings, providing a basis for understanding individual rights and moral duties. He argued that God is the source of the light of natural reason and the light of faith. He embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity. Aquinas' natural law theory has been influential in shaping ideas about human liberty and the moral limits of government authority. He has been described as "the most influential thinker of the medieval period" and "the greatest of the medieval philosopher-theologians".