God, His Existence and His Nature; A Thomistic Solution, Volume II - Paperback

Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877-1964) was a French Catholic theologian. He has been noted as one of the leading neo-Thomists of the 20th century. He taught at the Dominican Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome from 1909 to 1960. He was born Gontran-Marie Garrigou Lagrange on February 21, 1877, in Auch, near Toulouse France. While studying medicine at Bordeaux he experienced what he described as a religious conversion after reading Life, Science, and Art by the Breton writer Ernest Hello (1828-85). He joined the French Dominicans, studied and taught at Le Saulchoir, before moving to Rome, where he lectured at the Angelicum from 1909 until his retirement in 1960. In 1917 a special professorship in ascetical and mystical theology was created for him at the Angelicum, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. His great achievement was to synthesize the highly abstract writings of St Thomas Aquinas with the experiential writings of St. John of the Cross, attempting to show they are in perfect harmony with each other. Father Garrigou-Lagrange, as the leading proponent of "strict observance Thomism", attracted wider attention when in 1946 he wrote against the Nouvelle Théologie theological movement, criticizing it as Modernist. He is also said to be the drafter of Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical Humani generis, subtitled "Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine". The Osservatore Romano, Dec. 9-10, 1950 lists Garrigou-Lagrange among the names of the preparatory commission for the definition of the Assumption of Mary.