# English Summa war articles are taught as a heading that can bless public religious war

Date: 1920

## The fact

II-II q.40 in English print became a classroom warrant for public authorities to fight for religion as just cause. Crusade policy is later popes’ and kings’. The heading is scholastic.

## Context

A limit-condition (sovereign authority) can still licence mass harm when the sovereign is a church-state. Medium confidence.

[Thomas Aquinas](/people/thomas-aquinas) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, Holy See, or archive page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Summa Theologiae II-II q.40 — War (https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm; New Advent).

## Significance

A printed religious-war heading is a [humanitarian-access](/drivers/humanitarian-access) risk for those on the wrong side of a ‘just cause’.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is humanitarian-access. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is humanitarian-access. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Thomas Aquinas: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-aquinas

## Drivers

- Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access

## Sources

- https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/aq-just-war-crusade-heading