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English Dominican Summa prints natural-law articles that accommodate servitude

The English Summa’s justice and natural-law questions, including received ius gentium servitude, print a hierarchy of unfree status as legally thinkable. It is not a slave code for 1270 Naples, and it is not abolition. In the causal graph this event strengthens the driver Income Inequality.

English Dominican Summa prints natural-law articles that accommodate servitude

Sources: [1][2]

Read the full account

The English Summa’s justice and natural-law questions, including received ius gentium servitude, print a hierarchy of unfree status as legally thinkable. It is not a slave code for 1270 Naples, and it is not abolition.

Context

Scholastic law can call slavery a consequence of sin and still treat it as a title. Later colonial lawyers quoted such headings. Medium confidence on unique plantation coefficients.

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.

Why it matters

Printed accommodation of servitude is an inequality path, not a 1270 census of unfree persons.

Who was responsible

Contribution type and responsibility level for each recorded actor — not sole-author shorthand.

  • Thomas Aquinas

    Person

    Direct responsibility

    responsibility level 0.32 · verified

    Named Dominican master as heading of later editions and papal acts. Printers, popes, and editors publish the instrument.

What changed

Fact → Driver → Indicator. Relationship strength orders the paths; it is not the observed indicator movement.

    1. FactEnglish Dominican Summa prints natural-law articles that accommodate servitude
    2. strengthensDriverIncome Inequality

    impact weight 0.45 · Effect from 1 January 1920 · verified

    Printed accommodation of servitude is an inequality path, not a 1270 census of unfree persons.

Evidence

The sources behind this fact and its verification state.

Verified2 sources on file
  1. 1.Summa Theologiae I-II q.94 — Natural lawNew Advent · High credibility · verified
  2. 2.Britannica — Saint Thomas AquinasEncyclopaedia Britannica · High credibility · verified
What the sources establish

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. 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. Confidence is stated on the impact path.

Causal path

How this event connects to drivers and indicators in the graph.

  1. ActorThomas Aquinas
  2. contributed toFactEnglish Dominican Summa prints natural-law articles that accommodate servitude
  3. strengthensDriverIncome Inequality

Cite this page

Factrail. (2026). English Dominican Summa prints natural-law articles that accommodate servitude. Factrail. https://factrail.ai/facts/aq-slavery-servitude

https://factrail.ai/facts/aq-slavery-servitude

Accessed 16 October 2026.

By the Factrail desk · Method: how we source and score · Last reviewed

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