GRICE ED AQUINO

  There is  no direct personal or professional connection between the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas (Tomasso Aquino) and the 18th-century humanist Tommaso Niccolò d'Aquino, author of   Delle delizie tarantine . They were two different individuals separated by several centuries.    Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) was an immensely influential Dominican friar, philosopher, and theologian in the High Middle Ages. He is a Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church. Tommaso Niccolò d'Aquino (1665–c. 1771, as the book was published posthumously in that year) was a poet, humanist, and patrician from Taranto, Italy, who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. His work Delle delizie tarantine (Of the delights of Taranto) is a descriptive work, originally in Neo-Latin verse, about the natural history and life of his home city.  While both share the surname "d'Aquino" (which simply means "from Aquino," a town in the Lazio region of Italy), this indicates a potential common regional origin for their families rather than a direct familial relationship or shared identity as the same person. The name was not uncommon, and the later individual was a local figure in Taranto writing on a completely different set of topics and in a different era than the philosopher.