Ptolemy of Lucca

Ptolemy (Tolomeo) of Lucca was a Dominican friar who was a friend and confessor of Thomas Aquinas. In 1318 Pope John XXII made him bishop of Torcello. After Aquinas died, Ptolemy completed Aquinas’s unfinished treatise on kingship, De regimine principum, and wrote Books 3 and 4 himself. Because the finished work long circulated under Aquinas’s name, Ptolemy’s words, including this passage, have often been credited to Aquinas.