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In the year 1271, in the Dominican Priory of Santa Sabina in Rome, the greatest theologian of the medieval West took up his pen to write a single short article in his Summa Theologiae.
Thomas Aquinas' view on true manliness contrasts appearance with substance of strength, urging virtue and perseverance over mere force.
Key Takeaways
- True manliness is about the substance of strength—virtue and perseverance—not mere outward displays of force.
- Yielding to small pressures, not great ones, defines effeminacy or softness in Aquinas' view.
- Disordered desires weaken the soul and prevent genuine endurance and manly strength.
- The spiritual life calls for courage and fortitude but warns against pride, retaliation, and dominance.
- Manliness is cultivated through many small virtuous acts, not by a single heroic moment.
Summary
- Thomas Aquinas explores the concept of manliness in his Summa Theologiae, focusing on the vice of effeminacy (mollities) as opposed to perseverance.
- Aquinas distinguishes between the appearance of strength (outward forceful passions) and the substance of strength (virtue and ordered soul).
- True manliness is shown by enduring difficulties and persevering in the good, not by dominating or retaliating.
- The soft man is not gentle or tender but one who yields to small pressures and abandons the pursuit of higher goods.
- Scripture and spiritual masters praise courage and fortitude but warn against pride, dominance, and inability to bear humiliation.
- The man who appears strongest may be the softest if he cannot endure small hardships or interior struggles.
- Disordered appetites, especially lust, weaken the soul and render a man effeminate by making him unable to endure small hardships.
- The saints exemplify true manliness through gentleness combined with perseverance and virtue, not through harshness or stoicism.
- Manliness involves a rightly ordered soul under the virtues, including temperance and theological virtues like faith, hope, and charity.
- True strength is built gradually by many small acts of virtue, forming a soul that remains steady under trials.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Manliness
- 01:12Aquinas' Unique Perspective on Strength and Softness
- 02:24Christ's Example and the Challenge of Endurance
- 03:24Distinguishing Appearance vs. Substance of Strength
- 04:19The Nature of Fortitude and Endurance
- 05:17Defining the Soft Man and Effeminacy
- 07:18The Danger of Mollities Disguised as Strength
- 08:11Lust and Disordered Appetite as Causes of Softness
- 09:58Saints as Models of True Manliness
- 11:20The Role of Virtue and Grace in True Strength
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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The author was Thomas Aquinas, called the Angelic Doctor, and the article in question was tucked away in the second part of the second part, question 138, on the vices opposed to the virtue of perseverance.
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The article asks a simple question: whether effeminacy is opposed to perseverance. The Latin word he uses is mollities, softness, and the analysis that follows would become the foundational text in the Western tradition on what it actually means to be unmanly.
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In our own day, this is a topic of perpetual relevance. The question of what it is to be a man, and what it is to fail at being one, has returned to public discourse with an urgency it has
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not had in generations. Yet most of what is offered as an answer comes from voices who have never read a page of Aquinas, and whose definitions of strength and softness would have been unrecognizable to the masters of the
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spiritual life. What came from the pen of the Angelic Doctor in those few short articles, drawing on Aristotle and on the long monastic tradition before him, is far stranger and far more demanding than anything currently on offer.
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Scripture and the fathers consistently exhort men to courage, to fortitude, to the manly virtues. "Quit you like men, be strong," says the Apostle.
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The martyrs are praised for their virtus, a word that literally means manliness. On the other hand, the same tradition warns against the very things that the world has always coded as masculine: pride, dominance, retaliation, the love of conquest, the inability to bear
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humiliation. The saints we are told to imitate are men like Francis, who wept and kissed lepers. Like Aquinas himself, who was famously gentle and called the dumb ox by his fellow students.
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Like Christ, who allowed himself to be struck and did not strike back. How are we both to be manly and to refuse the very things the world calls manly?
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What makes this even more difficult is to consider these texts in light of our Lord's own practice, which was to endure the cross in silence rather than to defend himself.
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A consideration of these texts side by side forms the foundation for a piece of advice from the masters of the spiritual life on why the man who appears strongest may in fact be the softest and why the man who endures may be more
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masculine than the man who conquers. When we approach this problem and place these two sentiments side by side, it becomes obvious that there is something to learn from both and that they do not contradict each other.
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There is genuinely a manliness commended in scripture and there is genuinely a hollow counterfeit warned against.
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The task of the spiritual master is to distinguish between them. And here Aquinas, following Aristotle and the fathers, makes a distinction that resolves the difficulty.
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In order to address this, Aquinas distinguishes between two things: the appearance of strength and the substance of it.
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The substance of manly strength consists in the ordering of the soul under the virtues.
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The appearance of strength consists in the outward display of forceful passions. The first is genuine virtus. The second is often its opposite. Aquinas teaches in his treatise on fortitude that the strength which is properly called virtue is not the strength of the body but of
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the soul, by which a man holds firm in the good against the difficulties that would move him from it.
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He addresses this directly in his treatise on fortitude, drawing on Aristotle. Now the principal act of fortitude is to endure not only certain things that are unpleasant as apprehended by the soul, for instance the loss of bodily life,
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which the virtuous man loves not only as a natural good but also as being necessary for acts of virtue and things connected with them,
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but also to endure things unpleasant in respect of bodily contact, such as wounds and blows.
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Hence the brave man on one side has something that affords him delight, namely as regards spiritual pleasure in the act itself of virtue and the end thereof, while on the other hand he has cause for both spiritual sorrow in the
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thought of losing his life and for bodily pain. Hence we read 2 Maccabees 6:30 that Eleazar said, "I suffer grievous pains in body but in soul am well content to suffer these things because I fear thee." It is on the basis of this distinction
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that Aquinas sets forth his analysis of mollities. While the genuine virtue of fortitude consists in enduring, in the Latin sustinere, to bear up under, the vice of mollities consists in the inability to endure.
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The soft man is not the man who is gentle or tender or contemplative or aesthetically refined.
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The soft man is the man who folds, who was on the road to the higher good and abandoned it because the road got hard,
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who could not bear the weight of the difficulty between himself and the good he should have pursued.
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Saint Thomas writes, "Perseverance is deserving of praise because thereby a man does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils. And it is directly opposed to this, seemingly, for a man to be ready to forsake a good on
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account of difficulties which he cannot endure. This is what we understand by effeminacy because a thing is said to be soft if it readily yields to the touch. Now, a thing is not declared to be soft through yielding to a heavy blow. For walls
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yield to the battering ram. Wherefore, a man is not said to be effeminate if he yields to heavy blows. Hence, Aristotle says that it is no wonder if a person is overcome by strong and overwhelming pleasures or sorrows. But he is to be
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pardoned if he struggles against them. Now, it is evident that fear of danger is more impelling than the desire of pleasure.
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Wherefore, Tully says under the heading, "True magnanimity consists of two things. It is inconsistent for one who is not cast down by fear to be defeated by lust or who has proved himself unbeaten by toil to yield to pleasure."
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Aquinas's image is precise and worth dwelling on. A wall is not soft because it yields to the battering ram, for the battering ram is a great force, and to yield to a great force is no shame. A thing is soft when it yields to a light
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touch. And so, a man is not effeminate because he breaks under torture or under the gravest dangers. A man is effeminate when he yields to the small pressures.
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The spiritual masters have always warned that mollities is most dangerous when it wears the appearance of its opposite.
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The man who must retaliate at every insult is not strong. He is unable to endure the small pain of being misjudged. And so, he is mollis before the passion of anger.
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The man who cannot abstain sexually is not virile. He is unable to endure the ache of unmet desire, and so he is mollis before concupiscence.
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The man who must perform stoic invulnerability is not steady. He is unable to endure his own interior life, and so he is mollis before his own heart.
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In each case, what looks like hardness is in fact the panic of a soul that cannot bear to be touched by what it fears.
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Aquinas confirms the deep connection between disordered appetite and the softness in his treatise on lust, where he writes that the inconstancy of the soul arises from lust precisely because lust enfeebles the heart and renders it effeminate.
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Lust enfeebles a man's heart and renders it effeminate, according to Hosea 4:11. Fornication and wine and drunkenness take away the heart.
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Vegetius, too, says that the less a man knows of the pleasures of life, the less he fears death.
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The man captured by his appetites cannot endure even small hardships because his heart has been softened by the constant satisfaction of every desire.
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He has trained his soul in yielding, and a soul trained in yielding to small pressures will yield to greater ones.
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This is the great inversion that the spiritual trad...
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The man who has truly conquered softness can finally afford to be tender. Aquinas, following Augustine and the fathers, sees this most clearly in the figure of Christ, who endured the cross in silence, and yet wept over Jerusalem.
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Who allowed John to lean upon his chest. Who accepted a woman's tears upon his feet.
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[music] Such tenderness is not a contradiction of his strength, but the proof of it.
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Only a soul that has nothing left to defend can rest in such openness. This basic consideration is able to resolve many of the seeming contradictions in the Christian view of manliness and to provide solid spiritual advice for those who may be struggling.
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First, the saints who appear gentle, Francis with the birds, Aquinas [music] weeping at mass, the Curé d'Ars in the confessional, are not soft in the sense Aquinas warns against.
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Their gentleness flows from a strength so deep it requires no display. Second, the men who appear hard in the modern fashion, who must dominate every room, retaliate at every slight, conquer every appetite, are often mollusk in the precise sense, because their entire
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posture is the inability to endure being small, [music] being wronged, being unsatisfied. Third, the man who would grow in genuine fortitude is taught by this that the path lies not through performing strength, but through learning to endure, to bear humiliation patiently, to wait
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under unmet desire, to remain in silence when speech would defend him, to suffer the small daily pains for the sake of the higher good.
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Aquinas insists throughout his treatise on fortitude that endurance is harder than aggression because the man who attacks is borne forward by the passion of daring, while the man who endures must hold firm against the pressing weight of evil with no movement of
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passion to help him. The truly strong man is therefore not the one carried by his anger or his ambition, but the one whose will is fixed upon the good by reason and by grace, and who remains there when no
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feeling supports him. Later spiritual authors would seize upon this analysis in their explanation of the simple question of how a man should pursue genuine masculinity.
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The path is not the cultivation of dominance, nor the suppression of feeling, nor the accumulation of conquests, but the slow ordering of the soul under the four cardinal virtues.
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Prudence, by which a man sees reality as it is and acts in proportion to it.
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Justice, by which he renders to each what is owed. Fortitude, by which he endures evil for the sake of the good.
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And temperance, by which his appetites serve him rather than rule him. To these are added the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.
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And above all, humility, which Aquinas calls the foundation of the spiritual life. Saint Thomas writes, "Humility holds the first place, in as much as it expels pride, which God resisteth, and makes man submissive and ever open to receive the influx of
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divine grace. Hence it is written, James 4:6, God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.
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In this sense, humility is said to be the foundation of the spiritual edifice. It is for this reason the masters teach that the saints have always seemed strange to the world. Their strength does not announce itself. Their tenderness is not weakness. Their
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willingness to be small, to be unknown, to be misjudged, to suffer in silence, is not the opposite of manliness, but its perfection.
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The world cannot read them because the world's categories are too narrow. It sees the gentleness and assumes weakness. It sees the steel and assumes harshness.
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It cannot imagine that both could be the same virtue fully grown. Aquinas, in the first article of his treatise on humility, explains why this cannot be otherwise.
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He writes, "Wherefore, a twofold virtue is necessary with regard to the difficult good. One, to temper and restrain the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately. And this belongs to the virtue of humility. And another, to strengthen the mind against despair, and
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urge it on to the pursuit of great things according to right reason. And this is magnanimity." Read that carefully.
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Humility and magnanimity are not opposites. They are the two hands of a single soul.
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The humble man is precisely the man capable of greatness, because he alone will not be destroyed by it.
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The world looks at the saint and sees only the lowering, only the willingness to be small, and concludes that there is no greatness there.
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But the lowering is the condition of the greatness. The man who has not learned to be small cannot bear to be great, because greatness will inflate him into a monster.
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The man who has learned to be small can be entrusted with greatness, because he will not mistake the gift for himself.
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[music] Here we have the principles that determine the genuine pursuit of masculinity in the Christian tradition.
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First, as Aquinas teaches throughout, the means must be proportioned to the end. The end of manhood is not the appearance of strength, but the substance of it, which is the soul rightly ordered under the virtues.
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Hence the practices of genuine fortitude, patient endurance of small humiliations, fidelity in unwitnessed labors, silence when speech would only defend the ego, [music] prayer maintained when consolation has withdrawn are the daily exercises by which the soul is trained.
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Aquinas, [music] taking up the classical definition from Augustine, puts it this way, "Virtue is a good quality of the mind by which we live righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God works in us without us."
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Note what Aquinas insists on. Virtue is a good quality of which no one can make bad use.
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The strength of body can be turned to evil. The forcefulness of personality can be turned to evil.
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Wealth charisma intelligence even courage of a worldly kind, all of these can be turned to evil.
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But virtue cannot because virtue is the soul itself ordered toward the good, and a soul ordered toward the good cannot be other than what it is.
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This is why Aquinas understands manhood in its deepest sense as a question not of what a man does, but of what he has become.
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The practices of genuine fortitude, patient endurance of small humiliations, fidelity in unwitnessed labors, silence when speech would only defend the ego, prayer maintained when consolation has withdrawn are the daily exercises by which that becoming is brought about.
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The path of growth is determined not by the ferocity of one's passions, but by the depth of one's order.
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For those who are advanced in the spiritual life, great trials can be borne with peace as Christ bore the cross.
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For those who are beginners, the trials must be smaller, lest the soul be overwhelmed and bitterness take root.
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Yet not so small that they fail to form the soul. Aquinas explains exactly why this slow accumulation matters in his treatise on the cause of habits. He writes, "It is clear that the active principle, which is reason, cannot entirely
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overcome the appetitive power in one act, because the appetitive power is inclined variously and to many things, while the reason judges in a single act [music] what should be willed in regard to various aspects and circumstances.
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Wherefore, the appetitive power is not thereby entirely overcome, so as to be inclined like nature to the same thing in the majority of cases, which inclination belongs to the habit of virtue.
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Therefore, a habit of virtue cannot be caused by one act, but only by many.
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No man becomes himself in a single decision. The appetites are wild and they are many and they pull in different directions.
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Reason cannot pin them down all at once. So, the masters counsel that the man who would grow in true masculinity should begin with the small daily endurance's.
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The unanswered insult, the held tongue, the unmet appetite, the unseen kindness. And let these slowly form in him the habit of the ordered soul.
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Each act by itself accomplishes little. But together, over months, over years, they make him what he becomes.
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This is how a man is built, not by a single conversion. By 10,000 small conquests, each of which alone seems to matter little and all of which together form the soul that no storm can move.
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So, what makes a true man? After everything we have walked through, the answer is not a definition. It is a vocation.
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The true man is the soul rightly ordered. He is humble enough to be small and magnanimous enough to be great. He endures more than he attacks. He receives more than he conquers. He is not built by a single decision in a
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single moment, but by the patient repetition of small good acts, day after unwitnessed day, until the appetites themselves begin to incline toward the good. He is, in the deepest sense, the man Christ was on the cross, and he is
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the man each of us is being called, in the quiet of our own becoming, to grow into.
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As always, God bless.
Topics:Thomas Aquinasmanlinessvirtuefortitudeeffeminacymollitiesperseverancespiritual lifemedieval theologySumma Theologiae
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