During a somewhat simpler time, before anyone stateside had uttered the words COVID-19, the University of St. Thomas commissioned world-renowned Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz to craft a bronze image of a famous philosopher — St. Thomas Aquinas, the St. Paul-based university’s namesake.

There were only two initial requirements. Aquinas, an Italian Dominican friar and Catholic priest who died in 1274, had to be holding the Summa Theologica, his seminal writing synthesizing the deepest Christian thinking at the time about God and man — some 38 tracts, 631 questions, 3000 articles, 10,000 objections and their answers.