Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence.<p>I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but here are two quotes I found on the website of a nun[1] (no less, so probably written in good faith):<p>> St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy. (G.K. Chesterton)<p>> St. Thomas Aquinas was a compulsive over-eater who was not just fat but morbidly obese and physically grotesque. (Myron Shibley)<p>[1] <a href="http://asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-fat-was-he-as-fat-as.html" rel="nofollow">http://asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-fat-was-...</a><p>(Fun fact, there's a reference to this in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, alluding to difficulties with the transport of the body over a staircase, which coincides with circumstances of G.K. Chesterton's passing, as described on that page.)