What did Aquinas do for recreation? Question: What did St. Thomas Aquinas do for fun? We know that he was a brilliant mind who wrote many good works. However, even he himself says that games and having fun are good for one's soul (I am not sure these are exact words, but he said something in that style). There is this quote attributed to him


  Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.


So, what was he doing to have fun, how did he play? If we do not have information, is there any educated guess? How did Dominicans, in general, have fun in those times?
St. Thomas Aquinas discusses recreation in his question on the modesty of the outward movements of the body (Summa Theologica II-II q. 168). In Article 3 on &quot;Whether there can be a virtue about games?,&quot; he writes (co.):

Just as man needs bodily rest for the body's refreshment, because he cannot always be at work, since his power is finite and equal to a certain fixed amount of labor, so too is it with his soul, whose power is also finite and equal to a fixed amount of work. Consequently when he goes beyond his measure in a certain work, he is oppressed and becomes weary, and all the more since when the soul works, the body is at work likewise, in so far as the intellective soul employs forces that operate through bodily organs. […] Now just as weariness of the body is dispelled by resting the body, so weariness of the soul must needs be remedied by resting the soul: and the soul's rest is pleasure
sicut homo indiget corporali quiete ad corporis refocillationem, quod non potest continue laborare, propter hoc quod habet finitam virtutem, quae determinatis laboribus proportionatur; ita etiam est ex parte animae, cuius etiam est virtus finita ad determinatas operationes proportionata, et ideo, quando ultra modum suum in aliquas operationes se extendit, laborat, et ex hoc fatigatur, praesertim quia in operationibus animae simul etiam laborat corpus, inquantum scilicet anima, etiam intellectiva, utitur viribus per organa corporea operantibus. […] Sicut autem fatigatio corporalis solvitur per corporis quietem, ita etiam oportet quod fatigatio animalis solvatur per animae quietem. Quies autem animae est delectatio

Although intellectual and spiritual pleasures are greater than sense pleasures, contemplatives can still grow weary of contemplating too long due to weariness of the body.
Community meals and especially feast days are certainly times for recreation.
The Primitive Constitutions of the Order of Friars Preachers (c. 1228) demands rest on Sundays and feasts, in accordance with the 3rd Commandment:

On Sundays and special feasts, they shall refrain from writing manuscripts. Likewise we forbid servile work on Sundays; for example, to carry stones, collect wood, and so on.

St. Thomas did recreate in the parlor with his fellow Dominican brothers, but not excessively. From the Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino by William de Tocco (1323), his first biographer (translation from Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work by Torrell, O.P., p. 33):

he had the habit since youth of immediately leaving the parlor or meeting, whatever it might be, when, in their common recreations, his interlocutors diverted the conversation toward subjects other than God and what is ordered to him.

St. Thomas did have a sense of humor, too. See Joseph M. Magee's Thomistic Humor Page, esp. Quodlibet q. 12 a. 20 (&quot;Whether truth is stronger than either wine, the king, or woman.&quot;), to which I'd add Summa Theologica II-II q. 189 a. 1 ad 5:

it is not necessary for one to be an ass before being a mannon oportet quod aliquis prius sit asinus quam sit homo

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