APOLLONIUS DE TYR
. The legend of Apollonius of Tyre, which involves the incestuous love of a father for his
daughter, was immensely popular in the Middle Ages. There are some sixty Latin texts,
and at least six French prose versions from the 14th and 15th centuries. Its influence on
later works, such as Belle Helaine de Constantinople, the Roman du comte d’Anjou, and
Philippe de Beaumanoir’s La Manekine, is manifest.
William W.Kibler
[See also: BEAUMANOIR, PHILIPPE DE RÉMI, SIRE DE; FLOIRE ET
BLANCHEFLOR]
Lewis, Charles B., ed. “Die altfranzösischen Prosaversionen des Appollonius-Romans.”
Romanische Forschungen 34(1915): 1–277.
Zink, Michel, ed. and trans. Le roman d’Apollonius de Tyr. Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1982.
APPATIS
. Military law and custom provided a procedure known in Old French as appatis to
regulate the behavior of troops living off the land in friendly territory. A special levy on
the local inhabitants to support military forces, it generally involved requisitioning
supplies. While the affected populations might regard appatis as thinly disguised
extortion, it did provide an orderly, legal means of supplying troops without resort to
outright pillage.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
Keen, Maurice. The Laws of War in the Later Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1965.
AQUINAS, THOMAS
. (ca. 1224–1274). The only medieval philosopher whose ideas command an active
following in the 20th century. The symmetry of Thomas’s methodical synthesis of
traditional Christian (Augustinian and Platonist) theology with Aristotelian methods and
categories may be thought of at once as the zenith of medieval scholastic thought and its
downfall. Thomas’s apparently comprehensive, even-tempered certainties, the product of
method and reason, continue to attract those seeking answers to the problems of faith.
Thomas was born in Roccasecca, near Monte Cassino, Italy, the youngest son of
Count Landulf of Aquino, a relative of the emperor and the king of France. He was
schooled at Monte Cassino, where his family hoped he would become abbot, and later
(1240) studied arts at Naples. Thomas’s love of Christian learning urged him to join the
Dominican order. His family opposed his becoming a mendicant, when the wealth of the
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