Visiting Scholars

Thomas Santa Maria (AY 2020-2023)

Tom Santa Maria is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University specializing in the religious and cultural history of Early Modern Europe, especially Italy. In particular, he focuses on Early Modern Catholicism and the ministries, thoughts, and activities of the early Society of Jesus in the decades following the Council of Trent. His dissertation presents the history of Catholicism’s relationship to the senses as deeply ambivalent. Should the senses be trusted as tools that move the mind to God and profit the soul leading to eternal life, or guarded as the gates of sin that incite the body to lust and damn the soul leading to eternal death?

Before Yale, Tom completed a Master’s degree in Theological Studies at Boston College. Prior to that he attended the College of the Holy Cross where I completed the honors course in history, classics, and Catholic Studies.