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Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

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My talk today is titled The Way of Beauty, the Church and the Arts.

I'd like to start off with what's maybe an unusual way to begin a Tomistic Institute lecture, with singing.

I'd like to begin with the introit for the dedication of a church. This is a beautiful chant that dates back to the early

seventh century. The text in Latin that you're going to hear in a moment is terribilis est locus

iste. Hicdomous dei est at portcele, at vocabitur Aola Dei.

How awesome is this place?

This is the house of God and the gate of heaven,

and will be called the court of God.

Terribilisas locus iste,

Hidomus deist, at Port Achele

At Vokabe to Aulah day.

So those notes you just heard, St. Thomas Aquinas himself would have sung. That's taken from the Dominican gradual. It's a chant that goes back, as I said, to the seventh century. The origins of it are

really fascinating, and they're a great example of what we're going to be exploring all throughout

tonight's lecture. The connection between beauty, both of spaces, of physical things, of music,

and the liturgy itself. So those chants were composed for the dedication of a very special church.

We've been seeing some images of it in the slides already.

It's the church called the Pantheon.

So the word pantheon means all the gods.

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