In the Paradiso, which saint appears in the sphere of the Sun?

In the Paradiso, Saint Thomas Aquinas appears in the sphere of the Sun. Dante associates this sphere with the wise, whose intellectual understanding illuminates the world just as the physical Sun provides light.

Aquinas is the first of twelve brilliant souls who form a circle around Dante and Beatrice in Paradiso X. The group includes theologians, philosophers, church scholars, and King Solomon. Aquinas, a Dominican theologian and one of the most influential medieval Christian thinkers, identifies the other spirits and later narrates the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The answer is sometimes complicated by the fact that the sphere contains more than one saint. Saint Bonaventure, a Franciscan theologian, appears in a second circle of twelve lights and praises Saint Dominic, founder of Aquinas’s order. Other saintly scholars in the sphere include Albert the Great, Isidore of Seville, Bede, and Richard of Saint Victor.

Thomas Aquinas remains the best single answer because he is the first and most prominent figure named in Dante’s description of the Sun’s wise souls, while the alternatives listed are not the intended occupants.