 Thomas Aquinas was born near Aquino, halfway between Rome and Naples, around the year 1225. He was the youngest of at least nine children, and born into a wealthy family that presided over a prominent castle in Roccasecca. As a teenage student in Naples, he fell under the sway of the Dominicans, a newly founded order of priests devoted to preaching and learning. Joining the order at the age of nineteen, he was assigned to Paris for further study, but his plans were delayed by the intransigency of his parents, who had hoped he would play a leading role at the venerable local monastery, Monte Cassino, where he had studied as a child. After confining him to Roccasecca for a year, his parents yielded and Thomas went to Paris as a Dominican friar.