 In 1268, Aquinas was asked to return to Paris for an unusual second term as master of theology. Here he put his now venerable reputation to work in attempting to steer the philosophical conversation away from various extreme positions that were dividing scholars. He wrote a brief treatise arguing for a middle ground on the vexed question of whether the world could be proved to be eternal or created in time (§3), and a somewhat longer treatise against the view that all human beings share a single intellect (§6.2). These years were dominated, though, by his efforts to complete the Summa theologiae and at the same time write commentaries on all of Aristotle’s principal works. When his second four-year term in Paris came to an end he returned to Italy, this time to Naples, in 1272. During these final years he nearly, but not quite, finished both the Summa theologiae and his commentary series. Instead, after a year and a half in Naples, he stopped writing, famously explaining that “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me.” A few months after that he died, in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova, on March 7, 1274.