  Although in a sense Thomas Aquinas defends a version of divine illumination, he in another sense clearly weakens the theory by giving it the status of an innate gift rather than ongoing patronage. In making for the agent intellect a central place in his theory of cognition, Aquinas has less room for illumination. As the thirteenth century progressed, philosophers and theologians were increasingly willing to make this tradeoff. While the Aristotelian theory of cognition waxed, the Augustinian theory of divine illumination waned. To combine the two seemed, in the words of Étienne Gilson (1930), “unproductive and even, in a sense, contradictory.” 