In the early 1330s in Tabriz, Persia, in modern Iraq, the Franciscan Friar Hugolino remarked that, on account of Thomas Aquinas' position on the poverty of Christ, he was a heretic, because his determination went against the Bible and the saints, "and many Friars Minor were ready to prove the contrary". Hugolino admitted that Aquinas had "written well on many other matters, but in this he erred disgracefully. The things they preached about him on his feast day, moreover, were lies, because God never revealed a miracle for him". In the Minorite convent of Tabriz, a Venetian heard Friar Luigi claim that Friar Giorgio had asserted that Pope John XXII was a heretic and should not have canonized Aquinas. When the Venetian asked why the pope made him a saint then, Luigi responded, "I don't know why he canonized him, but I know that some people told him before the canonization, 'Be careful, Lord Pope, of what you do, because you will always be blamed for canonizing a heretic'". Friar Luigi and Friar Filippo agreed with Friar Giorgio, whose opinion about Aquinas the Venetian had also heard first hand 1. Granted, the opinion of some Spiritual Franciscans living in the jurisdiction of the Dominican Bishop William of Tabriz as recorded in an inquisition conducted in the local Dominican convent is likely to be extreme, but we present it to show that Thomas Aquinas was by no means a universal authority in the late Middle Ages, even after his canonization, which was anything but a process devoid of political meaning. Indeed, in a mid-14th century Parisian