This "studium" was an intermediate school between the "studium conventuale" and the "studium generale". "Prior to this time the Roman Province had offered no specialized education of any sort, no arts, no philosophy; only simple convent schools, with their basic courses in theology for resident friars, were functioning in Tuscany and the meridionale during the first several decades of the order's life. But the new "studium" at Santa Sabina was to be a school for the province," a "studium provinciale". Tolomeo da Lucca, associate and early biographer of Aquinas, tells us that at Santa Sabina Aquinas taught the full range of philosophical subjects, "teaching in a new and special way almost the whole of philosophy, both moral and natural, but especially ethical and mathematical, as well as in writing and commentary."