Famous Phlegmatics
St.Thomas Aquinas
He is often thought to be abrilliant phelgmatic. He was careful in thought and speech, methodical, precise, quiet, even-tempered, simple, and dry-witted. His friends once played a trick on him, because he was so trusting and innocent (hallmarks of the easy-going, sweet phlegmatic): “Look! Out the window! There is a flying cow!” St. Thomas looked, and they all burst into laughter. He calmly and dryly replied, “I would rather believe that the cow is flying than that my friends would lie to me!” As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “There is not a single occasion on which he indulged in a sneer. His curiously simple character, his lucid but laborious intellect, could not be better summed up than by saying he did not know how to sneer.” (102) He was a man of common sense, logical and methodical, yet trusting and innocent. It is said that his last confession was the confession of a five-year old child, so pure and simple was he. “Whenever he was interrupted, he was very polite, and more apologetic than the apologizer” (p 99).
St. Gregory Nazianzen
St. Gregory Nazianzen had a winning personality, with charismatic and diplomatic oratory skills. Because of his tender heart, when he was attacked by an Arian rabble, he refused to punish them and said, instead: "Let us overcome them by gentleness, and win them by piety; let their punishment be found in their own consciences, not in our resentment. Dry not up the fig-tree that may yet bear fruit." When faced with another heretical group, the Novatians, he said: "Let them, if they will, walk in our way and in Christ's. If not, let them walk in their own way.”
Pope John XXIII
Pope John XXIII wrote about his own temperament, which may have been phlegmatic, in his humble and sincere Journal of A Soul:“Above all I am grateful to the Lord for the temperament he has given me, which preserves me from anxieties and tiresome perplexities… I have noticed that this disposition, in great things and in small, gives me, unworthy as I am, a strength of daring simplicity…” (xxiii, Journal of A Soul). Pope John XXIII was simple, pious, serene, and courageous, with a gentle heart devoted to the service of the Church and an “imperturbable inner calm and certitude.” “I was a good boy, innocent, somewhat timid.” (xxi Journal of A Soul).
Famous Phlegmatics
Calvin Coolidge, Tim Duncan, Sandy Koufax, Ian Crocker, Keanu Reeves
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