How St. Thomas Aquinas drove away a prostitute

Our Lord tells us in Matthew 10 that one’s enemies will be those of one’s own house. We see this clearly in the case of St. Thomas Aquinas. His family was so opposed to his decision to pursue a vocation that they locked him up in a castle, and sent him a prostitute in the hope that it would destroy his vocation:

“… Thomas was abducted by his brother Rinaldo… and taken to the second family castle… Thomas… vehemently resisted attempts to tear the Dominican habit from his back, and in a famous episode which probably occurred on the night of his capture or the following night, drove away with a firebrand a prostitute who had been sent to his room to seduce him from his vocation.” (Carroll, The Glory of Christendom, Vol. 3, p. 260.)