The Angelic Warfare devotion, also called the Cord of St. Thomas, is named after a supernatural event in the life of St. Thomas. When St. Thomas entered the Dominican Order, his family — especially his mother, the Countess Theodora — was very opposed to his choice of vocation. They were not opposed to his becoming a priest, but they were of noble blood, related to the royal houses of France, Sicily, Aragon and Germany. They wanted him to become a churchman who was powerful in the political sense.

Thomas, however, could not be dissuaded from his desire to join the friars of St. Dominic, a relatively new and untried group who were poor and possessed little political influence.
St. Thomas asked his superiors to get him away from his family’s efforts to hinder his vocation. They decided to send him from Naples, near