Juan Tomás de Boxadors began his career as a diplomat of the Kingdom of Spain to the court of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor.

Following the death of his brother in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Boxadors had a spiritual crisis that resulted in his joining the Dominican Order.

[1] He promoted the revival of Thomism with his letter "De renovanda et defendenda doctrina sancti Thomae" (1757) which was widely distributed in the Order.

Lamenting deviations from Thomistic doctrine and demanding a return to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, Boxadors charged Salvatore Roselli (1722–1784) with assisting the reform of education in the order.

Roselli then wrote his influential Summa philosophica ad mentem Angelici Doctoris S. Thomae Aquinatis of 1777, which supplanted the major manuals of the day and continued to be the standard Thomistic text through its third edition in 1857–59.