Note 4

The word compendium (originally “a hoard,” “a saving”) had come to mean “a shortcut” (compendia mantis) and, still more figuratively, a literary “abridgment” (compendium docendi). In the resolutions of 1210 and 1215 mentioned in [note 3], the word summa is still used in this sense: “Non legantur libri Aristotelis de metaphysica et naturali historia, nec summa de iisdem.” According to general assumption the first instance of a Summa Theologiae in the now current sense is that by Robert de Courzon of 1202 (not as yet published in full). It is, however, probable that the Summae by Prévostin and Stephen Langton (likewise active at Paris) precede it by some ten or fifteen years; cf. E. Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, V (Les Ecoles de la fin du VIIIe siècle à la fin du XIIe) Lille, 1940, especially pp. 249, 251, 676.