Introduction. The Summa’s Origins: Three Fables and a Candid Counterproposal

This introduction considers the origins of the Summa theologiae from three different directions. First, it interprets the work’s prologue in terms of what is known of Thomas’s teaching activity at the time when he began it. Second, the chapter situates the Summa in the sequence of Thomas’s experiments with genres for writing large-scale works of theology. Third, it considers the elements out of which Thomas chose to compose the Summa—and especially the article as an abbreviation of the disputed question. The chapter concludes by proposing that a contemporary reader might respond best to the implications in these origins by beginning to read with the Summa’s last part.