Penflourish initial Q at beginning of the Prologue
Pembroke Coll. MS 36, f. 1r
Aquinas, Summa theologica Part II. section 1
East Anglia, Bury St Edmunds?, ca 1300–1325

Image reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College

The Summa theologica was written in three parts, although the second part is subdivided into two sections and the third part remained unfinished. This copy only contains the first section of part II. Part I is concerned with God and His Creation, Part II with moral theology, and Part III with the Incarnation and the Sacraments. The text is arranged in the form of questions (quaestiones), objections to the issue stated in the questions, a counter-statement, and finally an exposition and clarification of the issue addressing the objections. The opening page has a short prologue followed by stating the eight questions for the opening section on man’s final end, followed by question 1, with its first two articles with objections and answers. This manuscript, like the previous item, comes from the Benedictine library of Bury St Edmunds abbey as evidenced by the press mark T.10 at the top right of this page. It was perhaps made in East Anglia but probably not at the abbey itself, and quite possibly at Cambridge or Oxford. Some of these texts of scholastic theology were imported from Paris and production of this manuscript there cannot completely be excluded.