In many ways, this volume has long been overdue. Although Aquinas's Summa Theologiae looms large in the way theology and philosophy were done in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholastic thought, it has been less clear how it acquired its specific relevance in the context of theology metaphysics or moral thought. It is often assumed that Cajetan or Vitoria singlehandedly revived this work for scholarly use. But as the two parts of the volume show, the appropriation, discussion, and creative modification of the topics contained in the Summa gradually became ingrained in the way theology was transmitted, a process that culminated in the seventeenth century. Rather than referring to Thomistae, the volume's title, Summistae, points not at Aquinas's oeuvre in general but specifically to the Summa Theologiae insofar as it is at the roots of a specific tradition.

The volume carefully distinguishes two different approaches to the Summa: 1) as a textbook for scholarly use, and 2) as a source for commentaries, some aspects of which are analyzed in the volume's second part. The first part, “Framing the Commentary Tradition,” starts with what I judge to be the most authoritative survey of the Summa's influence in recent literature. Marco Toste and Lidia Lanza illustrate the different strands of the commentary tradition according to its geographical distribution, its historical development, and the way it was done in the various religious orders. They distinguish four main periods: the first in the fifteenth century, and the second due to Francisco de Vitoria's work. For the third period, from the 1590s on, Salamanca served as a hub for disseminating the Summa. It also signaled a geographical widening outside the Iberian Peninsula. The fourth period, which began around 1650, gradually abandoned the idea of commenting the Summa and opened new paths to integrate it into new discussions. This volume also shows that there was a rich tradition in the late Middle Ages in commenting, endorsing, or criticizing the Summa, as Brînzei and Schabel's article shows. As Ueli Zahnd points out, the incipient tradition of commenting on the Summa did not immediately supersede the doctrinal primacy of Lombard's Sentences. However, he shows that in Germany and Northern Italy from the fourteenth century onward, primarily Dominicans were happy to base their own works on the Summa, thus establishing a kind of genre. This is especially palpable at the University of Padua during the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, presented by Matthew Gaetano.

The second part of the volume, under the heading “Discussions in the Commentary Tradition,” comprises several articles that discuss a range of topics for which the Summa was seen as pivotal. Theological themes include the proof of God's existence (Mauro Mantovani), the light of glory in the Jesuit tradition (William Duba), creation, the subsistence of prime matter (Helen Hattab), and angelic location (Daniel D. Novotný and Tomáš Machula). These pieces showcase the impact the Summa had on articulating and transforming the theological language. The same could be said of those articles that deal with issues from an epistemological and practical perspective, such as the problem of invincible ignorance in Arriaga, Vázquez, and Bayle (Jean-Luc Solère), a survey of infidelity in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century authors (Andreas Wagner), the ethical problem of self-preservation (Marco Toste), and finally the question of whether it was licit for prisoners sentenced to death to escape (Lidia Lanza). To be sure, this second part offers insights into a small segment of the topics present in the Summa. Notably absent are thoughts on providence, predetermination, free will, and the complex tradition of commenting and modifying Aquinas's theory of law and justice. Those topics have, of course, been dealt with extensively in the secondary literature, yet it has not been done from the point of view of the Summa as the authoritative text. However, those shortcomings do not diminish the overall achievement of this volume because it shows that the tradition of commenting on the Summa should be studied as a subject in its own right.