1. plural of summa; comprehensive treatises or systematic works covering entire fields of knowledge
Usage: academic; historical

Examples

• Medieval scholars wrote summae to organize all knowledge in their fields.
• Thomas Aquinas’s summae remain influential works of theology and philosophy.
• The university library contains several important summae from the 13th century.
• These summae attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine.
• Students studied the great summae to understand systematic approaches to learning.