Hey [r/catholic](/r/catholicism/). I’m an illustrator, and I recently completed a project I thought you might enjoy seeing. I’ve posted this elsewhere, but the mods said I could post it here. Obviously this being r/catholic this is… the place.

Ave Maria Press contacted me about a new book they were releasing, called ‘The Summa Illuminated: A Guide to St. Thomas Aquinas’s Masterpiece’ by Cajetan Cuddy, OP. The concept was: this book lays out the structure of the Summa Theologica and walks the reader through it. We wanted to visualize this layout as a giant cathedral, for a viewer to walk through.

So, I disappeared for a while and, using this priest / scholar’s work, I illustrated this. Clearly it’s not a replacement for reading the Summa, or his excellent book (which I recommend), but here, I’ve done my best at representing one of the most influential works of theology and philosophy ever, in total, in a 2 by 3 foot image.

Each section has several subsections and illustrations, graphics, or charts. I illustrated a large liturgical calendar prior to this - this is similar, but one of my favorite things is taking dense networks of information and making them visual. As you flip through the images, you can see places where a relatively complex idea (what are the different types of evil, and how do they relate to the form and action of something, and our conception of ethics?) is laid out into a rectangle that is actually just a few inches wide.

Obviously, as an artist, I sell my work - although this genuinely wasn’t my primary aim in posting this. You could guess I’m somewhat of a hermit, and I just like showing my large projects to people that may appreciate them. If you’re interested in reading more or obtaining a print (framed or unframed), you can find all that here (on my store or my Etsy, if you’d prefer that):

[https://linktr.ee/owencyclops](https://linktr.ee/owencyclops)

My username is also my website. (If you notice a small typo in the above images, I fixed that before sending these to the printer).

I also highly recommend the book this is adapted from. There’s no way I would have been able to do this project without using this book. It’s just under (or around) 200 pages, and takes you through the entire Summa Theologica. I got a lot out of it. That’s on their website here: [https://www.avemariapress.com/products/summa-illuminated](https://www.avemariapress.com/products/summa-illuminated)

Thanks for looking at my pics. I hope your spring vibe is currently unfolding well.

So, I illustrated the Summa Theologica.