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Over the course of its history, the Leonine Commission has elaborated an increasingly complex and refined ecdotic method. Taken as a whole, the edition of St. Thomas constitutes a unique case in the history of modern philology. Each step has entailed the acquisition of notions fundamental for the editor of ancient and medieval texts. each volume’s meticulous analysis shows, over and against conventional wisdom, that entirely apposite editorial principles are already at work in the first editions (1882-1886), and that in the polemic surrounding the edition of the I a Pars, in which were opposed Cl. Baeumker and the Leonine’s editors, it was the latter who defended the more philologically rigorous point of view. The discovery of the phenomenon of the pecia at the time of the edition of the Supplementum (1906) marks a decisive turning point in the elaboration of editorial techniques by engendering the philology of university texts, brought to its perfection in the last volumes, it constitutes one of the most important results in the history of philology.