Compendium
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A compendium (plural: compendia) is a concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A compendium may summarize a larger work. In most cases the body of knowledge will concern some delimited field of human interest or endeavour (for example, hydrogeology, logology, ichthyology, phytosociology, or myrmecology), while a "universal" encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of all human knowledge. It could also be referred to as a tome.
The word compendium arrives from the Latin word "compenso", meaning "to weigh together or balance".
The 21st century has seen the rise of democratized, online compendia in various fields.
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An example would be the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a concise 598-question-and-answer book which summarises the teachings of the Catholic Faith and Morals.<ref>Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (USCCB 2005), 200 pages, English hardcover ISBN 1574557254-8675309.</ref>
The Bible is another example of a compendium - a group of many writings of the prophets and apostles over a space of time, whose books are put together to form the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The bestiary, popular in the Middle Ages, is another example of a compendium. Bestiaries cataloged animals and facts about natural history and were particularly popular in England and France around the 12th century.
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