The Sentences of Peter Lombard became the standard doctrinal textbook between the mid-thirteenth century and the sixteenth century in western Europe. The gradual systematization of theology that took place in the long twelfth century (1050-1215) had its roots in the early theological works of Anselm of Canterbury and continued through the works of Peter Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, Robert of Melun, and Odo of Lucca’s Summa sententiarium. The process of accumulation is already evident in Robert of Melun’s amalgamation of Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Abelard and in Odo of Lucca’s reliance on Hugh of St. Victor and Anselm of Laon. But, of the various sentence compilations that were composed during the mid-twelfth century, it was the Sentences of Peter Lombard that became the standard.
Like the other high medieval sentence compilations, the Sentences of Peter Lombard are primarily a collection of patristic citations from Saints Ambrose, Hilary of Poitier, and Augustine. For his sources, Peter relied heavily on his previous Glosses on the Psalter and the Pauline Epistles as well as his medieval predecessors. When compared to contemporary theological systems, such as Hugh of St. Victor’s De sacramentis, it is clear that Peter abandoned earlier attempts to construct a historical or chronological interpretation of Christian doctrine. Peter’s theological work is a more systematic project grounded in Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana and employs Augustine’s distinction between things (res) and sings (signa). For the bishop of Hippo all of Christian doctrine is of things or of signs (omnis doctrina vel rerum est vel signorum). Certain things (Trinity) do not signify anything, but signs do; all signs are also things, but not all things are signs. Further, the distinction between things and signs is coupled with the distinction between things to be enjoyed (frui), things to be used (uti), and things that are both used and enjoyed. This latter distinction between things to be enjoyed and things to be used is between: (1) things enjoyed (frui) in the sense of delighting in the thing for its own sake (not for the sake of something else), and (2) things used (uti) as a sign for, or as a means of ariving at, something else.
Employing Augustine’s analysis Peter divides the four books of the Sentences into: book I, Trinity (thing/s to be enjoyed); book II, creation, angels, the fall and grace (things to be used); book III, the Incarnation of the Word and the virtues (things that are objects ofenjoyment and use); book IV, the sacraments and last things (signs). The above distinctions are developed in the introductory sections of book I and book IV of the Sentences (I Sent., dist. 1; IV Sent., dist. 1 (prol.)). Peter argues that the Triune God is the only proper object of enjoyment. Everything else in the cosmos is a thing (including the sacraments as signs) to be either used and enjoyed or simply used. Peter’s Augustinian ordering of Christian doctrine and theology is a rational structure that eventually replaced the historical or chronological approaches to Christian doctrine that antedated his own work.
The success of Lombard’s Sentences is due primarily to his balanced approach to the opinions of the Fathers and the Masters. His work often achieves a via media between contradictory opinions. But, despite Peter’s attempt to reconcile various opinons, certain positions held in the Sentences became the object of heated debate in the schools. Two examples are Lombard’s discussion of the Holy Spirit as charity (I Sent., dist. 17); and his analysis of the hypostatic union in which he argues that Christ, in his human nature (qua human), is nothing (nec aliquid; III Sent., dist.10). Lombard’s claim in book III, distinction 10 is not a variant of docetism, but argues that since Jesus’ human nature did not have an independent human hypostasis, it was not, strictly speaking, a human thing. Both of these distinctions attracted the attention of theologians from the mid-twelfth century up through the time of Johannes von Staupitz and Martin Luther; two sixteenth-century theologians who were sympathetic to Lombard’s analysis of the Holy Spirit in distinction 17 of book I.
Alexander of Hales made the Sentences of Peter Lombard his doctrinal textbook for the study of theology at the University of Paris around 1222. The introduction of the Sentences was to compliment the study and interpretation of Scripture that was dominant at Paris in the twelfth and early thirteenth century. This decision was followed by Richard Fishacre at Oxford (c. 1245), despite opposition from Robert Grosseteste and Richard Rufus who wanted to maintain the centrality and sufficiency of the Scriptures for theological study. Regardless of such critiques, the Sentences of Peter Lombard became the standard theological textbook in western Europe up until the sixteenth century. Commentaries on the Sentences became the chief method, along with commentaries on the Bible and
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Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, of attaining the level of Master of Theology.
The initial commentaries on the Sentences were balanced works that functioned as instruments for learning the entire breadth of scholastic theology. Early commentators such as Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great commented on (glossed) all four books of the Sentences, a practice that was continued by their respective students in the mid-thirteenth century: Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. Both Bonaventure and Thomas commented on all four books of the Sentences distinction by distinction, thus following closely the logical ordering of Lombard’s work. Later, by the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the commentaries became topical treatises that addressed the most important philosophical and theological questions of the day. This is evident in Scotus’ Ordinatio where he considers fewer questions within each distinction and omits (or collapses into each other) certain distinctions all together. Both as a representative of the twelfth-century Sentences collections, and throughout the various subsequent genres of Sentence commentaries, the Sentences of Peter Lombard were the single most important theological work of the Middle Ages.
See also: > Albert the Great > Alexander of Hales
> Anselm of Canterbury > Augustine > Bernard of Clairvaux > Bonaventure > John Duns Scotus > Peter Abelard > Richard Fishacre > Richard of St. Victor
> Richard Rufus of Cornwall > Robert Grosseteste
> Thomas Aquinas
World History
