Author | Peter Lombard |
---|---|
Original title | Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae |
Language | Latin |
Subject | Christian theology |
Genre | |
Publication date | c. 1158 |
Publication place | France |
The Sentences (Latin : Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae; Sententiarum. English: Sentences Divided into Four Books; Sentences) is a compendium of Christian theology written by Peter Lombard around 1150. It was the most important religious textbook of the Middle Ages.
Part of a series on |
Scholasticism |
---|
The sentence genre emerged from works like Prosper of Aquitaine's Sententia, a collection of maxims by Augustine of Hippo. [1] : 17 It was well-established by the time of Isidore of Seville's Senteniae, one of the first systematic treatments of Christian theology. [2] In the Sentences, Peter Lombard collects glosses from the Church Fathers. Glosses were marginalia in religious and legal texts used to correct, explain, or interpret a text. Gradually, these annotations were compiled into separate works. The most notable precedent for Lombard's Sentences were the Glossa Ordinaria , a 12th-century collection of glosses. [3]
Lombard went a step further by compiling them into one coherent whole. [4] There had been much earlier efforts in this vein, most notably in John of Damascus' The Source of Knowledge. When John of Damascus' work was translated into Latin in 1150, Lombard had access to it. [1] : 17
Lombard was not alone in his project. Many other contemporary theologians were compiling glossaries, such as Robert of Melun's Sententiae and Hugh of Saint Victor's De sacramentis christianae fidei. [5] [6] : 2, 6 In 1134, Lombard went to Paris to study with Hugh, who was finishing his work at the time. [1] : 27 Their work was the signal development of 12th-century religious scholars: a systematic theology that treated the activity as a coherent practice. [7] : 34
Lombard's twin hurdles were devising an order for his material and reconciling differences among sources. Peter Abelard's Sic et Non employed a method for reconciling authorities that Lombard knew and used. [1] : 66 Abelard had also conceived of his work as a textbook. [8] Lombard's previous work, Magna glossatura , was an enormous success and quickly became a standard reference work. [9] Compiling the Magna glossatura prepared Lombard for the definitive synthesis of the Sentences. [10]
The Sentences were compiled in two phases. By 1154, he had completed an initial version of the text which he read to his students in Paris during the 1156–7 academic year. The following term, he had significantly revised the Sentences, and this became the definitive version. [11] The first major manuscript of the Sentences was copied by Michael of Ireland in 1158. There are nearly 900 extant manuscripts of Lombard's work, which indicates how widely it was used. [1] : 55
In addition to Lombard's Magna glossatura and the Glossa Ordinaria, the Sentences relied heavily on the works of Augustine, citing him over 1,000 times. [12] Julian of Toledo's eschatology was heavily reflected in Lombard's work. [13] The Sentences were also a remarkable snapshot of current thought. [14] : 1985–7 Editorial choices like including a table of contents made Peter's book a much more helpful reference than other glossaries. [1] : 64
Lombard arranged his material from the Bible and the Church Fathers in four books, then subdivided this material further into chapters. Probably between 1223 and 1227, Alexander of Hales grouped the many chapters of the four books into a smaller number of "distinctions". [15] In this form, the book was widely adopted as a theological textbook in the high and late Middle Ages (the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries). A commentary on the Sentences was required of every master of theology, and was part of the examination system. At the end of lectures on Lombard's work, a student could apply for bachelor status within the theology faculty.
In 1170, Pope Alexander III instructed William of Champgane to "convoke your suffragans at Paris" and renounce the "vicious doctrine" (pravae doctrinae) of Peter Lombard. [16] The Pope was accusing Lombard of espousing Christological Nihilianism: the idea that Christ's human nature was nothing and his sole identity was divine. [17] The concerns centered on Book III of the Sentences where Peter Lombard discusses the hypostatic union from a variety of angles. The debate lingered long enough that the Pope reiterated his concerns in a second letter to William seven years later. [16] The Pope's position was not universally supported among the Cardinals who felt the Church faced more pressing issues. [18]
After the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Sentences became the standard textbook of theology at medieval universities. [19] [1] : ix Stephen Langton's commentary on the Sentences helped establish the form. [20] Until the 16th century, no work of Christian literature, except for the Bible itself, was commented upon more frequently. All the major medieval thinkers in western Europe relied on it, including Albert the Great, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Marsilius of Inghen, William of Ockham, Petrus Aureolus, Robert Holcot, Duns Scotus, and Gabriel Biel.
Aquinas' Summa Theologiae would not eclipse the Sentences in importance until around the 16th century. Even the young Martin Luther still wrote glosses on the Sentences, and John Calvin quoted from it over 100 times in his Institutes .
David Luscombe called the Sentences, "the least read of the world's great books". [21] In 1947, Friedrich Stegmüller compiled a 2-volume bibliography of commentaries on the Sentences. [22] By 2001, the tally of Lombard commentators ran to 1,600 authors. [23]
Modern English Translation
Alexander of Hales, also called Doctor Irrefragibilis and Theologorum Monarcha, was a Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher important in the development of scholasticism.
Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon Aristotelianism and the Ten Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translated scholastic Judeo-Islamic philosophies, and "rediscovered" the collected works of Aristotle. Endeavoring to harmonize his metaphysics and its account of a prime mover with the Latin Catholic dogmatic trinitarian theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities, and thus became the bedrock for the development of modern science and philosophy in the Western world. Scholasticism dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. The rise of scholasticism was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain and England.
A medieval university was a corporation organized during the Middle Ages for the purposes of higher education. The first Western European institutions generally considered to be universities were established in present-day Italy, including the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, and the Kingdoms of England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries for the study of the arts and the higher disciplines of theology, law, and medicine. These universities evolved from much older Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools, and it is difficult to define the exact date when they became true universities, though the lists of studia generalia for higher education in Europe held by the Vatican are a useful guide.
Anselm of Laon, properly Ansel, was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics.
Peter Lombard was an Italian scholastic theologian, Bishop of Paris, and author of Four Books of Sentences which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he earned the accolade Magister Sententiarum.
Gilbert de la Porrée, also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian and Bishop of Poitiers.
Hugh of Saint-Cher, O.P. was a French Dominican friar who became a cardinal and noted biblical commentator.
Walter of Saint Victor was a mystic philosopher and theologian, and an Augustinian canon of Paris.
Robert of Melun was an English scholastic Christian theologian who taught in France, and later became Bishop of Hereford in England. He studied under Peter Abelard in Paris before teaching there and at Melun, which gave him his surname. His students included John of Salisbury, Roger of Worcester, William of Tyre, and possibly Thomas Becket. Robert was involved in the Council of Reims in 1148, which condemned the teachings of Gilbert de la Porrée. Three of his theological works survive, and show him to have been strictly orthodox.
William of Conches, historically sometimes anglicized as William Shelley, was a medieval Norman-French scholastic philosopher who sought to expand the bounds of Christian humanism by studying secular works of classical literature and fostering empirical science. He was a prominent Chartrain. John of Salisbury, a bishop of Chartres and former student of William's, refers to William as the most talented grammarian of the time, after his former teacher Bernard of Chartres.
Francis of Meyronnes was a French scholastic philosopher. He was a distinguished pupil of Duns Scotus, whose teaching (Scotism) he usually followed.
Summa and its diminutive summula was a medieval didactics literary genre written in Latin, born during the 12th century, and popularized in 13th century Europe. In its simplest sense, they might be considered texts that 'sum up' knowledge in a field, such as the compendiums of theology, philosophy and canon law. Their function during the Middle Ages was largely as manuals or handbooks of necessary knowledge used by individuals who would not advance their studies any further.
Peter Comestor was a 12th-century French theological writer and university teacher.
Sententiae, the nominative plural of the Latin word sententia, are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. Sententia, the nominative singular, also called a "sentence", is a kind of rhetorical proof. Through the invocation of a proverb, quotation, or witty turn of phrase during a presentation or conversation one may be able to gain the assent of the listener, who will hear a kind of non-logical, but agreed-upon truth in what one is saying. An example of this is the phrase "age is better with wine" playing off of the adage "wine is better with age". The same saying is present in Luke 5,39.
Robert Pullen was an English theologian and Cardinal of the Catholic Church, often considered to be one of the founders of Oxford University.
Peter of Poitiers was a French scholastic theologian, born in Poitiers around 1125-1130. He died in Paris on September 3, 1205.
The Glossa Ordinaria, which is Latin for "Ordinary [i.e. in a standard form] Gloss", is a collection of biblical commentaries in the form of glosses. The glosses are drawn mostly from the Church Fathers, but the text was arranged by scholars during the twelfth century. The Gloss is called "ordinary" to distinguish it from other gloss commentaries. In origin, it is not a single coherent work, but a collection of independent commentaries which were revised over time. The Glossa ordinaria was a standard reference work into the Early Modern period, although it was supplemented by the Postills attributed to Hugh of St Cher and the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra.
The Collectanea, or Magna glossatura as it came to be known, is a collection of commentaries on the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles written by Peter the Lombard between 1139 and 1141.
Peter of Atarrabia, also called Peter of Navarre, was a Franciscan administrator and theologian.
Summa sententiarum is a medieval theological work consisting of six treatises. Several codices and the Patrologia Latina contain the seventh treatise on marriage, authored by Walter of Mortagne.
The Sentences Online:
Commentaries on The Sentences: