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AN EARLY VERSION OF PETER LOMBARD'S LECTURES ON THE SENTENCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2019

MARK J. CLARK
MARK J. CLARK*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The discovery of a copy (in Lincoln MS 230) of Peter Lombard's lectures on the Sentences in three books (starting with the hexameral discussion that follows the treatise on the angels in the four-book version edited by Brady) makes possible for the first time investigating the development of the Lombard's theological teaching during his Parisian teaching career and the fortuna of that teaching outside of Paris. The fact that the Lombard began his early-career lectures on the Sentences in precisely the same place as he began his lectures on Genesis means that all of his teaching originated with Scripture. Moreover, the fact that Lincoln MS 230 is one of many early copies of the Lombard's Parisian teaching found in English cathedral libraries — Lincoln's Cathedral Library has another manuscript containing another copy of the Sentences, Lincoln MS 31, this one on four books, almost certainly copied within the Lombard's lifetime — has revealed the inadequacy of Brady's edition for scholarly understanding of the Lombard's career and teaching. Until now, no scholar paid much attention to the fact that Brady's choice of manuscripts was largely arbitrary and that his edition reflected the state of the Lombard's text around the time of Bonaventure in the mid-thirteenth century. Thus this discovery makes clear that the Sentences, like Gratian's Decretum and Comestor's History, developed over time. The Sentences were not, as so long assumed, a book written by the Lombard late in his career but rather the product of lectures delivered over the course of his career. The discovery of a treasure trove of English manuscripts preserving the Lombard's earliest extant Parisian teaching will enable scholars for the first time to trace the origins and development of the institutional practices of the cathedral school of Paris right up to the time of its transformation into the University of Paris.

Keywords

Peter Lombardthe Lombard's SentencesBibletheologyEnglish cathedral librariesLincoln CathedralHereford Cathedral
Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 74 , 2019 , pp. 223 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the British Academy for its grant of a Visiting Fellowship, which made possible the research that led to the findings presented in this study. I am especially indebted to Professor Nicholas Vincent, who together with the School of History of the University of East Anglia agreed to sponsor me. Professor Vincent's advice was invaluable, as he had himself spent considerable time in all of the cathedral libraries that I visited. Professor Katy Cubitt, the Head of the School of History, went out of her way to make me welcome and, a medievalist herself, helped me with crucial gaps in my knowledge. I must also thank not only other historians — Professors David D'Avray, Philippa Hoskin, and Rod Thomson each deserve my gratitude for going out of their way to assist me with this research — but also the librarians, archivists, and other staff at the cathedral libraries that I visited, often for weeks at a time: Canterbury, Lincoln, Worcester, Hereford, Exeter, and in London at Lambeth Palace. Cressida Williams at Canterbury, Claire Arrand at Lincoln, David Morrison at Worcester, Rosemary Firman at Hereford, and Ellie Jones at Exeter all deserve my special thanks both for their gracious hospitality and for going the extra mile with me and my work. Finally, I would be remiss not to thank heartily as well the many staff members who assist the History Department at the University of East Anglia: Rachel Cole, Melanie Watling, Danielle Shaw, Richard Delahaye, and Janette Darbon. Their support and gracious assistance were invaluable to me.

References

1 See Clark, Mark J., “Peter Lombard, Stephen Langton, and the School of Paris: The Making of the Twelfth-Century Scholastic Biblical Tradition,” Traditio 72 (2017): 171–274, at 251CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where I mentioned the need “to look again at the manuscripts preserving the Sentences, since it would certainly be revealing to understand with more precision how it came to be and the form in which the Sentences were taught decade by decade over the course of the second half of the twelfth century.”

2 Brady, Ignatius, ed., Magistri Petri Lombardi Parisiensis Episcopi sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Grottaferrata, 1971–81)Google Scholar, Prolegomena to Sent., 1 (1971), 131*–136*. The critical edition published by Brady was the third edition of the Sentences produced by the Franciscans within a hundred years. See Brady, Ignatius, “The Three Editions of the ‘Liber Sententiarum’ of Master Peter Lombard (1882–1977),” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 70 (1977): 400–411Google Scholar.

3 Brady rejected on solid grounds the supposed date of 1158 for Troyes MS 900, long considered the oldest extant manuscript containing the Lombard's Sentences. See Brady, Prolegomena to Sent. 1 (1971), 130*–131*.

4 On the removal of manuscripts from English libraries, the classic study, brief but tremendously informative, is that of Ker, Neil, “The Migration of Manuscripts from English Medieval Libraries,” in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in Medieval Heritage, ed. Watson, Andrew G. (London, 1981), 459–69Google Scholar. On the dispersal of manuscripts from English monastic libraries, see Carley, James, “The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Salvaging of the Spoils,” in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, Volume I, to 1640, ed. Ledham-Green, Elizabeth and Webber, Teresa (Cambridge, 2006), 265–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For full descriptions of each manuscript, see Thomson, Rodney M., Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (Cambridge, 1989), 23Google Scholar (for MS 31) and 189–90 (for MS 230). For the latter manuscript, Thomson supposed, mistakenly, that it preserves Books II–IV of the Sentences, since he took for granted, seemingly like every other scholar, that Brady had edited a “standard” version. Although the question of the extent to which the version edited by Brady is standard is beyond the limited scope of this study, I can report that, of the forty or so manuscripts containing copies of the Sentences, either complete or partial, that I examined during the past six months in England, no more than a handful match the version in Brady's edition in terms of how the chapters are organized. I am not of course speaking about the division into distinctions, which took place sometime during the thirteenth century. The numerous manuscripts in English cathedral libraries whose internal organization differs markedly from the version edited by Brady suggests that scholars have been misled in assuming that the Sentences were standardized in any real sense. Only diligent and painstaking manuscript researches will establish with precision when such standardization actually occurred and where, for it is manifestly possible that it occurred at different times in different places.

6 The scholarship on Peter Lombard during the past quarter century is all based upon Brady's edition, the second part of which appeared in 1981. See especially Colish, Marcia, Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1994)Google Scholar; Rosemann, Philipp W., Peter Lombard (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Peter Lombard, The Sentences, trans. Silano, Guilio, 4 vols. (Toronto, 2007–10)Google Scholar.

7 I am grateful to Joshua Benson and Riccardo Saccenti for agreeing to work with me in producing an edition and accompanying translation of this Versio primitiva of the Sentences. Benson will edit and translate Book III (Book IV in later versions), and Saccenti Book II (Book III in later versions). I here provide chapters from Book I, since that is the book that I myself am editing.

8 I am grateful to Saccenti as well for sending me the fruits of his own preliminary editing and for permission to share them here.

9 It is obvious that English cathedral libraries may not be unique in possessing numerous early versions of the Sentences. For this reason, Riccardo Saccenti is undertaking to examine manuscripts in cathedral libraries in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria.

10 During my last visit to Lincoln Cathedral Library I was able to examine Lincoln MS 31 at some leisure, and my preliminary investigations suggest that, although much, if not most, of the text of the version of the Sentences in Lincoln MS 31 matches that in the version edited by Brady, the organization of that text bears minimal relation to that in Brady's edition. I am loathe to say more than this at present, for Lincoln MS 31 contains but one of very many copies of the Sentences in English cathedral libraries that differ markedly and in many respects from that edited by Brady. It is likely that several at least of the earliest of those manuscripts will need to be edited and also that many, if not most, of the others will have to be studied in some detail, before any scholar can hazard an educated opinion about the state of the various versions of the Sentences during and after Peter Lombard's lifetime.

11 At fol. 40r, where Book II begins, we find the heading: “Incipit liber secundus de incarnatione Verbi,” and at 101v, where Book II ends, we find at the bottom of the folio the following transition: “Incipit liber tertius de signis sacramentalibus et de eis quae ipsis adiacent et postremo de Resurrectione.”

12 I shall submit for publication two studies that document in far greater detail Stephen Langton's practice throughout his career of lecturing not only on the Bible but also on Peter Lombard's biblical lectures, a discovery first introduced in Clark, “Peter Lombard, Stephen Langton, and The School of Paris” (n.1 above). The first (“Peter Lombard, Stephen Langton, and Twelfth-Century Cathedral Schools in England and Paris”), which treats the Anglo-Norman context for the ubiquity of the Lombard in the cathedral schools of England during the twelfth century and the related sending of Stephen Langton to Peter Lombard by countrymen in Lincolnshire who had already studied in Paris with Peter Lombard, is finished and will shortly be submitted for publication, either as an article in two parts to a journal or as a monograph. In it I set forth in cogent fashion all of the various kinds of evidence that show Langton's career-long reliance upon and incorporation of the Lombard's biblical lectures into his own. The second (“The Prologues of Stephen Langton [and Peter Lombard] Introducing the Bible: Introduction”) is a publication tentatively accepted by the editorial committee of the British Academy for publication in the Auctores Britannici. In the Introduction to that volume, in which the many prologues introducing the Bible, the Pentateuch, and Genesis throughout Langton's many and various lectures are edited and translated, I revise Langton's biography and existing historiography on his Parisian teaching career based on recent manuscript discoveries including those discussed in this article. I also present the evidence that not only sorts out the order of and relation among the nine traditions known to me of Langton's lectures on those prologues and on Genesis but also that establishes Langton's habit of lecturing on the biblical lectures of Peter Lombard throughout his career. Those lectures of Peter Lombard on Genesis correlate closely with the doctrinal teaching and wording in the Versio primitiva of the Sentences, featured in this study.

13 Dan. 3:72.

14 Pet. Lomb., II Sent., Dist. 12, cap. 5.1 (ed. Brady, 1971, p. 387): “Fons partis primae capituli quinti secundum Brady: ‘Cap. 5, num. 1. Quaestio aliqualiter suggeritur ab Hugone, De sacram., I, I, 5 (PL 176, 190 A).’”

15 Pet. Lomb., II Sent., Dist. 12, cap. 5.3 (ed. Brady, 1971, p. 387): “Num. 3. Prima pars ex Hugone, De sacram., I, 1, I (PL 176, 190 B); deinde de mole supra firmamentum, cf. Glossa ordin. in Gen. 1, 6 et 7 (apud Lyranum, I, 24d, 25a; v 4v–5r).”

16 See Biblical Glossa, Glossa marginalis Bedae attributa in Gen. 1.2 (Valenciennes 19, fol. 2va.2): “BEDA. Et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi etc. Non sunt audiendi qui reprehendendo dicunt deum prius creasse tenebras quam lucem, quia nullas in aqua vel in aëre fecit tenebras sed distincto ordine providentiae prius aquas cum caelo creavit et terra, et has cum voluit lucis gratia venustavit. Et notandum quod cum caelo duo elementa mundi creata sunt, quibus alia duo inserta sunt aqua scilicet et terra, quibus insunt ignis et aër. Aquae autem totam terrae superficiem tanta altitudine tegebant, ut ad illos usque locos pertingerent, ubi nunc usque super firmamentum partim resident. Ipsa autem terra et aqua informis dicuntur materia, quia omnia quae videmus vel ex ipsis sumpserunt exordium vel ex nihilo, et priusquam in lucem venirent, non erant unde formam haberent”; and also Biblical Glossa, Glossa marginalis Bedae attributa in Gen. 1.9 (Valenciennes 19, fol. 4vb.2): “Congregentur aquae quae sub caelo sunt etc. Aquae quae inter caelum et terram universa compleverant in unum locum congregantur, ut lux quae praeterito biduo aquas clara lustrabat in puro aëre clarior fulgeat, et appareat terra quae latebat et quae aquis limosa erat fieret arida et germinibus apta. Si quaeratur ubi congregatae sunt aquae quae omnis partes terrae usque ad caelum texerant, potuit fieri, ut terra subsidens concavas partes praeberet, quibus fluentes aquas reciperet. Potest etiam credi primarias aquas rariores fuisse quae sicut nebula tegerent terras, sed congregatione esse spissatas” (emphasis supplied to facilitate comparison with the Versio primitiva).

17 Pet. Lomb., II Sent., Dist. 12, cap. 5.3 (ed. Brady, 1971, p. 387): “Num. 4. Partim ex Hugone, De sacram., I, 1, 7 (PL 176, 193 A).”

18 Biblical Gloss, Glossa prothematica (Valenciennes 19, fol. 2r, col. c.2): “Alcuinus: Quattuor modis operatur Deus: primo in Verbo; secundo in materia informi (unde, qui vivit in aeternum creauit omnia simul); tertio per opere sex dierum distinxit creaturas; quarto ex primordialibus seminibus non incognitae oriuntur naturae sed notae saepius, ne pereant, reformantur.” See Pet. Lomb., II Sent., Dist. 12, cap. 6 (ed. Brady, 1971, p. 388): “Cap. 6. Fere totum ex Prothematibus Glossae… .”

19 See Giraud, Cédric, Per verba magistri: Anselme de Laon et son école au XIIe siècle (Turnhout, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Andrée's, Alexander review essay, “Laon Revisited: Master Anselm and the Creation of a Theological School in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Medieval Latin 22 (2012): 257–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Thus, a good bit of it is assembled in the study of the Anglo-Norman context for the presence of so many early copies of the Lombard's works in England, already referred to above in note 13 (“Peter Lombard, Stephen Langton, and Twelfth-Century Cathedral Schools in England and Paris”), and that study already runs to 140 pages.

21 Brady, Prolegomena to Sent. 1, 124*: “Primo, quia, abstractione facta ab omni relatione ad Lombardum, monstrari potest quod versio Burgundionis libri Damasceni De fide orthodoxa solum post mortem beati Eugenii III (8 iulii 1153) absoluta fuerit: deest enim epistola dedicatoria, quae Burgundionis duobus operibus prioribus praefigitur, et in titulo istius novi operis, etiam in codicibus antiquioribus, Eugenius salutatur ut ‘beatae memoriae.’”

22 Ibid.: “Proinde, concludere oportet quod haec versio lucem vidit solum circa finem 1153 vel anno sequenti. Ex alia parte, non sine influxu huius facti, ut libenter concedimus, iter italicum Magistri nostri mensibus septembri–decembri an. 1154 assignatur, quando ad limina apostolica socius fuit Theobaldi Parisiensis episcopi. Unde sequitur quod terminus post quem Sententiarum (vel saltem libri primi et dist. 1–22 libri tertii, ubi frequentius occurrit nomen et doctrina Damasceni) poni debet initium anni 1155.”

23 See Saccenti, Riccardo, Un nuovo lessico morale medievale: Il contributo di Burgundio da Pisa (Rome, 2016), 27–53Google Scholar, in which Saccenti reviews at length Burgundio's intellectual biography and concludes to the same dates as Brady (1154/1155) for the diffusion of the De fide orthodoxa.

24 I am grateful to Saccenti for sharing this information as well as his revised thinking on the dating of Burgundio's translation. It may be helpful to point out that both of his grounds for changing his estimate of those dates predate my sharing with him (on 20 September 2018 in the British Library) my discovery (in Lincoln that same week) of the Versio primitiva in Lincoln MS 230.

25 Saccenti now believes that Pope Eugenius III brought that translation with him to the Council of Reims in 1148 and that De fide orthodoxa became available in Latin sometime between 1146, at the earliest, and 1148, at the latest. If Saccenti is correct, John Damascene's De fide orthodoxa got to France no later than the Council of Reims, held in March of 1148. It is obvious that it could have gotten there earlier and would most likely have gotten to Paris as soon as it was available.

26 Neve, John and Greenway, Diana E., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1066–1300. 3. Lincoln (London, 1977), 2Google Scholar.

27 See Dorothy M. Owen, “Chesney, Robert de (d. 1166), bishop of Lincoln,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

28 The evidence for the claim that Lincoln MS 230 preserves a replica of the Lombard's own copy is substantial and various, but here it must suffice to note that the copyist preserved rubrication and decorative lettering even on a schedula that he added after skipping a section. We do not know when Lincoln MS 230 arrived in Lincoln — it is not listed in the early catalogues — but quite apart from questions related to the manuscript itself (when it was copied, where, etc.), the version of the Sentences preserved in Lincoln MS 230 is demonstrably very early. It is on this basis that I suggest the possibility of its connection to Bishop Robert, a conjecture that is at this point admittedly speculative.

29 Thus Hereford MS O.VIII.9, which preserves an early version of the Lombard's Sentences, and Hereford MS P.V.13, which contains an early version of the Lombard's Collectanea on the Pauline Epistles, both contain rich evidence of the teaching of English masters on that of Parisian masters. Both manuscripts will have to be edited, especially the margins, which were manifestly preformatted to accommodate such teaching.

30 A telling sign of just how little scholars know about Parisian schools after 1141 is Ferruolo's monograph, which remains to this day the standard authority. After Chapter One (“Paris and the Expansion of Education”) and Chapter Two (“The School of St. Victor”), Ferruolo turns to monastic and humanistic critiques of the scholastic project. He can say no more about the Parisian schools after 1141 owing to lack of any evidence. See Ferruolo, Stephen, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985)Google Scholar.

31 For a full discussion of the redating of Langton's Parisian career, which revised Powicke's 1933 estimate by at least ten years, see Clark, Mark J., The Making of the Historia scholastica: 1150–1200 (Toronto, 2015), 164–72Google Scholar. The story in which Langton describes his experiences serving the tables of the rich is at p. 187.

32 See Pet. Lomb., IV Sent. (ed. Brady, 1981): d. 35, c. 1.2 (p. 468); d. 38, c. 2.8 (p. 480); and d. 41, c. 3.6 (p. 498).

33 The standard edition of c. 22 can be found at Concilium Lateranense II (1939), c. 22 (Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta 2.1, 111–12).

34 Friedberg, Emil, ed., Corpus iuris canonici, 1, Decretum magistri Gratiani (Leipzig, 1879)Google Scholar. For a recent edition of the Treatise on Penance, see Larson, Atria, Gratian's Tractatus de Penitentia : A New Latin Edition with English Translation (Washington, DC, 2016)Google Scholar; Dist. 5, c.8 is at 258.

35 On the posited reception by Peter Lombard of this papal decretal from Gratian, see Larson, Atria, “The Reception of Gratian's Tractatus de penitentia and the Relationship between Canon Law and Theology in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Religious History 37 (2013): 457–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Larson also treats the subject in her monograph: Larsen, Atria A., Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Twelfth Century (Washington, DC, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Winroth, Anders, The Making of Gratian's Decretum (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who discovered the existence of an earlier recension of the Decretum, dates the earlier to just after Lateran II in 1139 and the later recension to before 1150. Recent scholarship suggests that these dates are too late. For comprehensive discussion of all relevant historiography, see Larson, Atria, “Papal Councils and the Development of Lay Penance in the Long Twelfth Century,” Cristianesimo nella storia 39 (2018): 39–85 at 42Google Scholar: “The conciliar record then falls silent about this issue until the pontificate of Innocent II (1130–1143), who rescued Melfi's decree on false penance at the Second Lateran Council (1139) and likely a few years earlier at Pisa (1135).” See also Atria Larson, “De vera et falsa penitentia and Penitential Renunciation Canons in the Period from Gregory VII to Gratian and the Collection of Nine Books,” in Proceedings of the XVth International Congress for Canon Law in Paris 2016, forthcoming. I am very grateful to Atria Larson for sending me proofs of these studies before publication and for bringing these and other relevant studies to my attention. Larson herself relies upon an ongoing reappraisal of all of the councils convened by Innocent II. See in this connection Brett, Martin and Somerville, Robert, “The Transmission of the Councils from 1130 to 1139,” in Pope Innocent II (1130–1143): The World vs the City, ed. Doran, J. and Smith, D. J. (London, 2016), 226–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 We owe the discovery of this earlier form of the rubric preceding c. 22 to Joshua Benson, who is editing Book III of the Versio primitiva. We are grateful to him for sharing his discovery with us and permitting us to present it here.

38 Mark J. Clark, “Peter Lombard, Stephen Langton, and The School of Paris” (n.1 above).