(ca. 1100–1160). The “Master of the Sentences,” born and educated in Novara, Lombardy, arrived in Paris via Reims (ca. 1135) with a letter of recommendation from Bernard of Clairvaux to Abbot Gilduin of Saint-Victor. While he apparently never taught at the abbey, Peter did preach there, and he maintained close ties with Saint-Victor throughout his life.
The Lombard soon made himself a reputation as a formidable theologian. By 1142–43, he had the dubious distinction of being named by Gerhoch of Reichersberg as a dangerous innovator; in 1148, he was summoned by Pope Eugenius III to the Consistory of Reims to help judge the orthodoxy of another innovator, Gilbert of Poitiers, whose christology Peter found lacking. Teaching at Notre-Dame by 1143, he was a canon by 1145 and steadily rose in rank (subdeacon by 1147, deacon by 1150, archdeacon by 1157). In 1158, his years of service were crowned by his election as bishop of Paris; this honor was short-lived, as he died in 1160.
The earliest works of the Lombard are his commentaries on the Psalms (before 1138) and on the epistles of Paul (by 1142). Though Herbert of Bosham reports that Peter meant them for his personal edification only and that he never finished them, they were swiftly and widely circulated, often even replacing the marginal-interlinear glosses for the Psalms and epistles in the Glossa ordinaria. Known as the Magna glossatura, they became the most frequently cited works of Scripture exegesis in the Middle Ages. Peter based his two commentaries on a close reading of Anselm of Laon’s glosses and Gilbert of Poitiers’s biblical commentaries. He kept the Glossa’s patristic and Carolingian base, took over Gilbert’s organization scheme and hermeneutic principles, and consistently worked out doctrinal positions and current theological issues in connection with the scriptural text.
Even more central to the history of medieval theology and philosophy is the Lombard’s Quattuor libri sententiarum, or the Sententiae. Sentence collections proliferated in the 12th century, as theologians strove to systematize and professionalize their field. Peter Lombard’s Sententiae (1155–57) became an instant and enduring success throughout Europe (legislated into the theological curriculum of the University of Paris in 1215) and remained without serious competition until replaced by the Summa of Thomas Aquinas in the 16th century. It was second only to the Bible in importance in theological training; hundreds of theologians wrote commentaries on the Sententiae. The reasons for its success have recently been set forth in a effort to restore the luster to the Lombard’s tired reputation. Its comprehensive coverage of topics, logical order, lack of dependence on or promotion of any elaborate philosophical system, sensitivity to the need for clarity and consistency in theological language, and readiness to address controversial issues while acknowledging contemporary consensus, all ensured the utility of the Sententiae to generations of theologians and philosophers. In addition, Peter’s christology avoided many of the semantic pitfalls that plagued contemporary theologians; his Trinitarian views were solemnly ratified at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
Peter Lombard. Commentarius in psalmos davidicos. PL 191.55–169.
——. Collectanea in omnes b. Pauli epistolas. PL 191.1297–696 and PL 192.9–520.
——. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. Ignatius Brady. 3rd ed. rev. In Spicilegium Bonaventurianum. Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S.Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–81, Vols. 4–5.
——. Sermons (printed under the name of Hildebert of Lavardin). PL 171.339–964. [See list in J.de Ghellinck, “Pierre Lombard.” In Dictionnarie de théologie catholique, Vol. 12 (1935), cols. 1961–62.]
