SOURCE: Colish, Marcia L. “Psalterium Scholasticorum: Peter Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis.” Speculum 67, no. 3 (July 1992): 531-48.

In the following essay, Colish examines how Lombard differs from his predecessors in his commentary on the Book of Psalms.

The Book of Psalms was unquestionably the book of the Old Testament most beloved by patristic and medieval exegetes. Seen as a guide to the Christian life and as a prophecy of Christ and his church, the Psalms received extended attention from Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, and Cassiodorus and from their Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon successors. After the ninth century, monastic writers continued to display a sustained interest in the text. As had always been the case, so in the twelfth century the goal of monastic commentators was to inspire unction and compunction in their monastic audience. And, as before, their address to the Psalms reflected the assumption that this...