Profile Major Works Resources

Peter Lombard, c.1100-1160.

Italian Scholastic philosopher from Novara.  A student of Adelard in Paris, went to teach in that city, becoming a professor at the school of Notre Dame and eventually Bishop of Paris. 

Peter Lombard's fame rests on his Sentences, a comprehensive summation of Christian doctrine and debates in four books, paraphrasing and quoting freely from the Church fathers, notably St. Augustine. His work was also influenced substantially by his contemporary Gratian. Lombard Sentences would be the primary theology textbook used by Scholastic studies, eclipsing nearly all other books of that kind.   Theology students were frequently known as Sententiari (students of Lombard's Sentences).  

A veritable industry of Scholastic summaries and commentaries on Lombard's Sentences was fostered in the course of the 13th C.  Four stand out: the Summa Aurea of William of Auxerre (c.1220), the  Summa universae theologica of Alexander of Hales (c.1245), the Commentaria of Bonaventure (c.1250) and the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.  These four do not confine themselves to remarking narrowly on Lombard's text, but rather use the themes and arrangement of the Sentences to guide their own philosophical and theological ventures.

 

  

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Major Works of Peter Lombard

  • Quatuor libri Sententiarum (Book of Sentences),  c.1150 (1754 ed., 1848 Migne ed.)
  • P. Lombardi Opera Omnia (Migne vol 192)
 
 
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Resources on Peter Lombard

 
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