sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Monica Brînzei / William O. Duba (eds.): Principia on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

Research on Peter Lombard's "Book of Sentences" - the standard textbook used in faculties of theology throughout the later Middle Ages, and sometimes beyond - has been yielding impressive fruits since the late Marcia Colish reinvigorated the field with her two-volume study that appeared in 1994. [1] Among recent developments, one should mention Mark Clark's discovery that the genesis of the "Sentences" and their place in Peter Lombard's corpus are much more complex than Ignatius Brady assumed when he prepared his critical edition in 1971-1981. [2] Clark and his team are preparing a new edition, which they believe will lead to a reevaluation of the relationship between biblical studies and systematic theology in the early scholastic period.

Significant progress has been made, as well, in the study of the tradition of commentaries on the "Sentences." Since lecturing on Peter Lombard's textbook was a mandatory step in the education of every scholastic theologian, the exercise generated an enormous corpus of writings. A comprehensive investigation of this corpus would yield an extremely detailed map of the intellectual landscape in the medieval faculties of theology. One of the research teams that have devoted themselves to this large task is the group around Monica Brînzei, William Duba, and Chris Schabel, who have unearthed many hitherto neglected commentators not only from Paris and Oxford but also from universities in more eastern parts of Europe. It is this indefatigable team that is principally responsible - along with other contributors, to be sure - for the two-volume work that forms the subject matter of this review.

The existence of principia has been known since Franz Ehrle's pioneering study of Peter of Candia (who was to become Pope Alexander V), published one hundred years ago. [3] However, until Brînzei and Duba's new handbook, there was little in-depth research on this fascinating genre. Principia were, as the name indicates, "beginnings" - speeches delivered to mark the opening of a particular set of lectures, both in the faculty of arts and in the faculty of theology. In the latter, any bachelor about to begin his lectures on Scripture or on one of the four books of the "Sentences" was expected to "principiate" (principiare). The term principium was also used for the inaugural lecture of a newly appointed master (an ambiguity that has occasionally caused confusion in the scholarly literature), but the volumes under discussion focus on principia that were devised to open lectures on Peter Lombard's textbook. (The subtitle "Exploring an Uncharted Scholastic Philosophical Genre Across Europe" is therefore a little strange.)

Monica Brînzei's helpful "Guide for Understanding Principia on the Sentences of Peter Lombard" (1-27 in vol. 1) provides a first orientation regarding the components and development of the genre. In the thirteenth century, principia began as fairly conventional praise of Peter Lombard, his "Sentences," and the theological discipline. It is in the fourteenth century (as William Courtenay's contribution shows in more detail) that principia developed into vehicles for vigorous intellectual debate; this came about through the incorporation of disputed questions, called quaestiones collativae. These debate-style principia, where bachelors engaged each other's positions on a broad range of issues that often went far beyond topics covered by the Lombard himself, circulated in quires (quaterni) where the arguments were recorded on paper. In fact, the new availability of paper may explain the abundance of recorded principia (which likely would not have been committed to parchment).

By 1330, a typical principium comprised four components: a collatio (or sermon), a protestatio of faith and goodwill, a quaestio collativa, and a concluding gratiarum actio. The collatio was organized around a biblical passage, carefully chosen by the bachelor to convey his vision of the theological enterprise. Brînzei explains: "For a theologian, the thema functioned as a means of organizing his speech about what he, as a person and as a member of a school, was going to bring to the teaching of the Sacred Page". (8) Originality and even playfulness were welcome. Thus, for example, a Cistercian bachelor lecturing in Paris, Pierre Ceffons, chose as his theme a single letter, the omega from Revelation 1:8! In the thirteenth century, the biblical theme was combined with a discussion of the "Sentences" and the task of commenting upon them in terms of the Aristotelian four causes. But verse could be incorporated as well, no doubt for mnemonic reasons. The protestatio was a solemn oath to remain faithful to the teachings of the church, but also - notably - to show respect to one's fellow bachelors or socii. Brînzei observes that, by the fifteenth century, the protestatio tended to congeal into standard formulae. The quaestiones collativae that have been transmitted in the already mentioned paper quires often display remarkably lively exchanges among bachelors, a back-and-forth of argument and counterargument that testifies to what the scholastics themselves termed libido arguendi (28-29). Brînzei sees evidence of orality here, that is to say, of written records staying close to actual oral exchanges. If this is so, then principia take us much closer to the practice of scholastic disputation than the quaestiones disputatae that are transmitted on parchment. Finally, in the gratiarum actio the bachelor expressed gratitude toward the church, the university, the Master of the "Sentences," his teachers and fellow bachelors.

The two volumes presented here comprise 1200 pages with twenty-one contributions (five of which, adding up to 420 pages, are authored by Chris Schabel). Based upon a conference held in Paris in 2015 on the topic Les Principia des Sentences: entre exercice institutionnel et débat philosophique, this massive handbook focuses on the fourteenth century, with chapters on principia in Paris (seven chapters), Oxford (four chapters), Bologna, Cracow, Florence, Heidelberg, Prague (one chapter each), and Vienna (four chapters). Several of the contributions feature editions of hitherto unedited texts. This work represents a major milestone in research on Peter Lombard's "Sentences" and what Olga Weijers so aptly termed the "intellectual practices" of the medieval university. [4] It belongs in every library that supports research in these areas.

Notes:

[1] Marcia L. Colish: Peter Lombard, 2 vols., Leiden 1994.

[2] Mark J. Clark: Rethinking Peter Lombard's Corpus, in: Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 90 (2023), 229-289. For Brady's edition, see Magistri Petri Lombardi: Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols., Grottaferrata 1971-1981.

[3] Franz Ehrle: Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, des Pisaner Papstes Alexander V. Ein Beitrag zur Scheidung der Schulen in der Scholastik des 14. Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte des Wegestreites, Münster 1925.

[4] Olga Weijers: Le maniement du savoir. Pratiques intellectuelles à l'époque des premières universités (XIIIe-XIVe siècles), Turnhout 1996.