ROBERTO di MELUN (Melodunensis). — Theologian and bishop, born in England at the end of the 11th century, died at Hereford on 27 February 1167.
A student at Oxford and Paris, around 1137 he succeeded Abelard as professor of dialectic in the schola artium of the “Montagne Ste-Geneviève,” and around 1142 as professor of theology at Melun; at the Council of Reims (1184), Pietro Lombardo (v.) Giovanni di Cornovaglia (v.), he fought against the Gilberto della Porrée (v.). After several years of teaching at the abbey of S. Vittore (Paris), at the suggestion of s. Tommaso Becket he was called to England (1160) by King Enrico II and appointed (1163) bishop of Hereford; if for some time he was too loyal to the sovereign against Becket, he subsequently took a firm stand in favor of the illustrious martyr.
Between 1145 and 1155 he composed a commentary on the Gospel of s. Matteo, substantially preserved in the Quaestiones de divina pagina (ed. R. Martin, Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, I, Lovanio 1932), and a theological work on the Pauline letters: Quaestiones de epistolis Pauli (ed. R. Martin, op. cit., II, there 1938); the quaestiones follow the lectio of the biblical text and discuss, with an original method and insights, important subjects that were subsequently taken up by the author in his most celebrated work (which became almost a theological classic at the end of the 12th century), the Sententiae (unpublished; numerous manuscripts). Although these imitate the arrangement of Ugo di S. Vittore’s De Sacramentis, they do not attain its inward fervor and innate simplicity. A personal theologian endowed with insight, R. di M., while an admirer of the Victorine school, dared to attack the friends of the great abbey (Guglielmo di St-Thierry and s. Bernardo) and to oppose Pietro Lombardo himself; by defending Abelardo in the question of appropriatio trinitaria, he opened the way to a doctrine that was accepted by all the great scholastics of the 13th century.