Sentences, Commentaries on the

SENTENCES, Commentaries on the. - The textbook in the Faculty of theology during the 13th and 14th centuries was the Bible, the "sacred page," from which the regent master "read" this or that book at his choice. The bachelor, on the other hand, to whom the master entrusted a great part of his teaching and his responsibility, commented for the younger students on the four books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (v.).

The statutes of the Faculty of Paris made this obligatory, and in this they were followed by all the other universities. No one could accede to the mastership or take the "licentia docendi" without having carried out this task to the satisfaction of the students and of the master, who made himself guarantor of it. The Sentences thus became the book, or the "Scriptum," "in Scripto," and Peter Lombard became "the Master." The importance of the text did not cease to increase, as masters, taking less interest in their teaching, trusted too much in their bachelor, and as initiation into theology consisted above all in the study of a whole work, rather than in capricious commentaries on different books. It is necessary, therefore, to refer to the commentaries on that text if one wishes to follow the various phases of theological thought; all the more so since each commentary neglected none of the theological problems and since the number of those that survive is very high. In F. Stegmüller's Repertorium there are 1407 entries, even if not all of them are perhaps true commentaries and not all are complete; this figure gives an idea of the importance of the material available, most of it still unpublished.

The work of Peter Lombard was only one of the many attempts that gathered into a complete and organic treatment all the problems discussed in theology. Others are known, earlier and later, which have the same character, from Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, Roland Bandinelli, Gandulf of Bologna, down to the Sententiae Parisienses, Florianenses, Sententiae Divinitatis, the Summa Sententiarum of Robert of Melun (v.), the work of Peter of Poitiers (v.), etc. But that of Peter Lombard prevailed over the others because of its clear and logical exposition, its well-chosen and abundant patristic documentation, and the balance of its solutions. The interest of the commentaries on the Sentences is given both by the common element offered by the textbook to which all had to refer and by the relatively very wide field granted to personal thought and initiative; so that through the individual books both their respective authors are revealed and, at the same time, the movement of theological thought, whose different currents manifest themselves, especially when grouped into the various schools and compared in their chronological succession.

According to the statutes of the University, each "sententiarius" bachelor read all the books of the Lombard in two years, but from the middle of the 14th century, it seems, this was done in one year. The dates for the inauguration of each book were also fixed, and its "principium" was celebrated with a kind of solemn feast, especially the first (between the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and St. Denis); the second took place in the first days of January, the third in the first days of March, and the fourth in those of May. Generally the same order as Peter Lombard's was followed; very often, however, for various reasons, it could be changed; thus, for example, Peter Aureol read the 1st and 4th books in 1316-17 and the 2nd and 3rd the following year; it also happened to Duns Scotus to read the 1st and 4th books in the same academic year. St. Bonaventure had read the 4th before the 3rd. St. Albert the Great would have read, it seems, the 1st and 3rd, then the 2nd and 4th. The four books were to be read effectively without stopping on certain particular questions, on which too much time would have been spent, as many were tempted to do toward the 14th century and then in the 15th. From the outset, they stopped at a question of the prologue or of the 1st book, to explain which they spent so many lectures that the rest of the book, or even of the books, paid the price. Thus Peter Lombard's Commentary ended up being a pretext for certain outlandish questions that had only a relative connection with it, questions that could have been addressed without any reference to the Sentences. To remain in compliance with the statutes, some passages of the text of the Sentences were finally read or summarized, very hastily.

This fact, contrary to the university statutes, clashed with the spirit and the initial practice. There occurred, in reality, an evolution which, starting from the very structure imposed by the Sentences (common, moreover, to all the other commentaries), that is, the divisio textus, the quaestiones attached to the text, provoked by it, then, at the end of the lecture, the expositio litterae or the dubia in litteram (explanations of the Lombard's text), slowly flowed into an amplification of the 2nd point, the question, to the detriment of the other points, which remained sacrificed. Soon it remained alone, and following the order of the Lombard's distinctions and problems, it assumed such vast proportions as to nullify its function and reached the excesses mentioned above. In the ordinary reading, as can be observed in the great authors of the 13th century, the questions raised in the course of each distinction and each subdivision may be more or less numerous. Here the initiative of the reader, of the "sententiarius" bachelor, is noted; his desiderata, his preferences emerge; his thought and his personal position are revealed. It is enough to establish a parallel for a given distinction by 4 or 5 nearly contemporary authors to discover in it the extreme variety of the genre, the number of questions, the character and the solutions given to them. Within the fixed schemes a certain freedom is permitted: one may pass over a problem posed by the Lombard that one does not like, or pose other questions that he had not suspected. One is permitted to depart from his way of seeing things, to criticize his solutions, to propose others; without overturning the general plan, one can shift particular questions and rework very freely, at one's own pleasure, the order of the treatises. There is, moreover, a whole series of opinions of the "Master of the Sentences" that are officially "non tenentur."

Provided one does not depart from the track of orthodoxy, quite original and even bold opinions are permitted; one knows that one is always under the watchful eye of the master, who must guarantee the value of his bachelor's teaching, as well as under the attentive gaze of the students, colleagues and adversaries; from time to time denunciations force a retraction, when they do not even force one to abandon or prematurely interrupt one's teaching career.

The commentary on the Sentences remains, undoubtedly, a youthful work, up to a certain point; only one who was 30 years old was admitted to the reading of the Sentences; very often in the religious Orders a greater age was required, after a fairly long apprenticeship of 7 or 8 years of previous theological studies, during which the candidate had attended at least three times the "reading" of the 4 books of Peter Lombard; he had thus been able to reflect, make comparisons, choose one or another opinion. From the commentary on the Sentences (1254-56) St. Thomas drew his most important preferences and did not easily return to it; it remained for St. Thomas, as for his contemporaries, the basis on which other works were later drafted, and it constituted in a master's career the point of departure and the most useful comparison, inasmuch as it was very vast and had forced the author to pronounce on almost all the great themes of theology.

From this arises the singular importance of the commentaries. Sometimes the definitive redaction takes place, for various reasons, several years after the oral teaching. Such, for example, is the case of Giles of Rome, whose Book I appeared around 1276-78, that is, almost immediately after the "lecture," while Books II and III were not redacted until 1309. The same happened to Richard of Mediavilla (v.), whose books, read in 1284-86, saw the light around 1295. It is not rare to find oneself faced with multiple redactions, either because the author gave his teaching on the Sentences on several occasions, in different places, as did Scotus, Vitalis of Furno (in Paris and Montpellier), Peter Aureoli (in Paris, Toulouse, Bologna and Paris), or because, moved by the criticisms he had received or by the desire for a revision, the author took up again a first redaction already made (such is the case of Durandus of St. Porciano, of whom a triple redaction is preserved, and of John of Mirecourt, who offers two). St. Thomas had proposed, during his stay in Italy, to take up again his Commentary, of which he redid Book I, but he then renounced this in order to devote himself instead to the composition of the Summa Theologica.

These redactions are, in general, quite carefully done, as regards exposition and style. It happens, however, sometimes that a text was caught on the fly by a listener (this is the case of the reportata) or that the notes were not completed by the author himself. Such, for example, are the various Reportaciones (Parisienses, Oxonienses and, within these, the variants of this or that manuscript) of the Commentary of Duns Scotus (v.). Such are the notes taken day by day by Richard of Bazoches in the course taught by Peter Plaust in 1392-1393, further enriched with piquant annotations on the affairs of the University and of the kingdom, or also the probably original text of the Commentary of Gerard of Abbeville on the III Sententiarum. More lively and picturesque than the others, such redactions are sometimes less reliable. To pronounce an exact judgment on the author's doctrine, one must take into account the deficiencies of the one who reports them.

Through these commentaries, so numerous, which line up from the 13th to the 15th century, coming from all the schools, expressions of all the great universities, it is possible to write the history of theology, of its uncertainties or of its progress. After the commentaries, but on a much lower plane, one must recall the summaries of the Lombard (some of which have been put into verse), the epitomes of the commentaries on the Sentences, the sheets or school notes and, finally, the more or less extensive compilations on the commentaries, such as, for example, that of Prosper of Reggio Emilia, contained in ms. Vat. lat. 1086 on the prologue, and dist. I of the first book, or the anonymous one of Münster, Univ. 257, on the treatise de virtutibus.