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Peter Lombard

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Peter Lombard
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(born c. 1100, Novara, Lombardy — died Aug. 21/22, 1160, Paris) French bishop and theologian. He studied in Bologna and taught theology in the school of Notre-Dame, Paris. He was consecrated bishop of Paris in 1159. His Four Books of Sentences (1148 – 51), a systematic collection of teachings of the Church Fathers and opinions of medieval theologians, served as the standard theological text of the Middle Ages. In it Peter touched on every doctrinal issue, from God and the Trinity to the four "last things" (death, judgment, hell, and heaven). He asserted that sacraments are the cause and not merely the signal of grace and that human actions may be judged good or bad according to their cause and intention.

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Biography: Peter Lombard
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The Italian theologian Peter Lombard (ca. 1095-1160) wrote "The Sentences, " a work that became the standard textbook on theology in European universities for 400 years.

Peter Lombard was born at Lumellogno in the region of Novara in northern Italy. After a period of study at Bologna or Vercelli, he crossed the Alps to France in 1134 and went to Reims to study under a fellow countryman, Lutolph of Novara, who held a prominent position in the cathedral school at Reims. Lutolph had previously been a student of Anselm of Laon, and in his teaching he continued the exegetical traditions of the school of Laon, which concentrated on the interpretation of Scripture through the sayings of the Church Fathers.

After studying under Lutolph for 2 or 3 years, Lombard moved to Paris, where he may have attended at SteGeneviève the lectures of Peter Abelard, a long-standing enemy of Lutolph. During the next 5 years Lombard wrote his commentaries on the Psalms and on the Letters of St. Paul, both of which were soon used in the schools. About 1140 Lombard received his license to teach and he probably remained in Paris, where in 1144 he became a canon of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Lombard's reputation as a theologian grew rapidly, and he seems to have developed a friendship with Bernard of Clairvaux. At the Council of Reims in 1148, Pope Eugenius III named Lombard to a commission to study the writings of the leading theologian of the school of Chartres, Gilbert de la Porrée, who was then the bishop of Poitiers. Although Lombard seems to have favored a condemnation, one was not forthcoming, and he continued in his writings the struggle against what he considered suspicious doctrine. Following a journey to Rome in 1153 and the reward of a prebend at Beauvais, he continued his teaching at Paris, where, before 1156, he became the archdeacon of the Cathedral.

Lombard's greatest theological work, The Sentences, was completed in 1157 or 1158. It not only was a summary of Christian doctrine but was critical of positions taken by Gilbert de la Porrée. The work is a compilation of the sayings of the Fathers, especially of St. Augustine, on the major aspects of Christian dogma. However, it is not a mere collection of authorities but an attempt to group the most important theological statements from the sources around particular problems. Lombard made an effort to harmonize seemingly conflicting statements and constructed the outlines of a solution. But the solutions offered were not of a kind to end discussion but rather to stimulate it and to channel it within orthodox and, hopefully, fruitful lines. The form of Lombard's work was not unique but was based on De fide orthodoxa of St. John of Damascus and the Sentences of St. Isidore of Seville, and it was similar to Gratian's Decretum.

The content of Lombard's Sentences covers most of Christian theology, moving from the nature of God and the Trinity at the beginning, through the doctrine of creation and Christology, to the Church, the Sacraments, and the Final Judgment. The theological bias is Augustinian, and Lombard was particularly concerned with the question of man's salvation and the nature of the moral act. He tried to maintain a strong concept of the freedom of man while stressing the omnipotence of God and the absolute need for grace.

Within 2 years after its completion, students were writing commentaries on the Sentences, and the work was made a major theological source by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In 1159, after the death of Bishop Thibault, Lombard was elected bishop of Paris. He died there the following year on August 21.

Further Reading

There is no full-length study of the life and thought of Lombard in English. Lombard's teaching on the Sacraments is examined in Elizabeth Frances Rogers, Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System (1917).

Irish Literature Companion: Peter Lombard
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Lombard, Peter (?1560-1625), churchman and Irish historian. Born in Waterford to an Old English family and educated at Louvain he was ordained in 1594. In December 1600 he completed De Regno Hiberniae Commentarius (Louvain, 1632), a work on ‘the island of Saints’, promoting Hugh O'Neill. Lombard was made Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in June 1601, but remained in Rome, where he was to be joined by O'Neill, and where he died.

Philosophy Dictionary: Peter Lombard
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Lombard, Peter (1095/1100-1160) Italian theologian. Lombard's importance in scholastic thought derives from his four books making up the Book of Sentences, composed between 1145 and 1151. These treat of matters such as predestination, God's relationship to creation, freewill, and so forth, and were the frequent topic of commentaries by subsequent theologians.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Peter Lombard
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Peter Lombard, Lat. Petrus Lombardus, c.1100-c.1160, Italian theologian, often called Magister Sententiarum. He studied at Bologna, Reims, and Paris, where he is said to have been a student of Abelard. He acquired some fame as a teacher and was given high offices, serving for a time as archbishop of Paris. His Sentences, one of the most celebrated of all theological works, is a compilation of opinions of earlier theologians, often in conflict and not always reconciled. It was particularly important because its doctrine on sacraments (that a sacrament is both a symbol and a means of grace and that seven fulfill the required conditions) was adopted as the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (see Trent, Council of). By the 13th cent., the Sentences had become the principal theological text in the universities, and many of the greatest scholastics wrote commentaries on it.
Wikipedia: Peter Lombard
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Peter Lombard or Petrus Lombardus; (c. 1100 — July 20, 1160 in Paris) was a scholastic theologian and bishop and author of Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he is also known as Magister Sententiarum.

Contents

Biography

Peter Lombard was born in Lumellogno[1] (then a rural commune, now a quartiere of Novara, Piedmont), to a poor family.[2] His date of birth was likely between 1095 and 1100.

His education most likely began in Italy at the cathedral schools of Novara and Lucca. The patronage of Otto, bishop of Lucca, who recommended him to Bernard of Clairvaux, allowed him to leave Italy and further his studies at Reims and Paris. Petrus Lombardus studied first in the cathedral school at Reims, where Magister Alberich and Lutolph of Novara were teaching, and arrived in Paris about 1134[3], where Bernard recommended him[4] to the canons of the church of St-Victor. In Paris, where he spent the next decade teaching at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, he came into contact with Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, who were among the leading theologians of the time. There are no proven facts relating to his whereabouts in Paris until 1142 when he became recognized as writer and teacher. Around 1145, Peter became a "magister", or professor, at the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. Peter's means of earning a living before he began to derive income as a teacher and from his canon's prebend is shrouded in uncertainty.

Peter Lombard's career

Lombard's style of teaching gained quick acknowledgment. It can be surmised that this attention is what prompted the canons of Notre Dame to ask him to join their ranks. He was considered a celebrated theologian by 1144. The Parisian school of canons had not included among their number a theologian of high regard for some years. The canons of Notre Dame, to a man, were members of the Capetian dynasty, relatives of families closely aligned to the Capetians by blood or marriage, scions of the Ile-de-France or eastern Loire Valley nobility, or relatives of royal officials. In contrast, Peter had no relatives, ecclesiastical connections, and no political patrons in France. It seems that he must have been invited by the canons of Notre Dame solely for his academic merit.

He became a subdeacon in 1147, and was ordained priest some time before 1156. At the Council of Reims (1148)[5] and possibly at the consistory of Paris the year before, he took part as a theological expert. At some time after 1150 he became a deacon, then an archdeacon by 1156, or maybe as early as 1152. In 1159, he was named bishop of Paris: a hostile witness, Walter of St Victor accused Peter of obtaining the office by simony,[6] though he had no sources of income; the more usual story is that Philip, younger brother of Louis VII. and archdeacon of Notre-Dame was elected by the canons but declined in favor of Peter, his teacher. Peter was consecrated at the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 28 July 1159.

His reign as bishop was brief.[7] He died on either July 21 or 22, 1160. Little can be ascertained about Lombard's administrative style or objectives because he left behind so few episcopal acta. He was succeeded by Maurice de Sully, the builder of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.[8] His tomb in the church of Saint-Marcel in Paris was destroyed during the French Revolution, but a transcription of his epitaph survives.

Writings

Peter Lombard wrote commentaries on the Psalms and the Pauline epistles; however, his most famous work by far was Libri Quatuor Sententiarum, or the Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology at the medieval universities. From the 1220s until the 16th century, no work of Christian literature, except for the Bible itself, was commented upon more frequently. All the major medieval thinkers, from Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel, were influenced by it. Even the young Martin Luther still wrote glosses on the Sentences and John Calvin quoted from it over 100 times in his Institutes.

Though the Four Books of Sentences formed the framework upon which four centuries of scholastic interpretation of Christian dogma was based, rather than a dialectical work itself, the Four Books of Sentences is a compilation of biblical texts, together with relevant passages from the Church Fathers and many medieval thinkers, on virtually the entire field of Christian theology as it was understood at the time. Peter Lombard's magnum opus stands squarely within the pre-scholastic exegesis of biblical passages, in the tradition of Anselm of Laon, who taught through quotations from authorities.[9] It stands out as the first major effort to bring together commentaries on the full range of theological issues, arrange the material in a systematic order, and attempt to reconcile them where they appeared to defend different viewpoints. The Sentences starts with the Trinity in Book I, moves on to creation in Book II, treats Christ, the savior of the fallen creation, in Book III, and deals with the sacraments, which mediate Christ's grace, in Book IV.

Doctrine

Peter Lombard's most famous and most controversial doctrine in the Sentences was his identification of charity with the Holy Spirit in Book I, distinction 17. According to this doctrine, when the Christian loves God and neighbor, this love literally is God; he becomes divine and is taken up into the life of the Trinity. This idea was never declared unorthodox, but few theologians have been prepared to follow Peter Lombard in his audacious teaching. Compare Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est, 2006.

Also in the Sentences was the doctrine that marriage was consensual (and need not be consummated to be considered perfect, unlike Gratian's analysis). Lombard's interpretation was later endorsed by Pope Alexander III, and had a significant impact on Church interpretation of marriage.

Notes

  1. ^ Hödl, in Biograficsh-Bibliografisches Kirchenlexikon.
  2. ^ The few known facts of Peter's life are presented in Philippe Delhaye, Pierre Lombard: sa vie, ses œuvres, sa morale (Paris/Montreal) 1961.
  3. ^ Hödl
  4. ^ In a surviving letter, Ep. 410, Opera omnia viii.391, noted by Hödl
  5. ^ Pope Eugenius III was present at the synod, which examined Gilbert de la Porrée and Eon de l'Estoile. Peter was among the signers of the act condemning Gilbert's teachings (Hödl).
  6. ^ In his polemic Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae II.4.
  7. ^ His successor, Maurice de Sully, was bishop by the end of 1160.
  8. ^  "Peter Lombard". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Peter_Lombard. 
  9. ^ This is a central point of Delhaye 1961, who sees Abelard, rather than Peter, as the founder of scholasticism.

External links

References

  • Colish, Marcia L., Peter Lombard Volume One (New York: E.J. Brill, 1994).
  • Rosemann, Philipp W. Peter Lombard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
  • Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's "Sentences" (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007).
  • Herlihy, David Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Irish Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Copyright © 1996, 2000, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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