| 102. Peter the Lombard and the Summists. | ||||
Literature: Works of P. Lombard, Migne, vols. 191, 192. Protois, P. Lomb. son ep que, sa vie, ses ecrits et son influence, Paris, 1881. Contains sermons not found in Migne. Koegel: P. Lomb. in s. Stellung zur Philos. des Mittelalters, Leip., 1897. *O. Baltzer: D. Sentenzen d. P. Lomb., irhe Quellen und ihre dogmengeschichtl. Bedeutung, Leip., 1902. *Denifle: D. Sentenzen Abaelards, etc., in Archiv, 1885, pp. 404 sqq. Arts. Lombardus, in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 1916-1923, and *Herzog, by Seeberg, XI. 630-642. Stoeckl, Philos. des Mittelalters, I. 390-411. The Histories of Doctrine of Schwane, pp. 160 sqq., Bach, Harnack, Fisher, etc. | ||||
Peter the Lombard is the father of systematic theology in the Catholic Church. He produced the most useful and popular theological text-book of the Middle Ages, as Thomas Aquinas produced the most complete theological system. In method, he belongs to the age of the great theologians of the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism was at its height. In point of time, he has his place in the twelfth century, with whose theologians, Bernard, Abaelard, Gilbert, Hugo of St. Victor, and others, he was personally acquainted. Peter was born at Novara, in Northern Italy, and died in Paris about 1164. After studying in Bologna, he went to France and attended the school of St. Victor and the cathedral school in Paris, and came under the influence of Abaelard. He afterwards taught in Paris. Walter Map, describing his experiences in France, calls him the famous theologian. In 1159 he was made bishop of Paris. | ||||
His monumental work, the Four Books of Sentences, libri quatuor sententiarum, covers, in a systematic way, the whole field of dogmatic theology, as John of Damascus had done four hundred years before in his summary of the Orthodox Faith. It won for its author the title, the Master of Sentences, magister sententiarum. Other systems of theology under the name of sentences had preceded the Lombard's treatise. Such a work was ascribed to Abaelard by St. Bernard. This was probably a mistake. It is certain, however, that Abaelard's scholars Roland (afterwards Alexander III.), while he was professor at Bologna, 1142, and Omnebene produced such works and followed Abaelard's threefold division of faith, charity, and the sacraments. Of more importance were the treatises of Anselm of Laon, Robert Pullen,1 and Hugo of St. Victor, who wrote before the Lombard prepared his work. Robert Pullen, who died about 1147, was an Englishman and one of the first teachers at Oxford, then went to Paris, where he had John of Salisbury for one of his hearers about 1142, enjoyed the friendship of St. Bernard, came into favor at Rome, and was appointed cardinal by Coelestin II. | ||||
The Lombard's work is clear, compact, and sententious, moderate and judicial in spirit, and little given to the treatment of useless questions of casuistry. In spite of some attacks upon its orthodoxy, it received wide recognition and was used for several centuries as a text-book, as Calvin's Institutes, at a later period, was used in the Protestant churches. Down to the sixteenth century, every candidate for the degree of B. A. at Paris was obliged to pass an examination in it. Few books have enjoyed the distinction of having had so many commentaries written upon them. One hundred and sixty are said to be by Englishmen, and one hundred and fifty-two by members of the order of St. Dominic. The greatest of the Schoolmen lectured and wrote commentaries upon it, as Alexander Hales, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Durandus, and Ockam. | ||||
Not uninfluenced by the method pursued by Abaelard in the Sic et Non, the Lombard collated statements from the Fathers and he set about making his compilation to relieve the student from the task and toil of searching for himself in the Fathers. Augustine furnished more than twice as many quotations as all the other Fathers together. The Lombard went further than Abaelard and proposed to show the harmony existing between the patristic statements. In the arrangement of his material and for the material itself he drew largely upon Abaelard, Gratian, and Hugo of St. Vector,1 without, however, quoting them by name. Upon Hugo he drew for entire paragraphs. | ||||
The Sentences are divided into four parts, treating of the triune God, created beings and sin, the incarnation, the Christian virtues and the decalogue, and the sacraments with some questions in eschatology. The author's method is to state the doctrine taught by the Church, to confirm it from Scripture, then to adduce the opinions of the Fathers and, if they seemed to be in conflict, to reconcile them. His ultimate design was to lift up the light of truth in its candlestick, and he assures us his labor had cost him much toil and sweat of the brow. | ||||
The Lombard's arguments for the divine existence are chiefly cosmological. God's predestination of the elect is the cause of good in them and is not based upon any foreseen goodness they may have. Their number cannot be increased or diminished. On the other hand, God does not take the initiation the condemnation of the lost. Their reprobation follows as a consequence upon the evil in them which is foreseen. | ||||
In the second book, the Lombard makes the famous statement which he quotes from Augustine, and which has often been falsely ascribed as original to Matthew Henry, that the woman was not taken from Adam's head, as if she were to rule over him or from his feet as if she were to be his slave, but from his side that she might be his consort. By the Fall man suffered injury as from a wound, vulneratio, not deprivation of all virtue. Original sin is handed down through the medium of the body and becomes operative upon the soul by the soul's contact with the body. The root of sin is concupiscence, concupiscentia. The Lombard was a creationist. God knew man would fall. Why He did not prevent it, is not known. | ||||
In his treatment of the atonement, Peter denied that Christ's death was a price paid to the devil. It is the manifestation of God's love, and by Christ's love on the cross, love is enkindled within us. Here the Lombard approaches the view of Abaelard. He has nothing to say in favor of Anselm's view that the death of Christ was a payment to the divine honor. | ||||
In his treatment of the sacraments, the Lombard commends immersion as the proper form of baptism, triune or single. Baptism destroys the guilt of original sin. The Lord's Supper is a sacrifice, and the elements are transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Water is to be mixed with the wine, the water signifying the people redeemed by Christ's passion. | ||||
It is remarkable that a work which came into such general esteem, and whose statements are so carefully guarded by references to Augustine, should have been attacked again and again as heretical, as at the synod of Tours, 1163, and at the Third Lateran, 1179; but at neither was any action taken. Again at the Fourth Lateran, 1215, Peter's statement of the Trinity was attacked. Peter had said that the Father, Son, and Spirit were a certain highest being, and that the substance neither begets nor is begotten, nor does it proceed from anything. Joachim charged that he substituted a quaternity for the Trinity and called him a heretic, but the council took another view and pronounced in favor of Peter's orthodoxy. Walter of St. Victor went so far as to accuse the author of the Sentences with Sabellianism, Arianism, and novel heresies. In spite of such charges no one can get as clear an idea of mediaeval theology in a succinct form as in Peter Lombard unless it be in the Breviloquium of Bonaventura. | ||||
The last and one of the clearest of the Summists of the twelfth century was Alanus de Insulis, Alain of Lille, who was born at Lille, Flanders, and died about 1202. His works were much read, especially his allegorical poems, Anticlaudianus and De planctu naturae. | ||||
In the Rules of Sacred Theology Alanus gives one hundred and twenty-five brief expositions of theological propositions. In the five books on the Catholic Faith,1 he considers the doctrine of God, creation and redemption, the sacraments, and the last things. The Church is defined as the congregation of the faithful confessing Christ and the arsenal of the sacraments. Alanus' work, Against Heretics, has already been used in the chapters on the Cathari and Waldenses. | ||||
Another name which may be introduced here is Walter of St. Victor, who is chiefly known by his characterization of Abaelard, Gilbert of Poictiers, Peter the Lombard, and the Lombard's pupil, Peter of Poictiers, afterwards chancellor of the University of Paris, as the four labyrinths of France. He likened their reasoning to the garrulity of frogs, ranarum garrulitas, and declared that, as sophists, they had unsettled the faith by their questions and counterquestions. Walter's work has never been printed. He succeeded Richard as prior of the convent of St. Victor. He died about 1180. | ||||