Marcia L. Colish

Peter Lombard (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History) Marcia L. Colish

This study places Peter Lombard's thought in the context of the intellectual debates of his time, in the effort to understand the substance of Lombardian theology and the reasons why his principal work, the "Sentences" became a classic of early scholastic theology with a durable influence, doing more to shape the education of university theologians and philosophers than any other work of systematic theology for the next four centuries. Attention is paid to the sentence collection as a genre of theological literature, the problem of theological language with which Lombard and his contemporaries wrestled, and his contribution to early scholastic biblical exegesis as well as to the development of his systematic theology in the "Sentences". This work should be of interest to intellectual historians of the Middle Ages, historians of theology and philosophy, and readers interested in the rise of early scholasticism and the interaction between theology and canon law in the 12th century.