BRILL'S STUDIES

IN
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
General Editor

A.J. VANDERJAGT, University of Groningen

Editorial Board
M. COLISH, Oberlin College
J.I. ISRAEL, University College, London
J.D. NORTH, University of Groningen
H.A. OBERMAN, University of Arizona, Tucson
R.H. POPKIN, Washington University, St. Louis-UCLA
VOLUME 41/1
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PETER LOMBARD
BY

MARCIA L. COLISH

VOLUME ONE

4, &/SL -β

E.J. BRILL
LEIDEN · NEW YORK · KÖLN
1994
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Colish, Marcia L.
Peter Lombard / by Marcia L. Colish.
p. cm. — (Brill's studies in intellectual history, ISSN
0920-8607 ; v. 41)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 9004098615 (set : alk. paper). — ISBN 9004098593 (v. 1 :
alk. paper). — ISBN 9004098607 (v. 2 : alk. paper)
1. Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, ca. 1100-1160. 2. Theology,
Doctrinal—History—Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Tide. II. Series.
BX1749.P4C64 1993
230\2'092—dc20 93-8757
CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CEP-Einheitsaufh ahme

Colish, Marcia L.:
Peter Lombard / by Marcia L. Colish. - Leiden ; New York ;
Köln : Brill.
(Brill's studies in intellectual history ; Vol. 41)
ISBN 90-04-09861-5
NE:GT
Vol. 1 (1993)
ISBN 90-04-09859-3

ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 90 04 09859 3 (Vol. 1)
ISBN 90 04 09861 5 (Set)

© Copyright 1994 by E.J. Bull, Laden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior wntten
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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
 CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE

Author's Note ix
List of Abbreviations xi

Preface 1

1. Peter Lombard's Life and Works 15

Biography 15
Works 23
Reputation 30
2. The Theological Enterprise 33
Systematic Theology in the Twelfth Century 34
Monastic Parallels and Contrasts 35
The Scholastic Sentence Collection as a Genre of
Theological Literature 42
The Criticism and Evaluation of Authorities 44
Peter Abelard and His Followers 47
Gilbert of Poitiers and His Followers 52
Hugh of St. Victor and the Summa sententiarum 57
Roland of Bologna, Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun 65
The Lombard 77

3. The Problem of Theological Language 91

The Abelardian Challenge 96
The Lombardian Response 119
The Porretan Challenge 131
The Lombardian Response 148

4. Sacra pagina 155

Psalms Exegesis: The Monastic Approach 158
Pre-Lombardian Scholastic Psalms Exegesis 162
Peter Lombard on the Psalms 170
Pauline Exegesis : The Monastic Approach 189
Pauline Exegesis among the Lombard's
Scholastic Predecessors and Contemporaries
and the Lombard's Collectanea 192
VI CONTENTS

5. The Doctrine of God 227

Man's Knowledge of God: Proofs of God's
Existence, Analogies of the Trinity 229
Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun 230
The Lombard 238
Nature and Person in the Trinity 245
The Critique of Abelard 254
The Divine Nature in Relation to the Creation 263
God's Ubiquity 264
God's Foreknowledge, Providence, and
Predestination, and Free Will and Contingency 268
Can God Do Better or Different Than He Does? 290

6. The Creation, Angels, Man, and the Fall 303

The Doctrine of Creation 303
The Chartrain Challenge 305
The Response of the Scholastic Theologians 319
The Lombard on Creation 336
Angels among the Lombard's Scholastic
Predecessors and Contemporaries 342
The Lombard on Angels 347
Human Nature before the Fall: The Contemporary
Debates 353
The Lombard on Prelapsarian Human Nature 366
The Fall: The Contemporary Debates 372
The Lombard on the Fall 377
The Effects of Original Sin: The Contemporary
Debates 381
The Lombard's Position 383
The Transmission of Original Sin: The
Contemporary Debates 385
The Lombard on the Transmission of Original Sin 393

7. Christ, His Nature, and His Saving Work 398

The Hypostatic Union: Ancient and Current
Understandings 399
The Lombard on the Hypostatic Union 417
The Debates over the Lombard's Christology 427
Christ's Human Knowledge: Ancient and Current
Debates 438
The Lombard on Christ's Human Knowledge 442
Other Attributes of Christ's Humanity 443
 CONTENTS vii

The Atonement: The Contemporary Debates 448

The Lombard's Doctrine of the Atonement 459

VOLUME TWO

8. Ethics, Sacraments, and Last Things 471

Ethics 471
Intentionalism in Ethics: The Consensus
and the Disagreements Within It 473
The Lombard as an Intentionalist 480
Vice and Sin 484
Virtue: Free Will and Grace in Its Attainment 488
The Theological Virtues 493
The Cardinal Virtues 504
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit 507
The Moral Law of the Old Testament 510
Conclusion 514
The Sacraments 516
The Idea of Sacrament in General 517
Baptism 532
Confirmation 548
The Eucharist 551
Penance 583
Unction 609
Holy Orders 614
Marriage 628
Last Things 698
The Non-Scholastic Challenge 700
The Scholastic Response 704
Peter Lombard on Last Things 710
Conclusion 718

Bibliography 779

Index of Names 819

Index of Subjects 859

 AUTHOR'S NOTE

I include this author's note in order to clarify some technical

stylistic decisions made in this book which entail apparent inconsist-
encies, inconsistencies which medievalists have long since come to
live with, if not to love, but which may trouble readers coming to
this book from another part of the landscape.
First, there was no agreement on Latin spelling in the Middle
Ages, a fact reflected in the policies of editors of medieval texts and
the houses that publish them. Some editors and publishers sys-
tematically classicize the spelling of medieval Latin, however the
language may be used in the manuscripts on which the texts
depend. For example, they substitute " i " for " j " or "u" for "v" on
this basis. On the other hand, some editors and publishers retain
the spellings found in the manuscripts. I have followed the practice,
when quoting from editions of medieval Latin texts, of preserving
whichever decision regarding the spelling is followed by the edition
in question.
Another discrepancy concerns the Anglicization, or not, of the
Latin names of medieval personages, and the titles of well known
works. There are names, such as John of Salisbury, Gilbert of
Poitiers, and Peter Lombard, whose English form is in common use
among Anglophone readers. It would be an affectation to refer to
these people in Latin or in another language. On the other hand,
there are figures, such as Ordericus Vitalis and Jacques de Vitry,
for whom this is not the case. My practice has been to use which-
ever version of the name has the greatest immediate recognition
value, regardless of the lack of symmetry that any result. Similarly,
while the titles of works written in Latin will usually be cited in that
language in the text, others, such as Abelard's Ethics and Augus-
tine's City of God or Eighty-Three Diverse Questions, will be given in
English as more familiar or as less cumbersome than their Latin
originals.
I will have occasion to cite repeatedly in this book the works of
scholastic theologians and canonists, not only by the page or col-
umn number in the texts in which their works are printed, but
according to the more specific, and traditional, finding tools indi-
cated by the subdivisions within their texts. This practice, too, is
quite standard for medievalists, who will readily recognize abbre-
viations such as "d" for distinctio, " c " for capitulum or causa, "q" for
χ AUTHOR'S NOTE

quaestio, and dictum for a canonist's summation of a point. This

system of abbreviations should serve as a guide for any readers
unfamiliar with this standard scheme of citation for medieval texts.
Let me note as well that no effort has been made here to regular­
ize the spelling of "mediaeval" to "medieval" or vice versa. When
these adjectives occur in titles or in the house style of publishers,
the spelling given by the author or by the publisher is the spelling
that will be followed.
I will have occasion to cite female scholars, both in the bibliogra­
phy and in footnotes organized alphabetically, who began to pub­
lish under one surname but who have changed their surnames
thanks to a change in their marital status. I will cite their works
alphabetized according to the first surnames under which they
began to publish, with their subsequent surnames indicated in
square brackets following their original names. I trust that this
practice will not be confusing to readers who may initially seek
citations to the writings of these scholars in locations where they
will not be found.
 ABBREVIATIONS

AHDLMA Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire

du moyen âge
Beiträge Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philoso-
phie [und Theologie] des Mittelalters
GCCM Corpus Christianorum, continuatio
medievalis
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, series latina
CIMAGEL Cahiers de l'Institut du moyen âge grec et
latin de Γ Université de Copenhague
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum
latinorum
DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
FS Franciscan Studies
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte Artur Michael Landgraf, Dogmen-
geschichte der Frühscholastik, 4 vols. (Re-
gensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1952-56)
MGH, Scriptores Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Scriptores
Misc. Lomb. Miscellanea Lombardiana (Novara: Isti-
tuto Geografico de Agostini, 1957)
PL Patrologia latina, cursus completus, ed. J.
P. Migne
RHE Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique
Rolls Series Rerum Brittanicarum medii aevi,
Scriptores
RSPT Revue des sciences philosophiques et théolo-
giques
RSR Revue des sciences religieuses
RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale
ZkT Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie
 PREFACE

Like the account of creation in Genesis, this book came into being
in two stages, in response to two successive inspirations, although
in this case they were purely human. Shortly after he had com-
pleted a book on Adam Wodeham, the early fourteenth-century
Oxford scholastic, William J. Courtenay happened to remark to me
that, in Wodeham's day, university students engaged in getting over
the academic hurdle of the commentary on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard mandated by the theological faculties felt no obligation to
gloss all sections of the work in equal detail. Instead, they gave very
cursory attention to the parts they found uninteresting and concen-
trated on those they found stimulating or problematic. A few years
later, John Van Dyk noted in print that, in the fifteenth century,
scholastics had abandoned that practice and had returned to the
systematic commentary on the entire text.1 Combining these two
observations and pushing the common question they raised back-
ward in time, I was struck by the fact that medievalists would be
able to survey and map the terra incognita that remains in our
knowledge of much of the history of speculative thought from the
middle of the twelfth century to the end of the period if the Sentence
commentaries of all the scholastics known to have made them could
be studied in chronological order and in a comparative way. Such a
study, I ruminated, would enable us to track, and possibly to
account for, the shifting interests in different generations, in differ-
ent geographical centers, in different religious orders or pedagog-
ical cadres—whatever categories such an investigation might
reveal as significant.
Hard on the heels of that thought came a sobering reflection.
Except for a handful of the best-researched of the scholastics, the
Sentence commentaries of the high Middle Ages have not been edited
and published. To be sure, thanks to the assiduous labors of
Friedrich Stegmüller and his continuators, the authorship and
present whereabouts of hundreds of manuscripts which preserve

1
John Van Dyk, "The Sentence Commentary: A Vehicle in the Intellectual
Transition of the Fifteenth Century," in Fifteenth-Century Studies, 8, ed. Guy P.
Mermier and Edelgard E. DuBruck (Detroit: Fifteenth-Century Symposium,
1983), pp. 227-38.
2 PREFACE

these commentaries are now known. 2 At the same time, the very
extensiveness of this body of material makes the task of editing, or
even sampling, all these manuscripts too daunting to be under-
taken by a single scholar, in a single lifetime. Having been pulled
back to earth by this thought, I was bouyed up again by another
observation. Even if the editing and publishing of all known Sentence
commentaries could be done, ideally by a large international
équipe of medievalists with unlimited funding, it would not be
possible to interpret fully what the commentators had said unless
we had, as a base line, a clear idea of what the Lombard himself
had said in the Sentences. Do we really know, I asked myself, what
the Lombard's theology actually had been? Preliminary research
into that question revealed an astonishing fact. Peter Lombard
makes an appearance in all manuals and textbook surveys, because
all medievalists acknowledge the formative role that his Sentences
played in the education of university theologians and philosophers
in the high Middle Ages. Also, no less than three successive critical
editions of the Sentences have been produced within the past
century.3 Yet, there exists no good modern book-length treatment

2
Friedrich Stegmüller, Reportorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi,
2 vols. (Würzburg: F. Schöningh, 1947). This ground-breaking survey has been
supplemented by Victorinus Doucet, Commentaires sur les Sentences: Supplement au
Repertoire de M. F. Stegmüller (Quaracchi: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1954); J. B. Korolec and R. Palacz, "Commentaires sur les Sentences:
Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller," Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum 11
(1963): 140-45; J. B. Korolek, A. Póltawski, and Z. Wlodek, "Commentaires sur
les Sentences: Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller," ibid. 1 (1958): 28-30;
Zdzislaw Kuksewicz, "Commentaires sur les Sentences: Supplément au Répertoire
de F. Stegmüller," ibid. 5 (1960): 45-49; Jerzy Rebeta, "Commentaires sur les
Sentences: Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller," ibid. 12 (1967): 135-37;
Josef Tfiska, "Sententiarii Pragensis," ibid. 13 (1968): 100-10; Zofia Wlodek,
"Commentaires sur les Sentences: Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller
d'après les MSS. de la Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire de Pelplin," ibid. 8
(1961): 33-38; "Commentaires sur les Sentences: Supplément au Répertoire de F.
Stegmüller," ibid. 5 (1963): 144 46; "Commentaires sur les Sentences: Supplément au
Répertoire de F. Stegmüller d'après les MSS. de la Bibliothèque de Wrodaw,"
Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 6 (1964): 100-04; "Commentaires sur les Sentences:
Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller d'après les MSS. des bibliothèques de
Prague," ibid. 7 (1965): 91-95; Kazimierz Wójciki, "Commentaires sur les Sentences:
Supplément au Répertoire de F. Stegmüller," Mediaevalia Philosophorum Polonorum 13
(1968): 111-14; John Van Dyk, "Thirty Years since Stegmüller: A Bibliographical
Guide to the Study of Medieval Sentence Commentaries," FS 39 (1979): 255-315;
William J. Courtenay, "Newly Identified 'Sentences' Commentaries in the Stuttgart
Landesbibliothek," Scriptorium 41 (1987): 113-15. I am indebted to Professor Courte-
nay for this last reference.
3
On the editorial history of the Sentences in modern times, see Ignatius C.
Brady, "The Three Editions of the 'Liber Sententiarum' of Master Peter Lombard
(1882-1977)," Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 70 (1977): 400-11.
 PREFACE 3

of Peter Lombard's thought. The only general monographs on this

subject were published at the turn of the twentieth century or
earlier; and they are all seriously out of date.4 The only relatively
modern introductions to Lombardian theology are found in brief
encyclopedia articles.5 Once I had made that surprising discovery,
the idea of writing the present book came into focus with startling
clarity. A full-dress study of the Lombard's theology would be well
worth doing in its own right, I concluded, in order to fill this gap in
our knowledge of the twelfth century's most renowned and influen-
tial theologian, independent of its potential utility for scholars who
might want to study successive Sentence commentaries as a baro-
meter of later medieval speculative thought.
Confident that I had hit upon the useful project of understanding
a thinker who has the distinction of being, at the same time, famous
and poorly known, I next sought to assuage my curiosity as to how
such a paradoxical situation could have arisen in the first place.
This led to the second genesis of the book, whose inspiration was an
extremely illuminating historiographical essay on Peter Lombard
by Ermenegildo Bertola.6 Bertola's paper helps to show how and
why Peter Lombard has fallen through the cracks, in modern
historiography of medieval thought. At the same time, it shows how
the disesteem for the Lombard has functioned as an index of the
ways in which the received tradition has conceptualized the history
of medieval speculative thought, ever since this subject started to
be revalued in the nineteenth century. What is involved here is not
a series of periodic inflations and deflations of the Lombard's
reputation, but rather a succession of unsympathetic appraisals of
it. The consistency of this dismissive view is striking, even though it
has been informed by a variety of inter-confessional, intra-
confessional, philosophical, and other interpretive agendas. What-

4
Otto Baltzer, Die Sentenzen des Petrus Lombardus: Ihre (gellen und ihre dogmenge-
schichtliche Bedeutung (Leipzig: Dieter'sche Verlags-Buchhandlung, 1902); Joh.
Nep. Espenberger, Die Philosophie des Petrus Lombardus und ihre Stellung im zwölften
Jahrhundert, Beiträge, 3:5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1901); Julius Kögel, Petrus Lom-
bardus in seiner Stellung zur Philosophie des Mittelalter (Greifswald: Julius Abel, 1897);
F. Protois, Pierre Lombard, e'vêque de Paris dit le maître des Sentences: Son époque, sa vie, ses
écrits, son influence (Paris: Société Générale de Librairie Catholique, 1887).
5
Joseph de Ghellinck, "Pierre Lombard," in DTC (Paris: Letouzey et Ané,
1935), 12 part 2: 1941-2019; now superseded by Martin Anton Schmidt, "Das
Sentenzenwerk des Petrus Lombardus und sein Aufstieg zum Muster- und Text-
buch der theologischen Ausbildung," in Handbuch der Dogmen- und Theologiege-
schichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 1: 587-615. I would like to
thank Dr. Max Haas for the latter reference.
6
Ermenegildo Bertola, "Pietro Lombardo nella storiografica filosofica
medioevale," Pier Lombardo 4 (1960): 95-113.
4 PREFACE

ever the reasons, commentators have succeeded in marginalizing

the most central theologian of his time, and have created a modern
Peter Lombard who is a caricature of his medieval reality, making
it all but impossible to appreciate what his contemporaries found
worthwhile in him. The line of inquiry opened up by Bertola,
therefore, pointed to two other considerations which went into the
shaping of this book. First, it suggested that, in rescuing a major
figure from undeserved neglect, I might also be able to contribute
to a rethinking of the larger issue of how we conceptualize the
twelfth century and its place in the history of medieval thought.
Second, it suggested the modus operandi which I have followed in my
attack on this assignment, the reading of Peter Lombard not from
an anachronistic or tendentious perspective, but in relation to the
schools and masters of theology in the first half of the twelfth
century. For, it is only by positioning him in the context of contem-
porary debates that we will be able to see what the agenda of
scholastic theology was at that time, and why the Lombard was
held to have succeeded better than his coevals in addressing its
needs and concerns.
Given the extensive attention lavished on the thought of the
twelfth century in the decades since its status as an age of renais-
sance was established, the claim that its contours need to be re-
drawn may require a defense. That claim can be validated, I will
argue, if we juxtapose the older assessments of Peter Lombard side
by side with the interpretive problems which they fail to solve.
Here, we can take Bertola as our starting point, and supplement
what he has brought to light.7 As he has shown, scholars have
agreed in finding Peter wanting, for one reason or another, since
the sixteenth century. Reformation Protestants objected to him as
the progenitor of scholasticism, a movement which, for them, stood
for false doctrine, a tortuous and hair-splitting mode of reasoning,
and the incorporation of philosophy into theology that had forged
the leaden bonds which their own polemic sought to shatter. For
them, Peter's problem was that he was too scholastic. At the same
time, Counter-Reformation Catholics, especially those supporting
the revival of Thomism in their day, rejected him, substituting the
Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas for his Sentences as their school
text, because they did not find him scholastic enough. The early
modern rationalists, who distanced themselves from these con-
troversies, dismissed him for being too theological and not suf-

Ibid. Unless otherwise noted, the material in the next three paragraphs
depends on Bertola.
 PREFACE 5

ficiently philosophical. Like their Protestant predecessors, Enlight-

enment thinkers equated the Middle Ages with scholasticism,
understood pejoratively. They criticized the Lombard for seeking
to unite Aristotle with the Augustinian tradition, viewing this
union as a mésalliance from the other direction, although in the
eyes of some philosophes, Anselm of Canterbury had to share the
blame with Peter for this misstep.
In the historiography of the nineteenth century, scholars turned
from a Peter Lombard held up as an example of whatever was
deemed worthy of attack to a Peter Lombard seen as irrelevant.
However they may have diverged in their versions of the story line
of medieval intellectual history, they agreed in treating him as all
but invisible, a character with no real part to play, virtually writing
him out of the script. The German school, starting with Heinrich
Ritter and continuing with Bernhard Geyer, Clemens Bauemker,
and Martin Grabmann, saw the high Middle Ages as a period of
philosophical revival. Important as they held the reception of Ar-
istotle to have been, they regarded the influence of Platonism as
equally critical. They tended to subdivide twelfth-century thinkers
into two groups, depending on which of these schools of ancient
philosophy they were deemed to have espoused. For them, Adelard
of Bath, Anselm of Canterbury, and the Chartrains formed the
honor guard of Platonism, with Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers,
and Honorius Augustodunensis in the vanguard of Aristotelianism.
Since they saw in Peter Lombard a man without commanding
allegiances to either of these traditions, the German school con-
cluded that he was simply not in tune with contemporary intellec-
tual trends. This view is repeated by J. N. Espenberger in one of the
earliest full-length studies of Peter's thought. 8
The French school, launched by Victor Cousin and followed by
Barthélémy Hauréau, Maurice DeWulf, and Émile Bréhier, also
accented philosophical renewal in the twelfth century, but took a
somewhat different tack from the Germans. Strong proponents of
rationalism, and anxious to defend the view that the Christianity of
medieval thinkers had not prevented them from being real philos-
ophers, they placed particular emphasis on the revival of meta-
physics, the reopening of the debate over universals, and the
effort to correlate reason and revelation, concerns destined to re-
ceive more attention in the thirteenth century. Judged according to
this proleptic and increasingly neo-Thomist standard, the relevant

Espenberger, Die Philosophie, passim and esp. pp. 8-15.

6 PREFACE

groupings among the twelfth-century thinkers were not the Plato-

nists and Aristotelians. Rather, the century took shape, for the
French school, as a conflict between the conservatives, such as
Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, Bernard of Glairvaux,
and the Victorines, on the one side, and such harbingers of the
future as Anselm of Canterbury and, above all, the Abelardians
and Porretans, on the other. Now, Peter Lombard borrowed from
both of these groups but was not a card-carrying member of either.
So, once again, he was relegated to the sidelines and seen as having
avoided the great issues of the day. He was held to have lacked an
interest in metaphysics and was described as an enemy of logic
even though he was sometimes constrained to use it, with no
position on universals to defend and with nothing to contribute to
the synthesis of reason and revelation.
In short, for the French as well as the German school, Peter was
regarded as being of no philosophical interest at all, and, therefore,
as being of no interest at all, globally. He simply watched the great
parade go by, and did not march in it himself. So great was Peter's
perceived refusal that F. Protois could devote an entire monograph
to condemning a figure whose attitude toward philosophy he pre-
sents as one of avoidance, abstention, indifference, and disdain. 9
And, as late as 1969, an echo of this position could be found in
David Luscombe. Of Peter, he says, "he expected nothing from
philosophers and he excluded them in favor of an exclusive cultiva-
tion of the theological tradition." 10 A much more influential exten-
sion of the French school into the historiography of the twentieth
century was the work of Etienne Gilson. It is instructive to note
that he does not even include Peter Lbmbard in his History of
Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, except when he refers to the
commentaries on Peter's work made by scholastics who can be
pressed more easily into the Procrustean bed of the realism-versus-
nominalism or reason-versus-revelation debates.
In the first wave of the revolt of the medievalists, theology took a
decidedly back seat to philosophy as an index of why the twelfth
century should be seen as a period of revival. Such did not invari-
ably remain the case in the historiographical sequel, in which
theology now came to be included in the plot, and in which it could

9
Protois, Pierre Lombard, passim and esp. pp. 40-41. This same line is taken by
Kogel, Petrus Lombardus.
™ David E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: The Influence of Abelard's
Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1969), p. 279.
 PREFACE 7

be conceded that it was not sufficient to read medieval theologians

across their theology for the sake of the philosophy that might
thereby be extracted. Welcome as this shift in perspective has been
in many quarters, it has not necessarily led to a more generous or
less tendentious appraisal of the Lombard. At issue here is not just
confessional or philosophical polemics but also hermeneutics.
Whether or not they share the views of the neo-Thomists, many of
the scholars in this group have basic difficulty reading a sentence
collection and understanding how ideas are being put forth in this
genre of theological literature, of which Peter's Sentences is the
salient example. They tend to measure this genre against the norm
of a late thirteenth-century summa, which it does not resemble
formally. By that standard, they find it wanting. At first glance—
and, typically, a first glance is all that Peter's Sentences receive from
them—it looks like a compilation of the opinions of past authorities,
pure and simple, rather than as the vehicle for the theologian's own
positions. This is the way in which the Sentences have been de-
scribed, all too often.
Otto Baltzer framed the terms of this assessment almost a cen-
tury ago. He observes that Peter states, in the prologue of the
Sentences, that his aim is to bring together the views of the church
fathers. Baltzer reads this statement literally, as exhausting the
Lombard's objectives, and uses it to define the parameters of his
own study. He confines his efforts to cataloguing Peter's sources
and subjecting them to statistical analysis, in order to see which
authorities he relies on the most.11 It never occurs to Baltzer that
Peter's prologue needs to be read as a captatio benevolentiae, an
expression of the "modest author" topos. Nor does it occur to him
to go beyond the noting of Peter's citations to a consideration of the
uses to which Peter puts them. This understanding of Peter's
relationship to his authorities has remained remarkably durable. In
1960, Enrico Nobile could call the Sentences a cento lacking in any
discernible principle of organization.12 A year later, Philippe Del-
haye could describe it as the mere echo of a tradition.13 The same
view informs Jaroslav Pelikan's recent assessment of the Sentences as
an exercise in running in place, "the reaffirmation of Augustine,"

11
Baltzer, Die Sentenzen, passim and esp. pp. 1-14.
12
Enrico Nobile, "Appunti sulla teologia dei Quattro libri delle Sentence di Pier
Lombardo," Pier Lombardo 4 (I960): 49-59.
13
Philippe Delhaye, Pierre Lombard, sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa morale (Montreal:
Institut d'Etudes Médiévales, 1961), p. 27.
8 PREFACE

and as nothing much else.14 And it can be found as well in Gillian

Evans's still more recent estimate of the Sentences as essentially a
reference book in which Peter's main project is to promote certitude
and orthodoxy by anxiously placing a cordon sanitaire around the
theological boundaries fixed by the church fathers. 15
Although they come to Peter from the history of theology rather
than from the history of philosophy, these interpreters still produce
the same cumulative effect. They tell the reader that modern schol-
arship is justified in not taking Peter Lombard seriously. They
report the fact of the scholarly neglect of him with complacency and
satisfaction, not with regret or self-doubt. On the first page of the
book he writes to document the correctness of this state of affairs,
Protois announces, "Pierre Lombard est aujourd'hui plus cité que
lu et plus célèbre que connu." 16 Luscombe agrees, calling the
Sentences "one of the least read of the world's great books," a
circumstance commensurate with his view that its author was "a
cautious, sober, and apparently dull expositor." 17
This alleged dullness has been traced to Peter's lack of a suf-
ficiently speculative mind as a theologian by Antonio Brancaforte.
Brancaforte sees the Lombard as a religious thinker, seeking to find
a middle ground between mysticism and rationalism, of the sort he
thinks Thomas Aquinas later achieved. Unfortunately, because of
his intellectual shortcomings, Peter's reach exceeded his grasp. 18
Still more dismissive than this criticism of Peter as a failed Thomist
avant la lettre has been the criticism of him as a twelfth-century
humanist manqué. While he acknowledges that Peter could
and did use grammar as a tool of theological analysis, Marie-
Dominique Chenu mentions him only occasionally, and dispar-
agingly, as having failed to promote the speculative grammar that
flowed into the logica modernorum and as having contributed nothing
to the discovery of the world and man concurrently taking place in
the school of Chartres, which Chenu sees as the main achievements
of twelfth-century thought. 19 And, Jean Leclercq rejects the Lom-

14
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 3: 270.
15
Gillian R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Road to Reformation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 102-04.
16
Protois, Pierre Lombard, p. 1.
17
Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, p. 263.
18
Antonio Brancaforte, "Contribute di Pietro Lombardo all'unità del pensiero
medioevale," Teoresi 8 (1953): 230-45.
19
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957),
pp. 93, 96, 99, 116.
 PREFACE 9

bard, that prototypical sentence collector, as a tiresome florilegist,

in his repeated efforts to argue that it was not the scholastics but the
monastic theologians who were the true Christian humanists and
the true authors of theological renewal in the twelfth century. 20
To be sure, Leclercq speaks for the monks, especially those in the
reformed orders such as the Cistercians, in the effort to win them a
hearing, along with the scholastics who have tended to dominate
the histories of medieval theology. There are some historians of
scholasticism who, while not ceding an inch of their turf, have yet
manifested some disquiet over the traditional image of the Lom-
bard as an also-ran or as the negative mirror image of the really
important developments in twelfth-century thought. Also, as histo-
rians they feel the prick of their professional conscience and an
obligation to account for the status Peter attained in the medieval
chapter of the story. Some commentators have therefore made an
earnest effort to find some merit in Peter's work and to grasp why it
caught on. But, the best they have been able to come up with is a
mixed review. In the judgment of Artur Michael Landgraf, the
scheme of organization of the Sentences is a coherent one; it became
canonical with good reason. On the other hand, its contents are
both impersonal and unoriginal.21 For Joseph de Ghellinck, the
Sentences definitely enjoyed more posthumous glory than they de-
served. He sees this work as a cold and lifeless resume lacking in
boldness or creativity. At the same time, he concedes that Peter did
do his research thoroughly, assembling an impressive dossier of
patristic citations but without manifesting any indiscreet curiosity.

Jean Leclercq, "The Renewal of Theology," in Renaissance and Renewal in the

Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 68-87, reprising his more extended argu-
ment for the same position in The Love of earning and the Desire for God: A Study of
Monastic Culture, 2nd ed. rev., trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1974), passim and esp. pp. 1-7. Leclercq is followed by Stephen
C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Pans and Their Critics,
1100-1215 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), ch. 3. Recently, Brian P.
Gaybba, Aspects of the Mediaeval History of Theology: 12th to 14th Century (Pretoria:
University of South Africa, 1988), pp. 7^65, has noted some of the inconsistencies
of Leclercq's view and has suggested that the distinction between monastic and
scholastic theology which he draws be replaced by a distinction between ''ex-
periential' ' and "notional" theology; but he does not place Peter Lombard in this
scheme.
Artur Michael Landgraf, Introduction à l'histoire de la littérature théologique de
la scolastique naissante, ed. Albert-M. Landry, trans. Louis-B. Geiger (Montreal:
Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1973), pp. 53, 132. This view is shared by Henry
Cloes, "La systématisation théologique pendant la première moitié du XII e
siècle," ETL 34 (1958): 329, although he paradoxically sees this alleged unorigi-
nal! ty as a virtue.
10 PREFACE

His organization is cogent and his coverage is well balanced. But

these traits are not sufficient to overturn Ghellinck's basic
conclusion.22 Ludwig Ott is rather more generous. Not only does he
accept the idea that Peter's sweep of the fathers is wider than that
of his contemporaries, but also that he is more accurate than they
are in the way he presents them, often correcting thinkers with
whom he disagreed by showing that they had misused their
sources. Ott has also noticed that Peter uses logic constructively in
a number of ways, to order his material lucidly, to harmonize
discrepancies among his authorities, and to introduce distinctions
that clarify theological topics. Still, on balance, like Landgraf and
Ghellinck, he finds Peter impersonal, unoriginal, and uncreative.23
Jacques Le Goff finds "force, clarity, and a synthetic spirit" in
Peter's work but concurs in the view that he made no significant or
original contribution.24 While acknowledging that Peter recognized
the initiatives made by other twelfth-century thinkers and incorpo-
rated them into the Sentences, while noting that he did not shrink
from controversy, and while admitting that he did advance the
debates at times, Luscombe's final verdict is the harsh one cited
above.25 One of the single most influential historians of scho-
lasticism in modern times, Martin Grabmann, has signaled another
positive feature of the Sentences. Both the clarity and cogency of its
plan and its method for weighing and analyzing authorities, he
observes, lent the book a high degree of pedagogical utility. Yet, in
the last analysis, it is not the intrinsic merit of the Lombard's work
that sealed its fate, he thinks, but the lucky timing of its appearance
and the influence of Peter of Poitiers, the disciple of the Lombard
who promoted it.26
Even with these hesitant steps toward the recognition of Peter
Lombard as more than just a nay-say er to the major intellectual
movements of his day and more than a mere compiler, a good, gray
florilegist, the historiography to date still fails to explain how he

22
Joseph de Ghellinck, L'Essor de la littérature latine au XIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Brus-
sels: L'Édition Universelle, 1946), 1: 70-73; L· Mouvement théologique du ΧΙΓ siècle,
2nd éd. (Bruges: De Tempel, 1948), pp. 202-49.
23
Ludwig Ott, "Petrus Lombardus: Persönlichkeit und Werk," Münchener
theologische Zeitschrift 5 (1954): 105-13; reprised in "Pietro Lombardo: Personalità e
opera," Misc. Lomb., pp. 15-21.
24
Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 148.
25
Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, pp. 262-79.
26
Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols. (Graz:
Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1957 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1911
ed.]), 2: 404-07.
 PREFACE 11

succeeded in seizing the theological initiative and in capturing the

imagination of his contemporaries. It also fails to explain why it
was he, and not one of his allegedly more exciting compeers, who
became the enduring classic, the standard introduction to systemat-
ic theology in the medieval university curriculum, starting with
Paris in 1215. The book which follows will be an effort to rediscover
the medieval scenario in which Peter plays the role of the hero, the
scenario obscured by the modern versions of the twelfth century in
which he is relegated to the role of a bit player or a chorus
character, at least when his lines are not consigned to the cutting
room floor altogether. In our view, the best way to place Peter
Lombard in his own time is to read him, always, in conjunction
with the theologians in the first half of the twelfth century. This is
the context within which he worked and the audience to which he
spoke.
The body of this book will be divided into two parts, of unequal
length. In the first section, after a chapter presenting what is known
about Peter's life, works, and medieval reputation, I will offer three
chapters which may be regarded, collectively, as an extended essay
on method. They will treat, respectively, the emergence in the
twelfth century of systematic theology as a sustained pedagogical
enterprise, in chapter 2; the problem of theological language in
early and mid-century theology, in chapter 3; and biblical exegesis
among the scholastics, in chapter 4. In each case my goal will be to
target the methodological problems and opportunities arising from
these concerns and to explore why the Lombard's address to them
was, and was perceived to be, an improvement over the other
current options. The second part of the book will treat the sub-
stance of Lombardian theology. In four chapters, largely but not
entirely taking the four books of Peter's Sentences as my organiza-
tional guide, I will present his teachings on the divine nature and
the Trinity in chapter 5; the creation, man, and the fall in chapter
6; Christology and the redemptive work of Christ in chapter 7; and,
in the lengthiest part of the book, ethics, sacraments, and Last
Things in chapter 8. In each area I will seek to position Peter's
opinions in relation to the debates of his own time. The book will
end with a conclusion summing up the findings of this investigation
and offering my assessment of Peter's contribution to the develop-
ment of Christian thought in the twelfth century.
But before moving on to that assignment, it is my welcome duty
to acknowledge my appreciation to a number of institutions and
individuals whose help and support have been as gratefully re-
ceived as they have been essential in the research and writing of
12 PREFACE

this book. First, I would like to thank several publishers for permit-
ting me to reuse material first printed in journals or collaborative
publications on which they hold the copyrights. These include
the Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin for "Another Look at the
School of Laon," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 53
(1986): 7-22; the Bibliopolis Press of Naples for "Gilbert, the Early
Porretans, and Peter Lombard," in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contempo-
raines: Aux origines de la logica modernorum, éd. Jean Jolivet and Alain
de Libera (1987): 229-50; the Duke University Press for "System-
atic Theology and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century,"
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988): 135-56; the
Abbaye de Mont-César in Louvain for "Early Porretan Theology,"
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 56 (1989): 58-79; the Villa-
nova University Press for "Quae hodie locum non habent: Scholastic
Theologians Reflect on Their Authorities," in Proceedings of the PMR
Conference, 15, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (Villanova: Augustinian His-
torical Institute, 1990), pp. 1-17; the Southeastern Medieval Asso-
ciation for "From sacra pagina to theologia: Peter Lombard as an
Exegete of Romans," Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 1-19; E.J. Brill
for "Peter Lombard and Abelard: The Opinio Nominalium and Di-
vine Transcendence," Vivarium 30 (May 1992): 139-56; to the
University of Notre Dame Press for "Peter Lombard as an Exegete
of St. Paul," in Ad litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval
Readers, ed. Mark D. Jordan and Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 71-92; and the Medi-
eval Academy of America for "Psalterium Scholasticorum: Peter Lom-
bard and the Development of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis," Speculum
67 (July 1992): 531-48. I am much in their debt for their gracious
cooperation.
I also owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the institutions
whose generosity made possible my research and writing, provid-
ing me with time, financial support, and hospitable environments
for my work. Foremost among these are Oberlin College, the
Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and the John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation. Oberlin granted me the leaves in 1982,
1986-87, and 1989-90 essential for my research. My year as a
member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute in
1986-87 enabled me to profit from the support and stimulation of
that unparalleled community of scholars. And, a fellowship from
the Guggenheim Foundation in 1989-90 enabled me to bring the
research and writing of this book to a conclusion. I would also like
to record here my lively appreciation to the Weston School of
Theology, the Institute of Medieval Canon Law of the University
 PREFACE 13

of California, Berkeley, and to the History Departments of Harvard

and Yale Universities, for the welcome, the colleagueship, and the
facilities which they warmly extended to me. Among the libraries
where the research was done whose staffs went well beyond the call
of duty in making their collections available to me and in procuring
materials difficult of access I would like, in particular, to thank the
Biblioteca Municipale of Novara, the Deutsches Historisches Insti-
tut of Rome, King's College, Cambridge, the Bibliothèque Munici-
pale of Troyes, and the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale.
There are also many friends and colleagues who have helped me
in a host of ways, from extending a cordial welcome on behalf of
their institutions to alerting me to important bibliography that I
otherwise would have missed, sharing their own knowledge and
critical acumen with me, lending and giving me materials that I
needed, serving as my sponsors, and offering professional and
personal courtesies and kindnesses too numerous to mention. In
alphabetical order, they are: Uta-Renate Blumenthal, Eve Bor-
sook, John E. Boswell, the late Ignatius Brady, James A. Brundage,
Giles Constable, William J. Courtenay, Karlfried Froelich, Mar-
garet T. Gibson, Penny S. Gold, Theresa Gross-Diaz, Max Haas,
the late David Herlihy, Ralph Hexter, William E. Hood, Peter I.
Kaufman, Paul Knoll, Stephan Kuttner, Robert E. Lerner, David
E. Luscombe, Gary Macy, Laurant Mayali, Harry Miskimin, Karl
Morrison, Francis C. Oakley, John O'Malley, Jaroslav Pelikan,
Fred C. Robinson, John Van Dyk, John Van Engen, and Grover A.
Zinn. In a special category are two other people for whose help I
am profoundly grateful, Thelma Roush, for technical assistance
that was literally invaluable, and the Rev. Peter Eaton for his
keen-eyed and generous contribution to the thankless task of read-
ing proof. To all of them I extend my sincere and heartfelt appre-
ciation. Such merit as this book may have owes much to them; such
flaws as it retains are mine alone.

M. L. C.
Oberlin, Ohio
 CHAPTER ONE

PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS

For a man of his acknowledged importance, Peter Lombard left

behind him a remarkably scanty biographical record. Although he
attained swift and enduring fame as an exegete and theologian, as
well as high ecclesiastical office in a land far from his own, no
contemporary biographer thought of commemorating his life. Nor
did Peter himself leave any letters or personal documents that
would help us to reconstruct and date his activities and rela-
tionships. Large gaps remain in the evidence that we do have
concerning his life and works. Legends started to grow up about
him as early as the thirteenth century; some of them still remain in
circulation. The best of the modern scholars who has labored to
establish what can be known for certain about Peter's life and
works, who has sifted uncritical hypothesis from likely conjecture,
is undoubtedly Ignatius C. Brady.1 His studies lay the foundation
for the material in this chapter, along with such amplifications and
corrections as it has been possible to make.

BIOGRAPHY

Peter was born in the region of Novara, in Lombardy, probably

between 1095 and 1100. Some scholars continue to give his birth-
place as the small town of Lumellogno, although this is a fancy
going back to the Renaissance historian Paolo Giovo, who derived

1
The most reliable introductions to this subject, and our chief guides to it in
this chapter, are the prolegomena to the two volumes of Peter Lombard, Sententiae
in IV libris distinctae, 3rd ed. rev., ed. Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata:
Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 8*-129*, 2: 7*-52*, which
supersede Brady's own earlier studies of Peter's life and works, "Peter Lombard:
Canon of Notre Dame," RTAM 32 (1965): 277-95 and "Peter Lombard," in New
Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967), 11: 221-22,
studies which, in turn, offer correctives to the earlier investigations of Ludwig Ott,
"Petrus Lombardus: Persönlichkeit und Werk," Münchener theologische Zeitschrift 5
(1954): 99-105; reprised as "Pietro Lombardo: Personalita e opera," in Misc.
Lomb., pp. 11-15; and Damien Van den Eynde, "Précisions chronologiques sur
quelques ouvrages théologiques du XII e siècle," Antonianum 26 (1951): 223-33;
"Nouvelles précisions sur quelques ouvrages théologiques du XIP siècle," FS 13
(1953): 110-18; "Essai chronologique sur l'oeuvre littéraire de Pierre Lombard,"
in Mise. Lomb., pp. 45-63.
16 CHAPTER ONE

it from a play on the words lumen omnium in reference to Peter.2

Nothing is known for certain about his origins, his social back-
ground, or his early education. Indeed, the first thirty-some years
of Peter's life remain a complete blank. In the early fourteenth
century the chronicler Ricobaldo of Ferrara invented the charming
legend that he was the son of an impoverished widow who earned a
meager living as a laundress. When news of Peter's election as
bishop of Paris reached Novara, the city fathers decided to equip
her in splendid style, at public expense, and to send her to Paris to
visit her son with an escort of local notables. As the story goes,
when the Novarese delegation arrived and made their courtesy call,
Peter failed to recognize his mother in this richly attired lady. It
was not until she returned, clad in her ordinary humble clothing,
and chastised him, that he acknowledged her, embraced her, and
did her honor.3 This legend remained so enduring that it could be
invoked in the nineteenth century by the Novarese poet and politi-
cian Giuseppe Regaldi. As a defender of the working class, he
sought to harness the aura of Novara's most famous citizen, the
"son of a laundress," to his own cause.4 Another now-exploded
legend is the "myth of the three brothers," which also derives from
a chronicler of the high Middle Ages, Godfrey of Viterbo, and
which is grounded on the geographically and chronologically im-
possible claim that Peter Lombard, his disciple Peter Gomestor,
and Gratian of Bologna were all siblings.5
Our first documented reference to Peter Lombard is found in a
letter written by Bernard of Clairvaux to Gilduin, prior of St.
Victor in Paris, between 1134 and 1136.6 Noting that this promis-

2
Antonio Massara, "La leggenda di Pier Lombardo," in Miscellanea storica
Novarese a Raffaele Tarella (Novara: G. Parzini, 1906), pp. 118-20. His source is
Ricobaldo of Ferrara, Historia imperatorum Romano-Germanicorum a Carolo M. usque ad
an. 1298, ed. L. A. Muratori, Rerum Italicorum Scriptores (Milan, 1726), 9: 124.
This legend has died hard; it is retained in the most recent treatments of Peter's
biography, Ludwig Hödl, "Petrus Lombardus," in Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte,
ed. Martin Greschat (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1983), 3 part 1: 205 and Mark A.
Zier, "Peter Lombard," in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987), 9: 516.
3
Massara, "La leggenda," pp. 121-36.
4
Mario Nogari, "Giuseppe Regaldi e Pier Lombardo," Bolletino storico per la
provinda de Novara 68 (1977): 78-94.
3
Massara, "La leggenda," pp. 122-36. The "three brothers" legend was first
rejected by Antoninus of Florence. See Gallia Christiana, in provincias ecclesiasticas
distributa (Paris: H. Welter, 1899 [repr. of Paris: Ex Typographia Regia, 1744
ed.]), 7: 70; Joseph de Ghellinck, L· Mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle, 2nd ed.
(Bruges: De Tempel, 1948), p. 285.
6
Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 410, in Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and
H. M. Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957-77), 8: 391.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 17

ing individual had been brought to his attention by Humbert,

bishop of Lucca, and that he himself had borne the expenses
connected with his education at Rheims for a time, Bernard recom-
mends Peter to Gilduin. He clearly thinks that Paris is where Peter
should go to enhance his theological education. Bernard urges
Gilduin to support Peter for what he evidently envisions will be a
fairly brief period of study.
The cathedral school of Rheims had initially suggested itself as a
likely place for Peter to go because of the current presence there of
masters who were continuing the tradition of Anselm of Laon, the
best known theologian in France in the early years of the twelfth
century.7 The most renowned of these, famous—or notorious—for
his opposition to Peter Abelard, was Alberic. Also present was
Lotulph of Novara. He had engaged in a public debate on Christol-
ogy with Gerhoch of Reichersberg in Rome in 1126. His repute in
Italy may have been an added draw in the eyes of his fellow-citizen.
At Rheims as well Peter could study with Walter of Mortagne, who
had also taught at Laon and whose correspondence shows him to
have maintained connections with a number of masters at other
centers. The pedagogy of these masters, like that of Anselm of
Laon, was strong on traditional exegesis and relatively unrespon-
sive to the philosophical concerns animating a number of theolo-
gians in this period. This fact, along with Alberic's departure from
Rheims to accept the bishopric of Bourges in 1136, may account for
the timing of Peter's decision to leave that school. And, the fact that
it was Hugh of St. Victor to whom Walter had turned for clarifica-
tion on the doctrine of the Trinity may have suggested the pro-
fitability of studying with Hugh, whose masterpiece, the De
sacramentis, was now nearing completion.8
Peter arrived in Paris in 1136. Nothing can be proved about his
exact whereabouts in that city until he emerged in ca. 1142 as an
acknowledged writer and teacher. Whether or not he was already
teaching at Notre Dame at that point, he most certainly lent luster
to that school from at least 1145, when he became a canon of Notre
Dame. Peter's means of support before he was able to earn a living
as a teacher and before he derived income from his canon's prebend

7
John R. Williams, "The Cathedral School of Reims in the Time of Master
Alberic, 1118-1136," Traditio 20 (1964): 93-114. See also Carlo Ramponi,
"Leutaldo: Scuola teologica di Reims," Pier Lombardo 1 (1953): 14—15.
8
Damien Van den Eynde, Essai sur la succession et la date des écrits de Hugues de
Saint-Victor (Rome: Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, 1960), pp. 39-110, gives
a thorough analysis of the date of the De sacramentis in relation to Hugh's other
works and concludes, p. 110, that it was most likely completed in 1137.
18 CHAPTER ONE

remains a mystery. Did Gilduin respond favorably to Bernard's

appeal, offering Peter hospitality at St. Victor and tuition with
Hugh? This question has attracted debate. It is true that Peter's
work reflects a thorough familiarity with Hugh's De sacramentis and
with its largely Victorine sequel, the anonymous Summa sententiarum.
He is deeply influenced by these sources. At the same time, one of
the marks of Peter's theology is his grasp of the works of many other
contemporary masters. He is thoroughly conversant, for example,
with the writings of Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers and his
earliest disciples, Robert Pullen, and Gratian. It was certainly
possible in this period to acquaint oneself with the teachings of
thinkers with whom one was not bound in a formal master-disciple
relationship. An objection has also been raised to the idea that
Peter actually studied with Hugh on the antiquated, and sketchy,
grounds that the school of St. Victor was already closed to externs
by Hugh's day.9 Thus, William J. Courtenay maintains that the
most Gilduin could have offered Peter was "meals and possibly
accommodations . . . for at least a few months;" and he adds that
"there is no evidence that he received formal instruction there,
although he may have profited from personal contacts and possible
access to the library." 10 In response to this statement, it is impor-
tant to distinguish the issue of subvention, on which there is,
indeed, no documentation whatever, from the question of whether,
as an extern, Peter could have had access to the formal pedagogy of
Hugh of St. Victor. For, on the latter point, we have solid evidence
that two other contemporary externs did study with Hugh, suggest-
ing that Courtenay's conclusion may be too hasty.

9
Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their
Critics, 1100-1215 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 27-29; William
J. Courtenay, "Schools and Schools of Thought in the Twelfth Century," unpub-
lished. I am indebted to Professor Courtenay for allowing me to use this paper in
typescript. On the other hand, it has been pointed out by Philippe Delhaye,
"L'organisation scolaire au XIP siècle," Traditio 5 (1947): 245-50 [repr. in
Enseignement et morale au ΧΙΓ siècle (Fribourg, Suisse: Éditions Universitaires, 1988,
pp. 36-40]; Luc Jocqué, "Les structures de la population claustrale dans Tordre
de Saint-Victor au XIΓ siècle et au début du XI IIe siècle," in L'Abbaye parisienne de
Saint-Victor au moyen âge, éd. Jean Longère (Paris: Brepols, 1991), pp. 71-72, 72 n.
50, 91; and Jean Longère, "La fonction pastorale de Saint-Victor à la fin du XII e
siècle et au début du XIII e siècle," in ibid., p. 291 that, unlike monastic houses,
St. Victor did not close its doors to externs in this period. Both Jocqué and
Longère think that the Lombard did receive hospitality and instruction there, as
does Patrice Sicard, intro, to his ed. of Hugues de Saint-Victor et son école (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1991), p. 17. Hödl, "Petrus Lombardus," p. 206, also thinks that Peter
was an extern student at St. Victor.
10
Courtenay, "Schools," n. 32.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 19

One of these figures is Clarenbald of Arras. In 1142 or after, he

wrote a commentary on the De hebdomadibus of Boethius, in the
preface to which he reflects on his student days at St. Victor. This
preface, in the form of a dedicatory epistle, was discovered by
Nikolaus M. Häring in a previously unknown St. Omer manuscript
and later incorporated by him into his critical edition of
Clarenbald's text.11 Clarenbald offers a justification for the com-
position of yet another commentary on the De hebdomadibus, given
the fact that this work had been glossed repeatedly in the first half
of the twelfth century. Two of his own masters, he observes, had
done so, Thierry of Chartres and Hugh of St. Victor. Now, among
twelfth-century authors, Hugh was exceptionally fortunate in the
care lavished on his works by his successors. His oeuvre had
already been catalogued by the Victorines as early as 1155. But,
neither in the first nor in any subsequent inventory of his writings
do we find a written commentary on the De hebdomadibus.12 This
means, unless there was a written gloss that did not survive, that
the only way for Clarenbald to have known about Hugh's inter-
pretation of that work was through his oral teaching. And, indeed,
the term Clarenbald uses, lectiones, reports that this was the case.
Another contemporary witness to the fact that Hugh provided
formal instruction to externs is Lawrence of Westminster. This
Englishman began his monastic career at St. Albans and had
already risen to the abbacy of Westminster when he decided to
interrupt his duties in order to go to France to study with Hugh in
the 1130s. After Hugh's death in 1141, he returned to England and
moved to the abbey of Durham in 1143. It was here that he met
Maurice, a monk of Durham. Maurice left Durham for Rievaulx,
whose abbot he became in 1145. It was after that transfer that
Lawrence dedicated to Maurice his Sententiae de divinitate,13 whose
relationship to the Hugonian canon has received much discussion.
The text of the dedicatory epistle was first discovered and printed

11
Nikolaus M. Häring, "A Hitherto Unknown Commentary on Boethius' de
Hebdomadibus Written by Clarenbaldus of Arras," MS 15 (1953): 214-15; Häring,
ed., Life and Works of Clarenbald of Arras, A Twelfth-Century Master of the School of
Chartres (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1965), pp. 19-20, 23.
The locus in Clarenbald's text is the dedicatory Epistola ad Odonem 3, p. 64.
12
Rudolf Goy, Die Überlieferung des Werke Hugos von St. Viktor (Stuttgart: Hierse-
mann, 1976).
13
F. E. Croydon, "Abbot Laurence of Westminster and Hugh of St. Victor,"
Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1950): 169-71; Delhaye, "L'organisation sco-
laire," pp. 245-50 [repr. in Enseignement et morale, pp. 36-40]; Sicard, intro, to his
ed. of Hugues de Saint-Victor, pp. 17, 23-24.
20 CHAPTER ONE

by Bernhard Bischoff;14 and, more recently, it has been incorpo-

rated into his edition of the entire work by Ambrogio Piazzoni.15 In
it, Lawrence presents the Sententiae as a reportatio of Hugh's oral
teaching, which Hugh looked over and corrected while Lawrence
was still at St. Victor. The debate over this text has focused on the
question of whether it actually is a reportatio, as Lawrence says it is,
and if so, whether the teaching it reports reflects Hugh's opinions
before or after the completion of his De sacramentis, or whether, on
the other hand, the Sententiae is a work of Lawrence's own au-
thorship, albeit closely dependent on Hugh. These debates, chroni-
cled fully by Piazzoni,16 do not concern us here. What does concern
us is the fact that Lawrence, as an extern, enjoyed the personal
instruction of Hugh. The fact that master-disciple relations be-
tween Hugh and extern students such as Clarenbald and Lawrence
took place in this period suggests that we should not rule out the
lively possibility that such a relationship may have taken place as
well between Hugh and Peter Lombard, between 1136 and the
beginning of Peter's own teaching career, whatever his means of
support may have been during those years.
The Lombard's teaching won rapid recognition; and it is likely
that this is what inspired the canons of Notre Dame to invite him to
join their ranks. Already in 1144, the author of the Metamorpohosis
Goliae could confidently add Peter's name as a "celebrated theolo-
gian" to the list of prominent Parisian masters whose "mouths
breathe nard and balsam." 17 Such praise recommended Peter to
the canons, whose school had not boasted a theologian of distinc-
tion for some time, inspiring them to overcome their ingrained
disinclination to recruit outsiders. The demography of the canons
of Notre Dame in the twelfth century has received detailed and
careful study.18 They were a highly pre-selected group, tightly knit

14
Bernhard Bischoff, "Aus der Schule Hugos von St. Viktor," in Aus der
Geisteswelt des Mittelalters: Studien und Texte Martin Grabmann zur Vollendung des 60.
^ensjahres von Freunden und Schülern gewidmet, ed. Albert Lang, Joseph Lechner, and
Michael Schmaus, Beiträge, Supplementband 3:1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1935),
1: 346-50.
15
Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, "Ugo di San Vittore 'auctor' delle 'Sententiae de
divinitate'," Studi medievali 23:2 (1982): 912.
16
Ibid., pp. 861-911.
17
R. B. C. Huygens, ed., "Metamorphosis Goliae," Studi medievali 3:2 (1962):
771: "Celebrum theologum vidimus Lumbardum,/ cum Yvone Helyam Petrum et
Bernardum,/ quorum opobalsamum spiratos et nardum."
18
Marcel Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections episcopates dans le royaume de France
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1957), pp. 106-46; Louis VII et son royaume (Paris: SEVPEN, 1964),
pp. 109-17. See also Robert-Henri Bautier, "Paris en temps d'Abélard," in Abélard
en son temps, éd. Jean Joli vet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981), pp. 53-77; Jacques
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 21

in their social status and relationships. To a man—and this can be

said, in essence, of the bishops of regalian France as well—they
were members of the Capetian house, relatives of families closely
linked to the Capetians by blood or marriage, scions of the Ile-de-
France or eastern Loire valley nobility, or relatives of royal officials.
This situation was especially pronounced at Notre Dame, where
the fortunes of the canons and those of their secular relatives in the
royal service went hand in hand. Networking, nepotism, and favor-
itism were the standard means of ecclesiastical advancement,
promoted not only by the families of such men in order to enhance
the power and influence of their lineages, but also as a calculated
strategy of the monarch, in the effort to bind the prominent noble
families in the royal domain to the royal cause, to reward their
loyalty with promotion, and to block the advancement of those who
were out of favor. For his part, Peter Lombard had no relatives, no
ecclesiastical connections, and no political patrons or associates in
France. He thus appears to have been recruited and welcomed by
the canons of Notre Dame on the basis of scholarly merit alone. He
was the one, and the only, member of that body who lacked its
typical social profile. Also, unlike some prominent canons of Notre
Dame—Robert of Garland leaps to mind—he was no pluralist. He
cannot be identified with the Peter named as a canon of St. Mary's,
Chartres, who in any case is described as a physician to King Louis
VII, a profession he never practiced. Nor is he the master Peter
whom Pope Eugenius III recommends in a letter to Henry, bishop
of Beauvais, in 1151, asking him to provide that individual with a
prebend. Peter Lombard was a beneficed cleric of Notre Dame of
Paris only.19
Once a member of the chapter, Peter continued to advance. It is
not known at what point he was ordained to the priesthood. He
became a subdeacon in 1147. He participated as a theological
expert at the council of Rheims, presided over by Eugenius III in
1148, and possibly at the consistory of Paris that prepared the way
for it in the preceding year.20 At some time after 1150 he became a

Boussard, Nouvelle histoire de Paris: De la fin du siège de 885-886 à la mort de Philippe

Auguste (Paris: Hachette, 1976), pp. 197-225; Elizabeth M. Hallam, Capetian
France, 987-1328 (London: Longman, 1980), pp. 193-95.
19
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 1: 18*-19*.
20
Ibid., pp. 27*-30*. Brady notes that not all the contemporary sources
mention Peter's attendance at this consistory and council. For the most recent
analysis of the pertinent sources, see Laura Cioni, "II concilio di Reims nelle fonti
contemporanee," Aevum 53 (1979): 273-300. For additional bibliography, see
Marcia L. Colish, "Gilbert, the Early Porretans, and Peter Lombard: Semantics
22 CHAPTER ONE

deacon, and an archdeacon by 1156, if not as early as 1152.

Between the middle of July, 1153 and the beginning of December,
1154, his bishop, Theobald, was in Rome on ecclesiastical business.
It is extremely likely that Peter was in his suite. He was certainly of
appropriate rank to accompany his bishop; and, of course, he was
the only member of the chapter who spoke Italian. It is generally
agreed that it was Peter's presence in Rome at this time that
afforded him the opportunity to discover the Defideorthodoxa of the
eighth-century Byzantine theologian, John Damascene. Translation
ofJohn's work into Latin had just been completed by Burgundio of
Pisa as a papal commission. Peter was the first Latin theologian to
make use of John's work, and he did so to crucial effect in his own
theology from 1155 onward.
Most striking of all as an index of how this outsider became an
insider is Peter's election as bishop of Paris, a post to which he was
consecrated on about the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, July 28, 1159.
Describing him as "a man of great learning and admirable above
all the other Parisian doctors," 21 the chronicler who reports this
event leaves no doubt that it was scholarly attainment that won
Peter this honor. The outcome is the more extraordinary given the
fact that learning scarcely ranked high on the list of qualifications
for high ecclesiastical office in the France of Louis VII. Indeed, of
the some 300 men Louis raised to the rank of bishop within the
royal domain, or in sees outside of it where he held regalian rights,
one can number on the fingers of one hand those who were authors
or notable masters. Besides Peter, the only one who was a foreigner
was John of Salisbury. John's elevation to the bishopric of Chartres
later in the century inspired astonishment in the eyes of many
French clerics, notwithstanding his wide-ranging political connec-
tions, both in England and on the continent. Unlike Peter and
John, the other exceptions to Louis' episcopal policy had long-
standing ecclesiastical or social ties in the dioceses to which they
were appointed.22 Moreover, the first name reputed to have been
put forth in the Parisian election of 1159 was not Peter's, but that of
Philip, also an archdeacon of Paris, but, unlike Peter, the king's
younger brother. Philip looked to be the obvious choice. But, when

and Theology," in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: Aux origines de la logica

modernorum, éd. Jean Joli vet and Alain de Libera (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987), p. 229
n. 1.
21
Continuatio Beccensis, éd. Richard Howlett, Rolls Series (London: H. M.
Stationer's Office, 1889), 81 part 4: 323: "Magister Petrus Longobardus, vir
magnae seiende et super Parisiensium doctores admirabilis."
Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections, pp. 106-09; Hallam, Capetian France, p. 195.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 23

Peter's name was placed in nomination, Philip stepped down, in

deference to the man who had been his teacher. Louis may have
been surprised initially when the canons presented Peter as their
candidate; but he ratified the election without demur or delay.23
Peter's reign as bishop was as brief as his attainment of the office
was remarkable. He died on either July 21 or 22, 1160. His surviv-
ing episcopal acta are too few and unsubstantial to enable us to infer
anything about his administrative style or priorities. His epitaph,
which, like his tomb, lay in the church of St. Marcellus in Paris
prior to its destruction during the French Revolution, speaks rather
to his fame as the author of the Four Books of Sentences, and his
glosses on the Psalms and the Pauline epistles.24

WORKS

These are the works of Peter's that have come down to us, although
the assiduous investigation of modern scholarship has shown that
they were not his only writings. The commentary on the Psalms is
Peter's earliest known work. It was completed before 1138. An
English pupil of the Lombard's, Herbert of Bosham, states that it
was composed for his own edification and reflection, and not as a
text for classroom instruction.25 There is no evidence that he taught
Psalms exegesis formally until 1158-59, although Brady's careful
labors as the editor of the Sentences reveal the fact that he made
significant use of the material in the Psalms gloss in his teaching as
a systematic theologian. The next surviving work is his commen-
tary on the Pauline epistles, entitled the Collectanea. This work
underwent two redactions, the first composed between 1139 and
1141,26 and the second, which revised some but not all parts of the

23
Robert of Torigni, Chronica, ed. Richard Howlett, Rolls Series (London: H.
M. Stationer's Office, 1889), 82 part 4: 204 even describes Peter's election as
having been promoted "connivente Philippo." See also Gallia Christiana, 7: 68. The
story of Philip's withdrawal is doubted by Brady, Prolegomonon to Sent. 1:
33*-34*. But it is accepted by Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections, pp. 119, 139, whose
analysis Brady does not consider.
24
Gallia Christiana, 7: 69.
25
The text is printed by Joseph de Ghellinck, "La carrière de Pierre Lombard:
Nouvelle précision chronologique," RHE 30 (1934): 98. Peter's glosses on the
Psalms are printed in PL 191. Herbert's work on these glosses is discussed by H.
H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in Englandfrom Alcuin to Roger Bacon: Being an Inquiry
into the Text of Some English Manuscripts of the Vulgate Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1933), pp. 219-24.
26
Recently, Zier, "Peter Lombard," p. 517, has followed Brady in arguing for a
date of ca. 1147-48 for the first recension because of Peter's familiarity with the
ideas of Gilbert of Poitiers, which gained wide publicity at that time. But he
24 CHAPTER ONE

work, between 1155 and 1158. Finishing touches on both glosses

were added by Herbert, our first external witness to the double
redaction of the Collectanea.21 Internal evidence supporting the dou-
ble redaction has also been found in the material from the Sentences
which Peter incorporates into the second version, reflecting the
development of his thought particularly in cases where he uses
John Damascene.28 Herbert does not indicate whether Peter's
Pauline exegesis was initially intended for classroom instruction.29
That this was the case is highly likely on both substantive and
methodological grounds. There are clear, and reciprocal, borrow-
ings of subject matter between the Collectanea and the Sentences. Just
as he imported material he was developing for the final edition of
the Sentences into the second redaction of the Collectanea, so he
assigned large chunks of the Collectanea to their appropriate subject
matter categories within the Sentences. Here, Brady's careful annota-
tions of Peter's exegetical sources in the Sentences document one side
of the transaction, while his discovery and publication of several of
Peter's interim revisions of the first redactions of his commentaries
on Romans and 1 Corinthians, which do not yet reflect his most
mature treatment of the topics involved, illuminate the process of
exegetical revision.30 This evidence aside, it is difficult to see why
Peter would have gone to the trouble of updating the Collectanea
unless he was planning to use it as a teaching text, side by side with
the Sentences. According to Brady, he lectured on St. Paul from these
revised glosses in his final year of teaching,31 an opinion that makes
eminent sense. For, it was in his Pauline exegesis that Peter first
worked out the method for handling conflicting authorities, both in

ignores the fact that Gilbert taught in Paris for several years prior to his elevation
to the see of Poitiers in 1142, and the fact that Peter was informed on Porretan
teachings well before the end of the decade. For the chronology of Gilbert's career
as a teacher, see H. C. van Els wijk, Gilbert Porreta: Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1966), p. 25; Lauge Olaf Nielsen,
Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta's Thinking and
the Theological Exposition of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130-1180,
Acta theologica danica, 15 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), pp. 27-29. The text of the
Collectanea is printed in PL 191-192
27
Ghellinck, "La carrière," pp. 95-100.
28
Modern scholars who have tracked the internal evidence for the second
redaction of the Collectanea include Jean Leclercq, "Les deux redactions du pro-
logue de Pierre Lombard sur les Épîtres de S. Paul," in Mise. Lomb., pp. 10ÎM2;
Ermenegildo Bertola, "I commentari paolini di Pietro Lombardo e loro duplice
redazione," Pier Lombardo 3: 2-3 (1959): 75-90. The text of the Collectanea printed
in PL 191-192 is based on the second redaction.
29
Ghellinck, "La carrière," pp. 95-100.
30
Brady, Appendices 1-3, in Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 53*-87*.
31
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 19*.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 25

establishing the correct reading of Paul's text and in addressing the

doctrinal questions that flow from it, a method visible in a more
full-blown form in the Sentences, Methodologically too, then, the
organic connections between his exegesis and his systematic theo-
logy suggest why he would have treated the Collectanea as a school
text and as a natural pedagogical companion piece to the Sentences.
The Sentences constitute the Lombardian summa that emerged out
of the course in systematic theology which Peter taught for well-
nigh two decades. He is thought to have begun this approach to
pedagogy soon after the completion of the first version of his glosses
on Paul. He continued to revise his treatment of particular topics
over the years, sometimes entertaining his students in class by
citing, as a position to be refuted, one he had held himself only
recently.32 The development of Peter's ideas in the Sentences ben-
efited from his deep, independent, and discriminating research into
the thought of earlier authorities and from his wide familiarity
with the work of contemporary masters, which sometimes alerted
him to the need to take a stand on issues that were otherwise of
little interest to him and sometimes led him to abandon, or, alter-
natively, to emphasize more sharply, opinions he had stated in his
own earlier writings. The major turning point in his theological
development in the writing of the Sentences, which enables us to date
its final edition to the years 1155-57, was his encounter with the
works ofJohn Damascene in 1154. This author gave Peter the tools
with which to reformulate his position on Trinitarian theology and
Christology and to develop new arguments against views he re-
jected. The revised edition of the Sentences was probably what he
taught in the academic year 1157-58, since, at the instance of his
pupils, the following year was given over to the teaching of exegesis.
The final version of the Sentences went into circulation immediately.
And, it was read in circles that went well beyond those of the
scholastic classrooms of Paris and environs where one would expect
to find it, as is witnessed by the fact that the provenance of the first
extant manuscript of the Sentences, dated to 1158 in the hand of the
same scribe who copied it, now Troyes Bibliothèque Municipal
MS. 286, formerly 960, was the monastery of Clairvaux.33

32
Ignatius C. Brady, "Peter Manducator and the Oral Teachings of Peter
Lombard," Antonianum 41 (1966): 454-90.
33
This manuscript was first noted and described by Joseph de Ghellinck, "Le
traité de Pierre Lombard sur les sept ordres ecclésiastiques: Ses sources, ses
copistes," RHE 10 (1909): 17 n. 2; and Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der
scholastischen Methode (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1957 [repr. of
Freiburg im Breisgau, 1911 ed.], 2: 362.
26 CHAPTER ONE

As a member of the cathedral chapter of Notre Dame, Peter

Lombard served as a preacher as well as a teacher of theology at
the school. Some thirty of his sermons have survived, twenty-six of
which are printed among the sermons of Hildebert of Lavardin in
Migne's Patrologia latina, while the other four, discovered recently,
have been edited and published elsewhere.34 The vast majority
were composed for delivery in connection with specific liturgical
feast days or seasons, particularly Advent, Lent, and Easter, and
very occasionally for saints' days falling within these parts of the
liturgical calendar. They adhere closely to the themes of the day,
without digressing. Rather than making his point of departure the
gospel or another biblical reading assigned to the mass of the day,
Peter takes as his text some other biblical passage that relates to it
or that sheds light on it. His objective is not to preach on a
particular text, but on the significance of the event in the life of
Christ commemorated in the liturgy. His goal is less an exegetical
one than a dogmatic one, the illumination of doctrinal truths and
ethical values, which he always seeks to place in a larger theological
framework. He sometimes weaves additional biblical material into
the fabric of the sermon to promote these ends.
In handling the Bible in his sermons, Peter displays a firm grasp
of the principles of typological exegesis, using them cogently, and in
moderation, to show the connection between the revelation of the
Old Testament and that of the New. He is not interested in the
multiplication of allegorical examples, or in repeating himself.
Copiousness is not one of his stylistic ideals. His sermons are lean
and have a clear beginning, middle, and end. He evidently expects
his audience to be able to follow the structure of his sermons,
without the need for him to highlight their organization or to
summarize the points made at the end of each section. Peter shows
himself to be in command of the standard rhetorical devices used in
homiletic oratory. He uses parallel sentence structures, parallel
rhythms, and pariform word endings to reinforce his points, as well
as the frequent citation of examples in threes. But he is not an
orator who speaks because he enjoys the sound of his own voice, in
order to overwhelm his audience emotionally, or to impress them
with a display of rhetorical pyrotechnics. Both his voice, and his
presentation of doctrine, are straightforward. They appeal to the
34
See the analysis in Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 99*—112*. The sermons
belonging to Peter in P I 171 are those numbered 4, 7-8, 12-13, 21, 23-25, 32,
35-36, 43, 45, 55, 67-68, 72, 78, 80, 99, 111-112, and 115. See also Damien Van
den Eyade, ed., "Deux sermons inédits de Pierre Lombard," in Misc. Lomb.,
pp. 75-87.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 27

intellect more than to the heart. He deals with essential truths of

the faith, grounding them mainly on the birth, life, teaching career,
miracles, passion, and resurrection of Christ. The doctrines aired
are sometimes ones that were matters of great controversy in the
period; but Peter presents them concisely and without polemics.
Those sermons dealing with the Trinity and with the co-inherence
of the divine and human natures in the incarnate Christ were
clearly written in the 1140s or early 1150s, for they do not manifest
the more pointed doctrine and the crisper theological vocabulary
found in the final edition of the Sentences on those subjects. Likewise,
the sermons in which Peter discusses the cardinal virtues do not yet
reflect the mature doctrine of grace found in his later work. The few
scholars who have commented on Peter Lombard's sermons have
agreed in finding them clear, instructive, impersonal, grave, and
cool in their tone of voice. They are not sermons designed to reveal
anything about the inner life of the author. They were probably
composed for delivery not to the wider urban congregation of the
cathedral of Notre Dame but to the canons and the students at the
school.35 Peter was not a master of the spiritual life and does not
seek to present himself as one in his sermons. Rather, he resembles
a school chaplain, who wants his educated hearers to apply their
intelligence to their experience of the liturgy and to the nodal
mysteries of the Christian faith that it commemorates.
As late as 1971, when Brady published the first volume of his
edition of the Sentences, most scholarly considerations of Peter's
works, having disposed of the dubia and spuria,36 were inclined to
stop right here. More recently, however, and triggered by the
pioneering work of Beryl Smalley and George Lacombe,37 which he

35
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 33* n. 2, 34*; Joseph de Ghellinck, "Pierre
Lombard," in DTC (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1935), 12 part 2: 1960; Jean Longère,
Oeuvres oratoires des maîtres parisiens au ΧΙΓ siècle: Etude historique et doctrinale
(Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1975), 1: 87-88.
36
On this, see Joseph de Ghellinck, "Les Opera dubia vel spuria' attribués à
Pierre Lombard," RHE 28 (1932), 829-45; Ludwig Ott, Untersuchung zur theologi-
schen Briefliteratur der Früscholastik, Beiträge, 34 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1937),
pp. 80-82; Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 1: 113*-17*. These include three letters
from an unidentified Peter of Paris, two of which are written to a non-existent
Philip, archbishop of Rheims, an apologia defending Peter against the attack made
on his Christology by John of Cornwall after his death, a Practicae theologiae
methodus, an In concordiam evangelicam, and a Glossa ordinaria. Brady, Prolegomenon
to Sent. 2: 112*, later judged that Sermons 31 and 32, printed in PL 171 among
other of the Lombard's sermons, are dubious and spurious, respectively.
37
Beryl Smalley and George Lacombe were the first to suggest an expansion of
the Lombard's exegetical canon in their "The Lombard's Commentary on Isaias
and Other Fragments," New Scholasticism 5 (1931): 123-62; followed by Smalley,
"Some Gospel Commentaries of the Early Twelfth Century," RTAM 45 (1978):
28 CHAPTER ONE

confirmed in his latest research into the Lombardian canon, Brady

has pressed forward to the investigation of the other writings that
can be attributed to Peter although they are no longer extant.
These writings are all exegetical and suggest that the Lombard
glossed not only the Psalms and St. Paul, but virtually the entire
Bible. Since these works have not survived, it is impossible to date
them and to discover why they failed to inspire the interest which
the Psalms commentary and the Collectanea clearly attracted. And,
by the same token, the evidence supporting the composition of
these other glosses is, necessarily, indirect. Three main lines of
inquiry have been pursued in establishing that they existed, and
what they were. In the first place, and following Smalley's lead,
Brady has found references to additional glosses of Peter's in the
works of contemporaries who were his pupils, such as Peter Co-
mestor, William of Tyre, and Peter the Chanter, and in other figures,
such as Stephen Langton, whose exegesis is closely dependent on
Peter's.38 Another of Brady's tactics has been to detect the work of
Peter the exegete in citations found in his other writings that cannot be
traced to the glosses of the other exegetes on whom he drew.39
A third approach of Brady's has been to appeal to external
evidence, especially the cartulary of Notre Dame and related
documents.40 The cartulary records Peter's obituary, and with it
the bequest he made to the chapter in his last will and testament.
This will indicates that he owned a house, next to St. Christopher's
church on the Ile-de-la-Cité. This he gave to the chapter along with
an "entire chapel" containing a gold chalice, liturgical vestments,
two silver basins, and two vessels used in the administration of the
water and wine in the Eucharistie service, a breviary in two
volumes, and a pallium or altar cloth. In addition, and carefully
inventoried, he bequeathed his library. The titles include the entire
New Testament, with glosses on all the books. The books of the Old
Testament accompanied by glosses are the Psalms, the five books of
Moses, the four major prophets, the twelve minor prophets, the
Song of Songs, and the books of Job, Esther, Tobias, Judith,
Wisdom, and Ecclesiastes. Also listed are Peter's own copy of his
Sentences and the Decretum of Gratian.41 Since this is Peter's official

153-56, 175; "Peter Comestor on the Gospels and His Sources," RTAM46 (1979):
113. This position receives the support of Hödl, "Petrus Lombardus," p. 208.
38
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 19*, 23*-28*, 44*-52*.
39
Ibid., pp.
H
29*-33*.
I Ibid., p 21*.
M. Guérard, ed., Cartulaire de l'église Notre-Dame de Paris, Collection des
cartulaires de France, 4 (Paris: Crapelet, 1850), 1: 60.
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 29

and documented bequest, it deserves to be taken seriously. Brady

also refers to a library catalogue of Notre Dame which, among
other exegetical works, mentions glosses on the books of Esdra and
Proverbs. He argues that these glosses, as well, are works of the
Lombard's.42 This document, however, is far more problematic
than Peter's last will and testament. The latter can be dated to the
year of his death and it specifically refers to the glossed books of the
Bible as his own. On the other hand, the library catalogue is not
itself dated. It is located in the cartulary between two items that are
dated, but their dates are from the late twelfth to early thirteenth
century. Nothing is stated about the authorship of any of the
exegetical works listed. Included in this catalogue are the Quaes-
tiones of Peter of Poitiers, a disciple of the Lombard's whose writings
date to the next generation.43 It may well be, therefore, that Peter of
Poitiers, Peter Comestor, or some other Notre Dame master of the
second half of the twelfth century is the author of these glosses.
Finally, Brady has stated that none of the manuscripts ascribable
to the Lombard in either of these documents were retained by the
chapter of Notre Dame. He speculates that they were sold by his
successor to the see of Paris, Maurice of Sully,44 a known critic of
some of Peter's teachings and, equally important, an avid fundraiser
whose chief administrative objective was to finance the raising of
the new, high Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame, whose construction
he initiated. Such may have been the case. Brady mentions a copy
of the Sentences listed in 1271 among the books possessed by Notre
Dame for the use of poor scholars, described as originale Lombardi.
He suggests that the term "original" here means "integral," and
that this codex was not Peter's autograph copy.45 This judgment is
plausible, because the same language occurs in another document
not noticed by Brady, which can scarcely refer to the selfsame
manuscript. In 1296, Peter of St. Audemars, chancellor of Notre
Dame, made a donation of his own, a collection of theology books
to be kept in the charge of subsequent chancellors of Notre Dame,
also for the use of poor scholars who could not afford their own
copies. The inventory includes "the Four Books of Sentences, Item, the
original of the Sentences of Master Peter Lombard," and goes on to
describe the binding of the codex, its leather now somewhat the

42
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 21*-22*.
43
Cartulaire de Notre-Dame, 1: 462, item 39.
44
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 22*-23*.
45
Brady, Prolegomenon to Sent. 1: 129*-30*.
30 CHAPTER ONE

worse for wear.46 From the standpoint of the physical wanderings

and vicissitudes of medieval codices, the ultimate fate of Peter's
own personal copy of his masterpiece is unknown. But the academic
survival of Peter's Sentences was never very much in doubt.

REPUTATION

How far do the biographical facts that can be gleaned, inferred,

or plausibly conjectured about him go in putting a human face on
Peter Lombard? While he remains tantalizingly elusive as a person-
ality, some few glimpses of what he was like do emerge from the
externals of his life. He was clearly a man who made a deep and
lasting impression on his contemporaries, a man who inspired
admiration and respect. As a foreigner without resources and con-
nections, he succeeded in swimming against the current of French
church history in his day, winning reception as a canon of Notre
Dame, advancement in the chapter, and a stunning election to the
bishopric of Paris. Strictly on the basis of talent, he rose to the top
of the academic ladder and thereby captured for Notre Dame a
commanding lead in the teaching of school theology, which was to
flow directly into the theological faculty of the University of Paris in
the immediate sequel. As a career intellectual, he managed to turn
his outsider status in France into an asset. He was open to learning
from a wide number of masters and found decided affinities with
some of them; but he never sacrificed his independence on the altar
of discipleship. In a period when personal animosities and profes-
sional jealousies often poisoned the exchanges between thinkers,
embittering the lives of some masters and hindering their work,
Peter appears to have made no enemies, but rather to have won the
esteem of those who knew him, even though he did not shrink from
espousing controversial opinions.
Peter's students quite naturally lauded him. As with William of
Tyre, who was his pupil for six years, the Lombard's outstanding
knowledge, the "sane doctrine commended by all," and the venera-
tion his teaching inspired47 could be invoked retrospectively as a

46
Excerpta ex Libro nigro, 2, Appendix to Cartulaire de Notre-Dame, 3: 353: "Quat-
tuor libri Sententiarum. Item, originale Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi, in
quodam libro coperto corio vitulino, jam quasi depilato, cum clavis rotundis
cupro."
This fragment from William of Tyre's Historia was discovered and first
published by R. B. C. Huygens, ed., "Guillaume de Tyr étudiant: Un chapitre
(XIX, 12) de son 'Histoire' retrouvé," Latomus 21 (1962): 823: "In theologia
autem virum in ea scientia singularem, cuius opera que exstant prudentum chorus
 PETER LOMBARD'S LIFE AND WORKS 31

measure of his own good fortune and of the solidity of his own
academic training. The praises of the author of the Metamorphosis
Goliae and of the continuator of Bee, cited earlier, came from men
who had no such personal stake in his reputation. Even a critic, like
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, could refer honestly and gracefully to
Peter's distinguished research as the author of the Sentences, bring-
ing together as it did "the opinions of many and diverse churchmen
and scholastics both old and new,"48 in the same work where he
took exception to Peter's Christology, as he understood it.
Later in the twelfth and thirteenth century, chroniclers from
various parts of Europe echo the impression of Peter's decisive
seizure of the theological initiative which the inner history of scho-
lasticism reveals. At the very least, with Jacques de Vitry, they hold
his work to be useful.49 More typically, as with Alberic of Trois
Fontaines, they describe his Sentences as "a most excellent work"
and his exegesis as now the acknowledged "greater gloss,"50 while
the Sanblasian continuator characterizes his teaching as brilliant
and illustrious.51 A few thirteenth-century chroniclers repeat these
views, sometimes almost verbatim; by then, they had acquired an
air of complimentary boiler plate.52 But Vincent of Beauvais goes
on to observe that Peter's works, "all of which are publicly taught

cum veneratione amplectitur et colit cum reverentia, virum sana doctrina per
omnia commendabilem, magistrum videlicet Petrum Lonbardum, qui postea Fuit
Parisienssis episcopus, annis sex continuis audivimus."
48
Gerhoch oF Reichers berg, Liber de gloria et honore Filii hominis 19, PL 194:
1143D.
49
Jacques de Vitry, ChroniconL·gendaeaurae inserto, MGH, Scriptores (Han-
nover, 1879). 24: 171: "Floruit magister Petrus Lombardus episcopus Parisiensis,
qui Librum Sententiarum, glosas Psalterii, et epistolarum Pauli utiliter com-
pilavit."
50
Alberic oF Trois Fontaines, Chronaca, MGH, Scriptores (Hannover, 1874), 23:
843: "Circa hoc tempus magister Petrus Lombardus Fuit Parisiensibus episco-
pus . . . Qui tria Fecit opuscula egregia, videlicet Librum Sententiarum, quod est
opus excellentissimum, Glossaturam continuam super beati Pauli epistolas, et
opus satis grande super Psalterium. Et hec est in scholis ilia quae dicitur maior
Glossatura."
51
Continuatio Sanblasiana, MGH, Scriptores (Hannover, 1868), 20: 308: "His
diebus Petrus Lombardus et Petrus Manducator apud Parisiensium magistri
insigni claruerunt. . . Prêter hec in Apostolum nee non Psalterium continuas
glosas luculenter admodum exposuit."
52
For instance, Chronica Pontificium et Imperatorum Mantuana, MGH, Scriptores
(Hannover, 1879), 24: 218: "Eo etiam tempore floruit Petrus Lombardus, episco-
pus Parisiensis, qui Librum Sententiarum, glosas Psalterii et Epistolarum Pauli
utiliter compilavit;" William Andrensus, Chronica, MGH, Scriptores (Hannover,
1879), 24: 725: "Ét cum eisdem donariis Psalterium glossatum, epistolas Pauli
glossatas, sententias magistri Petri.''
32 CHAPTER ONE

in the schools," had attained the status of academic classics.53 It is

certainly true that, by the late thirteenth century, scholastics had
concurred in dismissing some of Peter's opinions.54 None the less,
Dante Alighieri was on the mark in placing him in the Heaven of
the Sun, the heaven of the theologians, along side of some of his
most famous commentators.55 These witnesses testify to the rapid
acceptance which Peter's work received and to its continuing im­
pact on both systematic theology and exegesis. But there is one of
them, the same Ricobaldo of Ferrara responsible for launching
some of the Lombardian apocrypha with which this chapter
opened, who goes farther than anyone else in underscoring the
particular qualities of mind and character that emerge from the
nude facts of Peter's biography, the qualities that informed his
writings and gave them their immediate excitement and durable
appeal. Peter was recognized, Ricobaldo says, for the "shining
intelligence" {clams ingenio) irradiating his Sentences; he was "a
learned and a humble man" (virperitus et humilis).56 In the chapters
that follow, it will be our task to uncover the teachings that
flowered from the stock of these inborn and acquired virtues.

53
Vincent of Beauvais, Memoriale omnium temporum, MGH, Scriptores (Hanno­
ver, 1879), 24: 157-58: "Sub Ludovico Francorum rege, patre Philippi, magister
Petrus Lombardus Parisiensis episcopus claruit, qui Libri Sententiarum et glosas
psalteri et epistularum Pauli, que omnia nunc in scholis publice leguntur, ex
multis catholicorum patrum dictis utiliter compilavit et ordinavit."
54
Edward A. Synan, "Brother Thomas, the Master, and the Masters," in St
Thomas Aquinas, 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies, 2 vols., ed. Armand Α. Maurer et
al. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 2: 227-42.
55
Dante Alighieri, Paradiso 10.107-08: "quel Pietro fu che con la poverella/
offerse a Santa Chiesa suo tesoro." Massara, "La leggenda," pp. 135-36, thinks
that the legend of Peter as the son of a poor laundress is the source for this image of
the widow's mite. But, it derives from Peter's allusion to Mark 12:42-43 and to
Luke 21:1-2 in his "modest author" description of his work in the incipit to Sent. 1
prologus 1, 1: 3.
56
Ricobaldo, Historia, Rerum Italicorum Scriptores, 9: 124.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE

The most central and enduring contribution to the history of

Christian thought made in the time of Peter Lombard was a
thoroughgoing reconsideration of the nature of the theological en-
terprise. As contributing members of the renaissance of learning
that swept through the twelfth-century schools in all fields of learn-
ing, the theologians in his milieu were eager to amplify and to
improve on the quality of instruction in their own subject. And, as
with other contemporary masters, they were concerned with turn-
ing their subject into a professional discipline, one with a clear
intellectual profile and a conscious sense of what pertained to it and
where it stood in relation to other forms of intellectual endeavor.
Theologians in the schools committed themselves, as never before,
to the task of ensuring that their students possessed both the range
and depth of knowledge and the technical skills required not only to
solve practical problems within the church but also the skills re-
quired to train other professional theologians as masters in their
own turn. As a consequence, a massive pedagogical assignment
now confronted the school theologians. They were required to
design a curriculum for the education of professional theologians.
In constructing their syllabus, they had to decide what topics to
include and the order in which to present them. They needed to
supply, as well, a convincing rationale for their particular selection
and ordering of the material. In addition, the theologians needed to
devise pedagogical strategies for teaching their students how to
think theologically. Students would have to learn how to appraise
and to analyze the legacy of the Christian tradition and the posi-
tions of rival contemporary masters. They would need guidance in
the fruitful application of ideas and principles drawn from sister
disciplines. And, they would have to master the use of these tools
and materials critically and constructively in addressing the theolog-
ical problems of the day, both the hardy perennials and the ques-
tions being newly agitated.
34 CHAPTER TWO

SYSTEMATIC T H E O L O G Y IN T H E T W E L F T H C E N T U R Y

The response of the twelfth-century theologians to these per-

ceived educational needs was to invent systematic theology1 and
the sentence collection as a means of doing it. It must be stressed
here that both systematic theology and the sentence collection were
inventions of the twelfth century. To be sure, a huge amount of
theology had been written before this time. Latin theologians from
the patristic period onward had produced a large number of genres
of theological literature. They had written exegesis, polemics,
hortatory, consolatory, and homiletic literature. They had reflected
and debated on a host of individual themes and questions, whether
dogmatic, sacramental, ethical, or publicistic. They had held up
models of excellence in saints' lives and had catalogued heresies to
be avoided. They had also, at times, collected debated issues and
offered their solutions; they had commented on the creeds of the
church; and they had drafted concise summaries of the main points
of Christian doctrine for the instruction of neophytes. But, before
the twelfth century, no Latin theologian had developed a full-scale
theological system, with a place for everything and everything in its
place, in a work that went well beyond the bare essentials, that
treated theology as a wholesale and coherent intellectual activity,
and that, at the same time, imparted the principles of theological
reasoning and theological research to professionals in the making.2
The genre of theological literature which proved to be the twelfth
century's most innovative response to the pedagogical challenge
presented by the teaching of systematic theology was the scholastic
sentence collection. As we know, it was Peter Lombard's Sentences

1
A useful introductory overview is provided by Henri Cloes, "La systématisa-
tion théologique pendant la première moitié du XII e siècle," ETL 34 (1958):
277-329.
2
For the contrast between the patristic and the twelfth-century handling of
quaestiones and the relation of the latter to theological system-building, see Colo-
man Viola, "Manières personnelles et impersonnelles d'aborder un problème:
Saint Augustin et le XII e siècle. Contribution à l'histoire de la 'quaestio'," in L·s
Genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales: Définition, critique
et exploitation (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1982), pp. 25-30.
Aloys Grillmeier, "Fulgentius von Ruspe, De fide ad Petrum und die Summa
Sententiarum: Eine Studie zum Werden der frühscholastischen Systematik," Scho-
lastik 34 (1959): 526-65 seeks to show that patristic works such as Fulgentius, De
fide ad Petrum and Gennadius, Liber sive definitio ecclesiasticorum dogmatum should be
seen as schematic models for sentence collections such as the Summa sententiarum,
and not merely as sources for individual opinions; but the effect of his analysis is to
show the differences rather than the parallels between these kinds of works.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 35

that was regarded by medieval scholastics as having met the educa-

tional objectives involved in this enterprise better than the sentence
collections of his competitors. In order to see how and why this was
the case, this chapter will consider the Sentences in comparison with
the work of the actual or would-be systematic theologians of the
first half of the twelfth century, not only among the scholastics who
made use of the sentence collection as a medium but also among
the non-scholastic theologians who wrote systematic theology,
tackling parallel assignments but with quite different aims.

MONASTIC PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS

It is important to recognize that systematic theology was not a

monopoly of the scholastics, and that not all scholastic theologians
at the time were interested in writing it, or equally adequate to the
task when they did essay it. There were a number of monastic
authors who wrote systematic theology in the first half of the
twelfth century. It is not their lack of an esprit de système that
differentiates them from contemporary scholastics, but rather the
educational agendas with which they associated it. At the same
time, not all early twelfth-century scholastics were involved in
system-building to the same degree. Some were, but went only part
of the distance, while others did not set out on this itinerary at all.
The activity was far from being monolithic; it does not always
provide an automatic or infallible way of distinguishing one sub-set
of theologians from another in this period. In order to illustrate that
point, and to heighten our appreciation of what Peter aimed at and
achieved, it will be helpful to approach him by way of the theolo-
gians of the generation before and during his own, with whom he
may be usefully compared.
The earliest systematic theologians of the twelfth century were
not scholastics at all but monks, German Benedictines deeply
committed to the Gregorian reform movement in general and to
monastic reform in particular. Some proponents of monastic reform
at this time thought that the best way to achieve it was to found
new monastic orders. But Rupert of Deutz and Honorius Augusto-
dunensis, the figures who will serve as our cases in point here,
sought to reinvigorate the Benedictine order from within. The
energy which they applied to this task and the long term success of
the systematic theologies which they wrote for that purpose do
much to support John Van Engen's claim that the crisis deemed to
have been afflicting Benedictine monasticism at this time has been
36 CHAPTER TWO

somewhat exaggerated.3 While Rupert and Honorius have much in

common, a close look at their systematic theologies shows that they
are as different from each other as each is from his scholastic
counterparts.
Rupert's On the Trinity and Its Works, written between 1112 and
1116, is one of the first systematic theologies of the century.4 It
displays many similarities with contemporary and later scholastic
sentence collections. As with many current scholastics, Rupert is
sensitive to the problem of theological language, particularly as it
affects the treatment of Trinitarian theology and Christology. He
has an up-to-date command of the terminology of Aristotle and
Boethius, now receiving sustained attention in the schools. He is
familiar and comfortable with the technical issues in logic and
theology embedded in the contemporary debates over the teachings
of Roscellinus of Compiègne. Rupert also reflects a preference for a
literal account of creation, showing a responsiveness to the new
interest in cosmology fashionable in some scholastic centers west of
the Rhine. As well, in discussing marriage, he forecasts Hugh of St.
Victor's critique of the anti-Pelagian Augustine on that subject,
emphasizing the point that marriage is a sacrament instituted in
Eden before the fall and that, in man's postlapsarian state, it is not
merely a remedy for sin. Even more striking, the organization and
coverage of On the Trinity has notable parallels with the works of the
sentence collectors. Rupert deals with many of the same topics, and
in much the same order, starting with God, then moving to crea-
tures, and then treating the fall of man and its consequences, and
God's reparation of the situation through Christ's redemption.
Yet, if we move beyond Rupert's vocabulary and schema to his
actual handling of the topics he takes up, On the Trinity emerges as a
summa decidedly monastic in character, both with respect to its
appeal to the Christian tradition, its intended audience, and the
mode of theological reflection it demands and promotes. As is
typical with monastic theologians, Rupert is not so much interested

3
John Van Engen, "The 'Crisis of Cenobitism' Reconsidered: Benedictine
Monasticism between the Years 1050-1150," Speculum 61 (1986): 269-304; Rupert
ofDeutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 365-68. For another
reappraisal of the openness of twelfth-century monasticism to currents of thought
that some scholars would confine only to scholastic circles, see Marjorie Chibnall,
The World of OrdeHcus Vitalis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 58-85, 90, 99.
4
For a more extended discussion, see Marcia L. Colish, "Systematic Theology
and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century," Journal of Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies 18 (1988): 138-41. Rupert's De sancta Trinitate et openbus eius has been
edited by Rabanus Haacke in CCCM 21-24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971- 72). On
Rupert, see Van Engen, Rupert ofDeutz, esp. pp. 74-94 for this work.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 37

in debating with authorities he disagrees with as with choosing the

ones he finds illuminating, and weaving them seamlessly into his
own discourse. He is not concerned with helping his readers recon-
struct the history of doctrine on any of the points he discusses, but
rather seeks to extract profit from his preferred sources and to
direct the reader's attention to the intellectual sustenance he can
gain from them. The model, and rationale, that Rupert adopts as
his overall strategy is that of salvation history. As he sees it, in this
life the triune God can best be known, short of mysticism, not
primarily as the first cause though His effects in the natural world
or through the analogies of the Trinity in the human soul, but
through the work of divine creation, redemption, and renovation
recounted in Holy Scripture. Rupert takes the standard relational
terms used to describe the Trinitarian persons vis-à-vis each
other—unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding—and applies them
to the work of each Trinitarian person, manifested to man, as it is
revealed in Scripture. This tactic is designed to support the idea
that meditation on God, as He reveals himself in Scripture, will
lead the mind to a knowledge of the eternal, unmanifested Trinity
in itself. Thus, Rupert's whole enterprise yokes systematic theology
to the kind of meditative, reflective lectio divina specific to the
monastic calling, although with a stress on fundamental doctrine
rather than on ethical edification.
Our second monastic systematic theologian, Honorius, provides
an even more instructive comparison for our purposes. The par-
ticular aspect of the contemporary reform movement on which he
took a stand was the debate over whether the Benedictines should
continue to minister to lay congregations, as they had been doing
for centuries. Contemporary critics opposed the idea, whether out
of a desire to distinguish more clearly between the roles of the
secular clergy and the monks in principle, or because they thought
that the monks were inadequately trained for the ministry, or
because they eyed greedily the tithes which the monks collected
from their parishioners.5 Honorius was a vigorous defender of the
rights of the Benedictines to serve lay congregations and, not
incidentally, to receive their tithes. His response to the critics was
forthright and practical. In the first year or two of the twelfth
century, and most likely on his return to his native Germany from a

5
A good account of this debate is provided by M. Peuchmaurd, "Le prêtre
ministre de la parole dans la théologie du XIle siècle: Canonistes, moines, et
chanoines," RTAM 29 (1962): 52-76.
38 CHAPTER TWO

course of study in England with Anselm and Eadmer of Canterbury,6

he wrote the Elucidarium, a work of systematic theology aimed at
instructing his Benedictine confrères who served in the pastoral
ministry, upgrading their theological knowledge, and equipping
them to meet the perceived needs of their parishioners. 7 While
Honorius's immediate audience was thus a monastic one, his ulti-
mate goal was to instruct the laity. He does not write to stimulate
monastic meditation or to encourage theological speculation. He
touches firmly, and lightly, on basic doctrines, emphasizing instead
their practical consequences in ethics, the sacramental life, and the
life to come. He presents a summary overview, sparked by vivid
imagery, designed to hold an audience whose theological attention
span was likely to be short and whose interest in the subject was
anything but professional.
At the same time, the schema laid out in the Elucidarium is both
inclusive, coherent, and sophisticated. Although some commenta-
tors have seen the work as lacking in logical consistency, 8 it can
hold its own in this respect, in comparison with the schemata of
some of the scholastic systematizers later in the century. Honorius
subdivides his work into three books. In the first, he takes up God,
the creation of angels and their fall, the creation of man and his fall,

6
On Honorius's biography, his education, and the dating of this work, see
Valerie I. J. Flint, ed. "Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi" AHDLMA 49
(1982): 7-8; "The Career of Honorius Augustodunensis: Some Fresh Evidence,"
R. bén. 82 (1972): 63-86; "The Chronology of the Works of Honorius Augusto-
dunensis" R. bén. 82 (1972): 215-42. See also Marie-Odile Garrigues, "Quelques
recherches sur l'oeuvre d'Honorius Augustodunensis," RHE 70 (1975): 388-425;
Eva Matthews Sanford, "Honorius Presbyter and Scholasticus," Speculum 23 (1948):
397-404. Flint's dating of the Elucidarium is supported by Robert D. Crouse,
"Honorius Augustodunensis: Disciple of Anselm?" in Analecta Anselmiana, ed.
Helmut Kohlenberger (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1975), 4 part 2: 131-39; Crouse
challenges the view that Honorius studied with Anselm of Canterbury, although
he admits that it is otherwise difficult to account for his familiarity with the Cur
deus homo, which had just been completed when he wrote the Elucidarium. Janice L.
Schultz, "Honorius Augustodunensis," in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph
R. Strayer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985), 6: 285-86, reports this
difference of opinion without taking sides.
7
Honorius, Elucidarium, ed. Yves Lefèvre in UElucidarium et les lucidaires: Contri-
bution par Vhistoire d'un texte à Vhistoire des croyances religieuses en France au moyen âge
(Paris: É. de Boccard, 1954). On the context in which this work was written, see
Valerie I.J. Flint, "The 'Elucidarius' of Honorius Augustodunensis and Reform
in Late Eleventh-Century England," R. bén. 85 (1975): 179-89; "The Place and
Purpose of the Works of Honorius Augustodunensis," R. bén. 87 (1977): 97-118.
See also Josef A. Endres, Honorius Augustodunensis: Beitrag zur Geschichte der geistigen
^ens im 12. Jahrhundert (Kempten: Kösel'schen Buchhandlung, 1906), pp. 16-21.
8
Endres, Honorius, p. 197 n. 1; Joseph de Ghellinck, L· Mouvement théologique du
ΧΙΓ siècle, 2nd ed. (Bruges: De Tempel, 1948), p. 119; Lefèvre, UEluadarium, pp.
201-05.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 39

the need for redemption, the incarnation, and the earthly life of
Christ. Under the latter heading, he considers not only Christ's
nature as a God-man and its necessity or propriety as a means of
man's redemption, but also offers a historical reprise of His life
from the nativity to the ascension. Next, Honorius discusses the
earthly survival and extension of Christ's saving work in the church,
founded at Pentecost, and understood as Christ's mystical body. This
body is manifested and made available most perfectly in the dispensa-
tion and ministry of the church by the Eucharist, which Honorius
then takes up, adding, as a pendant to this topic, the problem of
immoral priests and the efficacy of their Eucharistie ministry.
The ecclesiology developed near the end of Book 1 provides the
conceptual foundation for the rest of the material Honorius treats
in the next two books. Book 2 addresses, as its central concern, the
ethical and sacramental life of the church in this world. Honorius
leads off with a brief consideration of the nature of sin, which he
sees as rooted in man's intentional use of his free will, and with a
discussion of God's omnipotence, providence, and predestination
as the basis for an understanding of the interaction of God's grace
and man's freedom in the Christian life. Man's soul and the trans-
mission and consequences of original sin are next considered, fol-
lowed by baptism as the necessary corrective to the fall. After an
abbreviated treatment of marriage, Honorius moves on to illustrate
the various professions men exercise in Christian society. These are
presented not so much as Christian callings but as conditions that
bear with them specific moral responsibilities and temptations.
Masculine activities alone are considered, from cleric to monk to
ruler to soldier to merchant to jongleur to farmer. Honorius as-
sesses the practitioner's chances of salvation in each case, with
farmers leading the field and jongleurs all but condemned to perdi-
tion ex officio. While he ignores women, their social roles and their
varying states of life, Honorius does take up the ethical problems
and opportunities of different age groups. Refreshingly, he thinks
young people are more likely to be saved than the old, since they
are more flexible and open to change.9 Clearly, this presentation
and analysis of ethical examples, drawn largely from lay profes-
sional life, is something Honorius finds more important than the
psychogenesis of ethical acts and the intractable problem of free
will and grace, to which he gives such perfunctory treatment. He
rounds out Book 2 with the modes by which man has been ethically

9
Honorius, Elucidarium 2.52-66, pp. 427-31.
40 CHAPTER TWO

governed. Penance is the means available for moral correction and

progress in the present dispensation, he notes; it was preceded in
the Old Testament by the Mosaic law and the exhortation of the
prophets. Throughout, guardian angels have been on hand to assist
men against diabolical temptation. Honorius concludes this book
with the sacrament of unction, which typically comes at the end of
the earthly life of the individual Christian.
Fully one third of the Elucidarium is devoted to Last Things, a
subject which Honorius takes up as a sequel and conclusion to the
life of the church on earth, in the permanent assignments of its
members in the life to come. Last Things is a topic which he em-
braces enthusiastically. All aspects of the eschatological scenario,
from the condition of souls before the coming of Antichrist, the
arrival and reign of Antichrist, the general resurrection, the second
coming of Christ, the last judgment, Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven,
are described in painstaking detail and in glorious technicolor.
Honorius relies on such sources as the final chapters of Augustine's
City of God and on the most imaginative passages of Julian of
Toledo's Prognosticon futuri saeculi. He paints a synaesthetic and
multi-media picture both of the torments of the damned10 and of
the joys of the saved.11
There are, to be sure, some problems in Honorius's coverage and
organization. But it is also quite clear that his emphasis is dictated
by his canny estimate of the intellectual needs, tolerances, and
interests of his intended audience. Honorius's handling of the
sacraments is intermingled with other subjects, whether dogmatic,
as in the case of the Eucharist, or ethical, as in the case of the other
sacraments. He omits confirmation and takes up holy orders only
obliquely, in connection with the sacramental ministry of bad
priests in Book 1 and the moral duties of clerics in Book 2. In his
account of creation, he mentions angels, men, and animals, but not
plants and other inanimate beings. His analysis, and his often
harsh judgments, of the chances for salvation of various occupa-
tional groups on the basis of profession alone in Book 2 does not
square entirely with his stress on intentionality in the moral life
elsewhere in the same book. None the less, in comparison with
many of the systematic theologians who wrote later in the century,
Honorius is remarkably inclusive and his inconsistencies are re-
latively minor. Within the terms of his project, as he has envisioned

10
Ibid., 3.12-18, pp. 447-49.
11
Ibid., 3.38-49, 3.79-120, pp. 454-57, 463-77.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 41

it, his schema is cogent and easy to follow. It reflects his idea that
the average Christian has both the need, and the capacity, to
understand how individual doctrines hang together. And, the Eluci-
darium shows Honorius's willingness to give pride of place to the
subjects his audience cares most about, the subjects on which their
attention can be caught and directed to the theological reasons
undergirding the norms ruling their daily lives and the faith that is
the foundation of their hopes, fears, and expectations.
This elaborate and carefully orchestrated schema is combined
with another feature of the Elucidarium which serves as an equally
clear index of its intended function as a systematic theology for the
common man, an utterly simplistic and catechetical presentation of
the material it contains. In no sense does Honorius seek to alert his
readers to the theological controversies of the day. Nor does he
want to inform them of the fact that the authorities sometimes
disagree and, if so, what to do about it. Honorius himself is pro-
digiously learned. The Elucidarium is based on thorough and up-to-
date research. From his own rich command of the relevant theolog-
ical literature, he makes his choices but without flaunting his
knowledge. Since his aim is not to provoke inquiry but to lay
questions to rest, what he does is simply to state clearly and firmly
in his own words the best answers he can find to the questions he
raises. He does not indicate by name or work the particular author-
ities he uses for this purpose and he does not explain why he prefers
their conclusions. As Valerie Flint has aptly noted, in the Elucida-
rium the author's intention is "to reduce the most complex to the
most simple, to substitute the answers for the learning process, and
so supposedly to render that process unnecessary by the deft
finding of answers." 12
As the first systematic theologians of the twelfth century, Ho-
norius and Rupert both bring a keen and judicious sense of audience
to their tasks. Both hit the marks at which they aimed. Their works
were immensely popular, as the numerous manuscripts preserving
them over the next several hundred years attest.13 Together, they
suggest how shortsighted it is to locate the revival of monastic
theology in this period exclusively in those authors who took their
cue from Bernard of Clairvaux. When On the Holy Trinity and the

12
Valerie I.J. Flint, "Henricus of Augsburg and Honorius Augustodunensis:
Are They the Same Person?" R. bén. 92 (1982): 150-51.
13
For Rupert, see Haacke's preface to the De sancta Tnnitate, CCCM 22; for
Honorius, see Lefèvre, L'Elucidarium, pp. 334-57; Flint, "Place and Purpose," pp.
119-27.
42 CHAPTER TWO

Elucidarium were written, they were quite original. Neither Rupert

nor Honorius had either monastic or scholastic models to follow.
Honorius's likely master, Anselm of Canterbury, the towering
theological mind of the day, had moved theology a major step
forward by his rigorous insistence on rational argument as a means
of clarifying the faith. But his own oeuvre continued to reflect the
earlier tendency of theologians to take on specific and limited
problems in individual works rather than to provide a synthetic
theological curriculum. And, the leading scholastics at the turn of
the twelfth century, Anselm of Laon and his followers, while they
made notable advances in one area of scholastic pedagogy, the
analysis and criticism of authorities, did not see the construction of
a systematic approach to theology as part of their project.

T H E SCHOLASTIC SENTENCE C O L L E C T I O N AS A GENRE O F

T H E O L O G I C A L LITERATURE

This last statement may still require emphasis, given the fact
that some of the most influential medievalists of our century have
seen in Anselm of Laon and his disciples the inventors of the
systematic sentence collection. This notion was popularized by
Martin Grabmann, who saw their work as both dialectical and
architectonic, and as heralding not only the elaborate sentence
collections of the mid-century but also the summae of the thirteenth
century to come.14 While he plays down their appeal to logic,
Joseph de Ghellinck joins Grabmann in describing the works of the
Laon masters as mini-summae, which present theological topics
under a series of specific and highly coherent dogmatic headings.15
This view has been perpetuated by a number of other scholars.16
But its most enthusiastic supporter has been Franz Bliemetzrieder,
one of the earliest editors of the Laon school manuscripts, who

14
Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols. (Graz:
Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1957 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1911
ed.]), 2: 157-68.
15
Joseph de Ghellinck, L'Essor de la littérature latine au XIΓ siècle, 2 vols. (Brus-
sels: L'Édition Universelle, 1946), 1: 41-45; L· Mouvement théologique, pp. 138-48.
See, for example, Francesco Carpino, "Una difficoltà contro la confessione
nella scolastica primitiva: Anselmo di Laon e la sua scuola," Divus Thomas, 3 a ser.
16 (1939): 39; Cloes, "La systématisation de théologie," pp. 277 ff.; Artur Michael
Landgraf, "Zum Werden der Theologie des 12. Jarhhunderts," Ζ*Γ 79 (1957):
425, 428; Ludwig Ott, "Petrus Lombardus: Persönlichkeit und Werk," Münchener
theologische Zeitschrift 5 (1954): 105; "Pietro Lombardo: Personalita e opera," in
Misc. Lomb., p. 15; René Silvain, "La tradition des Sentences d'Anselme de Laon,"
AHDLMA 22-23 (1947-48): 1-52.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 43

depicts Anselm of Laon as the century's most creative theologian in

this respect and as the model for all subsequent systematic theolo-
gians up through Peter Lombard. 17
The very wave of editorial activity unleashed by Bliemetzrieder
has provided the corrective to this interpretation, by showing that
the attribution of a systematic character to the writings of the Laon
masters rests on a very shaky foundation, a far-too sketchy ex-
amination of the manuscripts in which they are preserved. More
recent editors, in addition to bringing new texts to light, and
proposing connections among them, have undermined the earlier
view. Thus, Heinrich Weisweiler has proposed that Anselm set his
face against the dialectical theologians of the age and that he did
not create a new structure or model for theological education,
preferring an approach embedded in biblical exegesis. As Weis-
weiler has observed, both Anselm's own works and those of his
disciples only received schematic form later on, a form often im-
posed on the materials by the redactors who compiled their indi-
vidual opinions.18 The most recent editor, Odon Lottin, agrees that
both the literary form and the ordering of the doctrinal content
found in the Laon school manuscripts is a function of ex post facto
editorial arrangement and that they cannot be taken as an index of
the school of Laon's own view of theological education. While there
are identifiable family relations among the authors in this group,
and while many of their individual opinions received respectful
attention from other theologians during the first half of the century,
he concludes, it cannot be shown that either Anselm or his follow-
ers created the systematic sentence collection, or that they organ-
ized their teaching along the lines of a later summa}9

17
Franz Bliemetzrieder, "Autour de l'oeuvre d'Anselme de Laon," RTAM 1
(1929): 436.
18
Heinrich Weisweiler, "L'École d'Anselme de Laon et de Guillaume de Cham-
peaux: Nouveaux documents," RTAM 4 (1932): 237-69, 371-91; Weisweiler, ed.,
Das Schrifttum der Schule Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen
Bibliotheken, Beiträge, 33:1-2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936), pp. 3-6, 27-257. For
the most recent review of the literature dealing with the filiation of these texts, see
Heinrich J. F. Reinhardt, "Literaturkritische und theologiegeschichtliche Studie
zu den Sententiae Magistri A. und deren Prolog 'Ad iustitiam credens debemus',"
AHDLMA 36 (1969): 23-29.
19
Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux ΧΙΓ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles, vols. 1-5 (Louvain:
Abbaye de Mont-César, 1948-59), 5: 7-10, 178-83, 229-30, 444-47; Lottin, ed.,
"Quatre, sommes fragmentaires de l'école d'Anselme de Laon," in Mélanges August
Pelzer: Etudes d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale de la scolastique médiévale offerts à Monsei-
gneur August Pelzer à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire (Louvain: Biblio-
thèque de l'Université, 1947), pp. 81-108. This judgment has been supported by
44 CHAPTER TWO

T H E C R I T I C I S M AND EVALUATION O F A U T H O R I T I E S

While the Laon masters can no longer be viewed as the creators

of the systematic sentence collection, their opinions do reflect
another dimension of the approach to theological education taken
up by later scholastics who did use that genre, and one which
distinguishes their work sharply from that of the monastic system-
atizers just discussed. It also distinguishes the work of the scho-
lastic theologians of this period from that of the canonists, even
though the boundaries between these two disciplines in the early
twelfth century were far less distinct and more permeable than they
became later in the Middle Ages. Well before Peter Abelard had
formulated his famous rules for the analysis and evaluation of
authorities in his Sic et non,20 the Laon masters indicate that they
had already grasped and had learned how to apply the principles of
authorial intention and historical criticism. The fact that this de-
velopment was occurring, before Abelard's time, and that theolo-
gians such as the Laon masters as well as the canonists were
contributing to it, has received a certain amount of scholarly
appreciation.21 It has also been recognized that both canonists and

Ermenegildo Bertola, "Le critiche di Abelardo ad Anselmo di Laon ed a Gugliel-

mo di Champeaux," Rivista difilosofianeo-scolastica 52 (1960): 503-04; Bernard
Merlette, "Écoles et bibliothèques à Laon, du déclin de l'antiquité au développe-
ment de l'Université," in Enseignement et vie intellectuelle, IX'-XVr siècle, Actes du 95 e
congrès national des sociétés savantes, Reims, 1970 (Paris: Bibliothèque
Nationale, 1975), 1: 43. For more on this subject, see Marcia L. Colish, "Another
Look at the School of Laon," AHDLMA 53 (1986): 7-11.
20
Peter Abelard, Sic et non prologus, ed. Blanche Β. Boyer and Richard
McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 96. Good discussions of
Abelard's essay on method here, which do not speculate on his sources for it, are
Jean Jolivet, "Le traitement des autorités contraires selon le Sic et non d'Abélard,"
in Aspects de la pensée médiévale: Abélard. Doctnnes du langage (Paris: J. Vrin, 1987),
pp. 79-92; G. Paré, A. Brunet, and P. Tremblay, La renaissance du ΧΙΓ siècle: Les
écoles et renseignement (Paris: J. Vrin. 1933), pp. 290-91. Scholars who have recog-
nized Abelard's methodological dependence on the school of Laon as well as on
the canonists, at least in part, include Ermenegildo Bertola, "I precedenti storici
del metodo del 'Sic et non' di Abelardo," Rivista difilosofianeo-scolastica 53 (1961):
266-76 and Mary M. McLaughlin, "Abelard as Autobiographer: The Motives
and Meaning of His 'Story of Calamities'," Speculum 42 (1967): 478.
21
Franz Bliemetzrieder, "Gratian und die Schule Anselms von Laon," Archiv
fur katholische Kirchenrecht 112 (1932): 37-63; Nikolaus M. Häring, "The Interac-
tion between Canon Law and Sacramental Theology in the Twelfth Century," in
Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Stephan G.
Kuttner (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1976), pp. 483-93; "The
Sententiae Magistri A. (Vat. Ms. lat. 4361) and the School of Laon," MS 17
(1955): 1-45; Stephan G. Kuttner, "Zur Frage der theologischen Vorlagen Gra-
tians," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 23
(1934): 243-68. Still, the exclusion of the school of Laon from the group of
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 45

theologians freely invoked ancient authorities as a rationale for the

departures from existing norms and practices that they might wish
to advocate.22 Yet, typical of the theologians in this respect, the
Laon masters reveal a bolder and more independent reading of
authorities than what we find in contemporary canonists. While
certainly defending their own positions, the canonists tried to find
ways of adjusting the authorities who disagreed with their views
with the authorities who supported them. In Stephan Kuttner's
words, they strove to bring "harmony from dissonance." They felt
a constitutional disinclination to abandon any of the authorities.
Like thrifty housewives, they disliked waste. They wanted to save
everything, and somehow find a place for it in the ragoût. On the
other hand, the Laon, masters are an early witness to the theolo-
gians' recognition of the fact that, in choosing some authorities as
more cogent or relevant to contemporary needs and sensibilities,
they might well have to exclude others. The theologians were able
to accept the fact that the conflicts among authorities were some-
times real, and not merely apparent, and that when this was the
case, they could be reconciled only at the price of being fudged.
With their fellow theologians, the Laon masters felt free to make
principled choices among the authorities. They did not feel as
bound by precedent as the canonists and were perfectly willing to
reject those authorities who failed to meet their critical standards. 23

theologians in this current dies hard, as is seen in the work of Ghellinck, L·

Mouvement, pp. 164-66; Grabmann, Die Geschichte, 1: 236-46; Stephan G. Kuttner,
Harmony from Dissonance: An Interpretation of Medieval Canon Law (Latrobe, PA:
Archabbey Press, 1960), pp. 13, 25, 30; David E. Luscombe, The School of Peter
Abelard: The Influence of Abelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 214-16, 21&-22; George Makdisi, "The
Scholastic Method in Medieval Education: An Inquiry into Its Origins in Law
and Theology," Speculum 49 (1974): 640-61; Paré, Brunei, and Tremblay, La
renaissance du ΧΙΓ siècle, pp. 284-92; J. G. Sikes, Peter Abailard (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1932), pp. 76-87, 239-47.
22
Karl F. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300-1140
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 345. Morrison provides a good
introduction to the previous scholarship on this subject, pp. vii-xi, 3-8, 15-33,
37-110.
23
For this characterization of the canonical enterprise, see Kuttner, Harmony
from Dissonance. The greater flexibility of the theologians in their approach to
authorities and in their willingness to take an innovative line in using them has
been noted by Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, Historie des collections canoniques en
occident depuis les fausses décrétâtes jusqu'au Décret de Gratiën, 2 vols. (Paris: Sirey,
1932), 2: 314—52; Häring, "The Interaction between Canon Law and Sacramental
Theology," pp. 483-93. Cf. on the other hand Artur Michael Landgraf, "Diritto
canonico e teologia nel secolo XII," Studia Gratiana 1 (1953): 371-413, who sees
theologians as more conservative than canonists in this period, and Alfons M.
46 CHAPTER TWO

This tendency will be visible in a more wholesale fashion in the

generation after 1130, by which point Anselm of Laon and his
followers had either died or had passed from teaching to adminis-
trative positions in the church. But the method can be illustrated
quite easily from the opinions of members of this school. Let us
consider two examples, which are of interest because they both
invoke the authority of Pope Leo I, in one case to approve it against
the countervailing authority of Augustine and in the other case to
reject it on the basis of historical criticism. As historical critics,
these theologians handle the idea of the primitive church in a
manner quite different from that of the canonists. 24 Rather than
appealing to antiquity as a guarantee for a practice they want to
retain, or reinstitute, or institute for the first time, these masters feel
free to treat it as an index of obsolescence, invoking it in order to
relativize and dismiss practices that may have made sense centuries
ago but which fail to speak to present needs and conditions. This
attitude is clearly visible in the Laon masters' consideration of the
time of baptism. Leo had laid down the rule that persons to be
baptized should be received by the church only on Easter or Pente-
cost Sunday, unless they were in danger of death. This ruling had
established the canonical practice in the early church. The Laon
masters reject this tradition on grounds of pastoral utility; for it
does not regard the needs of the infants who now make up the vast
majority of baptizands and who are incapable of articulating the
fact if they are in danger of death. In addition to the welfare of these
infants, the church must minister to the legitimate anxieties of their
parents. The Laon masters anchor this pastoral agenda with a
historical argument. In the time of the ecclesia primitiva, they
observe, most new Christians were adults, who were capable of
alerting their ministers if their health was at risk. Their collective
reception in baptism on the great feasts of the resurrection liturgy
served not only as an important form of public witness to the
largely pagan society in which they lived, but also as a potent
source of group reinforcement. But, none of these conditions now

Stickler, "Teologia e diritto canonico nella storia," Salesianum 47 (1985): 695, who
sees the influences running as a one-way street from the canonists to the theolo-
gians.
24
Glenn Olsen, "The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva in the Writings of the
Twelfth-Century Canonists," Traditio 25 (1969): 61-86. For the theologians' coun-
tervailing use of this idea, see Colish, "Another Look at the School of Laon," pp.
12-14; "Quae hodie locum non habent: Scholastic Theologians Reflect on Their
Authorities," Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 15, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (Villanova:
Augustinian Historical Institute, 1990), pp. 1-17.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 47

obtain, the Laon masters conclude. Therefore, Leo's rule is no

longer appropriate and may be disregarded.25
In the case of our second example, taken from a Leonine ruling
on marriage, historical relevance is not the issue, but rather the
judgment that Leo offers better reasons for supporting his conclu-
sions than Augustine does, on general principles. One of the stan-
dard questions raised in the twelfth century, under the heading of
impediments to marriage, was whether a prior adulterous affair
should be viewed as an impediment if the lovers later find them-
selves free to marry each other. The two authorities invariably cited
by thinkers who take up this question, however they resolve it, are
Leo, who maintains that the affair is an impediment, and Augus-
tine, who holds that it is not. In explaining why they agree with
Leo, the Laon masters argue that he has sounder reasons on his
side. Leo had imposed the ban, they note, because he feared that
the lovers, if permitted to marry, would be tempted to plot the
murder of the obstructive spouse, an outcome they join him in
wishing to discourage. Augustine's permission of the union of for-
mer adulterers, they continue, might give rise to scandal, making it
seem as if the church were condoning their earlier misbehavior. On
their own account, our authors add that the marriage of the former
adulterers might also lead to the confusion of inheritance rights.
For all these reasons, they find Leo's argument more compelling
than Augustine's, and his conclusions more acceptable. 26

PETER ABELARD AND HIS FOLLOWERS

This kind of weighing of authorities, which was to become a

central ingredient in the enterprise of systematic theology among
the scholastic sentence collectors, was never credited to Anselm of
Laon by his erstwhile pupil, Peter Abelard, who is frequently
regarded as its inventor, rather than merely its codifier. In the
event, and despite his innovative spirit in other respects, neither
Abelard nor any of his own disciples emerges as the best example of
this method in practice in the generation after Anselm. Nor do the
Abelardians fare very well as exemplars of systematic curriculum

25
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 371; Sentential Atrebatenses, ed. Lottin in Psych.
et morale, 5: 275-76, 431.
26
Franz Bliemetzrieder, ed., Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge,
18:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919), pp. 148-49; Sentences ofAnselm of Laon from the
Liber Pancrisis, no. 66-67; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 409, ed. Lottin, Psych, et
morale, 5: 57-58, 288.
48 CHAPTER TWO

building, either. This judgment may be a startling one, given the

fact that Abelard has been hailed as the father of scholasticism
in innumerable textbooks. Yet, the legacy he left to systematic
theology in the twelfth century is a rather scanty one. Abelard's
basic weakness as a guide here is that he left no complete work of
systematic theology of his own. He was one of those academics
constitutionally incapable of finishing anything he started. Abelard
essayed three general treatises, each entitled a theologia and each
existing only in several fragmentary versions. His Theologia "summi
bonV\ Theologia Christiana^ and Theologia "scholarium" all announce
the same agenda in their prologues, but none follows that agenda
through to completion. Indeed, the sorting out and dating of these
disiecta membra has become something of a growth industry in recent
Abelard scholarship.27 Taken together, the Abelardian fragments
as collected by their modern editors state the author's intention to
subdivide Christian theology into three parts—faith, charity, and
sacraments. Under the heading of faith, Abelard limits himself to
what he thinks readers need to know about the definition of faith as
a cognitive state and the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology.
Other things that Christians might need to know in order to be
saved, and that professional theologians need to consider he either
ignores or relegates to separate treatises composed late in his
career, which he evidently sees as lying outside the project of
systematic theology. Thus, his treatment of creation is found in his
Hexaemeron,28 while his handling of original sin and the redemption
receives full attention only in his commentary on Paul's Epistle to
the Romans.29 The topic of Last Things does not appear in any of
Abelard's theological treatises.

27
Peter Abelard, Theologia "summi boni", ed. Constant J. Mews, CCCM 13;
Theologia Christiana, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert, CCCM 12; Theologia "scholarium", ed.
Constant J. Mews, CCCM 13 in Peter Abelard, Opera theologica (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1969-87). For the debates about the sequence and dating of the various
fragmentary versions and redactions of these works, see Constant J. Mews, "On
Dating the Writings of Peter Abelard," AHDLMA 52 (1985): 73-134; "Peter
Abelard's {Theologia Christiana) and {Theologia 'scholarium') Re-examined," RTAM
52 (1985): 109-58; and his preface to Peter Abelard, Opera theologica, CCCM 13:
20-23.
28
Mary Foster Romig, ed., "A Critical Edition of Peter Abelard's 'Expositio in
Hexameron'," University of Southern California Ph.D. diss., 1981. The text is also
found in PL 178. An edition incorporating Romig's work and including additional
manuscripts is forthcoming from CCCM.
29
Peter Abelard, In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 3:26, 5:19, ed. Eligius M.
Buytaert, CCCM 11:114-18, 164-66, 170-72; original sin is also taken up in Peter
Abelard, Ethics, ed. and trans. David E. Luscombe (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971), pp. 20-22, 58-62.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 49

The second part of Abelard's project addresses ethics. In prac-

tice, what he mainly has to say on that subject is that ethical acts
can be reduced to ethical intentionalities. He reserves to his Ethics
his fullest consideration of this claim, but he does not develop his
analysis of the psychogenesis of ethical acts into a full-scale treatise
on the Christian life.30 Since sacraments constitute the last part of
Abelard's table of contents and he rarely gets that far in his
theologiae, his treatment of this topic is extremely sketchy, confined
to the very small selection of sacraments that he was interested in,
for personal reasons or because they could be used to illustrate
some of his other concerns. Thus, he brings in baptism in the
context of his objections to the traditional doctrine of the transmis-
sion of original sin and his handling of it reflects his fascination
with circumcision as its Old Testament parallel.31 Penance is treat-
ed as a corollary of the idea that ethical intentionality is para-
mount in the ethical life.32 Marriage he gives extremely short shrift,
taking it up primarily to dispraise it,33 while the Eucharist interests
him mainly because the doctrine of the real presence affords him
the opportunity to explore the suitability of philosophical terminol-
ogy to describe the change in the elements brought about by the
consecration.34
Abelard's handling of the sacraments and ethics also points to
another deficiency of his work as a model for systematic theology,
an occasional logical inconsistency that is startling in a thinker
hailed as the paramount dialectician of his time. Abelard offers as
his definition of sacrament in general the standard Augustinian
statement that a sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace.35 He
regards marriage as a sacrament. Yet, he finds nothing in the
relations between spouses that signifies grace.36 Equally problematic

30
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 4-36, 53-56; also In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 1:16-17,
CCCM 11:65.
31
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 20, 58-62; In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 2:25, CCCM 11:
94· Theologia Christiana 2.22, CCCM 12: 142.
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 76-126. This point has been noted by Richard E.
Weingart, "Peter Abailard's Contribution to Medieval Sacramentology," RTAM
34 (1967): 173-77.
33
Peter Abelard, In Hexaemeron, ed. Romig, pp. 133-35; PL 178: 463C-464C; In
Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 4:18-19, CCCM 11: 148; Sermo 3, PL 178: 407C. This point
receives judicious treatment from Richard E. Weingart, The Logic of Divine Love: A
Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Abailard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp.
195-96; "Peter Abailard's Contribution," pp. 172-73.
34
Weingart, "Peter Abailard's Contribution," pp. 170-72.
35
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 16, CCCM 12: 406. This text, ed. by
Eligius M. Buytaert, is the shorter version of the work; the version edited by Mews
in CCCM 13 is the longer one that was used more widely in the twelfth century.
36
See above, n. 33.
50 CHAPTER TWO

is Abelard's handling of penance. Consistent with his intention-

alist ethics, it is not surprising that he comes down squarely on
the side of contritionism, in the contemporary debate on whether
the penitent's sins were remitted in the contrition or in the confes-
sion stage of the sacrament. The penitent's inner contrition gains
him pardon for sin, Abelard holds, whether or not he goes on to
confess his sin to a priest. None the less, and despite the difficulty of
finding a priest who is upright and discreet, Abelard maintains that
confession must not be omitted. His efforts to defend this notion
find him getting more and more hopelessly entangled in the contra-
dictions he spins.37 The inconsistency between Abelard's ethical
intentionalism and his actual advice can also be seen in his judg-
ment as a moralist. In documenting his own basic principle that
unknowing or accidental behavior is not morally culpable, he gives
three cases in point. There are the people who put Christ to death,
who, in their estimation, were not doing anything wrong but rather
punishing a criminal and blasphemer. There is the man who sleeps
with a woman not his wife under the misapprehension that she is
his wife. These people, he argues, commit no sin. Then Abelard
turns to his third example, a poor mother who lacks the wherewith-
al to provide bedding for her baby, who takes him into her own bed
to keep him warm, and who accidentally smothers him while
asleep. Notwithstanding the accidental character of the event and
the woman's loving, maternal intention, he rules that she is deserv-
ing of punishment. 38
If logical consistency is sometimes a problem in Abelard's theo-
logy, despite his prominence in that field of endeavor, one can also
find numerous soft spots in his handling of his authorities in prac-
tice, despite the excellent theoretical guidelines he provides in his
Sic et non. Abelard does not hesitate to cite the anti-Pelagian Augus-
tine, scarcely an apposite choice in this context, in support of his
own effort to reduce original sin to actual sin.39 His sense of the
pertinence of a particular authority to the case he wants to build is
equally if not more questionable in his handling of secular author-
ities. Abelard's quest for Trinitarian analogies in pagan literature

37
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 76-126. The contradictions in this argument have
been noted by Amédée de Zedelghem, "L'Attritionisme d'Abélard," Estudis Fran-
ciscans 35 (1925): 333-45; "Doctrine d'Abélard au sujet de la valeur morale de la
crainte des peines," ibid. 36 (1926): 108-25.
38
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 38-48.
39
Peter Abelard, In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 2:5-6, CCCM 11: 77-78. On this
point, see Julius Gross, "Abälards Umdeutung des Erbsündendogmas," Zeitschrift
fur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 15 (1963): 14-33.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 51

raised legitimate doubts in the minds of his contemporaries as to

whether he grasped the difference between the orthodox doctrine of
the Trinity, with its coequal persons, and the subordinationism
implicit in the Platonic doctrine of the World Soul, to which he
compared the Holy Spirit.40 Examples of passages where Abelard
fails to take into account the theological or philosophical perspec-
tives informing the views of the authorities he cites, or where he
misapplies them, could easily be multiplied.
The followers of Abelard, like their master, drew heavily on
philosophical as well as patristic evidence and they reveal a pro-
nounced taste for logic, a dialectical handling of the topics they
treat, and a sensitivity to the problem of theological language. They
also take as their cue the master's tripartite subdivision of the
subject matter. But, rather than trying to fill the gaps he left, thus
developing his ideas into a full-blown summa, they see their primary
task as the defense of the positions that had gotten Abelard into
trouble, and even the repetition of some of his least lucid and most
regrettable examples.41 They preserve his inapposite equation of
the World Soul with the Holy Spirit, repeating his earlier and less
nuanced position in the Theologia "summi boni33 rather than the
somewhat modified version of this idea which he provided in his
later works.42 They also repeat his illogical treatment of marriage as
a sacrament but which none the less neither signifies nor imparts
any gift of grace.43 In addition, the organizational skills of some of

40
Peter Abelard, Theologia "summi boni" 1.5.36-38, 1.5.41-6.49, 3.4.94-99,
CCCM 13: 95-99, 100-13, 198-200; he modifies his position slightly in Theologia
Christiana 1.71-78, 1.96, 1.123, CCCM 12: 101-04, 112, 124. On this point see, in
particular, Tullio Gregory, "Abélard et Platon," in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius M.
Buytaert (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1974), pp. 42^6, 51; "Uanima mundi
nella filosofia del XII secolo," Giornale critico deltafilosofiaitaliana 30 (1951):
494—508. See also Ludwig Ott, "Die platonische Weltseele in der Theologie der
Frühscholastik," in Parusia: Studien zur Philosophie Piatons und zur Problemgeschichte des
Piatonismus. FestgabefirJohannes Hirschberger, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva,
1965), pp. 307-15; Mariateresa Beonio-Brocchieri [Fumagalli] and Massimo
Parodi, Storia dellafilosofiamédiévale da Boezio a Wyclif (Bari: Laterza, 1989), pp.
214-15, 226.
41
These developments are recounted clearly by Luscombe, The School of Peter
Abelard.
42
Ott, "Die platonische Weltseele," pp. 315-18.
43
This teaching is preserved most fully in Hermannus, Sententie magistri Petri
Abelardi 28, 31, ed. Sandro Buzzetti, Pubblicazioni della facoltà di lettere e filosofia
deirUniversità di Milano, 101, sezione a cura di storia della filosofia, 31 (Florence:
La Nuova Italia, 1983), pp. 120, 135. The status of this text, framed as a reportatio
of Abelard's teaching, has been contested. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard,
pp. 158-64, makes what we find to be a convincing case for Hermannus as an
Abelardian author in his own right, because of his response to criticisms of the
master's doctrine of the Trinity, which Abelard himself did not take to heart in his
52 CHAPTER TWO

the Abelardians are questionable. The author of the Ysagoge in

theologiam, for instance, starts with man, continues with Christology
and the redemption, ethics and the sacraments, and places angels
and God at the end.44 His treatment of baptism reflects Abelard's
interest in comparing this sacrament, and not others, with its Old
Testament precursor. But the author is so taken with the utility of
the circumcision-baptism comparison in aid of Jewish-Christian
polemic that he blows it up all out of proportion in his sacramental
theology as a whole.45 All of the Abelardians, like their master,
ignore Last Things. In addition, they all omit major topics that
were heavily debated at the time, omissions that are sometimes
stunning. Thus, the authors of the two Sententiae Parisiensis leave out
penance, a sacrament which no other contemporary theologian
ignores; and Hermannus omits, of all things, original sin. The
apparent reason for these strategic omissions on the part of Abe-
lard's disciples is their evident inability to find arguments against
Abelard's critics on these points. As a technique of theological
education, this tactic, like the truncated theologiae of Abelard him-
self, left, and was perceived to leave, a great deal to be desired, in
twelfth-century scholastic circles.

GILBERT O F P O I T I E R S AND H I S FOLLOWERS

Another master in this period who is given almost as much praise

and attention as Abelard in the scholarly literature for his role as an
intellectual innovator is Gilbert of Poitiers, whose trial at Rheims in
1148 as a philosophical and theological radical was the intellectual
cause célèbre of the mid-century. Well before Gilbert's ideas had
attained their fullest notoriety, he and his disciples had developed a
general course in systematic theology, which can be found in two
Porretan sentence collections dating to the early 1140s. The doc-

latest version of that doctrine, and in his more "Pelagian" handling of grace.
Constant J. Mews, in the intro, to his ed. of Theologia "scholarium", CCCM 13:
23-24 and in "The Sententiae of Peter Abelard," RTAM 53 (1986): 130-84, argues
that this work is only a reportatio of Abelard's teaching and that its redaction by
Hermannus, and not by some other student of Abelard's, is not certain. His main
concern is to place this text in relation to other Abelardian works on the points
which they have in common, without considering the areas in which the author
departs from Abelard's position.
Ysagoge in theologiam, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf in Ecrits théologiques de Vécole
d'Abélard (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934).
45
Ysagoge in theologiam 2, pp. 181-89, This anti-Jewish agenda has been noted by
Landgraf, intro, to his ed., pp. xlvi-xlix; David E. Luscombe, "The Authorship of
the Ysagoge in theologiam," AHDLMA 43 (1968): 7-16.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 53

trine in these works summarizes Gilbert's teaching on the Mont

Ste. Geneviève after his departure from Chartres in ca. 1137 and
before his acceptance of the bishopric of Poitiers in 1142, with
additions and corrections reflecting the opinions of these two
pupils.46 Together, they indicate how Gilbert and the early Porre-
tans envisioned the theological enterprise. The authors divide their
sentence collections into fourteen books. The first book is devoted
to the problem of theological language, in general, with Books 2
and 3, on the Trinity and Christology, as specific applications of
that problem. Given the amount of controversy that Gilbert had
inflamed on precisely those questions, this represents a relatively
modest allocation of space to the topic.
The vast bulk of the Porre tan sentence collections, Books 4
through 11, is devoted to the sacraments, to which the authors now
repair, before the universe has been created, and before man has
fallen and found himself in need of them. In this period, the two
most prevalent ways of organizing sacramental theology, on the
part of authors offering a systematic account ofthat subject, were in
the order of their institution or in the order of their reception.
Another prominent scheme was to subdivide the sacraments into
two groups, those received by all Christians and those, such as holy
orders and marriage, received only by some Christians. Still
another way of organizing this subject was to distinguish baptism
and the Eucharist, or baptism alone, as necessary for salvation,
from the rest of the sacraments, which might be omitted, in some
circumstances, without jeopardizing one's salvation. The Porretans
depart from all of these models and propose an original four-part
model of their own, which they then, however, immediately
abandon. 47 Sacraments, they state, can be divided into rites of
initiation, rites of strengthening, rites of return, and rites of

46
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi I,"
AHDLMA 45 (1978): 83-180; "Die Sententie magistn Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi II:
Die Version der florentiner Handschrift," AHDLMA 46 (1979): 45-105. The
dating of these texts derives from Häring's analysis of the paleographical evidence
in the manuscripts on which his edition depends. For the dating of Gilbert's period
of teaching in Paris, see H. C. van Elswijk, Gilbert Porreta: Se vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1966), pp. 25-32; Lauge Olaf Neilsen,
Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta's Thinking and
the Theological Exposition of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130-1180,
Acta theologica danica, 15 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), p. 29. John Marenbon, "A
Note on the Porre tani," in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter
Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 353 n. 2 notes the
existence of these works but does not discuss their contents.
47
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.61, p. 144; Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 4.61, p. 67.
54 CHAPTER TWO

perfection. This scheme suggests that the logical place to begin

their exposition would be with baptism. But, they lead off with the
Eucharist, even though they define it as a sacrament of perfection.
Also, they omit holy orders, even though they repeatedly mention
the clergy as administrators of the other sacraments. And, while
they regard marriage as a sacrament, they cannot decide in which
of their four categories it belongs. In Book 10, while discussing
penance, they belatedly take up the question of original sin, vice,
and virtue, thus presenting the fall of man well before his creation
and well after the incarnation of Christ, ordained to remedy it. The
creation itself is almost an afterthought for the Porretans. We find
it, along with a brief reprise on original sin and an even briefer
allusion to Last Things, in Book 13, sandwiched inexplicably in
between two books devoted to the liturgy of Advent and Lent,
respectively.
This last peculiarity, the inclusion of a lengthy analysis of the
symbolic importance of the liturgy of these two seasons of the
church year, is particularly striking, for it is a total anomaly as a
topic in a scholastic sentence collection in this period. Its presence
here calls attention to the other odd features of the Porretan
scheme, with its heavy imbalance away from dogmatic theology, its
lack of logical and chronological coherence, and its inconsistencies
in the treatment of the sacraments which functions as the principal
theme of these works. The inclusion of the liturgy also points up
what the Porretans exclude. They have not the slightest interest in
cosmology; their account of creation treats of angels and men only.
Nor do they have any interest in discussing faith as a cognitive
state, or, for that matter, as a virtue; ethics, as a topic, is omitted.
Their most remarkable omission, however, is the atonement, a
subject central to any Christian theology and one that was vigor-
ously debated at the time. Yet, on the question of how Christ
accomplishes His saving work the Porretans have nothing at all to
say.
If this schema helps to explain why Porretan theology failed to
capture the imagination of contemporaries as an approach to sys-
tematic theological education, much the same can be said for their
handling of authorities. They do, to be sure, display occasional
flashes of real insight, a thorough command of contemporary di-
alectic, and an acute sensitivity to source criticism. As with most
theologians in this period, they object to Abelard's claim that God
cannot do better or different than He does. In criticizing it, the
Porretans astutely note that a basic flaw in Abelard's argument is
his treatment of God's nature as if it could be compassed by a
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 55

logical analysis of possibility, necessity, and contingency, even

though Abelard himself insists that, since logic is a formal art, it
cannot take us beyond logic to ontology.48 The Porretans' aware-
ness of the technical features of Abelard's logic and the nature of its
claims thus enable them to hoist Abelard on his own petard, and
not merely to argue that his position is unacceptable because it is
not congruent with God as He is believed to be. The most impres-
sive example of the Porretan critique of patristic authority occurs in
their argument against the practice of triple immersion in the
administration of baptism. Going back to a point earlier than the
fifth century, when Pope Leo I instituted that rule, they note that
Cyprian ordained single immersion. In reporting Cyprian's rule,
they note, Augustine garbled Cyprian's text and substituted triple
immersion, which Leo then followed. Given the fact that the prac-
tice of the church since Leo's day has been based on a textual
corruption, the Porretans argue that it can be safely dismissed. 49
These examples, while they certainly are impressive indices of
the Porretans' ability to think in precise logical terms and to
analyze their sources, are, however, exceptions that prove the rule.
In the vast majority of cases, they simply state their own position
without offering any particular rationale for it, even when the issue
is a debated one. On the occasions when they feel a need to bolster
their positions with authorities, whether biblical, patristic, or con-
temporary, their approach is simply to cite the authority by name,
without quoting or paraphrasing his text or considering why he

48
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 2.38-39, p. 119; Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 2.38-42, p. 54.
This is an understanding of Abelard's logic that is borne out in the studies of
modern scholars. The best statements of this position are by Mariateresa Beonio-
Brocchieri [Fumagalli], "La relation entre logique, physique et théologie chez
Abélard," in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (Leuven: Leuven University
Press, 1974), pp. 153-63; The Logic of Abelard, trans. Simon Pleasance (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, 1969), pp. 13-23, 28-36; Mario Dal Pra, intro, to his ed. of Peter
Abelard, Scritti di logica, 2nd ed., Pubblicazioni délia facoltà di lettere e filosofia
delFUniversità di Milano, 34, sezione a cura dellTstituto di storia della filosofia, 3
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1964), pp. xxi-xxiii, xxvi-xxviii; Bernhard Geyer, in
his ed. of Peter Abelard, Philosophischen Schuften, Beiträge, 20:1^4 (Münster:
Aschendorff, 1919-33), 4: 621-22, 624-33; Jean Jolivet, Arts du langage et théologie
chez Abélard, 2nd ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982), pp. 19-22, 117; Martin M. Tweedale,
Abailard on Universals (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1976),
pp. 93-95, 130-32, 210. The chief dissenters are Lambert M. DeRijk, intro, to his
ed. of Peter Abelard, Dialectica, 2nd ed. (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp. N.V.,
1970), pp. xxiii-xxviii, xl, lv-lix, xcv, xcviii, and Lucia Urbani Ulivi, Lapsicologia
di Abelardo e il "Tractatus de intellectibus" (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1976), pp.
85-93, 95-100, not in the sense of Abelard's goals in this connection, but more in
his actual achievement of them.
49
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.13-14, p. 149.
56 CHAPTER TWO

takes the stand he takes, and without indicating very systematically

the countervailing opinions and why they are objectionable.
Despite the fact that they themselves clearly had mastered the
necessary techniques, as pedagogues the Porretans are not very
concerned with passing their methodology of theological reasoning
on to their students.
The next mid-century systematic theologian of discernibly Porre-
tan filiation, the author of the Sententiae divinitatis, is notably more
eclectic than the earliest Porretans and much more erratic in his
handling of authorities.50 In one area, the creation, he offers a full
catalogue of conflicting interpretations and adduces a particularly
strong authority in support of each of them. After canvassing the
disputes, and distinguishing carefully between those that can be
settled with certainty and those on which our knowledge can only
remain probable, he gives his own analysis and response at the end
of each question. In other areas, however, he tends to ignore
current debates. He does not consistently mention the names of
authorities he calls on to anchor his own position. Nor does he refer
very expressly or frequently to contemporary or recent masters.
This unevenness in his treatment of authorities is coupled with an
organizational framework that is equally problematic. His work is
divided into six parts. He begins with the creation, set forth accord-
ing to the hexaemeral account in Genesis, up to but not including
man. Part 2 deals with man, free will and grace. In Part 3 the
author treats original sin and its consequences. In Parts 4 and 5 he
considers the incarnation and the sacraments, respectively, posi-
tioning the divine nature and the Trinity at the end of the sixth
part. This placement of God at the end of the schema is unques-
tionably the most bizarre feature of the Sententiae divinitatis. It does
not occur to the author that this topic is both logically, theologi-
cally, and chronologically prior to the other dogmatic issues he
treats earlier in the work. Aside from this decided peculiarity, there
are some notable omissions. The author departs from the early
Porretan treatment of the sacraments, dividing them into those
received by all Christians and those received only by some Chris-
tians. Having made this distinction, the only sacraments he actually
discusses are those that fall into the first group, although it has to
be said that, with respect to unction, he mentions it only and does
not discuss it. Marriage and holy orders receive no attention. As
with the early Porretans, he omits soteriology. But the gaps in this

50
Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertischen Schule, ed. Bernhard
Geyer, Beiträge, 7: 2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1909).
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 57

work are even more extensive, including angels, the devil, vice and
virtue, the sacerdotal power of the keys in connection with penance,
and Last Things.

H U G H O F ST. V I C T O R AND T H E SUMMA SENTENTIARUM

Far more influential than either the Porretans or the Abelardians

was the systematic theology of Hugh of St. Victor, the De sacramentis
fidei christianae, completed in 1137. In striking contrast to the sen-
tence collections of both of these groups, Hugh produced a work
that is both highly inclusive and that is informed by a clear
rationale accounting for its organization and coverage, one which
also places systematic theology as such along a trajectory of the
modes of human knowledge.51 This rationale is located in Hugh's
celebrated distinction between God's work of institution and His
work of restitution. Hugh entitles the work De sacramentis because
he views as sacramental all the modes by which God reveals
Himself to man and all the modes by which He redeems man. In
describing both of these processes, he follows a largely chronologi-
cal, not logical, order, subordinating many topics to the larger
question of how man comes to a knowledge of God, both as creator
and as redeemer. Hugh takes pains to place the exercise of system-
atic theology very clearly in the context of this broader epistemo-
logical concern. It is, he states at the outset, a second-order mode of
knowledge. In the first stage is a historical reading of Holy Scrip-
ture. Next comes an allegorical understanding of the historical
sense. From that allegorical understanding he now proposes to
compress the main points of doctrine, that must be known for
man's salvation, and that need, therefore, to be included in a
theological summary. It is also important, for Hugh, to distill from
secular writers what can be known about God's work of institution
in the natural world. This material supplements the information
which Scripture supplies about creation. But the Scriptural matter,
he notes, has a different slant. Its aim is less to tell man about
nature as such than to explain how man arrived at his present
dilemma and his need for salvation. Reprising a point he had
discussed at length in his Didascalicon, Hugh completes these intro-
ductory remarks by commenting on the utility of the liberal arts for

51
Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentisfideichristianae, PL 176. Good general
appreciations include Christian Schütz, Deus absconditus, Deus manifestus: Die Lehre
Hugos von St. Viktor über die Offenbarung Gottes (Rome: Herder, 1967), pp. 22-89;
Roger Baron, Science et sagesse chez Hugues de Saint-Viktor (Paris: P. Lethielleux,
1957), passim and esp. p. 139; Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, pp. 185-97.
58 CHAPTER TWO

the theologian, not only for the interpretation of the Bible but also
for the light they shed on the work of institution. He also lists and
describes briefly the books of the Bible, adding the church fathers
as an appendix to the New Testament.52
This elaborate essay on method in place, Hugh accordingly
divides the De sacramentis into two books, devoted to God's work of
institution and His work of restitution, respectively. The schema he
proposes would, indeed, have provided a very cogent approach to
systematic theology, at least if Hugh had adhered to the plan he
sets forth and if he had defined his key terms more clearly than he
does. One problem immediately apparent in the first book is that
Hugh is not always sure of whether the best way to order the
material is a chronological or a logical one, or according to the way
in which man comes to a knowledge of the subject in question.
Faced with having to make a decision on this question, he seeks to
avoid the issue by trying to do all three things at once. At times, the
results are rather confusing. Thus, at the beginning of Book 1,
Hugh leads off with the creation, rather than with the creator. But,
rather than starting with the work of the six days, he prefaces it
with an account of form and matter and the question of whether
primordial matter is préexistent. He then turns to the creation
proper. But here, he displays a lack of certainty as to whether to
present creatures in a hierarchical order, from primordial or exem-
plary causes, to invisible creatures, to visible creatures, or whether
to follow the hexaemeral account in Genesis. His decision is to
combine these two approaches, following neither consistently.
Thus, having ushered man onto the stage as the last created being,
Hugh backs up to discuss primordial causes and the question of
why the world was created at all. Hugh also tries to come to grips
with two other problems at this juncture. One is the question of
whether, and how, the primordial causes can be differentiated from
God. The other is the question of the sequence of creation followed
in the Genesis account, which leaves unanswered how certain
beings were capable of existing if they were created prior to the
natural forces or resources needed for their survival. Augustine and
Bede, Hugh's major sources on these issues, had come up with their
own answers, of which Hugh does not make full use. He leaves
the question of primordial causes dangling, although he accepts the
view that God actually created the entire universe simul, at the
same time, despite the six-day account related in Genesis. The

Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1, prologus 1.1.1, PL 176: 183A-187A.

 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 59

question of why Genesis is written the way it is he answers by

stating that this decision reflects the author's awareness of the way
man comes to know the creation.53
The subject of God, which Hugh takes up initially in the effort to
explain how He differs from primordial causes, leads Hugh to
develop a mini-treatise on the Trinity at that point, followed by
three brief proofs of God's existence, after he has been discussing
the Trinity for some time. But he does not continue with the Trinity
or the divine attributes here because there is still some unfinished
business remaining with respect to the creation, namely, angels.
Angels represent an organizational problem for him since he has
largely opted for a hexaemeral treatment of creation, and the
creation of angels is not included in the work of the six days in
Genesis. To be sure, Hugh could have inserted angels after his
discussion of primordial causes. But he does not make that choice.
He has, as noted, already opted for the creation simul theory. But he
still tries to see how angels fit into the hexaemeron, with under-
standably inconclusive results. Abandoning this unresolved prob-
lem, Hugh returns to man, next considering man prior to the fall,
the fall itself, and the consequences and transmission of original
sin. He acknowledges the fact that what we can know about man in
his prelapsarian state is largely conjectural. His tactic for address-
ing this subject is an interesting one. Rather than invoking a
philosophical "state of nature" analysis, he works backward from
the negative consequences of sin as described in the Bible to the
positive conditions they replaced. In man's fallen state, he needs
redemption, a thought that leads Hugh to remark briefly at this
point on Hell, as the destination he faces without it, and on Purga-
tory and Heaven as the possibilities open to him with it. Still within
Book 1, although, as he had indicated in his preface, it is the proper
subject matter for Book 2, Hugh then introduces, hard on the heels
of man's need for redemption, the incarnation of Christ. He regards
Christ as the supreme sacrament. This idea leads him to offer a
definition of sacrament itself, which he does, for the first time, in
Book 1, chapter 9, almost at the end of the first book, although the
idea of sacrament is the overall theme of the work, and despite the

53
A good account of this problem, which accents the inconsistencies that result
in Hugh's treatment of the creation, is Charlotte Gross, "Twelfth-Century Con-
cepts of Time: Three Reinterpretations of Augustine's Doctrine of Creation
Simul" Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): 325-34. See also A. Mignon, Us
origines de la scolastique et Hugues de Saint-Victor, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1895),
1: 321-28; Jakob Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St. Viktor (Würzburg:
Andreas Göbel, 1897), pp. 37-57.
60 CHAPTER TWO

fact that he has been using the term, with a variety of denotations,
in Book 1, as he plans to do as well in Book 2. For Hugh, sacra-
ments, in any of the senses intended, bring salvation only when
joined with faith and good works. And so, still in Book 1, he
considers faith and the Ten Commandments.
Even thus far, it is clear that the first book of the De sacramentis is
both redundant and disorganized. Its schematic problems stem
both from delay and anticipation in his positioning of material, as
well as from his trying to do too many things at once in his handling
of creation. Book 2 has its own schematic difficulties. Hugh opens
Book 2 with Christ's incarnation, which he had already introduced
in Book 1. He then proceeds to restate his views on the Trinity. It is
at this point that he first raises the vexed question of theological
language, the meaning of terms such as person, nature, and sub-
stance with respect to the deity, although, it must be noted, he has
already been using them, and without benefit of any lexical clar-
ifications, in this same connection repeatedly, in both books. Hugh
wrestles manfully with the contemporary debates on theological
language, criticizing some of the more technically minded theolo-
gians of the day for being too abstruse or for turning the issue into a
word game. He himself neither appreciates the technical problems
involved nor the need for terminological precision in this context.
He fails to come up with alternatives to the formulae to which he
objects that are both clear and comprehensible and that convey
with accuracy and specificity the doctrine he wants to support.
Abandoning rather than resolving that subject, he moves on to the
church and its sacramental rites, as an extension of the incarnation
into the present age. It is possible that Hugh has picked up this
idea from Honorius. In any event, he is the first scholastic theolo-
gian to include a discussion of ecclesiology in a systematic work.
Hugh's treatment of the sacraments, in the narrow sense of the
specific rites of the church, is confined to sensible signs that signify,
resemble, and contain grace. Unlike many of his predecessors, he
presents a treatise on the sacraments in Book 2 that yokes them all
to his general definition, that seeks a parallel treatment of all of
them, and that does not weave them into or subordinate them to
other topics. Hugh is a proponent of the septiform principle on the
grounds he lays down in his definition of sacrament in general. He
does not merely take up individual sacraments that interest him,
ignoring those that he does not find truly sacramental. Instead, he
explains why all seven are sacraments, in contrast with other
rituals such as the sign of the cross, which are sacred signs but
which lack the capacity to convey grace. If Hugh is clear on that
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 61

point, his treatment of sacraments shares with his treatment of

creation in Book 1 a confusing tendency to approach his subject
from several perspectives at once. He begins his account with holy
orders because the priesthood is necessary for the administration of
the other sacraments and because the different grades of holy
orders reflect the ministry of Christ which the church now extends
to the world. Marriage is taken up next because it was the first
sacrament, instituted by God in Eden before the fall. Here we can
see Hugh trying to combine a chronological model, based on the
order in which the sacraments were instituted, with a logical model,
based on the existence in place of the men needed to perform
them. At the same time, Hugh presents baptism, confirmation, the
Eucharist, penance, and unction in the order of reception. And,
also at the same time, he distinguishes these sacraments, as re-
ceived by all Christians, from the sacraments that some Christians
receive, a thought that impels him to return to marriage, which he
places after the Eucharist and reprises. In between the Eucharist
and matrimony, and for reasons apparent to Hugh alone, he inserts
a discussion of simony. One sometimes does find this topic included
in a treatise on the sacraments within a larger systematic work. But
when this is the case, it is typically presented after holy orders, as a
perversion of that sacrament. Hugh offers no explanation for his
inclusion of simony or for his location of it at the point where he
places it. It is the only sin he treats in this particular context; for his
more extended consideration of sin in general he introduces, more
logically, as a preface to the sacrament of penance. Hugh concludes
with a fairly detailed discussion of Last Things, expanding on what
he had said about Heaven and Hell in Book 1 but not reiterating
his earlier remarks on Purgatory.
While the sentence collections of contemporary and earlier scho-
lastics often suffer from omissions, this is scarcely the problem with
Hugh's De sacramentis. His difficulties lie more in the realm of
redundancy and in his unwillingness to adhere to his announced
schema, which would have yielded a more coherent organization
than the one with which he actually emerges. Three other salient
weaknesses are also visible in Hugh's attack on his assignment.
One is the multiple points of view he brings to such subjects as the
sacraments and the creation. Far from illuminating these topics by
shedding light from different angles on them, this tactic leads to
intellectual disjunction and confusion. A second difficulty lies in
Hugh's vagueness about terms that he needs to define and to use
clearly if he is going to succeed in refuting thinkers whom he
opposes, or even if he is going to carry forward his own larger
62 CHAPTER TWO

project. Here, his inconclusive handling of theological language is

an obstruction to his argument. Even more serious is his polyvalent
use of the term "sacrament." Even after having produced a general
definition that applies to the rites of the church which medieval
Christians associated with that term, he continues to use it to refer
to their Old Testament precursors, without qualifying the word in
such a way as to clarify why God deemed it necessary to supplant
these usages in the New Testament. Hugh even uses the phrase
"sacraments of the devil." 54 From the context, it can be ascertained
that what he means by this locution is probably the means by
which the devil binds sinners to himself. None the less, it is an
electrifying and anomalous formula in the light of Hugh's under-
standings of "sacrament" elsewhere in the work. Third, Hugh is
not always alive to the resources made available by his sources. A
good case in point, noted above, is the question of primordial
causes. Although Hugh draws heavily here on Augustine's Genesis
commentaries, he ignores the fact that Augustine had come to grips
with the same problem and had resolved it in a manner that would
have been perfectly sensible for Hugh to have adopted, given his
doctrinal desiderata on that subject.
This last observation leads us to a consideration of Hugh as a
guide to the handling of authorities more generally. Here, although
he has a wide knowledge of patristic sources, and one that indicates
a personal reading of them that goes beyond the materials available
in catenae or anthologies, he is less a model for the critical evaluation
of authorities than he is, at least potentially, as a guide to system-
atic theology.55 In the first place, except in the contexts of Christo-
logy and Trinitarian theology, he does not give the names of the
authorities to whom he refers. It was typical, in this period, for
scholastic theologians to indicate the positions of contemporaries
by the conventional use of quidam or alii dicunt, "as some say" or "as
others say;" Hugh extends this usage to the fathers as well.
Whether in the rare instances where he mentions them by name or
in the more usual cases where he does not, he declines to indicate
which of the author's specific works he is drawing upon. He does
not quote from them, contenting himself with summarizing their
conclusions. This practice does not make it easy for a reader to
ascertain why Hugh prefers one position over another. While
Hugh, as noted, presents the fathers as an appendix to Holy

54
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.8.11, PL 176: 312B.
55
Ludwig Ott, "Hugo von St. Viktor und die Kirchenväter," Divus Thomas, 3rd
ser. 27 (1949): 293-95.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 63

Scripture, this does not mean, in practice, that he is unwilling to

criticize or to reject patristic authority. When he does so, his tactic
is to take his own line, based on the theological considerations he
thinks are important at that juncture, but without systematically
comparing or analyzing the authorities in question, sifting out their
differences through the use of logic or preferring some to others on
historical grounds. If he can find concord among the authorities he
is pleased. But he is not interested in a sustained exercise in
reconciling conflicts; and he does not multiply citations as an
illustration of how to do so. He does treat, and take a stand on,
some of the leading controversies of the day. But Hugh's disinclina-
tion to rationalize his own positions and to explain his reasons for
preferring certain authorities to others and for his departures from
tradition make him less helpful than he might be as a model for how
to replicate the thought processes that have brought him to the
conclusions he reaches.
It cannot be said that any of Hugh's immediate followers
achieved dramatic rectifications of these Victorine deficiencies. The
most important of these is undoubtedly the anonymous author of
the Summa sententiarum, composed shortly after the completion of
Hugh's De sacramentis. David Luscombe has aptly described the
Summa sententiarum as "the Place de l'Étoile of early twelfth-century
theological literature, the point of arrival and of departure and the
center of circulation for many other writings and teachings."56 This
judgment is eminently sound when it comes to the way in which the
author poses the questions he takes up and the positions he takes on
them. He certainly tightens up the arguments against contempo-
rary theologians whom Hugh had opposed, borrowing some of
their ideas in the process, while avoiding some of Hugh's organiza-
tional problems. At the same time, he perpetuates some of the
difficulties in Hugh's schema and omits some of the topics that
Hugh had included. The Summa sententiarum is divided into seven
parts. The author first takes up the theological virtues. Then he
discusses the Trinity, the incarnation, angels, man, the fall, the
nature and transmission of original sin, and the sacraments. For
him, the sacraments include the precepts of the Old Law and six of
the rites of the New, concluding with marriage.

Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard> p. 198. Luscombe gives a fine overall
summary of the place of this work in contemporary theology and provides the
most cogent analysis of its dating and its possible authorship, reviewing the
previous literature, pp. 199-213. We concur with his view that the best date is ca.
1138-42 and that efforts to assign the work to any one author have been inconclu-
sive. The text of the Summa sententiarum is printed in PL 176.
64 CHAPTER TWO

In comparing this author's schema with Hugh's, we note the

omission of a hexaemeral account of creation. Only two creatures,
angels and men, are considered. The rest of the cosmos, including
the vexed question of primordial causes, goes by the board. Other
salient omissions are holy orders, the church, and Last Things, as
well as a number of issues hotly debated at this time, on which
Hugh had not failed to state his opinions. Good examples can be
found in the author's treatment of the sacraments. Under the
heading of baptism, he does not take up the validity of baptism by
desire or baptism by blood. With respect to penance, he states that
contrition, confession, and satisfaction are all required, but indi-
cates neither the fact that contemporaries were arguing about
when, in that sequence of events, the penitent's sin is remitted, nor
his own felt need to take a stand on this question. The author, like
Hugh, offers a general definition of sacrament that is apposite to the
rites of the church. But it does not apply, in his view, to the Old
Testament practices which he none the less describes as sacra-
ments. Undoubtedly, the most striking organizational peculiarity
of the Summa sententiarum is the author's decision to discuss the
incarnation before the creation and fall of man. This being the case,
it is initially quite difficult for the reader to see why the incarnation
occurred at all. It also points,to another deficiency of this work, an
extremely laconic and hasty treatment of soteriology.
The Summa sententiarum is much less redundant than Hugh's De
sacramentis. But the author does repeat himself in the treatment of
ethics. He defines sin in general in Book 3, the section of the work
where he places the fall of man, introducing that definition, how-
ever, after he has already been discussing original sin and its
difference from actual sin for some paragraphs. He then moves on
to virtue, understood not in its own right but merely as the opposite
of vice. Virtue also comes up in two other locations. Faith, hope,
and charity form the author's subject in Book 1; and charity
reappears as the fulfillment of the law following his consideration of
the Ten Commandments in Book 4. In none of these places does he
treat the psychogenesis of moral acts or the relation between grace
and human effort in man's moral life.
As noted, the author does not address all the debated issues of
the day. But he does seek to cover the major bases, whether
controversial or not. Unless he is treating controversial questions,
he is inclined simply to state his own opinions, without giving
reasons for them. In handling some controversial points, he glosses
over the fact that they are, indeed, controversial, and proceeds in
the same manner. In cases where he does set forth a controversy as
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 65

controversial, he presents the conflicting views and the authorities

on whom the contestants base them. He then tells the reader which
position he supports, although he is not terribly skillful or forth-
coming in explaining why. He sometimes contents himself with the
nude citation of countervailing authorities, as if they were self-
explanatory and intrinsically persuasive. While the author some-
times succeeds in selecting extremely pertinent advocates for the
positions taken in these debates, his handling of his authorities does
not help the reader to see what, in their reasoning or in the context
of their arguments, makes them authoritative or not, in the author's
eyes. In handling the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the
day, the author is more inclined than Hugh to use the technical
vocabulary imported into this area by the more avant-garde theolo-
gians, although he often uses these terms imprecisely, suggesting
that he has not fully grasped the semantic construction which their
coiners had placed upon them or the implications flowing from
their use. These traits may help to suggest why the Summa senten-
tiarum did not become a standard textbook in the teaching of
systematic theology despite its strong substantive influence on con-
temporary scholasticism.

R O L A N D O F B O L O G N A , R O B E R T PULLEN, R O B E R T O F M E L U N

As we move deeper into the generation of the 1140s and 1150s,

the tendency toward eclecticism, already visible to some degree in
the Summa sententiarum and the Sententiae divinitatis, becomes more
pronounced. This is certainly the case with Roland of Bologna,
Robert Pullen, and Robert of Melun, Peter Lombard's chief com-
petitors at that time. The first of these figures, Roland of Bologna,
is an interesting witness to the fact that books travelled widely in
this period, no less than pupils and masters, and that systematic
theology was practiced beyond the Alps as well as across the Rhine,
and among authors whose primary affiliation might be with a
calling other than that of scholastic theology. For Roland was a
master at Bologna not known ever to have left his native country,
a master equally if not better known as a canonist and as one of
the earliest commentators on Gratian's Decretum?1 He produced a

37
On this account, Roland in the past was sometimes confused with the
Bolognese canonist Roland Bandinelli, who later became Pope Alexander III.
This identification has been disproved by James A. Brundage, "Marriage and
Sexuality in the Decretals of Pope Alexander III," in Miscellanea Rolando Bandinelli,
Papa Alessandro III, ed. Filippo Liotta (Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati,
66 CHAPTER TWO

summa of canon law, as well as a theological sentence collection

written in ca. 1150.58 Roland's theology bears the imprint of a
canonical mentality at some points, no less than the marked in-
fluence of Abelard and, to a lesser extent, Hugh of St. Victor.
Roland's organization shows the influence of both of these masters.
His affinities with the Abelardians can be seen in his tripartite
subdivision of his Sentences into faith, sacraments, and charity,
although he reverses the order of the second and third subdivisions
usual in that school. Also typical of the Abelardian approach is
Roland's omission of Last Things and holy orders. The only feature
of the priesthood on which he comments is the power of the keys.
But, unlike the Abelardians, with their deep interest in the theme of
free will, he does not discuss the angels' possession ofthat faculty or
the psychogenesis of their fall. He gives un-Abelardian short shrift
to these ethical questions in man's case as well.
After an Abelardian curtain-raiser on faith and its nature as a
cognitive state, Roland offers a table of contents in his first book
that can be seen as an improved version of Hugh's agenda in the De
sacramentis. Although he does raise some cosmological questions
only to leave them dangling, Roland has clearly solved some of the
organizational problems that had plagued Hugh in that connec-
tion. Roland begins with the divine nature, treating God's attrib-
utes as such before moving to the Trinity. Next, he introduces the
creation, and finds a far more cogent way of blending logic and
chronology here than Hugh does. While he omits primordial
causes, he begins with the creation of primordial matter, con-
tinuing with angels, the work of the six days, and man. This topic is
followed by the fall and the transmission of original sin. Roland
concludes Book 1 with a consideration of the Old Law, ordained to
govern man. He goes into more detail on this subject than the
Abelardians do but he keeps it more firmly under control as a
superseded dispensation than Hugh does. Agreeing with Hugh that
Christ is the supreme sacrament, Roland begins Book 2 with the
incarnation, and treats the sacraments of the church in the order in

1986), pp. 59-83; Law, Sex, and Christian Sodety in Medieval Europe (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 257 n. 3; John T. Noonan, "Who Was
Rolandus?" in Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed.
Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1977), pp. 21-48. I would like to thank Professor Brundage for
bringing this matter to my attention.
58
Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius Gietl (Amsterdam:
Editions Rodopi, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder, 1891 ed.]), pp.
xvii-xviii for the dating; Summa magistri Rolandi, ed. Friedrich Thaner (Aalen:
Scientia Verlag, 1962 [repr. of Innsbruck, 1874 ed.]), p. xli for the dating.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 67

which they are received, as an extension of Christ's saving work in

the world.
The weakest point in Roland's organizational scheme is his
handling of ethics. Ostensibly, this subject belongs in book 3, under
the heading of charity or the moral life of the Christian. He does
talk about charity in that book, albeit in a cursory way. But his
chief discussion of vice and virtue is placed in Book 2, as an
addendum to the sacrament of penance. Another difficulty is
Roland's placement of the topic of predestination. He locates it
in Book 3 as a means of raising, under the heading of ethics, the
question of the relation of free will to grace in the moral life. Both
Hugh and Abelard had treated predestination under the heading of
God's attributes and powers, perhaps a more logical setting for that
topic. The chief debt that Roland the sentence collector owes to
Roland the canonist lies in his treatment of the sacraments. As with
other canonists, he tends to view the sacraments more from the
standpoint of their administration than from the standpoint of their
reception, and he assesses their validity largely in that light. In
treating marriage, for instance, the aspect of the sacrament that
brings a real sparkle to Roland's eyes is the impediments created by
consanguinity and affinity, to which he devotes most of his atten-
tion and which he discusses with relish. He reflects none of the
concern for the internalizing of the sacraments by the recipient and
their role in his sanctification that are hallmarks of sacramental
reflection on the part of contemporary theologians. Roland's canon-
ical inclinations are also reflected in his tendency to handle legal-
istically the ethical questions debated the most ardently by current
theologians, when he takes them up at all.
If Hugh shares the honors with Abelard in Roland's schema,
Roland's methodology places him squarely in the camp of the
Abelßrdians. Indeed, he is a better exponent of the approach
Abelard advocated than the master himself in practice. Roland is
extremely analytical and rigorous. He gives clear definitions of his
terms and presents his material in a highly formal, question-
oriented manner. In particular, he is interested in addressing issues
that possess a philosophical content. He produces many authorities
for and against each position he treats and explains clearly why he
supports or rejects them. He seeks to reconcile them systematically
when he can, typically citing the various opinions at the beginning
of each question and then discussing their merits and demerits as
he works toward his personal solution. Roland shows a keen aware-
ness of the importance of historical criticism. A good example can
be found in his treatment of confirmation. Roland notes that, in the
68 CHAPTER TWO

ecclesia primitiva, some authorities had agreed to waive the rule that
a bishop is the only proper minister of confirmation, in cases where
the Christian population was thin on the ground and a bishop
might not be easily available. But, such a dispensation, he
observes, is no longer needed in the present.59 This kind of analysis
is less typical of Roland's treatment of authorities than is his
tendency to reformulate what they have to say in philosophical
terms. In general, he is interested less in the context in which they
had written than in the logical or metaphysical implications of their
opinions. It is these implications that he is most eager to use,
framing them, as well as the questions he addresses, in syllogistic
form, whether inductive, deductive, or hypothetical. While Roland
also adduces and applies the norm of theological appropriateness,
his chief methodological trait is the systematic way in which he
applies reason both to the questions he raises and to the authorities
he cites.
The effort to refine Hugh of St. Victor's schema and to give more
sustained attention to the weighing of authorities also characterize
the sentence collections of Robert Pullen and Robert of Melun,
both of whom were English theologians teaching in Paris during
Peter Lombard's time. Since they lack the canonical outlook in-
forming Roland's work, which is likely to have limited the latter's
appeal among theologians, these two figures need to be considered
carefully as real contemporary alternatives to Peter. Robert
Pullen's efforts to improve on Hugh, on whom he is closely depen-
dent, are more apparent than real. He produced the lengthiest
sentence collection of the century, between 1142 and 1144,60 before
being called to Rome and made a cardinal. His Sentences occupy
eight books. In the first, he begins with a brief proof of God's
existence and then considers the divine attributes in general before
proceeding to the Trinity. Book 2 covers the creation, angels, man,
and the fall, and the nature and transmission of original sin. The
theme of the third book is the redemption. Beginning with the Old
Law in relation to the New, Robert continues with the incarnation
and nature of Christ. Christ's human nature, and, in particular,

59
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 24. His methodological affinities to Abelard have
been treated well by Gietl, intro, to his ed. of Sentences, pp. xxi-lxi; Luscombe, The
School of Peter Abelard, pp. 244-53.
60
Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo, PL 186. For the dating of this work, see
Franz Pelster, "Einege Angaben über Leben und Schriften des Robert Pullus,
Kardinal und Kanzler der römischen Kirche (d. 1146)," Scholastik 12 (1937):
23$-47; F. Courtney, Cardinal Robert Pullen: An English Theologian of the Twelfth
Century (Rome: Universitas Gregoriana, 1954), p. 23.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 69

Christ's human knowledge, receives more attention than any other

dogmatic issue in Robert's Sentences. It occupies approximately half
of Book 3 and the whole of Book 4. Book 5 continues with a
historical account of the life of Christ, culminating with His send-
ing of the Holy Spirit and His entrusting of His disciples with their
evangelical mission at Pentecost.
In the remainder of this book and in the books that follow,
Robert's concern is with how this evangelical mission is accom-
plished. He initiates that theme with a consideration of faith and
justification, and then moves on to the ethical and sacramental
lives of Christians. There is no distinct treatise either on ethics or
on the sacraments in this work. Like Honorius, Robert tends to
intermingle these subjects. Still in Book 5, and following justifica-
tion, he takes up baptism and penance. He then backpedals to
consider concupiscence as a consequence of original sin and the
nature of sin in general, to which these two sacraments speak as a
remedy. Sin in general is followed by the theological virtues, with
another flashback, following that topic, to sins that are mortal.
Ethics continues to concern Robert in Book 6, where he raises the
question of the degree to which negligence, ignorance, and diabol-
ical temptation affect man's culpability for sin. He then returns to
the types of sin, distinguishing between original and post-baptismal
sin. Having mentioned diabolical temptation earlier in Book 6, he
picks up that thread again, now discussing the theme in connection
with the assistance of the good angels in man's moral life. He ranks
both the angels and the demons according to the Pseudo-Dionysian
hierarchy. He then returns to penance, in connection with which he
discusses the priestly power of the keys and excommunication.
Book 7 begins with another reprise on penance, focusing on the
satisfaction stage of the sacrament. Next, Robert inserts a brief
treatise on the church. As we can see, he does not position it, as
Hugh and Honorius do, after his treatment of Christ's earthly life
as the extension of His saving work in sacramental sanctification,
even thought he had alluded to the foundation of the church at
Pentecost. Rather, Robert takes up the church under the heading of
ethics. Making a brief pass at the two-swords theory, unusual
among contemporary systematic theologians, who generally con-
ceded this topic to the canonists and publicists in their division of
labor, he moves to the various callings within the church. He
discusses the grades of holy orders and then treats a series of lay
professions, from ruler, to soldier, to civil servant; he then turns to
virginity and marriage, and the active and contemplative lives.
Returning to marriage, Robert now considers it not as a calling but
70 CHAPTER TWO

as a sacrament. In Book 8, Robert leads off with the Eucharist. But

the bulk of this book is devoted to Last Things, which he covers in
detail, drawing heavily on Augustine's City of God, as had Hugh.
Antichrist and his reign, the second coming of Christ, the resurrec-
tion, the last judgment, and Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell are all
described vividly and with much celestial fireworks, completing
Robert's summa.
Even this bare report on his coverage and organization suggests
the problems embedded in Robert Pullen's work as a systematic
theologian. It is true that there are some omissions in his Sentences.
Notably, he does not provide a general definition of sacrament, a
discussion or a principled rejection of confirmation and unction as
sacraments, or any notice of the confessionist-contritionist debate
currently raging in his analysis of penance. Robert, like the author
of the Summa sententiarum, confines his account of creation to angels
and men alone. But it is less his omissions than his other difficulties
that make Robert's work unwieldy and intellectually indigestible.
There is a marked lack of logic in his handling of many topics. On
one level, for example, his inclusion of holy orders and marriage
under the heading of the church makes sense, but it does not enable
him to distinguish these vocations from other Christian callings
that he does not regard as sacraments. Given Robert's scheme for
treating the sacraments, the Eucharist is presented almost as an
afterthought. He frequently puts the cart before the horse. This
tendency in turn results in his Sentences' most serious weakness from
an organizational standpoint, acute redundancy. Stemming from
Robert's inability to decide where to discuss a host of topics, this
deficiency leads him to return to them over and over again. He
takes up angels three times, once in the creation, next in man's
moral life, and finally in the last judgment. Penance also receives
three separate treatments, in association with baptism, in man's
moral struggle as assisted by angels and as impeded by demons,
and in connection with the authority of priests to impose satisfac-
tion. The bits and pieces of what might have been a full-scale
consideration of ethics are scattered among five different locations.
"Haphazard" is the term used to describe Robert's schema by
F. Courtney, and one can only agree. 61
There are still other problems. A mid-twelfth-century reader
picking up this work would gain no sense from it what was impor-
tant and what was not from the amount of space Robert assigns to

61
Courtney, Cardinal Robert Pullen, p. 22.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 71

particular subjects. Robert lacks a sense of proportion. He is also

extremely longwinded. He also frequently digresses, including
material from biblical history at some points that is not essential to
the forwarding of his argument and which is quite irrelevant to the
contexts in which it is placed. Not to put too fine a point on it, this
tendency reflects Robert's marked propensity for padding. Digres-
sion is also one of his ways of beating a strategic retreat from
problems he has trouble resolving. Another tactic he uses for the
same purpose is the posing of substantive questions in the form of
rhetorical questions, which, being unanswered, leave the reader up
in the air. There are quite a few topics which he seeks to dispose of
in one or another of these ways, the most glaring example being
Christ's human knowledge.62 The reason why Robert leaves so
many questions open is not because his sources, patristic and more
recent, do not provide clear guidance on how definite conclusions
might be drawn, but because he simply cannot make up his mind.
He presents many controversial questions at otiose length, provid-
ing the alternative solutions, side by side, and then moving on
without giving the reader any indication of what he personally finds
useful or problematic in any of the opinions cited or what prevents
him from choosing among them. As to what, in principle, would be
needed in order to make a clear determination, he leaves the reader
in the dark. Nor does he give the reader much help in deciding
whether conflicting authorities are compatible or not. Often, as
well, Robert repeats himself, multiplying long chains of authorities
for each and every point, whether controversial or not, piling these
citations on top of each other to no useful end, since they are
basically saying the same thing, or are quoting each other, without
adding any fresh perspective to the debate.
In citing authorities, outside of encumbering his text with super-
fluous references, Robert's technique is to give the authority's view,
and then to offer a view drawn from reason, on the point under
review. But he does not integrate reason with authority by investi-
gating the authority's rationale for the position he takes. Robert
does refer frequently, and positively, to philosophical sources. He is
sensitive to the utility of grammar and logic as analytical tools. At
the same time, he does not use logic as a structural principle in his
schema, since he does not discriminate between topics that are
controversial and need to be settled and topics that are not. Nor

62
A point noted despairingly by Horacio Santiago-Otero, El conodmiento de
Cristo en cuanto hombre en la teologia de la primera mitad del siglo XII (Pamplona:
Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1970), p. 204.
72 CHAPTER TWO

does he always grasp the difference between assertion, citation of

authority, explanation, and proof. Despite his appeal to the verbal
disciplines, he does not develop and use a consistent theological
vocabulary, or define key terms before he puts them to work. And,
despite his exhaustive, and reduplicative, catalogue of patristic
witnesses, he appeals to the Bible more than to any other authority.
Altogether, it is perhaps not surprising that Robert Pullen did not
succeed in attracting disciples and that his influence largely evapo-
rated from the scholastic scene following his removal to Rome.
Working a decade later, Robert of Melun at first glance looks to
be a self-conscious critic of many of the weaknesses in the Sentences
of Robert Pullen. His own Sentences were composed from the mid-
1150s through 1160, undergoing a double redaction.63 Robert of
Melun's stated goal was to attack Gilbert of Poitiers and to synthe-
size the theologies of Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor.64 From Hugh
he takes the conceptual model of God's institution and restitution
as the basis of his schema, and the broadgauged language of
"sacrament" as applied to both of these processes.63 This appro-
priation entails, for Robert, as it does for Hugh, an interest in
treating God as He manifests Himself to man, rather than God in
and of Himself. In comparison with Hugh, Robert devotes more
attention to topics such as predestination and original sin, which he
feels the Victorines had given too abbreviated a treatment. From
Abelard Robert derives his confidence in and command of logic as
a tool in theological reasoning. While he does not always agree with
Abelard's substantive conclusions, he often follows his lead in
deciding what topics ought to be posed and what manner of
address should be taken to them.66 Another feature of the Abelar-
dian legacy absorbed by Robert which sometimes goes by the
board among the Abelardians themselves, and which is ignored by
many other theologians at this time, is a concern with accuracy in

63
For the dating of the work and the evidence of the two redactions, see
Raymond-M. Martin, "L'Oeuvre théologique de Robert de Melun," RHE 15
(1914): 485; "Un texte intéressant de Robert de Melun," RHE 28 (1932): 313-15.
64
Robert of Melun, Sententie prologus, éd. Raymond-M. Martin, 2 vols, in 3
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1947-52), 3 part 1: 44-49. See, in
general, Martin's discussion in his intro., pp. xi-xiv and his annotations to pp.
45-46; Ulrich Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre des Robert von Melun (Mainz:
Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1964), pp. 328-30.
65
This side of Robert's work is well developed by Ulrich Horst, Gesetz und
Evangelium: Das Alte Testament in der Theologie des Robert von Melun (Munich: Ferdi-
nand Schöningh, 1971), pp. 3-5.
66
Ulrich Horst, "Beiträge zum Einfluss Abaelards auf Robert von Melun,"
RTAM 26 (1959): 214-26.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 73

the citation of sources. All too often, Robert complains, writers give
a mangled version of a text they are citing, or mis-attribute their
sources, or misrepresent the views they are reporting, out of sloppi-
ness or prejudice or ignorance. For this reason, he insists, it is
important to give the author's name, the title of his work being
cited, and a verbatim quotation rather than a paraphrase of his
words.67 He also criticizes people who are too wordy, who fling
about Greek terms so as to flaunt their erudition and who get
sidetracked into making inappropriate applications of the liberal
arts to theology.68
Another feature of Robert's Sentences which suggests that he is a
serious pedagogue who means business is his careful subdivision of
his text into titles, distinctions, and chapters, in order to highlight
the intellectual itinerary through which he conducts the student
and to facilitate reference. He outlines these subdivisions clearly
and explains their purpose.69 Robert is one of the earliest of twelfth-
century scholastic theologians to do so, and his subdivisions are
much more detailed than those found in any other such author in
his time. Quite apart from the merits of his positions, the thorough-
going professionalism which Robert's work projects in all these
respects has inclined his editor, Raymond-M. Martin, to aver that
he came closer than anyone else in the 1150s to giving Peter
Lombard a run for his money. The reason why he did not, in
Martin's opinion, is that Robert's Sentences remained incomplete.70
In 1160, he was recalled to England to accept ecclesiastical prefer-
ment, ending his life as bishop of Hereford. His work as we have it
omits the last three sections of the second part of his Sentences, which
would have dealt with sacraments, ethics, and Last Things.
But is Martin's judgment accurate, or does it spring from mis-
placed editorial enthusiasm? A closer look at Robert's schema and
his methodology in practice will help us to see whether he lives up
to the project he announces in his no-nonsense prologue. As noted,
Robert borrows from Hugh the notion of sacrament as his organiz-
ing principle. The two parts of his Sentences, accordingly, are enti-
tled the sacraments of the Old Law and the sacraments of the New
Law, respectively. Omitting the issue of what God reveals of Him-
self in nature, each section considers only what the Old and New
Testaments reveal about Him. Accordingly, Robert prefaces his

Robert of Melun, Sent, prologus, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 44 49.

Ibid., pp. 4-19, 25-44.
Ibid., pp. 49-56, 59-156.
Martin, "L'Oeuvre théologique," p. 489.
74 CHAPTER TWO

consideration of the divine nature, his first topic in part 1, with a

discussion of the relationship of the Old Testament revelation itself
to the revelation of the New Testament, asfigurato Veritas. He offers
suggestions on the ways of reading the Bible, noting that theologi-
cal language is sometimes used literally and sometimes figuratively
in Holy Scripture. Here he recapitulates Augustine's De doctrina
Christiana by way of Hugh's Didascalicon. After commenting on the
relationship of philosophy to revelation, which expands on the
observations he makes on the utility of the artes in his prologue, he
repeats Hugh's listing of the books of the Bible, adding to it a
treatment of the ages of the world. To this he appends a considera-
tion of the six days of creation. For Robert, creation includes
unformed matter, formed matter, and man. He omits angels and
other cosmological problems. At this point in part 1, having
already ushered the world and man onto the stage, he returns to
God, taking up the Trinity and how it may be known. This subject
leads to another disquisition on theological language. Robert then
moves to the divine attributes in general, which leads him to yet
another consideration of theological language. Having ignored
angels in the context of creation, Robert now introduces them.
Judging from the point in his account at which he positions them,
they would appear to have been created after the creation of man.
Robert discusses their hierarchy, and their duties, including their
role in the last judgment. He then returns to man and his composi-
tion and, in particular, his soul. After a digression on the so-called
World Soul, he continues with the human soul and its similarities
to and differences from the souls of animals and plants. A major
faculty of the human soul is free will. This thought moves Robert to
a comparison between charity and sin, to man's nature before the
fall, to the fall itself, and to the character of original sin. The second
part of Robert's Sentences, designed to cover the sacraments of the
New Law, leads off with another reprise of the differences between
the Old and New Testaments, this time by contrasting the Mosaic
laws and rituals with the Christian sacraments. That task com-
pleted, the second section of part 2 treats the incarnation and
nature of Christ, the redemption, Christ's conception, His condi-
tion in the tomb, and His harrowing of Hell. The text breaks off
here, but, judging from the detailed table of contents Robert supplies,
he planned to move directly from the harrowing of Hell to the
sacraments, ethics, and Last Things in sections 3 through 5 of part 2.
A consideration of this schema reveals that Robert has not been
entirely successful in eliminating the illogical order and redun-
dancy that plague the De sacramentis and other works influenced by
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 75

it. In some respects he perpetuates the existing problems of the

Victorine model and in other respects he substitutes his own ver-
sion of repetition and inconsistency. Robert's decision to insert the
creation in part 1 of his Sentences ahead of the creator reflects the
Hugonian idea that man comes to a knowledge of God through His
works. At the same time, Robert tries to structure the creation
itself, or as much of it as he includes, in a more exclusively hex-
aemeral order than Hugh does, although without advancing the
argument that the sequence of beings created according to the
Genesis account is a reflection of the steps in human cognition. His
placement of the topic of angels, detached from the creation
account, is sut generis and has little to recommend it. Robert treats
man both under the heading of creation and later on, after a
consideration of the role of the angels in the last judgment that
appears to jump the gun. The World Soul and the debates sur-
rounding it would seem to belong more appropriately in the section
of part 1 dealing with the creation. In part 2 of the Sentences, Robert
brings up the conception of Christ by the Virgin Mary after His
incarnation, nature, and redemption of man have already been
discussed. This item is both logically, chronologically, and theolog-
ically out of place. We cannot know what Robert was planning to
say in the ethical treatise that would have been the fourth section of
part 2, and how much it would have reiterated or made use of his
analysis of charity and sin in part 1. The most notable redundancy
in Robert's Sentences, and it is one he is responsible for introducing
into the Victorine tradition, lies in his handling of the topic of
theological language. He sees, more clearly than Hugh, that this is
an important subject, and he does make some notable steps toward
attaining a clear and consistent vocabulary. But, the extensive, and
repeated, attention paid by Robert to this issue is less an index of
his success at resolving it than a reflection of his need to return to it,
like a dog worrying a bone, in quest of a full resolution that remains
elusive. In these respects, while Robert can be read as having
purged his Sentences of some of the organizational problems of the De
sacramentis and the Summa sententiarum, not to mention the Sentences of
Robert Pullen, serious difficulties remain in his schema quite apart
from its lack of completion.
On another level, Robert imports a fresh conceptual complica-
tion into his schema that is not found in previous works that stand
under Hugh's shadow. He defines the material he treats in part 1 as
the Old Testamentfigurae,which only shadow forth the New Testa-
ment veritates. In so doing, Robert compounds an unsolved di-
lemma concerning the status of the fundamental dogmas he
76 CHAPTER TWO

addresses in this part of the Sentences. He makes many points about

basic and substantive metaphysical and anthropological realities in
his treatment of divine and human nature. Thus, he is talking here
about what truly is, not about partial and precursory events that
merely adumbrate the fullness of revealed truth to come. Robert
never comes to grips with the question of how, or whether, these
dogmatic topics can truly be understood as typological foreshadow-
ings of reality and not as essential truths of the Christian faith in
their own right, truths that will never be superseded.
Turning to Robert's method of argument and his use of author-
ities, we can measure him here against his stated objectives and his
criticisms of practices that he finds objectionable. He certainly does
give careful and extended treatment to many of the issues that call
for it the most urgently. Unlike the work of Robert Pullen, one can
see at a glance in Robert of Melun's Sentences which topics are
important, which topics are problematic, and which topics are not,
in terms of the amount of attention he gives to them. Following
Hugh, Robert tends to make little distinction between the Bible
and the church fathers as authorities. He draws on a wide range of
authorities, and they are authorities who are distinctly apposite to
the points debated. He also calls on his own rational analysis. The
method he employs reflects a technique which he had already
developed as a master of logic, a field which, like Abelard, he had
pursued before becoming a theologian. We have as a witness John
of Salisbury, who studied with him at that time and who observes
that Robert's teaching method typically juxtaposed pros and cons,
in order to show that the same terms could bear different meanings
and that there was more than one approach or answer. John adds
that, although thorough in his exposition and analysis of the
alternatives, Robert's own solutions were concise and to the point.71
While the first part of Robert's technique carried over into his
work as a theologian, concision often goes by the board in his
Sentences, and for two reasons. Like Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun
can be extremely longwinded and repetitious at times. This is
particularly the case when he has a weak argument, or no argu-
ment at all, and is using loquaciousness as a means of trying to
obscure that fact. A second reason for this characteristic is Robert's
very skill as a logician and his enjoyment of the use of this art, to a
degree that sometimes oversteps the bounds of utility. Despite his
own strictures on this very subject, and his praise of brevity, he
sometimes ignores the good short answers that exist to the prob-

71
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 2.10, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1955), pp. 96-97.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 77

lems he discusses at length in the very works of the authorities he

cites on the point, suggesting either poor research, lack of imagina-
tion, or an enjoyment of debate for its own sake. This latter possi-
bility is stressed by Luscombe in his appraisal of Robert's style of
argument. He describes Robert as a "difficult author to read who
often becomes weighted down with the effort of his own reasoning
and with the fineness of his own distinctions." 72 There is the
undeniable air of a runaway logician in Robert of Melun. If he is
analytical, he is primarily interested in analyzing concepts, not
authorities, a trait he shares with Roland of Bologna. He does not,
typically, concern himself with showing how the authorities have
arrived at their conclusions; nor is he interested in contextualizing
them. He is more likely to use an authority as the source of a
substantive opinion, and then to supply his own logical reflections
on that opinion. But he gives the reader little feel for the authority
as a working theologian himself. While he demands accuracy in the
citation of authorities, he sometimes garbles the authorities he
cites, especially Augustine. This practice suggests that Robert was
using his sources indirectly, and that he did not take the trouble to
verify them. And, despite his objections to the use of Greek terms,
he has recourse to them himself, for the simple reason that they are
helpful in the clarification of certain doctrines. 73 Whether in his
schema, or in his method, or in his doctrinal contributions more
widely, it cannot truly be said that Robert of Melun advances the
state of systematic theology as an intellectual enterprise very much.
His failure to attract a following after his departure from the
schools appears to have been a function not so much of the lacunae
in his Sentences as of the fact that students of theology in the
mid-twelfth-century came to much the same judgment on Robert's
Sentences as have most modern scholars.74

T H E LOMBARD

Let us now, in an act of imagination, place ourselves in the

position of a young scholar who arrives in Paris in the 1140s or
1150s, seeking the instruction that would enable him to become a

72
Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, p. 288.
73
Milton V. Anas tos, "Some Aspects of Byzantine Influence on Latin
Thought," in Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society, ed. Mar-
shall Claggett, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1961), pp. 132-34.
74
Anastos, "Some Aspects," pp. 132-34; Franz Bliemetzrieder, "Robert von
Melun und die Schule Anselms von Laon," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 53
(1934): 17-70; Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 328-30.
78 CHAPTER TWO

master of theology in his own right. Let us assume that he is eager

and committed, interested in obtaining the very best education he
can find in exchange for the outlay of time, money, and effort which
he is prepared to invest in schooling himself for a career as a
professional theologian. Let us further suppose that he is also a
careful and prudent person, willing to canvas the available options
before choosing a master. He takes the trouble to hear Robert of
Melun, and, if he arrives at Paris early enough, Robert Pullen, the
author of the Summa sententiarum, and the Porretans and Abelar-
dians as well. Hearing good reports about Peter Lombard, he
attends his lectures too, and decides—as did so many auditors—
that Peter is the master for him. In the light of the other alterna-
tives, which we have now examined, and in comparison with them,
what does he find in Peter's Sentences that sets the Lombard's
teaching apart, in his eyes, as so clearly superior?
Having acquainted himself with Robert of Melun's teaching, our
hypothetical student would have been pleased to note that Peter
shares with Robert a concern for ready reference within his Sentences
and that he likewise equips his work with the helpful numbering of
chapters as a finding tool.75 He would also have noticed that, like
the Victorines, Peter offers a coherent overall rationale for his
schema. Unlike the Victorine rationale, however, Peter's is not
based on a biblical or historical plan. While he treats many topics
in much the same order, and while he retains the Bible as a major
theological source, he does not subordinate his material to the
history of salvation. He offers, instead, a wider and more inclusive
view of the theological enterprise, one that makes room for con-
cerns that are also noetic, anthropological, moral, and meta-
physical.76 In outlining his own conceptual model at the outset of
his Sentences, Peter calls on a familiar Augustinian principle, while
assigning it a new role. The thematic orientation that Peter gives to
his work is the distinction between signs and things, use and
enjoyment, found in Augustine's De doctrina Christiana and applied

75
Ignatius C. Brady, "The Rubrics of Peter Lombard's Sentences" Pier Lombardo
6 (1962): 5-25. The distinctions which supplement this numbering of chapters
were added in the early thirteenth century, probably by Alexander of Hales, and
the original divisions were not always made in the same places as they were given
by later thirteenth-century commentators on the Sentences. On this point, see
Ignatius C. Brady, "The Distinctions of Lombard's Book of Sentences and
Alexander of Hales," FS 25 (1965): 90-116.
76
Cloes, "La systématisation," ETL 34 (1958): 327-29; Gillian R. Evans, Old
Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 42.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 79

by that author to biblical hermeneutics. Peter takes these distinc-

tions and applies them in turn to his own subject matter, using
them to explain to the reader the relative value to be assigned to the
topics covered in a work of systematic theology.77 He agrees with
Augustine that God Himself is the supreme res, the only being and
the only object of knowledge and goodness Who warrants enjoy-
ment in and of Himself. The created universe, the virtues, and the
sacraments are signa, signs to be used in attaining the enjoyment of
God. As for human beings, they are to be enjoyed as well as used.
They deserve to be treated as moral ends; and, indeed, the created
universe is ordered to their needs. At the same time, human beings
ought to enjoy and serve each other with ultimate reference to God
and their own salvation. Peter's reassignment of this Augustinian
theme to its new task in the Sentences has the effect of reappropriat-
ing something known, but with a fresh eye and a fresh insight into
the uses to which it may be put. This initial impression, gained
from a reading of Peter's prologue, would have been reinforced for
the student, as it can be reinforced for the modern reader, by a
closer inspection of the Lombard's schematic curriculum and
methodology.
One very striking feature of the disposition of material in the
Sentences which sets it apart from its competitors is the fact that
Peter combines a remarkably full coverage of the topics discussed
by scholastics in this period with a highly personal allocation of
space, one that gives the highest priority to the most speculative
doctrines of the Christian faith. Fully one half of the four books of
his Sentences is devoted to the divine nature and the nature of Christ.
And, while Peter is concerned with how man comes to a knowledge
of God and how God has manifested Himself to man, he also finds
it important to consider God as the supreme reality in His own
right. This emphasis can be seen immediately at the beginning of
Book 1. After some brief remarks on the testimonies of the Trinity
in the Old and New Testaments, Peter offers a series of more
extended reflections on how God may be known through His
similarities to other beings, and, equally, by His dissimilarities from
them. An inspection of the universe will lead to the conclusion that
the mutable world must have an immutable first cause. Meta-
physical analysis will yield the conclusion that beings made up of
parts and subject to modification by accidents must be grounded in

77
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IVlibns distinctae 1. d. I.e. 1-c. 3, 3rd ed. rev., ed.
Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 55-61.
80 CHAPTER TWO

a simple essence that transcends them. Likewise, the triune nature

of God can be appreciated by a comparison between it and created
beings, to which the deity has both similarities and dissimilarities.
Adverting here to Augustine's famous analogy of the Trinity in
man's memory, intellect, and will, Peter finds this comparison
helpful, and for two reasons. It points to the coinherence of the
divine essence in three Trinitarian persons, while at the same time,
the limits of this same analogy, which he is just as concerned with
underlining, permit him to emphasize God's transcendence.78
Having laid this foundation, Peter proceeds to a consideration of
the Trinity first, next turning to the attributes which the Trinitar-
ian persons equally share. His accent throughout this discussion
remains squarely on God in and of Himself, as the supreme being,
rather than on God as He has chosen to reveal Himself to man. In
treating the attributes of the deity as a whole, in which all the
Trinitarian persons are coequal, he continues to view the subject
from the standpoint of God as a metaphysical reality. Peter is
deeply interested in the terminology appropriate to the description
of the attributes of the individual members of the unmanifested
Trinity as well as in the terms apposite to the general divine
attributes which They share. He is sensitive to the need for termi-
nological distinctions in this connection, and is far more successful
than his contemporaries and immediate predecessors in making the
lexical specifications which he needs here and in applying his
chosen vocabulary consistently. Other than that, another notable
feature of his treatment of the deity in Book 1 is that Peter, without
getting bogged down in the debates about the World Soul, devotes
much more attention to the Holy Spirit and His mission than is
typical of other scholastic theologians at this time.
Book 2 is devoted to the creation. Starting with the businesslike
observation that God created the universe out of nothing, and that
God was the only cause of the creation, Peter firmly shunts to the
side the issue of exemplary causation. He next raises the question of
why God created the universe at all. Reminding the reader of the
principle that the universe exists for man's sake, which he had
articulated in his prologue under the heading of use and enjoyment,
he finds here a key to the organization of his material which had
eluded compeers who had wrestled with the disjunctions in Hugh

78
Peter Lombard, Sent 1. d. 3, 1: 6&-77. Giuseppi Lorenzi, "La filosofia di Pier
Lombardo nei Quattro libri delle Sentenze" Pier Lombardo 4 (1960): 24-26, may be
reading Peter somewhat proleptically in treating him as a defender of natural
theology.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 81

of St. Victor's account of creation. Beings, Peter notes, are both

spiritual and material; and these two modes of being are combined
in man. In each case, including man's own, the structure of being
has been ordained by God for man's sake. With that principle in
mind, he begins at the top of the created hierarchy of being with the
angels, and then proceeds to the work of the six days. He feels no
need to agonize over the cosmological problems embedded in the
hexaemeral account in Genesis because they have nothing to do
with the question of the final cause of creation, which is his major
concern here. So, while he comments on all the creatures in the
account, his treatment of creation is comparatively streamlined.
Peter then arrives at the centerpiece of Book 2, the creation of man
and his arrival at his present situation. Topics that interest him in
this connection are how man was made, what he was like before the
fall, and what would have been possible for him had the fall not
occurred. Like Hugh of St. Victor, he is perfectly willing to specu-
late on what might be called the contrary-to-fact condition of man.
In so doing, he opens up a wider horizon on the subject of man's
natural attributes and aptitudes than Hugh does, before moving on
to the exercise of free will that brought about the fall and its effects,
particularly on man's capacity to exercise free will, in relation to
grace, in his fallen state. The transmission of original sin, the
difference between original and actual sin, and the psychogenesis of
sin round out the topics covered in Book 2.
Peter then devotes Book 3 to Christology. Here, the theological
terminology which he had developed in Book 1 in his analysis of the
Trinity and the divine nature comes into play and is used to clear
and cogent effect. Peter devotes most of this book to the nature of
the incarnate Christ. He offers a full discussion of the debates
current at this time concerning the ways in which the divine and
human natures can be understood as coinhering in the incarnate
Christ. He outlines the support the proponents of the three leading
positions of the day could marshal from the Bible and the church
fathers. He indicates the difficulties that he finds in all of them,
proposing that, since they are all orthodox, yet all problematic, the
matter should remain an open question. Peter shows a keen interest
in Christ's human nature, and whether He was like us in all but sin.
He also raises the question of whether the human Christ should
receive worship, or only veneration. More important, however, is
the nature of Christ's saving work, to which he devotes extended
and finely nuanced attention. Concluding this section of Book 3
with the point that Christ's atonement motivates and empowers
men to imitate Him, Peter next takes up the virtues, moving from
82 CHAPTER TWO

the theological to the cardinal virtues and then to the gifts of the
Holy Spirit. While he initially presents these virtues and gifts as
they function in the psychology of the human Christ, a person Who
is unique, Peter's aim in this part of Book 3 is to explore the
operation of virtue in the moral lives of ordinary human beings. He
is content largely to state general principles and to analyze the
overall character of ethical acts. While he does take up the Ten
Commandments one by one, and gives a fair amount of attention to
usury and lying as breaches of the rules against theft and the
bearing of false witness, he is not interested in developing a tax-
onomy of moral conditions and activities as illustrated by particu-
lar professions or states of life.
At the beginning of Book 4, the Lombard introduces the sacra-
ments, which, he reminds the reader, are signs intended to be used,
rather than the things intended to be used as well as enjoyed,
which he had been discussing in the two previous books. He also
launches his treatment of the sacraments with a crisp definition of
sacraments in general, and one which distinguishes them clearly
from other devout practices or Christian callings which do not
conform to his definition and which can thus be set to one side here.
Peter also uses his analysis of what a sacrament is, why the sacra-
ments were instituted, and what sacraments consist of as a means
of discriminating sharply between the rites of the Old Law, and
those of the New. This same analysis enables him to explain why he
thinks that all seven of the Christian rites ventilated in this connec-
tion by some contemporaries are entitled to the name of sacrament.
He then organizes his own consideration of the sacraments under
the headings of the sacraments received by all Christians, in the
order in which they are received, and those received only by some
Christians, holy orders and marriage. In considering the grades of
holy orders, he combines Hugh of St. Victor's reflections on how
they illustrate different aspects of Christ's personal ministry with
indications of how they are congruent with the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. Unlike either Hugh or Robert Pullen, however, he does not
locate this topic, or the theme of sacraments more widely, within
the context of an overt ecclesiology. His treatment of marriage and
penance, in particular, reflects the benefit Peter derives from his
familiarity with the work of Gratian. But he borrows what he wants
from that master without departing from the strongly pastoral and
moral interest in these subjects typical of the scholastics, con-
cerned, as he is, with the way that these sacraments, and others, are
internalized in the spiritual lives of the people who receive them.
Book 4 concludes with a discussion of Last Things. On this
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 83

subject, Peter is much fuller than the Porre tans but much less
detailed than the Victorines. What is most striking about Peter's
handling of this subject is that he is far less interested in the manner
in which the end of the world will come about, and where and
when, than he is in the state of souls after the last judgment has
taken place. The Lombard offers an extremely abbreviated treat-
ment of Christ's second coming. Most notable of all, he omits the
Antichrist altogether from his Sentences. This is not because he lacks
a theology of the Antichrist. For, as we will see below in chapter 4,
he developed a full-scale personal position on that subject in his
exegesis of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. His goal, in the Sentences, appears
to be to repress wild-eyed millenarian speculation, as inappropriate
to the education of professional theologians. Likewise, while he
draws on Julian of Toledo's Prognosticon futuri saeculi, Augustine's
City of God, and Gregory the Great's Moralia for his treatment of
Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, as is typical in this period, he avoids
the more flamboyant descriptive passages in which other theolo-
gians of the time revel. As authorities go, he prefers the more
pared-down and sober account in Augustine's Enchiridion. Peter's
aim in his treatise on Last Things is not to paint a vivid sensory
image of the torments of the damned or the joys of the saints.
Rather, it is to comment on these moral conditions as outcomes of
the ethical and sacramental lives that Christians have led in this
world, and as expressions of God's justice and mercy.
In looking at this schema as a whole, one is impressed im-
mediately by two things. In the first place, Peter's Sentences make a
clear, and personal, statement not only about the importance of the
topics to which he gives extended consideration but also about the
angle of vision that he thinks is appropriate or illuminating in
connection with them. The agenda which he sets for himself in his
prologue is carried through systematically in the body of the work.
It informs his handling of both the most highly speculative doc-
trines of the faith and of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual means
by which the Christian life may bring individuals to a grasp of the
sublime realities which these dogmatic truths articulate. Second,
Peter does a remarkable job of slicing through the redundancies,
evasions, and confusions found in the other systematic theologians
of his time. To be sure, there remain some areas of overlap in his
work and his organization does reveal some imperfections. For
example, since both angels and men possess free will, Peter offers a
discussion of the relations between grace and free will in three
different locations, under the heading of the attributes of angels and
à propos of man, both before and after the fall. Also, he offers a
84 CHAPTER TWO

twofold consideration of Purgatory, once as a pendant to penance

and again in his treatise on Last Things. The most serious organi-
zational problem which Peter does not solve is what to do with
ethics. He defines virtue, in relation to the ethical intentionality of
the moral subject, in Book 1. Also in that book he considers
whether virtue is to be used or enjoyed, and virtue as a natural
good. Virtue surfaces again under the heading of Christ's human
nature in Book 3, along with an analysis of its psychogenesis. But,
Peter's analysis of sin, and his consideration of vice in general, is
developed in connection with the fall of man and its consequences
in Book 2. The positions Peter takes on these ethical questions are
logically consistent with each other, wherever he locates the mate-
rial. But, even though this is the case, ethics as a topic in its own
right fails to receive a systematic treatise in Peter's Sentences. He
tends to find this subject of interest primarily for the light it sheds
on human nature and on the nature of the human Christ. Still, even
acknowledging these flaws, Peter's Sentences goes a long way toward
eliminating the deficiencies found in the schemata of his competi-
tors. And, however much he may have learned from them about
how to construct a curriculum for the teaching of systematic theo-
logy, the schema he produces is by far the most coherent of the day,
and is one that bears the stamp of his own personal outlook.
Aside from the merits of his schema, our hypothetical student
would readily have judged that Peter's instruction provided a
better grounding in the techniques of theological reasoning re-
quired by the incipient professional than did the work of other
masters of the time. The student would have been impressed both
by Peter's sagacious and discriminating use of philosophy and the
verbal artes and by his command of the Christian tradition. As some
modern observers have not, he would have recognized Peter's
prefatory criticism of philosophizing as a vain display of erudition
and his assertion that reasoning should play a merely ancillary role
in theology for what they really were, a captatio benevolentiae and not
a description of the Lombard's actual practice.79 Like other occu-
pants of Peter's classroom he would have appreciated, in Peter's
oral teaching, his use of syllogistic forms to structure arguments in
a positive sense, as well as the appeal to logic to explode the
tautologies in positions he sought to demolish. Whether or not the
Lombard always imported these pedagogical tactics into the text of

79
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. prologus 3-4, 1: 3-4. See, on the other hand, Émile
Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France: Les écoles de lafindu VIIIe siècle à la
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 85

the Sentences, he certainly drew on philosophy in the handling of

substantive debates and in the clarification of terms and
propositions.80 As with the Porretans, Peter was able to meet a
renowned logician, such as Abelard, on his own terrain, and to
undercut him with his own weapons, as is visible in the two-part
strategy which he develops to refute Abelard's claim that God
cannot do better than He does. On the one hand, Peter shifts the
debate from the category of the logic of necessity and possibility.
He places it instead under the heading of another philosophical
principle, the distinction between God's absolute and ordained
power.81 And, on the other hand, he recasts it in the form of a
grammatical argument, one based ultimately on the same Boethian
and Aristotelian sources as Abelard had drawn on for his analysis
of future contingents. This argument makes its point of departure
the signification of a verb in a proposition. As Peter observes, there
are two modes of signification in the verb. It denotes an action.
And, it also denotes the time, whether past, present, or future, in
which the action takes place. But, he continues, time is purely
circumstantial with respect to the first mode of signification, the
signification of an action. Time does not condition the reality of the
action denoted by the verb. If, with respect to this action, the
proposition is true at any time, it is true independent of a particular
time. And, since God is eternal, the fact of His eternity is not
altered even though the Bible may employ the grammatical con­
vention of referring to some of His actions in the past tense of the
verb. Thus, Peter concludes, we can rule out the idea of a future
time in which God can improve on His creation, as Abelard
claims.82 It is the same familiarity with Boethius, and the same
sensitivity to the Aristotelian and Platonic roots of his polyvalent
vocabulary, that enabled Peter to grasp what was problematic in
the theological lexicons of some of his contemporaries and to dis­
card definitions that were being used by them as inadequate to the

fin du ΧΙΓ siècle (Lille: Facultés Catholiques, 1940), 5: 656; Lorenzi, "La filosofia di
Pier Lombardo," pp. 22-24.
80
Ludwig Hödl, "Die dialektische Theologie des 12. Jahrhunderts," in Arts
libéraux et philosophie au moyen âge (Montreal: Institut d'Études Médiévales/ Paris: J.
Vrin, 1969), pp. 70-71; "Die theologische Auseinandersetzung zwischen Petrus
Lombardus und Odo von Ourscamp nach dem Zeugnis der frühen Quästionen-
und Glossenliteratur," Scholastik 33 (1958): 137-47.
81
Beonio-Brocchieri [Fumagalli] and Parodi, Storia dellafilosofiamédiévale, pp.
82
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957),
pp. 93, 96, 99.
86 CHAPTER TWO

theological assignments they were being called upon to shoulder. 83

It was not just philosophy and the artes that provided means for
the clarification of ideas and terms and for the criticism of positions
to which Peter took exception, as well as for the provision of
alternative arguments, but also the church fathers and more recent
Christian authorities. The Lombard's handling of his Christian
sources reveals a deep and broad education, an acute and discrimi-
nating analysis of his authorities, both logically and contextually,
in the light of the author's intentions, an appreciation of the im-
portance of citing them accurately and using them appositely, and
a willingness to criticize and reject authorities who, in his estima-
tion, lacked cogency or who failed to support his own personal
positions. Along with other scholastic theologians of the day, Peter
sometimes made use of the catenae or chains of patristic citations
assembled by earlier writers, such as the Augustinian catena put
together by the Carolingian Florus of Lyon. In comparison with his
contemporaries, however, his recourse to authorities relies less on
indirect research of this sort and is based more thoroughly on his
own independent reading of his sources, whom he cites more fully
and accurately and whom he considers more thoroughly and analyt-
ically than anyone else. At times Peter imports into his discussion
authors ignored by other contemporary scholastics, or not known
to them. The most famous case in point is John Damascene, whose
work Peter was the first Latin theologian to bring to bear on
Trinitarian and Christological debate. 84 But there are other, less
dramatic, examples. Peter has a more circumspect and thorough-
going grasp of Augustine than his contemporaries. He draws on
works, such as the Eighty-Three Diverse Questions, not cited by other
theologians at the time. He is also fully aware of the fact that there
is an anti-Manichean, an anti-Pelagian, and an anti-Donatist Au-
gustine, and that this author's utility on certain topics varies with
his particular polemical agenda.
Peter also displays a systematic interest in the reasoning that has
led his authorities to the conclusions they reach. He makes it clear

83
Angiolo Gambaro, "II valore delPopera di Pier Lombardo," in Misc. Lomb.,
p. 5; Beonio-Brocchieri [Fumagalli] and Parodi, Stona déliafilosofiamédiévale,
p. 255.
84
Anastos, "Byzantine Influence," pp. 151-63; Ermenegildo Bertola, "Le 'Sen-
tentiae' e le 'Summae' tra il XII e il XIII secolo," Pier Lombardo 2 (1953): 25-41;
Eligius M. Buytaert, "St. John Damascene, Peter Lombard, and Gerhoh of
Reichersberg," FS 10 (1950): 323-43; Jacqueline Hamesse, "Le traitement auto-
matique du Livre des Sentences de Pierre Lombard," Studies in Honour of Roberto
Busa = Computazionale 4-5 (1987): 74.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 87

that this consideration is just as important as the author's substan-

tive position in deciding whether to agree with him or not. To
mention just one example, which also came up in our discussion of
the school of Laon, Peter likewise contrasts the opinions of Leo I
and Augustine on whether or not a prior adulterous affair is an
impediment to marriage. Peter supports Augustine, because Au-
gustine emphasizes the couple's desire to repent of their sin and to
regularize their relationship when events make this possible. The
accent on repentance and reparation, and the spiritual healing of
the couple, is, in Peter's view, the correct one, and it is consistent
with his wider view of the sacraments as having been instituted for
the sanctification of Christians. And so, he prefers Augustine's view
over Leo's more legalistic and punitive ruling.85 At the same time,
Peter disagrees sharply with Augustine on a host of other questions.
In many of the locations where his Augustinian citations are the
densest, Peter has brought Augustine forward in order to modify or
to disagree with him. The accuracy of his Augustinian citations,
whether he agrees with him or not, enabled later readers to use the
Sentences to correct pseudo-Augustinian attributions or erroneous
reports of his views.86 In order to facilitate his analysis of the
authorities, Peter, in agreement with Robert of Melun, insists on
quoting them in full and on supplying the name of the author and
the title of his work. He does this more consistently than Robert
does, however, and the problem of mis-attributions or the corrup-
tion of the texts is sharply reduced, in the Lombard's work. As with
Robert, Peter is not interested in supplying long chains of author-
ities to bolster each and every point. On topics that are not con-
troversial, he is usually content to anchor his solution with a single
pertinent authority. Where topics are in dispute, he does supply the
foundations in authority for the various positions taken. Yet, while
seeking to do justice to all sides, he does not multiply citations that
merely repeat the same argument. Instead, he selects the strongest
and most cogently put of the authorities without unnecessary redu-
plications. As with other theologians of the time, he typically refers

85
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 35. c. 4, 2: 471-72.
86
Artur Michael Landgraf, "Der hl. Augustinus und der Bereich des Petrus
Lombardus," Scholastik 29 (1954): 321-44; "Die Stellungsnahme der Frühschola-
stik zur wissenschaftlichen Methode des Petrus Lombardus," Collectanea Franciscana
4 (1934): 513-21. This position should stand as a corrective to the views of J.
Annat, "Pierre Lombard et ses sources patristiques," Bulletin de littérature ecclé-
siastique, ser. 3:8 (1906): 84-95; Ferdinand Cavallera, "Saint Augustin et le Livre
des Sentences de Pierre Lombard," in Etudes sur Saint Augustin, by Régis Jolivet et
al. = Archives de philosophie 7:2 (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1930), pp. 186-99.
88 CHAPTER TWO

to contemporary masters as quidam or alii, recognizing the fact that

the students and colleagues in his circle will know to whom he is
referring. He even cites himself at times as quidam, both to refer to
his own exegetical works, or even, in his oral teaching, to distance
himself from a view that he had once espoused but that, as he and
his students know, he no longer supports.87
Equally noteworthy is the independent line that Peter often takes
on the authorities he uses, even in cases where he draws on them
indirectly. The major area in which he makes use of catenae and in
which he does not quote his authorities or cite their works by title is
in his discussion of creation in Book 2 of the Sentences. The ultimate
source for most of his material is the series of commentaries on
Genesis written by Augustine against the Manichees, made avail-
able through the agency of Florus of Lyon. As noted above, the
cosmological concern with the discrepancies in the biblical account
of creation, which bedevils masters such as Hugh of St. Victor and
which can be traced to the attention given to the problem by
Augustine himself, is suppressed by Peter, regardless of the fact
that this is the way that the Augustinian heritage on this topic had
been transmitted. Peter does so because he regards these concerns
as not pertinent to the perspective on creation that he wants to
take. Similarly, Peter feels free to use Julian of Toledo and Augus-
tine's City of God very selectively in treating Last Things, in the
service of the theological restraint which he thinks is needed in the
field of eschatology.
Selectivity, and the freedom to offer his own way of framing the
questions he takes up, are also visible in Peter's use of more recent
sources. It has been argued that he draws heavily on the Abelar-
dian dossier of authorities in the Sic et non, and in the same order,
merely providing the solutions that Abelard omits.88 But a closer
study of his use of these materials has shown that Peter makes
extensive use of the Sic et non only on some subjects, such as the
divine attributes, the Trinity, and Christology, areas where he
stood at odds with Abelard and areas in which he was able to draw
on materials not available to Abelard, or available to him but
ignored by him. Aside from a reference or two to the Eucharist and
penance, Peter's appeal to the Sic et non in other respects is
sketchy.89 Similarly, it has been known for some time that Peter is

87
Artur Michael Landgraf, "Schwankungen in der Lehre des Petrus Lombar-
d s " Scholastik 31 (1956): 533-34.
88
Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard, pp. 94-95.
89
Boyer and McKeon, comm. on their ed. of Peter Abelard, Sic et non, pp.
635-45.
 THE THEOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE 89

heavily dependent on the Summa sententiarum, on a range of subjects

from the doctrine of God, to the sacraments, to the definition of
faith, to angelology, and to anthropology, a point which recent
scholarship has expanded and consolidated.90 Yet, while Peter
certainly draws frequently from the Summa sententiarum both for the
manner in which he poses questions and as a guide to the patristic
authorities who may be pertinent to their solution, the positions
with which he emerges and his rationale for supporting them often
take an independent line. To cite one example, on a topic given yet
another resolution by the Porre tans, Peter, following the author of
the Summa sententiarum, raises the question of whether baptism
should be administered by means of single or triple immersion.
With that master, he brings to bear on this question the authority
of Gregory the Great, who had indicated that both modes of
baptism are practiced in the church and that both convey an
edifying liturgical symbolism. Gregory had concluded that the
unity of faith would not be prejudiced by diversity of custom in this
respect, and had left the matter open. While the author of the
Summa sententiarum indicates a personal preference for triple immer-
sion, he places as his highest priority the following of local custom.
This solution is consistent with the position he takes on other
sacraments, in cases where regional practices vary.91 While the
Lombard takes account of the desirability of decorum, in advocat-
ing the support of local custom, he finds more compelling than his
source the symbolic value of triple immersion, paralleling as it does
the neophyte's death to sin and rebirth into new life with the three
days Christ's body lay in the tomb between His own death and
resurrection.92 Similarly, Peter goes a long way toward incorporat-
ing the work of Gratian into his sacramental theology. He draws
heavily on the dossier of authorities assembled pro and con in the
Decretum. But, Peter does not hesitate to edit Gratian's citations, to
contextualize or to relativize them historically, or to subject them to
theological criteria not advanced by Gratian himself, as a means of
dismissing positions which Gratian cites, or supports, with which
Peter disagrees. In the manner typical of his theological compeers,
he has a pastoral and moral outlook on the sacraments, not a
legalistic one, and he feels free to emphasize aspects of the sacra-
ments not of interest to Gratian and to dismiss considerations high

90
Mignon, L·s origines de la scolastique, 1: 180-93, although his analysis is flawed
by his attribution of the Summa sent, to Hugh of St. Victor; the best guide to the
current scholarship is found in Brady's annotations throughout the Sentences at the
pertinent loci.
91
Summa sent. 5.4, PL 176: 130A-B.
92
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 3. c. 7, 2: 249-50.
90 CHAPTER TWO

on Gratian's agenda as unimportant. And, in areas where he takes

a position diametrically opposed to Gratian's, Peter does not hesi-
tate to stand him, and his catalogue of sources, on their heads when
it suits his purpose. Further, since he does not rely exclusively on
Gratian's research, he is able to correct some textual corruptions
cited by Gratian as well as some apocryphal attributions which he
makes.93
In short, Peter's use of authorities reveals a well-informed, knowl-
edgeable, and critical spirit, as well as great skill in the application
of the materials he adduces to the solution of contemporary prob-
lems and to the articulation and defense of his own personal theo-
logy. The Lombard's handling of his authorities frequently involves
unexpected juxtapositions which have the effect of posing issues in
a new way.94 He makes sustained and consistent use of the princi-
ples stated in theory but abandoned in practice by some of the more
idiosyncratic theologians of the day, who often harnessed them to
theological agendas that proved to be deeply flawed and not very
serviceable.95 In a wider sense, Peter's approach to his authorities
suggests why it is a mistake to regard the sentence collection as a
mere anthology, and the theologians who worked in this genre as
mere compilers. Once one learns how to read it, the sentence
collection can be appreciated as the main vehicle that advanced the
teaching of systematic theology in the twelfth century, both with
respect to the methodology it could convey and to the larger
understanding of the theological enterprise it could envision. In
both of these respects, Peter Lombard's Sentences were deemed to
have provided the best response to the pedagogical demands made
in the education of professional theologians in the mid-twelfth
century because, quite simply, he produced the best version of this
new genre of theological literature available at that time.

93
Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 2: 314-52; Haring,
"The Interaction between Canon Law and Sacramental Theology," Proceedings
of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, pp. 483-93; Landgraf,
"Diritto canonico e teologia," Studio, Gratiana 1 (1953): 371-413; Gabriel Le Bras,
"Pierre Lombard, prince du droit canon," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 247-52.
94
Bertola, "Le 'Sententiae' e le 'Summae'," pp. 25-41.
95
Abelard is a good case in point. See Beryl Smalley, "Puma clavis sapientiae:
Augustine and Abelard," in Studies in Medieval Thought andL·arningfromAbelard to
Wyclif (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), pp. 1-8.
 CHAPTER THREE

THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE

As the previous chapter has made clear, one of the important

indices of the perceived capacity of a scholastic theologian to im-
part a serviceable methodology to his students in the first half of the
twelfth century was his ability to develop and to use consistently a
lucid theological vocabulary, one that could explain with precision
what he meant and why the views of opposing masters were un-
acceptable to him. To be sure, the problem of theological language
is endemic to this discipline. The general question of how human
language, with its terms and analogies derived from created beings
and experiences, can convey the divine reality had been, and would
remain, a concern of theologians, preachers, and writers of religious
literature across the centuries. But, more specifically, the profes-
sionalizing of theology in the first half of the twelfth century height-
ened the demand for terminological exactitude, especially in
addressing the speculative doctrines of Christianity. A sensitivity to
these needs can also be found in writers of monastic theology, as is
the case with Rupert of Deutz. It is clearly visible in the works of
Anselm of Canterbury.1 But it was largely the scholastic theolo-
gians who made a systematic effort to address the need for termino-
logical precision. Sometimes it was their familiarity with the verbal
artes which sharpened their perception of this need. Sometimes the
very originality of the response made by some scholastics to the
problem brought new complications in its train and invited criti-
cism, and the reformulation of the issue by their colleagues. The
difficulties under which theologians labored in this period were
made much more acute by the fact that, given the current state of
philosophical knowledge, they lacked a lexicon that was both tech-
nical enough to shoulder the burdens it had to carry, and common
to all the thinkers engaged in dogmatic speculation.2 This lack of

1
Marcia L. Colish, "St. Anselm's Philosophy of Language Reconsidered," in
Anselm Studies, ed. Gillian R. Evans (London: Kraus International, 1983), 1:
113-23.
2
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957),
pp. 90-107; Gillian R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology
as an Academic Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 203; Landgraf,
Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 1: 20-21.
92 CHAPTER THREE

precision and univocity plagued all the theologians who recognized

it as a problem. Over the course of two generations, there are some
notable efforts to come to grips with it. Yet, here too, as with his
schema for systematic theology and his technique of handling
authorities, it is Peter Lombard who wins the palm. In tackling the
recalcitrant problem of theological language, and in clarifying his
terms and using them with rigor and consistency, he goes farther
toward the development of a practicable vocabulary than was
ahieved by any European thinker prior to the reception of Aristot-
le, which was to alter fundamentally the terms of the debate in the
sequel.
Outside of the general desire for clarity, there were three main
difficulties specific to the intellectual history of the early twelfth
century that triggered the debates over theological language in that
period. Two of them stem from the fact that contemporary thinkers
were heavily dependent on Boethius as their schoolmaster in the
field of the Aristotelian logica vetus and as a philosophical theolo-
gian. Both his translations and commentaries on Aristotle's early
logical works and his own theological opuscula, aimed at defending
orthodox Ghristology and Trinitarian doctrine, received an atten-
tive reading in the schools. These works were commented on re-
peatedly. Yet, the terminology of Boethius was a confusing guide to
the theological language needed for the conduct of doctrinal debate
in the very areas where he applied it, because he himself uses key
terms essential to that debate, such as substance, essence, nature,
and person, in diverse and incompatible ways. Four different defi-
nitions of nature are found in his writings3 and six different
definitions of person.4 In the former case, he defines nature as that
which can act and be acted upon; as the principle of motion per se
and not accidentally; as the special property of a thing or the
specific difference from other things that gives it form; and, more
generally, as that which exists, in whatever mode, and, because it
exists, is capable of being apprehended by the mind in one way or
another. In the latter case, leaving aside persona as a theatrical mask
or as a character in a work of drama or fiction, his definitions

3
Karl Bruder, Die philosophische Elemente in dem Opuscula sacra des Boethius: Ein
Beitrag zur Quellengeschichte der Philosophie der Scholastik (Leipzig: Felix Meiner,
1928), pp. 64—80; Claudio Micaelli, "'Natura' e 'persona' nel contra Eutychen et
Nestorium di Boezio: Osservazioni su alcuni problemi filosofici e linguistici," in Atti
del congresso internazionale di studi Boeziani, ed. Luca Obertello (Korne: Herder,
1981), pp. 327-36.
4
Maurice Nédoncelle, "Les variations de Boèce sur la personne," RSR 29
(1955): 201-38; Micaelli, '"Natura' e 'persona'," pp. 327-36.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 93

include an accident or group of accidents in a man that make him

different from other members of the human race; a determination of
substance itself; a calling to the divine life through reason, love, and
freedom; in the incarnate Christ, "the individual substance of a
rational nature;" as applied to the Trinity, the eternal emanations
of the divine supra-substance; and as a category of relation, accord-
ing to the sense of the Aristotelian categories. This array of ambig-
uous definitions reflects the fact that Boethius sometimes uses his
terms in a Platonic sense and sometimes places an Aristotelian
construction on them. He does this partly because his argument, at
any given point in his theological works, is polemical, and he tailors
it to the ad hoc needs of the moment. He does so partly because of
his conviction that these two schools of philosophy are ultimately
compatible. The Boethian legacy leaves open two central ques-
tions, to which his works offer no clear solution: Given the fact that
the creed uses the terms substance and person with reference to the
deity, what do these terms mean in this connection, in comparison
with what they may mean with respect to created beings? And,
given the fact that the standard Trinitarian formula views the
persons of the Trinity as joined together by the reciprocal relations
of paternity, filiation, and procession, how apposite is the language
of relation, or the language of any Aristotelian accident, to the
deity?
The third problem relative to theological language confronted by
early twelfth-century thinkers stems from the differences in
approach taken by the Latin and Greek traditions to the theology of
the Trinity, and a corresponding difference in the ways theologians
in these churches had used the same terminology or the equivalent
terms in each language.5 The Greeks emphasized the economic
Trinity, that is, the persons of the Trinity as They manifest Them-
selves to man. The Greeks viewed the persons as three hypostases,
accenting Their different functions. For them, the difficulty lay in
showing how these hypostases possess a unity of nature. To the
notion of divine hypostasis they attached the idea of a being posses-
sing a nature, Who gives of that nature to another hypostasis. In
each of the persons, nature is a content within a container. The

5
A good account of the contrast between Greeks and Latins and of the
roblems posed for medieval thinkers by Augustine and Boethius is found in M.
êiergeron, "La structure du concept latin de personne: Comment, chez les Latins,
persona' en est venu à signifier 'relatio'," in Etudes d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale du
ΧΙΙΓ siècle, 2nd ser., Publications de l'Institut d'Études Médiévales d'Ottawa, 2
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1932), pp. 121-61, although he does not address the twelfth-
century efforts to cope with the difficulties.
94 CHAPTER THREE

person's transference of that nature can be understood without the

need to posit an underlying common nature as an intermediary in
the process. Each of the persons is Himself the intermediary. Thus,
the unity of nature in the three persons is seen as consecutive. On
the other hand, the Latins, as illustrated most typically by Augus-
tine, were concerned with how we can understand the relations of
the Trinitarian persons among themselves, quite apart from any-
thing They may choose to manifest of Themselves to man. The
Latins based their position on the unity of the divine nature, seen as
an ontological or logical substratum, with the Trinitarian persons
seen as expressions of that nature, which coinheres in Them
equally. With this principle in mind, it was necessary to distinguish
between terms that refer properly to the divine nature which the
persons equally share, on the one hand, and terms that signify the
attributes that distinguish one Trinitarian person from the others,
the terms that are specific and unique to each of the persons
vis-à-vis the others. The Latins concluded that the best way to
arrive at a valid conception of a person in this context was to
understand the Trinitarian persons as relations. Unbegotten, be-
gotten, and proceeding could thus serve as proper names of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for they are terms referring to each of
these persons alone. To this Augustine added his famous analogy of
the Trinity in the human soul, whereby the persons are compared
to the psychological functions of memory, intellect, and will. There
is a division of labor here; but, Augustine emphasizes, it coincides
with a functional interrelation among these faculties, each of which
is an activity of the same subsistent soul.
But, given the Latin approach to the Trinity, how was it possible
to maintain this position in the light of the Aristotelian understand-
ing of relation, which, if applied to the definition of the Trinitarian
persons, would treat Their personhood as accidental? The idea that
the deity is a substance subject to modification by accidents made
Latin theologians in our period acutely uncomfortable, and with
good reason, for it suggested that the divine nature is subject to
change and that, as accidents, the persons of the Trinity may
inhere in that nature, or not, as the case may be. Further, did an
acceptance of the Aristotelian understanding of relation as an
accident extend to an Aristotelian understanding of substance as
well? If so, the prime significance of substance would be its refer-
ence to created beings made up of matter and form. Such an idea
would scarcely be apposite to the deity, whether to the divine
nature in general or to any one of the Trinitarian persons in
particular. And, if these Aristotelian understandings of relation and
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 95

substance were rejected, what comprehensible understandings

could be found to replace them, and would they be adequate to
bear the dogmatic weight which the theologians would have to
place upon them?
Both the intractability of these questions and the theological
centrality of the doctrines whose understanding they affected help
to explain why Trinitarian theology and Christology were the
controversies par excellence among early twelfth-century theolo-
gians. One could, to be sure, ignore that fact. This was the case
with Anselm of Laon and his followers, who continued to use the
language of the creeds and the fathers as if it were self-explanatory,
self-consistent, and non-problematic. They simply repeat the tradi-
tional Latin terms, without defining them; one would never be
aware of the fact that theological language was such a burning
contemporary issue from reading their works. 6 Another approach
was to suggest an evasion of the problem by appealing to the via
negativa in theological language, along the lines of the Pseudo-
Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena. Indeed, this tactic was
advocated by thinkers connected with the school of Chartres, well
known for its responsiveness to other aspects of the Neoplatonic
heritage as well.7 According to this view, we cannot properly signify

6
See, for example, Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 236; Sentences of the School
of Laon, no. 282, 521, éd. Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux ΧΙΓ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles
(Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1959), 5: 190-94, 230, 333; Heinrich Weisweiler,
ed. "Le recueil des sentences 'Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur' et son
remaniement," RTAM 5 (1933): 252-53; Friedrich Stegmüller, ed., "Sententiae
Berolinensis: Eine neugefundene Sentenzensammlung aus der Schule des Anselms
von Laon," RTAM 11 (1939): 40; Sententie divine pagine, ed. Franz Bliemetzrieder in
Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2—3 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1919), pp. 5, 8-9.
7
Richard W. Southern, "Humanism and the School of Chartres," in Medieval
Humanism and Other Studies (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 61-85; Platonism,
Scholastic Method, and the School of Chartres (Reading: University of Reading, 1979);
and "The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres," in Renaissance and Renewal
in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 113-37 has argued that this school, as such,
never existed. Both on the basis of institutional associations among the thinkers in
this group and their demonstrable family connections intellectually, this position
has been refuted, effectively in our estimation, by Peter Dronke, "New Approaches
to the School of Chartres," Anuario de estudios médiévales 6 (1969): 117-40; Nikolaus
M. Häring, "Paris and Chartres Revisited," in Essays in Honour of Anton Charles
Pegis, ed. Reginald O'Donnell (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1974), pp. 268-317, 329; Hans Liebeschütz, "Kosmologische Motive in der Bil-
dungswelt des Frühscholastik," Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 1923-24, pp. 83-
148; Olga Weijers, "The Chronology of John of Salisbury's Studies in France
(Metalogicon II. 10)," in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. Michael Wilks, Studies
in Church History, Subsidia 3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 114-16.
96 CHAPTER THREE

the deity with theological language framed in positive statements.

On the other hand, negative statements yield names of God which
are more accurate, or at any rate, less inaccurate. God as He is
remains basically inexpressible. Human language cannot compass
Him. His nature is so transcendent that any attributes men may
give Him, attributes drawn necessarily from their knowledge of
created beings, must inevitably fall short of the divine reality, and
so constitute an improper use of language. In one way or another,
various members of this group of thinkers posit a sharp distinction
between man's modes of speech (forma loqumdi) and God's mode of
being {forma essendi), and urge that positive statements about God,
whatever grammatical form they take, cannot be literally true of
God but are, at best, to be understood metaphorically, with a
transferred meaning (translative).8
Despite their willingness to advocate this Dionysian position on
the poverty of theological language, the Chartrains, in practice,
joined with other scholastic theologians in this period in the effort
to work through the difficulties bequeathed by Boethius, Augus-
tine, and the Greeks. They did make the effort to come up with
cogent definitions of the all-important terms for describing God
positively. In the event, it was not the Chartrains themselves but
Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers who provoked the most
intense disputes on theological language at this time.

T H E ABELARDIAN CHALLENGE

Despite his keen interest in semantics as a professional logician,

Abelard proved surprisingly unsuccessful in arriving at definitions
of the key terms needed for Christology and Trinitarian theology.
His handling of natura, substantia, essentia, and persona is polyvalent in
the case of each of these terms. In the fields of logic and mathe-
matics, for Abelard, natura and its adverbial and adjectival forms
mean or imply a necessary order, according to which things have
to be as they are. As applied to phenomena, nature means a habit
(habitus) or disposition (dispositio), denoting the phenomenon's con-
crete mode of being, which endures and serves as that being's cause
or continuing principle of activity and which is not exhausted by its
ingredients or by the way the being acts. In this sense, nature in act

8
Nikolaus M. Haring, "Die theologische Sprachlogik der Schule von Chartres
im zwölften Jahrhundert," in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, Miscellanea
mediaevalia, ed. Albert Zimmerman, 13:2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), pp.
930-36.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 97

can be distinguished from nature as the ground of a creature's

being. Also, the nature of a genus can be distinguished, on this
basis, from the nature of any of its individual members. The idea of
nature, in the created order, as a force the creator grants to crea-
tures enabling them to function, to reproduce, and to act as sec-
ondary causes underlies Abelard's understanding of nature in the
sense of natural law, both as a moral norm and as a mode by which
man can come to a knowledge of God through the creation. At the
same time, Abelard the ethicist uses the term natura both to refer to
the human condition as corrupted by sin and to the pristine state of
man which was thereby corrupted. At no point in his works does he
offer a definition of nature that is self-consistent or that can be
understood with respect to the divine nature.9
Abelard's definitions of essentia are also polyvalent. Sometimes he
means by this term essence as contrasted with existence, existence
in this context referring to the state in which a being can be
modified by accidents. At other times, however, he means by
essence a being's mode of being more generally, which would
include, not exclude, its actual mode of being as conditioned by
accidents. Essence, for Abelard, can also mean a thing's intrinsic
nature, as in the phrase natura rerum, the law of nature as it applies
to the being's created endowment. In this sense, essence cannot be
separated from the being's existence. On the other hand, Abelard
also uses essentia to denote an entity's ground of being, which in
turn he understands both as its formal cause and as its material
cause. Despite these discrepancies, it is clear that the need to define
this term arises in the first instance, for Abelard, as a means of
grasping the nature of created beings. What essence may denote as
applied to uncreated being is a matter which he never system-
atically discusses, notwithstanding his attribution of this term to
the deity. Further, he sometimes equates essence and substance,
using these terms interchangeably with respect to God, while at
other times, he distinguishes substance, understood as essence,
from essentia, understood as existence. When he equates essentia with
existence, in the context of Trinitarian theology, he also equates
persona, or Trinitarian person, with this essentia-a.s~existence. This
practice is quite confusing, because Abelard also stresses, in the
same context, that the persons of the Trinity share the same essence
and substance, in passages where he treats essentia and substantia as

9
Jean Jolivet, "Éléments du concept de nature chez Abélard," in La filosofia
delta natura nel medioevo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1966), pp. 297-304; David E.
Luscombe, "Nature in the Thought of Peter Abelard," in ibid., pp. 314—19.
98 CHAPTER THREE

synonymous.10 To compound his difficulties still further, he also

borrows the Boethian definition of person as the individual sub-
stance of a rational nature, 11 thus annexing substantia both to the
attributes that distinguish each Trinitarian person from the others
and to the common Godhead which They share. And, at the same
time, he insists that, in applying the term substance to God, in either
of these senses, we cannot use it in the normal Aristotelian sense of an
entity capable of modification by accidents.12 While explaining what
substantia does not mean, with reference to God, Abelard never truly
clarifies what he thinks it does mean in that connection.
Confusing terminology is only one of Abelard's problems in the
development of a semantics adequate to the tasks of theology.
Abelard is frequently depicted as having been attacked, for
personal reasons, by monastic critics who failed to understand him,
who garbled what he had said, or who attributed to him positions
not his own.13 There are, however, technical features of his logic
and semantics which his scholastic confrères at the time were
perfectly capable of grasping,14 and which modern critics have also
noticed, which raise serious questions about its utility as a tool in
theological discussion. Abelard's larger goal is to show that re-
vealed statements about God and the data they convey can be
presented in such a way as to display their conformity with the laws
of predication. At the same time, his semantics is not basically
geared to an epistemology that connects the human psychology of
knowledge with the realities that exist outside of the human mind.15

10
Jean Jolivet, "Notes de lexicographie abélardienne," in Aspects de la pensée
médiévale: Abélard. Doctrines du language (Paris: J. Vrin, 1987), pp. 132-37; Arts du
langage et théologie chez Abélard, 2nd éd. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982), pp. 41, 296-320;
Jolivet, intro, to his trans, of Peter Abelard, Du bien suprême (Montreal: Bellarmin,
1978), p. 15.
11
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 2.105, ed. Constant J. Mews in Peter
Abelard, Opera theologica, CCCM 11-13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969-87), 13: 459.
12
J. G. Sikes, Peter Abailard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932),
pp. 119-20, 145-67.
13
For a good summary of the literature on this point, see Jean Jolivet, "Sur
quelques critiques de la théologie d'Abélard," AHDLMA 38 (1963): 7-51; Edward
Filene Little, "The Heresies of Peter Abelard," University of Montreal Ph.D.
diss., 1969, pp. 136-85.
14
On this point, see above, ch. 2, pp. 54—55, 85.
15
On this point, see above, ch. 2, p. 55 n. 48, to which may be added Jean
Jolivet, "Abélard entre chien et loup," Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 20 (1977): 319;
Arts du langage, pp. 44-45, 67-72, 74-77, 95-104, 229-335; Bruno Maioli, Gilbert
Porretano: Dalla grammatica speculativa alla metafisica del concreto (Rome: Bulzoni,
1979), pp. 33-36; Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 119-20; Richard E. Weingart, The Logic
of Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abailard (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 11-31.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 99

Rather, he is moving toward a formal logic whose goal is an

analysis of intramental concepts and an intramental validation or
invalidation of the propositions and arguments made up of the
words that signify these concepts. While at an initial remove, many
concepts derive from extramental realities, this is not the prime
signification which they possess. For, these extramental realities
may come into being and pass away. Once we have obtained our
concepts of them from them, they are no longer needed for the work
of the logician. Also, some nouns, such as indefinite nouns, can
refer meaningfully to things that have no existence. The meanings
words acquire are conventional, imposed on them by the speakers
who use them; they do not signify naturally. This signification by
imposition exists at two levels, for Abelard. There is the denomina-
tion or appellation, the significance of the actual thing (significatio
rerum). There is also the signification of the concept derived from
the thing (significatio intellectum). The perfection of the signification
lies in the latter mode of signification, since it is only at this level
that the sign can be used in a logical proposition and hence under-
stood.
This theory has an advantage, in Abelard's estimation. For, left
to a system of purely real signification, we would be confined to
verbal signs that might refer to non-significant things. But, with
logical signification, in his sense, we can find meaning in all the
parts of speech in whatever propositional contexts they may be
used, parts of speech, moreover, which not only manifest meaning
but which also can engender it. In one respect, Abelard's logic and
semantics may be regarded as post-Aristotelian avant la lettre, for
he expands the range of logic and does not subordinate it to modes
of verification lying outside its own formal scope. In another re-
spect, however, this logic and semantics restrict their own utility,
since the question of how words may correspond with the things
they originally signified, the question of how the logician's intellectus
may correspond with realities outside his own mind, is not the
point of Abelard's analysis of signification at all. And, if logic thus
makes no claims about ontology in the sense of the world of created
nature, the same can be said a fortiori in the case of theological
statements. Ultimately, Abelard is forced to concede that state-
ments about the Trinity must be understood figuratively,16 and that
the norm governing their use is theological appropriateness.17 Yet,

16
Jolivet, "Abélard entre chien et loup," p. 319; Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp.
119-20.
17
Jolivet, Arts du langage, pp. 280-81.
100 CHAPTER THREE

as in the notorious case of his analogy of bronze, a seal made of

bronze, and the impression made by the seal in wax for a Trinity
composed of persons Who are coeternal and consubstantial,18 he is
often unequal to the task of providing cogent analogies in the event,
a fact noted not only by his monastic critics19 but also by contem-
poraries who had frequented the schools20 as well as by modern
scholars.21 In sum, Abelard never comes to grips with the basic lack
of aptitude of a logic and semantics of the type he develops for the
work of theological clarification and defense to which he assigns it.
Yet, for all these problems, there was one particular application
of theological language made by Abelard that engendered more
controversy than any other, his attribution of the nouns power,
wisdom, and goodness to the persons of the Trinity as proper
names. Abelard is sensitive to the idea that there are some divine
properties, such as eternity, that inhere in the Godhead in general,
while others can be used to distinguish the personal traits of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In his view, power, wisdom, and
goodness are perfectly adequate to the latter task. He supports this
claim by multiplying citations to the text of the Bible in which the
Trinitarian persons are referred to by his preferred names.22 This
position provoked acute irritation in Abelard's critics, and with
excellent reason. For, they noted, if we apply to the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit the terms power, wisdom, and goodness as Abelard
urges, then it is impossible to make sense out of all the other
biblical passages where these terms are used to refer to more than

18
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 4.90-93, 4.102, 4.106, ed. Eligius M.
Buytaert, CCCM 12: 308-10, 315-16, 317-18; Theologia "scholarium" 2.112-18,
CCCM 13: 462-66; In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 1:20, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert,
CCCM 11: 70.
19
The capitula drawn up against Abelard at the council of Sens in 1140 describe
this bronze seal analogy as a "horrienda similitudo." The text is ed. by Eligius M.
Buytaert, CCCM 12: 473.
Thus, Otto of Freising observes à propos of Abelard, "The analogies he used
were not good." Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa 1.48 (46). trans. Christopher C.
Mierow (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), p. 83.
21
Jolivet, Arts du langage, pp. 308-20; Sikes, Peter Abailard, p. 115; Walter
Simonis, Trinität und Vernunft: Untersuchung zur Möglichkät einer rationalen Trinitäts-
lehre bei Anselm, Abaelard, den Viktorinern, A. Günther und J. Froschammer (Frankfurt:
Josef Knecht, 1972), pp. 54-57.
22
Peter Abelard, Theologia "summt boni" 1.2.5, 3.1.1-51, ed. Constant J. Mews,
CCCM 13: 88, 157-59; Theologia Christiana 1.1-4, 1.7-35, 3.112, 4.47-50, 4.11&-19,
4.154-56, 4.161-5.3, CCCM 12: 72-87, 236, 286-87, 324-25, 342-47; Theologia
"scholarium" 1.30-93, 2.135-36, CCCM 13: 330-56, 475. The best analysis is by
Eligius M. Buytaert, "Abelard's Trinitarian Doctrine," in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius
M. Buytaert (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1974), pp. 127-52.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 101

one of the Trinitarian persons, or to a person other than the one to

Whom Abelard assigns the name, or to God in general. Abelard
does not deny that all the Trinitarian persons possess all of these
attributes. He is also aware of some of the theological problems that
arise from his insistence that they are, none the less, proper names
of the Trinitarian persons. Thus, he notes, all three attributes are
involved in the incarnation of Christ, since that event manifests
God's power, wisdom, and goodness equally to man. Given this
position, it is hard to see why it was the second person of the
Trinity Who was incarnated, and not the first or the third.23 Simi-
larly, it is hard to explain why power should beget wisdom, and
why goodness should proceed from power and wisdom, and not
vice versa.24 Still, even having ventilated these questions, questions
which he cannot answer, Abelard continues to argue for the propri-
ety of these terms as personal names.25
Contemporaries such as Hugh of St. Victor, Gilbert of Poitiers,
William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, Clarenbald of Arras,
Robert Pullen, and Robert of Melun were convinced that Abelard
was wrong but were unable to pinpoint just how he had erred and
how he might effectively be refuted. Hugh agrees that the terms
power, wisdom, and goodness apply both to the persons of the
Trinity individually and to God in general. But he does not succeed
in explaining clearly the semantics of how this would work and he
can scarcely repress his feeling that the contestants are engaged in
meaningless word games.26 Gilbert charges Abelard with tri theism
for his effort to confine the three attributes preclusively to the three
Trinitarian persons. In turn, he himself stresses the unity of God so
heavily as to state that the persons of the Trinity can be distin-
guished from each other only numerically, 27 a point that raised
doubts about his own orthodoxy, or at least about the propriety of
his own numerical argument. For their part, the Chartrains find

23
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 4.68, CCCM 12: 296.
24
Ibid., 4.118-19, CCCM 12: 324-25.
25
Ibid., 4.47-50, CCCM 12: 286-87.
26
Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentisfideichristianae 1.2.5-12, 1.3.26-31, PL 176:
208A-211A, 227C-234C. The best analysis is by Johann Hofmeier, Die Trinitäts-
lehre des Hugo von St. Viktor dargestellt im Zussamenhang mit den Strömungen seiner Zeit
(Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1963), pp. 188-91, 193-95, 197-268. See also
Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), p. 190; Jakob Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre
des Hugo von St. Viktor (Würzburg: Andreas Göbel, 1897), p. 127; Jergen Pedersen,
"La recherche de la sagesse d'après Hugues de Saint-Victor," Classica et mediaeva-
lia 16 (1955): 91-133. All these authors note the inconclusiveness of Hugh's
critique of Abelard.
102 CHAPTER THREE

Gilbert's critique of Abelard fully as unacceptable as they find

Abelard's position itself. William of Conches observes that power,
wisdom, and goodness are names that are not exclusive to the
Trinitarian persons. But, given his own interest in distinguishing
the cosmological functions of these persons and in analogizing them
with the Platonic One, Nous, and World Soul, he sees the division
of labor here as acceptable and can find no way of distinguishing
between his own cosmological approach and Abelard's salvific and
charismatic treatment of the Trinity. 28 An anonymous writer of the
mid-twelfth century with palpable connections to the Chartrain
tradition agrees that the entire Trinity is involved in any action of
power, wisdom, and goodness undertaken by God and that these
names cannot be applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
exclusively. None the less, he holds that there are still grounds for
assigning them primarily to these respective persons. While con-
ceding at least this much of the Abelardian argument, he seeks to
analogize these terms to the human soul's faculties of willing,
knowing, and capacity. In both cases, he notes, these activities
operate in and through each other.29
This argument, while it mitigates the exclusivity of the Abelar-
dian attribution of power, wisdom, and goodness to the Trinitarian
persons, raises the question of whether the author has thereby
succumbed to another Abelardian claim which the Chartrains
vigorously disputed, the conflation of an Augustinian-style view of
the Trinitarian persons as distinguishable by Their relations to
each other with an economic view of these persons as distinguish-
able in their manifestation of Themselves to man, whether in the
order of the cosmos or in the order of grace. Abelard himself fails to
see the difference between these two perspectives. He repeatedly
juxtaposes his power-wisdom-goodness argument with the descrip-
tion of the Trinitarian persons as distinguished by paternity, filia-
tion, and procession. He even calls the former model a distinction
based on relation (relative).30 In general, the Chartrains draw a

27
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boethius de Tnnitate 1.3.53-54, 1.5.39, 2.2.72-80; In
Boethius contra Eutychen etNestonum 3.65-74, ed. Nikolaus M. Häring in The Commen-
taries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1966), pp. 113, 145, 17&-80, 285-87.
28
William of Conches, Philosophia mundi 1.6-12, ed. Gregor Maurach (Pretoria:
University of South Africa, 1974), pp. 10-14. On this point, see Heinrich Flatten,
Die Philosophie des Wilhelm von Conches (Koblenz: Görres-Druckerei, 1929), pp.
180-84.
29
Haijo Jan Westra, ed., The Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii Attributed to Bernardus Silvestris 5.424—54, 11.1-63 (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), pp. 107-08, 245-47.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 103

sharp distinction between these approaches and reject out of hand

the idea that the category of relation can be applied to the deity. As
Thierry of Chartres and Clarenbald of Arras see it, relations are
nothing but Aristotelian accidents, which can inhere only in sub-
stances subject to these predicaments. God cannot be viewed as a
substance in this sense, they maintain. He is beyond substance.31
Promising as is this combination of Aristotelianism and Neoplato
nism, Thierry at once compromises it, by attributing substance to
the deity anyway, and by stating that the divine substance is the
common essence which the Trinitarian persons share.32 And, de-
spite his zealous effort to rule out relations and accidents of all
kinds as apposite to the Trinity, he admits that the distinction
among paternity, filiation, and procession does work and that it is
acceptable, even though it is based on the intratrinitarian relations
of the persons.33 The chief problem of the Chartrains in coming to
grips with Abelard is that their vocabulary is almost equally impre-
cise. Their arguments have a way of canceling each other out. As
well, Clarenbald adheres to the Boethian definition of person as
the individual substance of a rational nature cited by Abelard,
although it means that there would be three substances in the
Trinity. This idea is compatible neither with the notion of sub-
stance as a supra-substantial divine essence, on the one hand, nor
with substance as created being subject to modification by accidents,

30
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 3.174, 4.50, 4.154-56, CCCM 12: 260, 287,
342-43; Theologia "scholarium" 1.21-27, 1.30-68, CCCM 13: 327-30, 330-45. This
point has been noted by Buytaert, intro, to his ed. of Theologia Christiana, CCCM
12: 415-51; Sikes, Peter Abailard, p. 161.
31
Thierry of Chartres, Commentum super Boethii librum De trinitate 1.8-9, 2.67-
4.21, 4.29, 5.1-12; Uctiones in Boethii librum De trinitate 1.28-29, 1.35-38, 1.45, 2.1,
2.35-37, 4.13-18, 4.32, 5.15-16, ed. Nicholas M. Häring in Commentaries on Boethius
by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1971), pp. 64-65, 89-95, 101, 103, 110-13, 140-41, 143-44, 147, 154,
166-67, 190-92, 197, 217-18. On these points, see Enzo Maccagnolo, Rerum
universitatis: Saggio sullafilosofia di Teodorico di Chartres (Florence: Le Monnier, 1976),
pp. 54-56, 74, 171-72. Clarenbald of Arras, Tractatus super librum Boethii De trinitate
praefatio 20, 1.9-12, 1.24, 1.51-54, 2.42-43, 3.1, 3.14, 3.16-17, 3.31, 3.35-36, 3.38,
3.41, 3.44-92, 5.1-11, 5.17, 6.2, 6.5-12, in Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., Life and Work
of Clarenbald of Arras, a Twelfth-Century Master of the School of Chartres (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1965), pp. 73, 89-90, 95, 97, 104-06,
124, 132, 144-45, 146, 151-52, 156, 159, 159-76, 176-79, 181, 182, 183-84. On
these points, see Wilhelm Jansen, Der Kommentar des Clarenbaldus von Anas zu
Boethius De trinitate: Ein Werk aus der Schule von Chartres im 12. Jahrhundert (Breslau:
Müller & Sieffert, 1928), pp. 119-34.
32
Thierry of Chartres, Comm. super Boethii De trin. prologus 10, 5.4, pp. 60, 114.
33
Ibid., 4.3, p. 96.
104 CHAPTER THREE

on the other, the two definitions of substance which he joins Thier-

ry in defending.34
The stern rejection of relation as applicable to God, even though
it is brought in through the back door in their acceptance of the
relational formula for the Trinity, may be read as an anti-
Abelardian tactic on the part of the Chartrains. But they cite it
primarily as a means of attacking Gilbert's numerical argument.
Among the relations or accidents that Thierry and Clarenbald
mention, they single out the accident of number for special atten-
tion. Aside from the fact that number is an accident, they note, the
sheer addition of one integer to another integer which has no
difference from the other integers to which it is added does not
provide a clear enough distinction among the Trinitarian persons.
In addition, Gilbert's argument raises the question of why we
should stop at three persons, or why there needs to be more than
one person in the Godhead at all. Thierry and Clarenbald respond
with a Trinitarian argument of their own, which tries to address
these concerns. It is also based on mathematics and tries to yoke
mathematics to a recognition of the relatedness of the Trinitarian
persons to each other, which they find lacking in Gilbert's teaching.
This argument is grounded on the principle that unity can serve as
the mathematical foundation of equality-in-difference. The formula
they adopt is: 1 X 1 = 1. As Thierry and Clarenbald interpret this
formula, in engendering the Son, the Father produces a being fully
equal to Himself. The same is the case in the joint procession of the
Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. The whole point of this
analysis is summarized under the heading of the names of the
Trinitarian persons which Thierry and Clarenbald borrow from
Augustine: unity, equality, and connection (unitas, aequalitas,
conexio) ,35 While it stands as a vigorous attempt to reinsert reciproc-

34
Thierry of Chartres, Commentarius in Boethii librum contra Eutychen et Nestorium
2.11, 2.14, 3.68, ed. Nikolaus M. Häring in Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of
Chartres and His School (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971),
pp. 235, 248; Clarenbald of Arras, Tractatus super librum Boethii De trin. 1.8, 5.12-14,
pp. 89, 179-80. Another member of this group, William of Conches, Dragmaticon 1,
trans. Maccagnolo in Rerum universitatis, pp. 246-63, adds another definition of
substance, namely, being without any specifications, which he thinks is applicable
to God.
35
Thierry of Chartres, Lectiones 3.10, 7.5-7, pp. 179, 224-25; Clarenbald of
Arras, Tractatus 2.34—40, pp. 120-23. On this mathematical argument, see Gillian
R. Evans, "Alteritas: Sources for the Notion of Otherness in Twelfth-Century
Commentaries on Boethius' Opuscula sacra" Bulletin Du Cange 40 (1975-76): 103-
13; Nikolaus M. Häring, "The Creation and Creator of the World according to
Thierry of Chartres and Clarenbaldus of Arras," AHDLMA 22 (1958): 157-69;
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 105

ity into the understanding of the Trinitarian persons, this argument

has the demerit of failing to square with the Chartrains' own
announced rules. Having rejected relation, in general, and the
accident of number, in particular, as apposite to the deity, they
then reimport mathematics into the discussion, as well as relation,
but without succeeding in justifying these departures from their
stated principles.
It was not only the bolder thinkers, like Gilbert and the Char-
trains, but also those who were more conservative or who sought to
accommodate more than one contemporary viewpoint, like Robert
Pullen and Robert of Melun, who grappled valiantly but unsuc-
cessfully with the problem of names apposite to the deity as it had
been posed by Abelard. Of the two, Robert Pullen is certainly the
less circumspect and the more contradictory. At the beginning of
his Sentences, Robert Pullen raises the question of whether the term
substantia can be applied to God, and also, what significance the
very term deus has. If we follow Aristotle, he says—the only option
he canvasses—neither the terms substance nor accident can be
attributed to God. Accidents are conferred upon beings by some-
thing or someone else. But God receives nothing from any being
outside of Himself. Further, substance refers to beings subject to
modification by accidents. Since God is immutable, He cannot be
altered by accidents and hence He cannot be called a substance.
Having banished both of these terms from the lexicon of theology,
Robert goes on to note that the noun deus can have no meaning at
all. Here he shifts from the Aristotelian understanding of created
substances as his base line to the definition of a noun as a part of
speech given by the ancient grammarians. As Donatus and Priscian
have said, a noun is a part of speech that signifies a thing in its
substance and its quality. But, as Robert has already indicated,
both substance and accidental qualifications are equally inapposite
to the deity. The conclusion which follows from Robert's conflation
of Aristotle and the grammarians is that it is impossible to speak
about God at all.36
It would seem that, if a theologian comes to this conclusion and
if, like Robert, he is either uninformed about the possibility of
negative theology or not interested in pursuing it, his only responsi-
ble course of action would be to close up shop and go in for
some other line of work. Since, as we know, these disquisitions on

Edouard Jeauneau, "Lectiophilosophorum'': Recherches surl'Ecole de Chartres (Amster-

dam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1973), pp. 10-11, 81-82, 93-97.
36
Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo 1.1, 1.4, PL 186: 675A-B, 680C, 682A.
106 CHAPTER THREE

theological language occur at the beginning of the lengthiest sen-

tence collection written in this period, Robert Pullen clearly did not
take this logical next step, which his semantics would appear to
make unavoidable. Having taken the pains to raise the question of
the significance of theological language in the manner just indi-
cated, he proceeds to drop it with a dull thud, and goes on as if he
had never taken it up. He goes right ahead and uses the key, and
problematic, terms in Trinitarian and Christological discourse,
although without ever defining them or indicating the sense in
which they apply to the deity. Thus, notwithstanding his earlier
remarks on substance, he states that there is a divine substance
which is the single essence shared by the Trinitarian persons. The
term essence remains undefined. In any event, and this is Robert's
critique of Abelard, the divine substance is reflected in God's
immensity, beauty, and omnipotence, and also in His power, wis-
dom, and goodness. These three latter terms are not to be identified
with particular Trinitarian persons. Rather, these persons are iden-
tified and distinguished from each other by the attributes of
paternity, filiation, and procession. These are traits which the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit possess from all eternity. Thus far,
what Robert has accomplished can be compared with the practice
of the school of Laon on this subject. He has merely stated the
standard Latin formula but without explaining why it is apposite
and why Abelard's terminology is not. Robert wraps up this por-
tion of his counter-assertion—for it is a counter-assertion and not a
counter-argument—by remarking, confusingly, that the filiation of
the Son and the procession of the Spirit occur according to sub-
stance {secundum substantiam), even though he had initially placed
substance, whatever he means by it, on the side of the Godhead in
general and not on the side of the proper names of the Trinitarian
persons.37 He may simply be trying to affirm here the consubstan-
tiality of the persons, and no more. But his location of this point at
the juncture where he places it does not make it clear that this is
what is intended.
Robert makes only one passing attempt to indicate what his
theological terms mean, in an effort that has the sole effect of telling
the reader what these terms do not mean. The divine substance, he
notes, is different from substance as the term applies to human
beings. In the latter context, each person is a single substance. This
is not the case with the Trinity. Abandoning the problem of how

Ibid., 1.3-7, PL 186: 676C-689C.

 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 107

substance and person differ in the Trinity, Robert goes on to argue

for the definition of human substance he has proposed, against
dialecticians who think that substance should refer to the human
race in general and not to its individual members. 38 Robert wraps
up these considerations by observing that language is sometimes
used properly and sometimes improperly. Without exploring that
point any farther, he adds that the properties of the Trinitarian
persons are not affects (qffectae) and know nothing of predicaments.
Having stated what a divine person is not, or what He lacks here,
Robert concludes that these ideas are matters of faith which tran-
scend the capacity of the human mind to understand in any way,39
a statement which says more about Robert's visible lack of adept-
ness in handling the assignment than about the efforts that had
been made, and were being made currently, to do so.
In the light of Robert's handling of the Trinity, it may not be
surprising to find that his attack on the terms needed to explain
Christology is equally self-defeating. According to Robert, both the
divinity and the humanity of the incarnate Christ may be described
as substances, each of which is an essence.40 As with his treatment
of the divine substance in Book 1 of his Sentences, here he makes no
effort to endow Christ's divine substance with any positive mean-
ing. Its relationship to His divine person is not clarified, something
that must be done if a theologian is to succeed in explaining why it
was the Word, and not one of the other Trinitarian persons, Who
took on human nature in the incarnation. All that Robert gives us
here is the repeated statement that there are two substances in the
incarnate Christ, humanity and divinity, or, alternatively, three
substances, a human body, a human soul, and the Word.41 This
three-substance theory is one that Robert inherited from the school
of Laon.42 We will also find it cropping up in the work of some of
Robert's contemporaries, where it is equally confusing. Aside from
Robert's inability to decide how many substances there are in the
incarnate Christ, a fact that does not enhance his positive exposi-
tion of Christology, the three-substance model has two other disad-
vantages. It treats the Word, as a divine person, as the equivalent
of the divine substance, neither of which terms is explained. And,
with respect to the human Christ, it departs from Robert's earlier

38
Ibid., 1.3, PL 186: 676C.
39
Ibid., 1.3, PL 186: 679C-D.
40
Ibid., 3.15, PL 186: 784A-B.
41
Ibid., 2.10, 3.18, 3.20, PL 186: 734B-C, 787A-789C, 792C-D.
42
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 182, ed. Lottin in Psych, et morale, 5: 128.
108 CHAPTER THREE

announced definition of the human substance as a human indi-

vidual who is also a person. In neither his earlier nor his later use of
substance, as applied to human nature, and in neither his twin-
substance nor his three-substance version of Christ's incarnate
nature does Robert indicate how, or if, his language can rule out
the heresy of Adoptionism. All in all, Robert Pullen's handling of
theological language is seriously defective and his application of his
inconsistent or unspecific language to the themes to which he
assigns it has nothing to recommend it. While he is less oblivious to
the problem, as a problem, than the Laon masters, he does not
advance an inch toward the goal of explaining what is wrong with
Abelard's semantics and what is better about his own counter-
proposals.
In comparison with Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun makes some
notable headway in addressing these intractable problems. He
devotes extended and repeated attention to the question of theolog-
ical language, which he takes up at no less than three points in his
Sentences. Yet, while he strives to use his key terms consistently, and
succeeds in doing so to a fair degree, he leaves a number of them
undefined and he sometimes contradicts himself or misses the
opportunity to capitalize on some of his most valuable arguments.
Robert is a critic of Abelard to some degree. But he is reluctant to
discard the Abelardian legacy altogether. His simultaneous loyalty
to Hugh of St. Victor, and to Hugh's essentially economic view of
the Trinity in creation and redemption, also impedes Robert from
making the fullest use of some of his most helpful findings.
Robert begins his consideration of theological language in
general at the start of the first book of his Sentences, under the
heading of the understanding of the language of the Bible. Here, he
notes, words are to be understood both literally and with the three
traditional spiritual senses used by exegetes. He continues by list-
ing six conditions which need to be taken into account in assigning
these spiritual meanings.43 At the same time, he asserts in these
prefatory remarks that all theological language is metaphorical, not
literal, and that negative theology is more accurate at times than
positive theology, in principle.44 Without entirely clarifying where
he stands amid this range of possibilities, Robert goes on to note
that some terms, such as "to be" and "good" have a different

43
Robert of Melun, Sententie 1.1.6, ed. Raymond-M. Martin in Robert of
Melun, Oeuvres, 4 vols. (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1932-52), 3
part 1: 170-79.
44
Ibid., 1.3.3, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 19, 21, 26-30.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 109

denotation as applied to God and to creatures.45 The same might

well be said of terms such as essence, substance, and nature, which
Robert needs to use in some detail in his theology. While he tries to
use them as clearly and consistently as he can, he does not provide
any definitions of their meaning with respect either to the deity or
to created beings.
None the less, Robert firmly yokes substance to essence and
nature, and applies these terms, synonymously, to the single divine
being possessed equally by the three Trinitarian persons.46 Some of
the names that refer properly to this divine substance they share,
such as justice, or goodness, or the name of creator, are terms that
reflect God's manifestation of Himself in His creation. Other terms
denoting the divine substance, such as simplicity or immutability,
refer to His nature as such. In both of these cases, Robert argues,
the attributes denoted are shared fully by all the Trinitarian per-
sons. In the case of the first group, the economic names that
describe God's relationship to creatures, the relations involved are
not accidental. For, while the universe itself is mutable and full of
phenomena subject to modification by predicables, God Himself is
changeless.47 Now, as for the notorious power-wisdom-goodness
formula of Abelard, Robert asserts that these attributes are essen-
tial properties of God. They pertain to the substance of the God-
head, in the sense he has just indicated. They are not proper names
of the Trinitarian persons. For, if they were the proper names of
these persons, they would yield three different essences. The result
would be tritheism. Further, and here rejecting Abelard again,
Robert argues that power, wisdom, and goodness are not relative
terms. They are, rather, convertible and equal. They are not parts
that make up a whole, or individual members of the genus to which
they belong. At the same time, they are useful terms because they
are analogous to human qualities, which facilitates their compre-
hension, and they are more fitting than any other divine attributes
in the category they inhabit in describing the manifestations of the
Trinity to man.48

45
Ibid., 1.5.45-46, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 258-76. This point has been studied
carefully by Peter W. Nash, "The Meaning of Est in the Sentences (1152-1160) of
Robert of Melun," MS 14 (1952): 129-42, who concludes, we think accurately,
that Robert tends to confuse esse as such with esse a se, leading him to treat
creatures as passing shadows of the divine being.
46
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.2.2, 1.3.3-7, 1.5.44, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 268; 3 part 2:
31-46, 254-55.
47
Ibid., 1.3.3, Ouevres, 3 part 2: 31-39.
48
Ibid., 1.2.5-7, 1.3.2, 1.5.39-^0, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 274-92; 3 part 2: 10-18,
110 CHAPTER THREE

Robert, however, cannot let Abelard go completely. Like Hugh,

he wants to argue for the acceptability of the power-wisdom-
goodness model as a set of proper names for the Trinitarian persons
in some way. His proposal is to argue that the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit do possess these properties, respectively, in a special,
preeminent, way, even though each of these persons participates, to
a lesser degree, in the attributes exemplified in that special way by
the other two persons.49 Valiant as it is as an effort to salvage the
least defensible features of the Victorine and Abelardian legacies on
power, wisdom, and goodness, Robert's reasoning at this point fails
to persuade the reader that his position does not stand in contradic-
tion to his assignment of these properties to the Godhead as such,
despite the huge amount of space he devotes to the effort to make
this case.50
The force of this contradiction is to leave in abeyance the sense
Robert assigns to the idea of person, as it is applied to the Trinity.
Confusion is not allayed by his other inconsistencies on that sub-
ject. In his introductory remarks concerning the conditions affect-
ing the reading of the biblical text in its spiritual senses, he includes
persona as one of them, defining it à la Boethius as the individual
substance of a rational nature.51 But, he also states that, in Trinitar-
ian discourse, none of the Boethian definitions of person are help-
ful or apposite and that the specific problem with the particular
definition earlier cited is that it yields three substances, that is,
three deities.52 His own preferred definition of person in the Tri-
nitarian context is a fairly content-free one, the differences men can
discern among the three persons (discretum discernens), a formula
which leads him to slide away from what those differences actually
are to the modes by which men may know them and may signify
what they know.53 And, in the Christological section of his Sentences,

241-46. These points are well developed by Ulrich Horst, Die Trinitäts- und
Gotteslehre des Robert von Melun (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1964), pp.
85-93, 119-38.
49
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.3.19-30, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 67-97. Raymond-M.
Martin, "Pro Petro Abaelardo: Un plaidoyer de Robert de Melun contre
S. Bernard," RSPT 12 (1923): 308-33 makes Robert more of a supporter of
Abelard here than he was.
50
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.6.1-20, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 285-314; Ulrich Horst,
"Beiträge zum Einfluss Abaelards auf Robert von Melun," RTAM 26 (1959):
314—26; Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 111-18.
51
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.1.6, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 176; Horst, "Beiträge," pp.
314-21.
52
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.3.11-13, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 51-57.
53
Ibid., 1.3.14, 1.3.16, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 57, 64-65.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 111

which remains unedited, the manuscript evidence indicates that he

reverts to the Boethian "individual substance of a rational nature"
despite its acknowledged difficulties.54
There is still the problem of whether the traditional formula of
unbegotten-begotten-proceeding can offer a cogent solution to the
question of how the Trinitarian persons are different from each
other, despite the difficulties associated with the Aristotelian con-
ception of relation as an accident, which the Chartrains emphasize
so heavily. Robert is one of a few theologians of his time to find a
way out of this dilemma in Augustine's De trinitate 5.16, which he
cites specifically, and with great pertinence, to this point. There, as
he notes, Augustine had pointed out that we can think about the
concept of relation in more than one way. We can, to be sure, view
it as an Aristotelian accident. As such, Augustine agrees, it is not
and cannot be an attribute of the deity. But Aristotelian logic is not
our only resource here. There is also the notion of relative nouns, as
discussed by the classical grammarians. In defining and illustrating
the concept of relative nouns, Donatus and Priscian include exam-
ples such as father-son and master-slave. Such examples have their
limits as analogies of the relations among the Trinitarian persons in
that they are drawn from human relations that involve priority and
posteriority, cause and effect, or circumstance. Augustine prefers
pairs of relative nouns such as left-right, or light-dark, because they
can be understood relatively {ad aliud) while also lacking a temporal
or causal dimension. As Robert points out, this type of reasoning
allows us to appreciate relations among the Trinitarian persons
that are permanent and that never change, a point which enables
him to supply a rationale for his support of the traditional Latin
formula not found in Robert Pullen.55 He concludes, therefore, that
it is proper to apply the names unbegotten, begotten, and proceed-
ing to the Trinitarian persons, in a manner that would not be
apposite if they were applied to the divine essence.56
Having attained, at this juncture, a position of decided advan-
tage, Robert at once proceeds to abandon it. Having established
that paternity, filiation, and procession do provide adequate proper
names for the Trinitarian persons and having appreciated the value
of Augustine's grammatical rescue mission for the concept of rela-
tion, his argument now reflects the fact that his main concern is not

54
Martin, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 57-58 n.
55
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.3.3, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 37-39.
56
Ibid., 1.3.8-9, 1.4.23-24, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 47-49. 150-51. On this point, see
Horst, Die Tnnitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 140-72.
112 CHAPTER THREE

the understanding of how these interrelations work. Rather, he

wants to consider why we use the terms denoting the divine essence
in the singular form of the noun, even though they refer to attri-
butes possessed by all three Trinitarian persons, unlike the re-
lational terms, which are used in the singular because they denote
the individual properties of the persons. Robert reasserts the point
that the persons can be described in terms of their properties. But
then, notwithstanding the grammatical argument he has appropri-
ated from Augustine, he returns to the idea that relations cannot be
enduring properties, on the basis of the Aristotelian notion of
relation as an accident. Robert does not explain why he has with-
drawn from the beachhead which Augustine had helped him to
win. Nor does he resolve the self-contradiction on the idea of
relation in his own argument. 57
And, for all the help that Augustine is able to provide for the
resolution of the vexing questions with which Robert wrestles so
inconclusively, his larger reading of the De trinitate works at cross
purposes to Robert's goal. He takes up one of the analogies Augus-
tine had noted in the human soul, not the memory-intellect-will
example but the mens-notitia-amor one developed at an earlier point
in Augustine's argument. Instead of seeing the parallels with the
relational terms which he accepts—and then rejects—as appropri-
ate proper names of the Trinitarian persons, he presents the Au-
gustinian analogy as unacceptable because it conflicts with his own
notion that each of the Trinitarian persons possesses His personal
attributes in a special and preeminent way. He fails to see that
here, and even more so in the case of the memory-intellect-will
model, Augustine might not be as hard to accommodate to that
claim as Robert thinks. Robert also maintains that Augustine's
argument does not differentiate the persons sufficiently. Another
objection is that Robert wants to treat one of the three analogous
terms, the human intellect alone, as the image of God in man. He
ignores the fact that Augustine regards the three terms in his
analogies as functions inhering in a single subsistent mind which
indeed is viewed as the image of God in man. All in all, Robert
makes rather heavy weather of Augustine's De trinitate, misunder-
standing and garbling this text although he could have put it to
more constructive use here.58

57
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.5.1-41, 1.6.21-25, 1.6.28-30, 1.6.40-42, Oeuvres, 3
part 2: 163-246, 316-24, 327-31, 348-55.
58
Ibid., 1.4.9-14, 1.6.43-49, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 110-28, 367-68; Horst, Die
Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 172-80, 181-84.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 113

A central blind spot in Robert's treatment of theological lan-

guage with respect to the Trinity is his inability to grasp the fact
that Augustine is not talking about the economic Trinity at all in
De trinitate. This same problem helps to account for his backing and
filling on the subject of relation, which prevents him from seeing
that it is the relations associating the persons with each other and
distinguishing Them from each other in Their unmanifested state
that is the focus of the Augustinian argument concerning relative
nouns. Aside from this economic bias, reinforced by his adherance
to both Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, Robert's theology suffers
here from his contradictions on the definition of person and his
inconsistencies in the handling of the power-wisdom-goodness
problem. If he is a mitigated Abelardian on both of these points, he
gives full credence to the utility of Abelard's bronze seal analogy,59
despite its incompatibility with a Trinity viewed as consubstantial
and coeternal. He does achieve a clear yoking of the terms essence,
substance, and nature and a consistent assignment of them to the
shared attributes of the Godhead. He also targets effectively the
problem implicit in the Boethian definition of person as the indi-
vidual substance of a rational nature, even if he remains unwilling
to disembarrass himself of it systematically. He does recognize the
fact that there is more than one way to think about relation, and
that one can use this concept meaningfully in Trinitarian theology,
having noted the limitations of Aristotelian logic in that context.
This, too, is an insight which he does not exploit as fully and
positively as he might have done.
Several of the more constructive features of Robert of Melun's
treatment of theological language—at least potentially—can also
be found in the two theologians of the period who contributed most
heavily to the eventual argument against Abelard's semantics de-
veloped by Peter Lombard, Walter of Mortagne and the author of
the Summa sententiarum. The Summa sententiarum has generally been
regarded as Peter's most immediate source in this connection, 60
with Walter seen as a source for that work.61 This may well have

59
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.4.3-9, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 101-10.
60
Ludwig Ott, "Die Trinitätslehre der Summa sententiarum als Quelle des Petrus
Lombardus," Divus Thomas 21 (1943): 159-86.
61
Marcel Chossat, La Somme des Sentences: Oeuvre de Hugues de Mortagne vers 1155
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1923), pp. 83-89; Ludwig Ott, "Die
Trinitätslehre Walters von Mortagne als Quelle der Summa sententiarum" Scholastik
18 (1943): 79-90, 219-39; "Walter von Mortagne und Petrus Lombardus in ihren
Verhältnis zueinander," in Mélanges Joseph de Ghellinck, S.J., 2 vols. (Gembloux:
J. Duculot, 1951), 2: 646-97. Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St. Viktor,
114 CHAPTER THREE

been the line of filiation, although it is worth remembering that

Walter's teaching was directly available to Peter, aside from its
textual accessibility; and, in some respects, he prefers Walter's
treatment to that of the Summa sententiarum.
Walter expressly states that he has framed his De trinitate as a
refutation of the view that power, wisdom, and goodness can be
used as proper names of the Trinitarian persons.62 These attributes,
along with attributes such as justice, refer to the single divine
essence or substance. They do not signify diverse properties in God
Himself, but the diversity of His effects as He operates in
creatures.63 The persons Who exist in this unity of the divine
substance are what the Greeks call hypostases, or subsistent man-
ifestations of the Godhead. 64 This being the case, for Walter, he
raises the question of whether, since the operations of God are
carried out by the entire Trinity, we have to say that the Son
engenders Himself. Walter answers in the negative. The operations
of the Trinity, he observes, are understood in the relation of the
Trinity to creatures. Although the actions of the Trinitarian per-
sons are inseparable, some are more appropriate to one person than
to another.65 Walter accepts the application of relative terms to the
Trinity, although not in the connection of the Trinity to the crea-
tion, since created things are mutable and God is not. Despite his
statement that the Trinitarian operations are understood in their
relation to the creation, Walter accents the unique appositeness of
the terms unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding, which refer to the
relations of the Trinitarian persons to each other and which must
be distinguished from terms, such as love or charity, which apply
substantially to all the persons. 66 As another example of this last
point, Walter cites the Augustinian analogy of mens-notitia-amor,
which he sees as a clear parallel of the intratrinitarian relations of
paternity, filiation, and procession. These relations, in either exam-
ple, are functional correlatives, not relations that are accidental, as
they may inhere in creatures.67 When it comes to the definition of
Trinitarian person as the "individual substance of a rational na-
ture," Walter holds that Boethius is just plain wrong. His definition

pp. 224-25, sees Hugh as Peter's source here, but that is because he writes before
scholars had determined that Hugh was not the author of the Summa sententiarum.
62
Walter of Mortagne, De trinitate 13, PL 209: 588D-590B.
63
Ibid., 1, PL 209: 577B-C.
64
Ibid., 2-3, PL 209: 577C-578B.
65
Ibid., 5, PL 209: 560A-581A.
66
Ibid., 7-8, PL 209: 583A-584C.
67
Ibid., 9, 11, PL 209: 584D-586A, 586C-587C.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 115

leads to three substances, that is, three deities. Despite its formula-
tion six centuries earlier, Walter dismisses it as a "profane
innovation."68 As to what a person really is, Boethius having been
rejected, a persona, for Walter, is the name of the properties (nomi-
num proprietates) that distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
from each other.69
There is much that Walter does not attempt here. He does not
discuss the grammatical rationale for the relational terms that he
sees as appropriate proper names of the Trinitarian persons. He
has not factored eternity into the nature of those relations. He has
therefore not explained fully what distinguishes intratrinitarian
relations from relations as the accidents inhering in creatures. He
has not defined substance or essence. None the less, he uses these
latter terms consistently and applies them clearly to the attributes
of the Godhead in general. He makes it clear why power, wisdom,
and goodness belong in the latter category. If he claims that the
functions of the Trinity are understood in relation to creatures, he
also takes a notable step in the direction of reappropriating the
Augustinian, and Latin, accent on the understanding of the rela-
tions of the Trinitarian persons vis-à-vis each other as the founda-
tion for a set of relational proper names that are truly unique to the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively. He also is crisp, cogent,
and unhesitating in his willingness to jettison a Boethian definition
of person that simply does not work. In short, Walter makes
some important contributions to the resolution of the anti-Abelard
debate.
In some respects the author of the Summa sententiarum consolidates
these gains and in others he takes a step backwards. As with
Walter, he does not define the terms substance and essence. He
tends to use them consistently, but is less wholehearted than Wal-
ter in this respect. He agrees that the divine essence and substance
are the same thing, adding that the unity of the divine essence and
substance is not changed or infringed upon by God's action in the
mutable created universe through His governance or disposition
(dispositio). While the author also defines the divine substance as
God's effects in nature, 70 he more typically equates substance,
essence, and nature with the Godhead as such, in contrast with the
Trinitarian persons Who share in it. He agrees with Walter in

Ibid., 6, PL 209: 581A-582A.

Ibid., 12, PL 209: 588A-C.
Summa sententiarum 1.4, PL 176: 48C-49A.
116 CHAPTER THREE

upholding the appositeness of the analogy of mens-notitia-amor as

relations among the Trinitarian persons, expanding it to include
Augustine's point that these relations are eternal and unchanging.71
With Walter, however, he has missed Augustine's grammatical
rationale for the admissibility of relation, so understood, to Trinitar-
ian theology.
In any event, having laid this foundation, the author notes that
we must distinguish the terms that signify the unity of substance
and nature in the deity, such as omniscience or eternity, which are
predicated of God substantially (dicuntur secundum substantiam) from
those that apply properly to the persons of the Trinity, such as
unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding, which signify the properties
that distinguish the persons {significant proprietates quitus personae
distinguuntur) vis-à-vis each other. These latter terms, he adds, are
predicated of the persons appropriately because the attributes in
question inhere only in the individual persons which they denote.72
They are used relatively (relative), with respect to each other. They
do not refer to anything accidental, since the intratrinitarian rela-
tions are permanent. 73 As for power, wisdom, and goodness, they
belong clearly under the heading of the terms denoting the attri-
butes of the deity as such. They are not acceptable as proper names
of the persons.74
The main area in which the author of the Summa sententiarum
backtracks, in comparison with Walter of Mortagne, is in his
handling of the problematic Boethian definition of person. He is
well aware of the objection that can be leveled against it, and which
had been so leveled by Walter and others, namely, that it entails
three substances, that is, three deities. But he is too timid to junk
this definition entirely. His proposal is to redefine it, so that its
semantic force is limited (restringitur significatie). According to his
own redefinition, Boethius's formula denotes persons who are dis-
tinct with respect to their properties but not distinct substantially. 75
The effect of this new definition is to leach the meaning out of
Boethius's formula by changing it so much that it stops saying what
he intended it to mean. For, the author's own positive definition of
a person is that a person is a property (proprietas). This claim he
anchors by the citation of authority in the phrase "in essence unity

71
Ibid., 1.6, PL 176: 51A-52D.
72
Ibid., 1.7, PL 176:53A-B.
73
Ibid., 1.9, PL 176:55C-D.
74
Ibid., 1.10, PL 176: 56D-58D.
75
Ibid., 1.9, PL 176: 56C-D.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 117

and in the persons property" (in essentia unitas, et in personis pro-

prietas). He adds that the Greeks use the term hypostasis to denote
the Trinitarian persons and that the Latins translate hypostasis as
substantia. This is an application of the idea of substance which he
rejects. The properties in God, he insists, are the relations in God,
which are not the same thing as the divine substance, a point on
which he concludes his analysis of theological language as applied
to the Trinity, with a reprise on the unique appropriateness of the
unbegotten-begotten-proceeding formula for the definition of the
personhood of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.76
Although the author of the Summa sententiarum waffles on the
Boethian definition of person, retaining it while at the same time
emptying it of its original meaning, and although he does not
attempt to define his other key terms, he does make an energetic if
imperfectly realized effort to use them consistently. He clearly
assigns substance, essence, and nature to the side of the Godhead
while squarely situating person on the side of the intratrinitarian
relations, seen as eternal. He uses Augustine effectively, if not
exhaustively. And, he shows some awareness of the terminological
discrepancies between the Greek and Latin Trinitarian formulae,
displaying an understanding of how these discrepancies had helped
to muddy the waters. At the same time as he makes significant
gains in these respects, however, he dissipates many of them when
he turns to the application of the lexicon he has developed for
Trinitarian discourse to the task of explaining the constitution of
the incarnate Christ.
The author's biggest semantic problem, in the context of Chris-
tology, is the term substantia. In the incarnation, he notes, the
Word, Who is both a divine person and a possessor of the divine
nature, took on a human nature. We recall here that, in speaking of
the divine essence and nature above, he had rigorously equated
these two terms with the divine substance. Exactly what the rela-
tionship between Christ's divine substance and His divine person-
hood may be is not spelled out in this analysis. The author moves
on to observe that there are two natures in the incarnate Christ,
divine and human. Whether the terms essence and substance have
a human denotation, and whether they are univocal with the way
these terms are to be understood of the divine nature, or whether
they are to be understood equivocally, or analogously, is a question
he likewise bypasses, proceeding to the statement that there are

76
Ibid., 1.11, PZ, 176:59B-61C.
118 CHAPTER THREE

three substances in the incarnate Christ, a human body, a human

soul, and the Word.77 We recognize the formula found in the school
of Laon, which has also cropped up in the Christology of Robert
Pullen. Its difficulties are manifest, especially in the light of the
lexicon which the author of the Summa sententiarum has been trying
to develop. For, the Word is understood as a person, the second
person of the Trinity. It is this person and not one of the other two
persons, and not the divine substance in general, that undergoes
incarnation. How Christians are to grasp the force of that belief,
given the three-substance formula, is indeed difficult to see. It is
likewise difficult to know what to make of this formula as it applies
to human nature, at least if one wants to adhere to the hylemorphic
notion of the human substantia inherited from Aristotle.
The author's problems are intensified when he raises the next
question, of whether Boethius's "individual substance of a rational
nature" is useful in understanding the humanity of Christ. As we
have noted, he was unsettled as to its applicability to divine per-
sons. In this context, he rejects Boethius's definition of person
because it would confine personhood to Christ's human soul alone.
Two difficulties would flow from that position. First, the definition
would conflict with the author's own Aristotelian presupposition
that human beings are composed of bodies as well as souls. Equally
serious, if the soul alone could be equated with the human person,
then, in the incarnation, the Word would take on a human person,
whether or not that human soul had already been united with a
human body. The result would be an individual containing two
persons, an idea difficult to sustain conceptually and also an index
of the heresy of Adoptionism. This heresy is a doctrine that the
author plainly rejects. And so, along with it, he dismisses the
Boethian definition as meaningful for human beings. He concludes
that it would be pertinent only to spiritual beings, such as angels,
that lack bodies.78
It is clear that the author's main concern in these passages is to
rule out heresies attached to Christ's nature. But, in expressing that
concern, he confuses the terminology which he had used for the
Trinity. He offers no advice on whether the term substantia can be
used in the same sense both for God and for creatures, and, if not,
how it should be understood in each case. He is equally ambivalent
in his application of substance to human nature, contradicting the

Ibid., 1.15, PZ, 176: 70C-D.

Ibid., 1.15, PL 176: 71A-B.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 119

idea that substance stands for the union of body and soul in man
with the notion that substance can be applied to the infra-
substantial physical and spiritual components that combine to
constitute a human being.

THE LOMBARDIAN RESPONSE

While we can certainly trace the influence of both Walter of

Mortagne and the Summa sententiarum in Peter Lombard's handling
of theological language, Peter takes on a much wider assignment in
this connection than any of the predecessors and contemporaries
whom we have already considered. As we will see below, he felt a
serious need to take stock of the semantics of Gilbert of Poitiers, no
less than the terminology of Abelard. Of concern here was not only
Gilbert's numerical distinction among the Trinitarian persons but
his semantics more generally, as they applied to other aspects of the
divine nature and to Christology. Peter also joins with many theolo-
gians of his time in seeking a definitive means of banishing the
Abelardian power-wisdom-goodness argument from theological
discussion. In some respects he employs the same tactics in dealing
with the teachings of both of these masters. Most succinctly stated,
his ability to bring John Damascene's De fide orthodoxa to bear on
Trinitarian theology enables him to pinpoint exactly the differences
between the Greek and Latin approaches to the Trinity that under-
lay, and beclouded, much of the debate, both in Abelard's formula-
tion of his teaching and in the arguments of his would-be oppo-
nents. On the Latin side, Peter takes the tack of focusing on
Augustine and of mining his De trinitate more exhaustively than any
of the theologians of his time. In the effort to re-Latinize the
doctrine of the Trinity he is thus better equipped than other think-
ers who had dismissed, or garbled, or misunderstood their Augus-
tine. In appealing to the resources of the two most philosophical of
the theologians representing the Greek and Latin traditions, re-
spectively, Peter seeks to find, and to clarify, a vocabulary adequate
to bear the speculative weight of the doctrines it would be called
upon to bear. He reflects a strong confidence in the ability of
theologians, even with the limited philosophical resources currently
available, to develop and to use with precision and consistency just
such a vocabulary. And, many of the arguments he works out in
response to Abelard, whom he regards as the Trinitarian theolo-
gian of the day most in need of refutation, also proved to be of great
utility when he turned his attention to Gilbert.
Peter grounds his case against Abelard in the Trinitarian theolo-
120 CHAPTER THREE

gies of Augustine and John Damascene because, by comparing

these two prototypical exponents of Latin and Greek theology, he is
able to show, clearly and convincingly, just what had led Abelard
astray.79 Abelard, he notes, had confused the Latin and Greek
understandings of the Trinity. Damascene made it clear to the
Lombard that Abelard had identified himself primarily with the
Greek effort to understand the economic Trinity, the Trinitarian
persons as They manifest Themselves to man, both cosmologically
and charismatically. At the same time, Abelard had seen the need
to distinguish between the attributes that we can assign to the
single simple divine essence and those we can apply to the Trinitar-
ian persons. Augustine focused Peter's attention on the fact that,
in addressing the second part of that assignment, the Latin tradi-
tion insisted on a point that Abelard has not taken with sufficient
seriousness, the need to understand the relations of the Trinitarian
persons among Themselves, quite apart from anything They might
choose to manifest of Themselves to man. With this distinction
between the Latin and Greek approaches clearly laid out, Peter is
able to show that Abelard's doctrine of the Trinity is inadequate to
the explanation of the Trinity in either of these modes. Abelard, he
agrees, had been correct in seeing that some terms apply to God as
such, while other terms apply properly to the Trinitarian persons
individually. Now, the names power, wisdom, and goodness are not
proper names as applied to the persons of the Trinity. For they do
not display what is unique to each of these persons in the internal
family relationship which He enjoys with the other two persons.
Nor do these terms apply properly or exclusively to the ways in
which one, and only one, of the Trinitarian persons manifests
Himself to man, since they denote attributes common to the divine
essence which they share.
Peter's strategy in developing this argument against Abelard can
be seen, first of all, in the way in which he organizes his material in
the first book of his Sentences. As we have seen, in considering the
schemata of contemporary systematic theologians in chapter 2
above, many of those who lead off with the deity begin with the

79
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IVlibns distinctae 1. d. 3. c. 1.5, d. 8. c. 4—c. 8.1-3,
d. 19. c. 2, d. 22. c. 5, d. 24. c. 6~d. 25. c. 3.4, d. 26. c. 3, c. 8, d. 27. c. 2.3, d. 30. c.
1.1-7, d. 33. c. 1.1-10, d. 34. c. 1.1-9, c. 4.2, 3rd ed. rev., ed. Ignatius C. Brady,
2 vols., (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 70,
98-101, 101-03, 160, 179-80, 189, 195, 203, 204-05, 220-22, 240-43, 245-46,
246-50, 253. On this whole question, see Ermenegildo Bertola, "II problema di
Dio in Pier Lombardo," Rivista difilosofia neo-scolastica 48 (1956): 135-50; Johannes
Schneider, Die L·hre vom dreieinigen Gott in der Schule des Petrus Lombardus (Munich:
Max Hueber Verlag, 1961), pp. 145-48, 181-82, 226.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 121

divine nature and then treat the Trinity. Peter does the reverse. In
discussing the Trinity first, he gets his basic vocabulary in place
and indicates the particular content he is going to give to the
troublesome key terms at issue. This done, he next takes up the
unity of the Godhead which the Trinitarian persons share, and the
various ways in which different subsets of divine names under this
heading can be understood. As noted, power, wisdom, and good-
ness are included in this particular subdivision of Peter's theologi-
cal lexicon. The are treated as such, before he continues with the modes
by which the deity governs the universe, a topic which then leads directly
into the subject of the creation, which he addresses in Book 2.
At the outset, and repeatedly in Book 1, Peter emphasizes the
point that the reason for writing about the Trinity is to show that
God is one in essence and plural in His persons. With Walter of
Mortagne, the author of the Summa sententiarum, and Robert of
Melun, he firmly annexes substance and nature to essence as ways
of speaking about the Godhead. Unlike any of these masters,
however, he endows these terms with a solid content. For him,
essence means absolute being, the fullness of being. Insofar as
essence can be compared with anything else, it is not to be con-
trasted with existence but with non-existence. Peter's reading of
Augustine and John Damascene points him to the understanding
that, in Latin, essence and its synonyms are the equivalent of the
Greek ousia. Essence, in his view, is actually a better term than
substance in this connection, although substance may be used with
this sense, à propos of the Godhead. The chief features of the divine
essence are characteristics of God in and of Himself. He is eternal,
incommutable, immutable, and simple. He is being as such, and
alone may be so called (Deus ergo solus dicitur essentia vel esse). Being is
not an attribute of God, for Peter, but a statement about His very
nature. This divine nature is utterly transcendent of created beings,
which have a beginning, even in the case of those that have immor-
tal souls, and which are changeable, subject to modification by
accidents. Even when created beings are spiritual, they too lack
simplicity and immutability. The term substantia must thus be
applied to created beings in a manner different from the way it is
applied to God. Peter acknowledges that substance refers properly
{proprie) to created beings subject to change. The term, thus, can be
applied to the deity only with caveats and restrictions, of the type
he has indicated. But, with that understanding, substantia can be
equated with the divine essentia.*0
80
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 2. c. 1-c. 2.3, d. 8. c. 1-8, 1: 61-63, 95-103. The
quotation is at d. 8. c. 1.7, 1: 96. Peter's accent on essentia as the key to his doctrine
122 CHAPTER THREE

Having made this point, Peter indicates that, along with substan-
tia, natura is to be yoked with essence, on the side of the Godhead; it
is not to be used to denote the Trinitarian persons.81 The term
natura also refers to the created universe, since it describes the
character of concrete individual beings, whatever that character
may happen to be, so long as it is intrinsic to the being in
question.82 The consideration of how God's existence and nature
may be known from an inspection of created nature which prefaces
immediately Peter's discussion of the Trinity is designed to do three
things at once. Outside of validating St. Paul's claim that the
invisible things of God may be seen through the things that He has
made, the proofs give Peter an opportunity to lay a foundation for
his anti-Abelardian argument by contrasting the composite and
changeable beings in creation with the omnipotent, omniscient,
and supremely good creator. This argument goes beyond the
offering of physical and metaphysical proofs of God's existence to
the annexation of the attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness to
the divine simplicity, from the outset. 83 A second anti-Abelardian
tactic built into Peter's proofs is his next move to the vestiges of the
Trinity in creation. He begins by emphasizing that these are simili-
tudes, not substantial participations of creatures in the incommu-
table and simple substance of the Trinity. Further, the analogies
found in the philosophers are mere pointers which fall short of
imparting a real knowledge of the Trinity. The best created anal-
ogy of the Trinity is the mind of man, as Augustine had developed
that theme in his De trinitate.
Peter gives a more comprehensive and more finely nuanced
treatment of the Augustinian argument in this section of his Sen-
tences than we find in the work of any of the contemporary masters
who invoke it. There are three features of his handling of this
subject which make it stand out from other current accounts. In the
first place, he considers both sets of Augustinian analogies, memoria-
intellectus-voluntas and mens-notitia-amor. Secondly, he takes careful
account of the problem of how relation may be understood, and
goes farther than anyone else in exploring both the advantages of

of the names of God has been aptly noted by Cornelio Fabro, "Teologia dei nomi
divini nel Lombardo e in S. Tommaso," Pier Lombardo 4 (1960): 79-&1; Etienne
Gilson, "Pierre Lombard et les théologies d'essence," Revue du moyen âge latin 1
(1945): 61-64; Schneider, Die Uhre, pp. 25-30, 224-26.
81
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 2. c. 4.2, d. 34. c. 1, 1: 64, 246-50.
82
Ibid., 1. d. 3. c. 1.1, 1: 68-69. On natura here, see Johann Schupp, Die
Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1932), pp. 15-23.
83
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 3. c. 1.1-6, 1: 68-70.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 123

the grammatical reformulation of this idea by Augustine and the

limits as well as the powers of relative nouns in the Trinitarian
context. Finally, he brings Damascene to bear on the definition of
persona with which he emerges and on the ways in which it is
appropriate as applied to the Trinitarian persons.
Peter begins with the analogy of memory, intellect, and will. This
serves as a useful analogy in that these three functions are not three
lives, three minds, three essences but are mental operations that are
distinct, as well as being functional correlatives of each other. They
coinhere in a single subsistent mind. With Augustine, he accents
the point that analogy is not identity. The human mind remains
unequal {licet impar) to the Trinity. The mind is a rational spirit
attached to a body, while God is spiritual and incorporeal. A
human being possesses these three faculties, but together they do
not comprise the sum total of his being, while the Trinitatian
persons do constitute God's whole being. The human being exercis-
ing these three mental functions is a single person, while the Trinity
is three persons. Still, a powerful source of comparability lies in the
fact that in both the divine and human analogates the three func-
tions are understood with reference to each other. In the human no
less than in the divine case, the interrelations involved are sharply
distinguishable from those pertaining to Aristotlian accidents:
"These three may be called one substance, and that is because they
exist substantially in the same mind or soul, not as accidents in a
subject, which can come and g o " (Haec tria dicantur una substantia:
ideo scilicet quia in ipsa anima vel mente substantialiter existunt, non sicut
accidentia in subiecto, quae possunt adesse et abesse) ,84
In support of this point Peter cites Augustine's De trinitate 9.4,
which no one else at the time who appealed to Augustine's argu-
ment had thought of using. He does so because he finds the discus-
sion of relative nouns in De trinitate 5.16 too weak for his purposes.
For, relatives such as left and right or light and dark involve
spatiality and sensory perception, neither of which pertains to the
mental faculties of man on which the Trinitarian analogy is based.
A fortiori, neither spatiality nor sense perception applies to the
Trinity itself. As Peter stands alone in recognizing, Augustine
himself had indicated the limits of his own grammatical argument.
He had arrived here at an argument based instead on man's mental
faculties, faculties seen as structured intrinsically into man's very
being, and not as accidents that may or may not be attached to it.

Ibid., 1. d. 3. c. 1.7-c. 3.2, 1: 70-75. The quotation is at d. 3. c. 2.8, 1: 74.

124 CHAPTER THREE

This argument addresses the critique of the concept of relation

made on the side of Aristotelian logic as well as the critique that
could be made on the side of grammar, and provides an analogy on
which the interrelations of the Trinitiarian persons, structured not
only intrinsically but also eternally into their divine being, can be
solidly grounded.
With this powerful argument in place, it may not seem im-
mediately apparent why Peter thinks it desirable to advert as well
to the mens-notitia-amor analogy, especially since, in Augustine's De
trinitate, it is treated as an argument less finally persuasive than the
one Augustine builds on the foundation of memoria-intellectus-voluntas.
For Peter, the chief limitation of the mens-notitia-amor analogy
is that it is impossible to make the same case, on the human side,
for relations that are intrinsic to the beings that possess them as can
be made for memory, intellect, and will. He prudently does not try
to extend that analysis of relation to this analogy. What appeals to
him about the mens-notitia-amor model is that it conjures up the
image of a parent and a child as the analogates of the noticing mind
and the object of knowledge and love of which it takes cognizance,
and of the love passing between them, while asserting their equality
and consubstiantiality and the complementarity of their joint in-
teractions. In some respects, Augustine's analogy of the lover, the
beloved, and the love that unites them might have served Peter's
purpose equally well. But he prefers the mens-notitia-amor model, at
least with the reading he gives to it, because it points to the ways in
which the Trinitarian persons, in their eternal relations to each
other, can be distinguished by the particular roles they play vis-à-
vis each other.85
Having found a way to include the concept of relation within his
analysis of the Trinitarian persons, while excluding the limits
attaching to relative nouns and to Aristotelian accidents alike,
Peter is now well positioned to clarify the meaning of the term
persona as applied to the Trinity. In general, this task is going to
require a set of names that are both proper to each person and
which can signify the divine essence, but in such a way as to display
"what pertains properly to the individual persons, and which is
attributed relatively to each of them" (ilia quae proprie ad singulas
pertinet personas, relative ad invicem dicuntur) .86 Insofar as the names
attached to the Godhead signify the divine essence, they signify the
divine substance, and may be attributed substantialiter to the per-

Ibid., 1. d. 3. c. 3.S-c. 4, 1: 74-77.

 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 125

sons when, but only when, it is the divinity each person shares with
the other persons that the speaker wants to denote. In coming to
grips with the problem of how substantial attribution of divine
names would work in this connection, Peter notes that this is a
linguistic problem that occurs both in Greek and Latin. Where the
Latins speak of three persons in the Trinity, the Greeks speak of
three hypostases, which the Latins have translated as substantia*. He
freely indicates that Boethius is the villian of the piece here. But, he
continues, such an understanding of substance is inapposite. Sub-
stance, as he has already pointed out, belongs properly to the
divine essence, the Godhead, and not to the Trinitarian persons;
the Boethian translation of the Greek has confused the issue and
should be discarded, lest we emerge with Sabellianism or some
other tritheistic heresy.87 Since we Latins, unlike the Greeks, use sub-
stance to refer to the divine essence, it may not be used to refer to
the things that the Trinitarian persons do not have in common. By
contrast, the names of the persons must refer to properties unique
to each person {nomine proprietas personae intellegatur). These prop-
erties are paternity, filiation, and procession. Proprietas as a defini-
tion of persona, he adds, is clearer than substantia and less confusing
than hypostasis. He expatiates on the dangers connected with hypos-
tasis in particular, observing that "poison lurks under this noun"
(sub hoc nomine venenum latere). To illustrate the latter point, he brings
forward a citation from Jerome where that authority tries to argue
against the Arians using the language of hypostasis. The unedifying
spectacle ofJerome unsuccessfully wrestling with this problem is an
argument for purging such terminology from the lexicon of Latin
theology.88 On the other hand, the personal properties of paternity,
filiation, and procession are clearly understandable as the names
denoting the relations among the persons, names which can indeed
be used properly of one, and of only one, of the persons. Reminding
the reader that these are eternal relations, and not predicables,
Peter shows that even Damascene, the source for the Greek alterna-
tive to Latin Trinitarian theology on whom he relies, can be used as
a positive support for the position he is defending. Quoting Damas-
cene, he report him as stating that "the hypostases do not differ from
each other according to substance, but according to their charac-

86
Ibid., 1. d. 22. c. 5.1, 1: 179. The same point is made at Sent. 1. d. 21. c. 1, 1:
174-75.
87
Ibid., 1. d. 23. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 181-86.
88
Ibid., l.d. 25. c. 2.1-d. 26. c. 1.1, 1: 192-97. The quotation is at d. 26. c. 1.1,
1: 197. On this point, see Schneider, Die Lehre, pp. 61-64, 93-96, 98-99.
126 CHAPTER THREE

teristic idioms, that is, their determinative properties" (Non differunt

ab invicem hypostases secundum substantiam, sed secundum characteristica
idioma, id est determinativas proprietates) .89 With this argument, and the
joint authority of Augustine and Damascene anchoring it, Peter
rests his case on the significance of the term persona as applied to the
Trinity and decisively rules out Trinitarian names that do not
display relationships among the persons which are unique to each
person alone and which do not speak to the eternal structure of the
Trinitarian family in and of itself.
This argument clearly obviates the ascription of power, wisdom,
and goodness as personal names of the Trinitarian persons. But
Peter has more to say on the side of the names given to the divine
unity which they share. Here, he accents the total equality of the
persons. None of the persons surpasses the others in His greatness,
His eternity, His wisdom, His power, His goodness, or in any of the
other attributes of the simple divine essence. Peter uses Damascene
to hammer in the point that the fullness of divine perfections is
found entirely in each of the Trinitarian persons.90 This line of
argument is leveled as much against Robert of Melun as against
Abelard and his more intransigent defenders. But Peter also shares
with Robert a concern with several other dimensions of that ques-
tion, which he raises in order to rule out the debate over universals
as relevant to a consideration of the divine nature. He agrees, with
Robert, that the Trinitarian persons cannot be called "parts" of a
"whole" called the Trinity. Nor can They be described as items
that belong to the same genus, possessing a subordinate status with
respect to the larger collective entity of which they are members.
Nor can the divine essence be regarded as a material cause or a
metaphysical substratum of what is common to the three persons, a
point inspiring Peter to take issue with Augustine.91 Nor is the

89
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 26. c. 2-d. 29. c. 4, 1: 197-219. The quotation from
Damascene is at d. 27. c. 3.1, 1: 205. Peter repeats the same quotation at Sent. 1. d.
33. c. 1.8, 1: 243, resuming the larger argument at that point in d. 33. c. 1-d. 34. c.
17, 1: 240-50. Similar language occurs in his Sermo 21, where he applies the
argument about persons as properties to the analogy of memory, intellect, and
will, PL 171: 435B-436B; this would enable us to date that sermon to the period
following his reading of Damascene in the early 1150s. Schneider, Die L·hrei pp.
118-23, 144-48, 166, 181-82, while positioning Peter's definition of person well in
relation to most theologians of his time, omits the material he derives from
Damascene.
90
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 19. c. 1-6, d. 20, d. 31-32, d. 34. c. 3-4, 1: 159-63,
172-74, 233-39, 251-53. A similar point is made about God's goodness in Sermo 4,
PL 171: 357C.
91
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 19. c. 8, 1: 166.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 127

divine essence a generalization derived from the similarities among

the persons, as with men who may share the same sex or physical
complexion. Peter uses Damascene here to show that these ways of
conceiving of the deity import the debate over universals into
theology in an incorrect way, thereby indicating his familiarity with
the terms ofthat debate even as he relegates it to philosophy. While
the divine essence cannot be regarded as an abstraction derived
from the Trinitarian persons, or as existing on a higher plane of
reality, Peter recognizes the grammatical aptness of nouns, such as
homo, which can refer both to mankind in general and to individual
members of the human race. But the capacity of nouns to signify
both in general and in particular in the case of created beings which
are both individuals and participants in larger conceptual entities
must be denied of the deity, since He is not that kind of being.92
Peter's handling of these issues is both fuller, more pointed, and
more streamlined than Robert's.
Having spelled out these particulars as they affect Trinitarian
theology specifically, Peter is interested in placing his theory of
theological language on a wider canvas. Since his lexicon is now in
place, the sense that he gives to the terminology he uses here is
unambiguous. He outlines three subdivisions within theological
language. The first includes the terms which he had addressed first,
the names applying to the Trinitarian persons individually, prop-
erly, and exclusively, the names which signify Their interpersonal
relations, along the lines of the Augustinian analogies and the
relations of paternity, filiation, and procession.93 Next, there are the
names that denote the divine essence in its unity. In addition to
terms such as eternal, immutable, and simple, which refer to God
in and of Himself, there are other terms that belong in this categ-
ory, because they can be predicated of the single divine substance,
but which also refer to God as He manifests Himself to man. Peter
places power, wisdom, and goodness in this group, along with
justice and the like.94 Here, he raises two other questions, both of
which are also aired by other contemporary theologians but not so
systematically. One is the matter of terms applied to God in the
singular or in the plural, a matter also taken up by Robert of
Melun. There is, to begin with, the noun "Trinity." It is grammati-
cally singular. Yet, it applies to none of the persons of the Trinity as

92
Ibid., 1. d. 19. c. 5-c. 9, 1: 163-69.
93
Ibid., 1. d. 22. c. 1.1, c. 5.1, d. 23. c. 2-c. 5, d. 25. c. 1-d. 27. c. 3.1, 1: 178,
179, 182-86, 190-205.
94
Ibid., 1. d. 22. c. 3, c. 5, d. 31-32, d. 34. c. 3-c. 4, 1: 179, 223-39, 251-53.
128 CHAPTER THREE

individuals but to all of them simultaneously. Further, it is attrib-

uted to Them as a collective noun but not to any of Them
substantially.95 All names, Peter continues, that are applied to God
substantially are used in the singular. Names referring to that
single substantia can also be applied in the singular to the Trinitar-
ian persons, but only when one is referring to the attributes that
each person shares with the others. This usage is not proper with
reference to the attributes denoting each member of the Trinity's
personal singularity.96
This line of analysis concerning singular and plural or collective
nouns leads Peter to his final question within his second subdivi-
sion, the appropriateness of mathematical language as applied to
the deity. As we recall, Gilbert of Poitiers had advanced the view,
against Abelard, that the persons of the Trinity could be distin-
guished only numerically. The Chartrains had attacked this argu-
ment, using against it the weapons forged by Aristotelian logic.
Asserting that accidents cannot be attributed to God and that
number is an accident, Thierry of Chartres and Clarenbald of
Arras had rejected Gilbert's position, while at the same time substi-
tuting for it a mathematical argument of their own, the 1 X 1 = 1
model by which unity engenders equality and the two engender
connection. This Chartrain formula appears to be just as numerical
a claim as Gilbert's. Now Peter likewise rejects the idea that God is
conditioned by accidents or that He is understandable in terms of
them, although, as we have seen, he succeeds in finding a way of
including relation, detached from its understanding as an accident,
within his Trinitarian theology. His concern with the propriety of
mathematical language in connection with the Trinity derives
partly from the felt need to respond to Gilbert and the Chartrains
on this point. It also arises from the fact that Damascene had
offered a numerical analysis of the Trinity which Peter also finds
problematic and in need of interpretation.
In addressing the point that the Trinitarian persons share an
identity of substance, Peter is, initially, drawn up short by a line he
quotes from Damascene, "the hypostases are said to differ by num-
ber, and not by nature" (numero enim, et non natura, differre dicuntur
hypostases)?1 The problem, as Peter sees it, is either that Damascene
seems to support the Porretan and Chartrain mathematical argu-

95
96
Ibid., 1. d. 22. c. 3, 1: 179.
97
Ibid., 1. d. 23. c. 1.1-3, 1: 181-82.
Ibid., 1. d. 19. c. 9.3, 1: 168.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 129

ments, which Peter rejects, or that he seems to support the idea that
the divine nature is a universal, while the hypostases are particulars,
which Peter also rejects. After wrestling with this issue, he con-
cludes that the overall tenor of Damascene's Trinitarian theology is
such that he cannot be thought of as a realist in this context; rather,
he is merely saying that the divine essence can be attributed to all
the Trinitarian person in the same way, and at the same time, and
that the divine essence is the same thing whether this term is used
to refer to the persons together or individually.98 As to the matter of
differentiating the Trinitarian persons by number, Peter advises
caution about how we understand this idea. One way of viewing
number is the listing of items—this, that, and the other—because
each one is different from the others. An example, which Peter does
not use but which would illustrate his point, is an apple, a pear,
and a banana in the same fruit basket. This notion of number
clearly will not do for the Trinity. Another way of viewing number
is as it is used in enumeration or computation, when we are talking
about more than one instance of the same type of thing, and we
want to indicate how many of them there are, or which particular
item in the assortment we are discussing. Using our fruit example,
we might enumerate one, two, or three apples in a basket of apples
in this way. Now Damascene, according to Peter, means this latter
type of numerical thinking. But still, the argument can be accepted
only with strict caveats. For one thing, as Peter has already noted,
the individual items in this numerical illustration do exist as indi-
vidual members of a genus, in our example, the genus of "apple-
ness." And, as he has explained above, the persons of the Trinity
cannot be viewed as members of a genus called "deity." Further,
the numerical argument must also be qualified—and this is a point
which Peter makes against both Gilbert, Thierry, and
Clarenbald—in that the distinction it posits is insufficient, for it
does not include the personal properties that differentiate the Trin-
itarian persons from each other. The same qualification, he notes,
should extend to our appropriation of the Augustinian notion of
unity, equality, and connection or concord as Trinitarian names."
In addition, this type of numerical distinction does not mean that
there is quantitatively "more God," more truth, more power, more
of any aspect of the divine essence, when two or three of the persons
are considered together than when a single divine person is being

Ibid., 1. d. 19. c. 9.3-6, 1: 167-69.

Ibid., 1. d. 19. c. 10.1-3, 1: 169.
130 CHAPTER THREE

regarded alone. We are not talking, here, about quantitative addi-

tions to the qualities possessed by any of the divine persons when
we think of them in terms of number, Peter stresses. Nor are we
thinking or speaking of a differentiation in number that is reducible
to the monad which is the conceptual substratum of all numbers.
For the threefold character of the structure of the deity is not
reducible in any way. Nor is the perfection of any of the Trinitarian
persons enlarged by our adding in the others.100
Ultimately, the value of using numerical language in speaking
about the divine nature and the Trinity, for Peter, is not that it can
substitute for a discussion of the essence of the Godhead or the
personal properties of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather,
and with the restrictions he indicates, it can supplement our under-
standing of the other divine names. In speaking of God as one, or as
three, Peter essentially treats number in a privative, not in a
positive sense. The idea of God's oneness is designed to exclude any
notion of polytheism, or any thought that there is more than one
Father, one Son, and one Holy Spirit. As for the notion of plurality
as applied to the Trinitarian persons, it does not refer to quantita-
tive diversity, addition, or multiplication, but is designed to rule
out singularity or solitude.101 Here, Peter is making an effort to
detach the unity of God from the sense that the deity, in and of
Himself, is alone. In God's capacity as being as such, rather, the
deity exists as a consortium, a society. And so, when we say that the
Trinitarian persons are distinct with respect to Their personal
properties we do not posit diversity of Them in the sense of
alienation.102 The utility of Peter's reflections on number as a
source for the divine names is that it serves as a vehicle for his
understanding of the ultimate metaphysical reality as a state of
intimate, loving, relatedness. One can have a transcendent deity,
he concludes, without having a deity Who is cold, detached, and
aloof.
Having treated the names attributable to the Trinitarian persons
vis-à-vis each other and the names attributable to the divine es-
sence in its transcendent state, Peter next turns to the third general
subdivision under which he considers theological language, moving
to the terms which we can apply to God with respect to time (ex
tempore) and in relation to creatures (relative ad creaturam) ,103 Tem-

° Ibid., 1. d. 19. c. 11-c. 12, d. 31. c. 2.9-c. 6, 1: 170-71, 228-32.

11
This point has been discussed with sensitivity by Brady, at Sent. 1: 187 n.
2
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 24, 1: 187-89.
3
Ibid., l . d . 22. c. 3, 1: 179.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 131

porality is involved here not because God Himself changes, but

because He interacts with creatures which themselves come into
being and pass away, and undergo modifications. Divine names
expressing such interactions include terms such as creator, lord,
refuge, and the like. These terms indicate God's impact on a world
which is altered by His governance both in the cosmological and
the charismatic orders, in events which do not alter God Himself.104
Peter assents to the view that individual Trinitarian persons may
take on particular functions in Their relations with the creation and
that some divine names under this heading, such as redeemer or
gift, may apply specifically to the person entrusted with these
missions.105 But his emphasis in his handling of theological lan-
guage in this subdivision is that the names of God we use here are
used of the deity as such. He concludes the third part of his general
analysis of this subject with a consideration of those names of God
used with reference to creatures that are to be understood
metaphorically (translative, per similitudinem), such as mirror, splen-
dor, character, and figure.106 It is clear from the relative weight that
he assigns to other aspects of the problem of theological language
that Peter does not think we need to enlarge on the theme of
metaphor and to qualify the force of positive names of God and, by
extension, the force of affirmative statements about God.

T H E PORRETAN CHALLENGE

Much of the emphasis in the foregoing pages has reflected Peter's

desire to attack Abelard, as the Trinitarian theologian of the day
most in need of refutation. It can certainly be said that Peter goes
farther than anyone else at the time to expose the inadequacies of
Abelard's power-wisdom-goodness model and the more basic con-
fusion between the deity as transcendent and as manifested on
which it rests, offering a clearer and more cogent rationale for his
critique and for the positive doctrine he puts forward than is true of
other actual or would-be anti-Abelardians. To the extent that
Abelard's mode of denominating the Trinitarian persons falls off
the theological agenda in the sequel, we can give Peter much of the
credit for that outcome. But Abelard was not the only major

104
Ibid., 1. d. 30. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 220-23.
105
Ibid., 1. d. 22. c. 3, 1: 179. On this point, see Ludwig Ott, Untersuchung zur
theologischen Briefliteratur der Frühscholastik, Beiträge, 34 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1937), p. 266; Schneider, Die Uhre, p. 111.
106
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 34. c. 5.2, 1: 254.
132 CHAPTER THREE

contender in the field. Even more problematic, in many ways, was

Gilbert of Poitiers. As we have seen, in his own attempt to refute
Abelard, Gilbert offered a mathematical understanding of the dis-
tinctions among the Trinitarian persons which some contemporar-
ies, including Peter, found wanting. But Gilbert threw an even
greater and more intractable challenge into the arena of theological
language thanks to his development of a semantic theory so original
as to be positively idiosyncratic and very difficult for contemporar-
ies to understand. Quite apart from a vocabulary that is rébarba-
tive, that invents new terms, and that uses existing terms in
standard Latin with Gilbert's own meanings attached to them,
Gilbert's semantics created severe problems when his lexicon was
applied to theology. To some extent, Gilbert himself was aware of
these difficulties and sought to address them. The disciples he
attracted during his own lifetime also saw some problems with his
vocabulary and made notable efforts to disentangle the substance of
his teaching from the lexical company in which it travelled. With
respect to Gilbert's theology and semantic theory, Peter has some-
times been seen as a critic, pure and simple, and even as the peritus
responsible for drafting the charges leveled against Gilbert at the
Consistory of Paris in 1147 and the Council of Rheims in 1148.107
This view is a distortion of the facts. In some areas, to be sure,
Peter follows the lead of the early Porretans in criticizing Gilbert's
theological terminology. But, in others, he finds Gilbert's definitions

107
See, for example, H. C. van Els wijk, Gilbert Porreta: Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1966), p. 95; Fabro, "Teologia dei
nomi divini," pp. 77-93; Nikolaus M. Haring, "Petrus Lombardus und die
Sprachlogik in der Porretanerschule," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 113-27; "San Bernardo
e Gilberto vescovo di Poitiers," in Studi su S. Bernardo di Chiaravalle nelVottavo
centenario della canonizzazione (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1975), pp. 87-88;
"The Porretans and the Greek Fathers," MS 24 (1966): 190; Jean Leclercq,
"Textes sur Saint Bernard et Gilbert de la Porrée," MS 14 (1952): 107; Lauge Olaf
Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta's
Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period
1130-1180, Acta theolorica danica, 15 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), p. 33; Ludwig
Ott, "Petrus Lombardus: Persönlichkeit und Werk," Münchener theologische Zeit-
schrift 5 (1954): 110; reprised as "Pietro Lombardo: Personalita e opera," Misc.
Lomb., pp. 11-12; Schneider, Die Lehre, pp. 121-23, 145-48, 181-82, 226. On
Peter's purported role in helping to draw up the charges against Gilbert, see Franz
Pelster, "Petrus Lombardus und die Verhandlungen über die Streitfrage des
Gilbertus Porreta in Paris (1147) und Reims (1148)," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 68-69,
72. This latter point has been convincingly refuted and the primary role of
Godescalc of St. Martin in that connection has been emphasized by Gillian R.
Evans, "Godescalc of St. Martin and the Trial of Gilbert of Poitiers," Analecta
Praemonstratensia 57 (1981): 209 and Häring, "San Bernardo e Gilberto," pp.
77-78.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 133

of terms accurate and helpful, and makes use of them himself.108

Peter's relationship to Gilbert of Poitiers on this whole subject is a
much more nuanced one than has usually been appreciated.
Gilbert produced both a metaphysics and a semantic theory in
the commentaries on the theological opuscula of Boethius which he
composed between 1135 and 1142,109 a period during which he
taught both at Chartres and Paris. In his account of beings, Gilbert
distinguishes their formal aspect, which he calls their quo est or
subsistentia, from their concrete individuality, which he calls their
quod est or subsistens.110 In his consideration of the quo est of beings,
Gilbert expressly distances himself from the doctrine of universals.
We cannot extrapolate the subsistentia of a being from that indi-
vidual being, he argues, combining it with similar extrapolations
from other individual beings, to produce an abstract idea that
refers to an abstract being, or even meaningfully to the individual
beings from which it has been derived. What other contemporary
thinkers, whether realists or nominalists, called universals, he re-
gards as useless concepts, inapposite in metaphysics and logic
alike.111 For Gilbert it is a waste of time to compare the subsistentia of

108
For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Marcia L. Colish, "Gilbert, the Early
Porretans, and Peter Lombard: Semantics and Theology," in Gilbert de Poitiers et
ses contemporains: Aux origines de la logica modernorum, éd. Jean Jolivet and Alain de
Libera (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987), pp. 229-50; "Early Porretan Theology,"
RTAM 56 (1989): 58-79. To the accounts of the council of Rheims cited there, now
add Marjorie Chibnall, intro, to her ed. and trans, of John of Salisbury, Historia
pontificalis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. xl-xli.
109
For the dates, see Els wijk, Gilbert Porreta, p. 63.
110
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boethius de Trinitate prologus secundus 6-7, 1.2.1-2,
1.3.38; In Boethius de Hebdomadibus 1.27-29, 1.32-35, 1.37, 1.53, ed. Nikolaus M.
Häring in The Commentaries on Boethius of Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1966), pp. 58-59, 78, 109, 193-95, 199. For the
literature assisting an understanding of Gilbert's metaphysics and semantics, see
Colish, "Gilbert," p. 231 n. 8. To these references may be added Lambert M.
DeRijk, "De quelques difficultés de nature linguistique dans le vocabulaire de
Gilbert de la Porrée," in Actes du colloque Terminologie de la vie intellectuelle au moyen
âge, ed. Olga Weijers (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), pp. 19-25.
111
This point has been interpreted correctly by Evans, "Godescalc of St.
Martin," p. 205; The Mind of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1983), p. 185; Bruno Maioli, Gilberto Porretano: Dalla grammatica speculativa alla
metafisica del concreto (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979), pp. 341-61; Christopher J. Martin,
intro, to "The Compendium Logicae Porretanum ex codici Oxoniensi Collegii Corporis
Christi 205: A Manual of Porretan Doctrine by a Pupil of Gilbert's," ed. Sten
Ebbesen et al., CIMAGEL 46 (1983): xvii-xxiii, 6; Lauge Olaf Nielsen, "On the
Doctrine of Logic and Language of Gilbert Porreta and His Followers,"
CIMAGEL 17 (1976): 45-46; Theology and Philosophy, p. 51; Sofia Vanni Rovighi,
"La filosofia di Gilberto Porretano," in Studi difilosofia medioevale, 2 vols. (Milan:
Vita e Pensiero, 1978), 1: 229-36. This position supersedes the view of Gilbert as a
realist maintained by Ermenegildo Bertola, "La scuola di Gilberto de la Porree,"
134 CHAPTER THREE

one being with the subsistentia of another being, for each subsistentia
inheres in the being to which it belongs in a radically singular way.
The thrust of Gilbert's teaching as a metaphysician is to emphasize
the utter individuality of each being, at the level of its quo est as well
as its quod est. For Gilbert, in both aspects, beings possess a unique-
ness that is irreducible, a uniqueness of a sort that other thinkers
might be inclined to grant only to beings that are persons.
Having laid out this highly original doctrine of being, Gilbert is
also concerned with using language precisely, naming the two
levels of being with nouns that parallel their respective abstractness
and concreteness.112 Thus, he holds, an abstract noun such as
humanitas is properly applied to the subsistentia of a particular man,
while a concrete noun such as homo is properly applied to his
concrete subsistens, the level of his being which can be modified by
accidents. It is not proper to say "homo est humanitas" because such a
statement confuses and conflates the two distinct aspects of being to
which the two nouns refer. Even with respect to created beings, this
semantic theory has its weaknesses. Gilbert is forced to use abstract
nouns to signify the subsistentia of these beings, even though he holds
that the subsistentia is not susceptible of abstraction from them.
Also, most created beings are composite. For instance, the body
and soul, the ingredients that make up the concrete subsistens of a
human being, are thus sub-concrete, infra-subsisteiit on the level of
being. Yet, corpus and anima, the only nouns available for denoting
them in Gilbert's lexicon, are nouns no less concrete than the noun
homo, which applies properly to the fully subsistent being which
they compose. Thus, despite Gilbert's concerted effort to use lan-
guage so that the abstractness and concreteness of terms reflect the
metaphysical status of the aspect of being which they denote, he is
not entirely successful in enforcing the strict parallelism between
language and reality that he seeks. Gilbert has available to him two
kinds of nouns, abstract and concrete, with which to denote three
levels of being, the subsistentia, the subsistens, and the infra-subsistent
components in a composite subsistens.

in Saggi e studi di ßosofia medioevale (Padua: CEDAM, 1951), pp. 19-34; Aimé
Forest, "Gilbert de la Porrée et les écoles du XII e siècle," Revue néo-scolastique de
philosophie 36 (1934): 101-10; A. Hayen, "Le concile de Reims et l'erreur théolo-
gique de Gilbert de la Porrée," AHDMLA 11 (1936): 39-102; and Richard J.
Westley, "A Philosophy of the Concreted and the Concrete: The Constitution of
Creatures according to Gilbert de la Porrée," Modern Schoolman 37 (1960): 270-71.
112
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. prologus secundus 12, 1.1.10-34, 1.3.16,
1.3.26-27, 1.3.30, 1.3.36, 1.3.38, 1.3.45-48, 2.1.21; In Boeth. de Hehd. 1.32-35,
1.57-69, pp. 60, 72-78, 106, 107-08, 109, 111-12, 167, 194, 199-202.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 135

This is not a problem which Gilbert addresses forthrightly in his

semantic theory. Nor does he come to grips with the need to explain
how abstract nouns referring to collective objects of knowledge
signify, a difficulty he leaves to his disciples.113 But he does take into
account some of the problems involved in his wish to make nouns
correspond rigorously to the aspect of being they denote in philoso-
phy and, even more so, in theology. Gilbert is sensitive to the
semantic limits of speech in the various scholarly disciplines, and in
no sense seeks to be a grammatical reductionist in his application of
these disciplines to theological questions. There are gaps, he notes,
between things, the concepts we form of them, and the words in
which we express those concepts; the words are like images
reflected in a mirror.114 Moreover, language itself is far from uni-
vocal. The same terms have different meanings in grammar, logic,
and natural philosophy.115 Our language labors under still greater
difficulties in theology. Gilbert asserts repeatedly that theological
statements involve a transferred meaning (dktio translata, proportionali
transsumptione, ratione proportione) and that they are paradoxes (para-
doxa) and symbolic indicators (emblemata).116 He criticizes heretics
for a too-literal application of human language to the deity,117 and
recommends intellectual humility, affirming that faith precedes
knowledge and that understanding depends on divine grace.118 Yet,
if Gilbert acknowledges that theological statements are analogous
and not exhaustive signs of what they signify, he does not state

113
Ebbesen et al., ed., "Compendium Logicae Porretanum," CIMAGEL 46 (1983);
Martin, intro, to "Compendium" pp. xviii-xlvi; Nielsen, "On the Doctrine of Logic
and Language," pp. 40-69.
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. prologus primus 2, prologus secundus
1.3.21-24, pp. 52, 65-68; the image of the mirror is at 1.3.26, p. 69.
115
Ibid., 1.3.47, 2.1.1-2, 2.1.5, 2.1.34; In Boeth. de Hebd. prologus 8-9; In Boethius
contra Eutychen et Nestorium 1.1.2, 1.58-61, ed. Nikolaus M. Häring in The Commen-
taries on Boethius of Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1966), pp. I l l , 163, 164, 170, 184-85, 243, 254-55.
116
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. 1.1.11, 1.2.36-46, 1.2.89, 1.4.28, 1.5.20-
21, 1.5.39, 2.1.1-2, 2.1.5, 2.1.34, 2.2.2, 2.4.6; In Boeth. de Hebd. 1.58-64, pp. 72,
85-88, 98, 119, 120, 143, 147, 161-64, 170, 200-01. Good discussions of this point
are found in Elswijk, Gilbert Porreta, pp. 33, 35, 38-39; Häring, "Petrus Lombar-
dus," pp. 113-27; Maioli, Gilberto Porretano, pp. xxvi-xxxi, 3-24, 36-46, 73-75,
179-240; Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp. 103-27, 130-36; Martin Anton
Schmidt, Gottheit und Trinitaet nach dem Kommentar des Gilbert Porreta zu Boethius, De
Trinitate, Studia Philosophica, supplementum 7 (Basel: Verlag fur Recht and Gesell-
schaft, 1956), passim and esp. pp. 6-10, 11-14; Michael Β. Williams, The Teaching
of Gilbert Porreta on the Trinity as Found in His Commentaries on Boethius (Rome:
Universitas Gregoriana, 1951), pp. 77, 78, 128.
117
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. prologus secundus 8, 20, pp. 59, 62.
118
Ibid., 1.1.1, 1.1.3, 2.1.9, pp. 70, 71, 164.
136 CHAPTER THREE

precisely where and how the analogies they contain fall short. In
practice, notwithstanding his conventional disclaimers, he goes
right ahead and invokes the semantic rules he had developed for
discussing creatures in speaking about the creator, even though
they are not truly apposite to Him. The most notorious case in
point, and parallel with his assertion that it is proper to say "homo
non est humanitas" is his statement that "Deus non est divinitas"
although he repeatedly avers that God is a radically simple being
Whose quo est is identical with His quod est. Unlike created beings,
God has one, and only one, level of being. God's divinity inheres
essentially in God; He is all His qualities.119 Thus, in applying the
distinction between deus and divinitas to the deity, Gilbert implies a
parallelism between God and creatures and a distinction between
the quo est and the quod est in God which he flatly rejects. Similar
difficulties are found in his handling of the key theological terms
substance, nature, and person.
Gilbert would have been happy to dispense with substantia
altogether, since it is not equivalent either to subsistentia or to
subsistens in his own lexicon.120 Since the term substance is in the
creed, however, he cannot avoid it. He is aware of the fact that, in
Aristotelian natural philosophy, substance comes closer to his own
subsistens than it does to his subsistentia. For, like Aristotle's sub-
stance, Gilbert's subsistens refers to the level at which beings can be
modified by accidents.121 Now God, he agrees, cannot be modified
by accidents. None the less, he sometimes calls God an essens sive
subsistens.122 But elsewhere, in an equally inapposite way, he some-
times equates the divine substance with divinitas or deitas, abstract
terms that point to the divine subsistentia}23
Despite these ambiguities, Gilbert uses the equation between
substantia and divinitas to attack the Trinitarian theologies of Abe-

119
Ibid., 1.2.96, p. 99.
120
Ibid., 1.4.6, p. 119.
121
Ibid., 1.4.99, p. 135.
122
Ibid., 2.1.17-19, 2.1.45-46, pp. 166, 172.
123
Ibid., 2.1.18-20, 2.1.24, 2.1.45, 2.1.54, 2.1.73, pp. 116, 166, 168, 172, 174,
179. This confusion is perpetuated by students of Gilbert purely on the level of
philosophy. Unsure of whether substantia refers properly to the quo est or the quod est
of beings, they seek to extend its significance to both, according to the intentions of
the speaker and the propositional context in which he uses the term. Yet, they
regard the reference of nouns to the qualities inhering in the subsistens as improper.
On this point, see Irène Rosier, "Les acceptations du terms 'substantia' chez
Pierre Hélie," in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: Aux ongines de la logica
modernorum) éd. Jean Jolivet and Alain de Libera (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987), pp.
315-16.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 137

lard and Augustine alike. Against Abelard, he argues that power,

wisdom, and goodness, like other abstract nouns, should be attrib-
uted to the single divine substance and essence of the deity. If
viewed as properties of the individual Trinitarian persons, these
traits would be reduced to accidents inhering in three different
beings at the level of subsistens. The differences among the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, he insists, are not substantial or essential but
numerical only; They all possess power, wisdom, and goodness in
the same way. In Gilbert's terms, the problem with Abelard's
Trinitarian theology is that he has collapsed the divine quo est into
the divine quod est, emerging with three deities. In Gilbert's estima-
tion, Augustine has done exactly the reverse, collapsing the divine
quod est into the divine quo est in his analogies of the Trinity in the
human soul. As he sees it, if we view the Trinity as parallel with the
mens, notitia, and amor in the human soul, we would reduce God to a
monad and blur the distinctions among the Trinitarian persons.124
But, if this line of reasoning provides a language in which Gilbert
can criticize Trinitarian theologies he dislikes, it does not enable
him to develop a positive Trinitarian theology that is comprehensi-
ble, one that does not lay him equally open to the charge that he
has failed to distinguish the persons of the Trinity adequately from
each other, and one that does not violate his own philosophical
rules.
If Gilbert's handling of substance is problematic, the same can
be said for his treatment of nature and person. His difficulties are
compounded here by the Boethian point of departure he takes. In
one of his definitions of nature, Boethius includes substance as one
of the concepts that nature embraces. Gilbert rejects this idea. He
wants to be able to apply natura to God as a simple, immutable, and
purely spiritual being. He thinks, correctly, that it would confuse
matters if he also applied natura to substances made up of matter
and form, which can be modified by accidents.125 On the other
hand, in speaking about created beings that are composite and that
are subject to accidents, Gilbert thinks that natura is appropriate as
well, and that it is attributed properly to these beings at the level of

124
Gilbert of Poitiers, InBoeth. de Trin. prologus secundus 14, 1.3.45-48, 1.3.53-
54, 2.1.51, 2.2.71, pp. 60, 111-12, 113, 173, 178. Stephan Otto, "Augustinus und
Boethius im 12. Jahrhundert," Wissenschaft und Weisheit 26 (1963): 18-21, 24-26
has argued that the motive for Gilbert's critique of Augustine was the desire to
substitute a metaphysically based understanding of the Trinity for one drawn from
the inspection of creatures. He ignores the semantic issues in Gilbert's analysis.
125
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. contra Eut. 1.1-36, 1.56-61, 1.92-100, pp. 242-
49, 254-55, 261-63.
138 CHAPTER THREE

subsistens.126 In speaking about the incarnate Christ, Gilbert con-

cludes that one must use natura in both senses of the word, under-
standing His divine nature as His pure and simple divine essence
while understanding His human nature as His concrete composite
phenomenal humanity.127 Yet, on the level of Christ's human na-
ture, how can a nature that happens to be a human being be
distinguished from a human person? And, can the term persona be
applied comprehensibly both to Christ as God and to Christ as
man? Gilbert wrestles with these questions,128 but does not fully
answer them.
Gilbert begins by rejecting the Boethian definition of a person as
the individual substance of a rational nature, as did some other
theologians of the time, largely as a way of criticizing Abelard's
anthropology.129 Gilbert finds unacceptable the equation of the
human person with the human soul which this Boethian formula
entails. For him, a human person is a human subsistens, a combina-
tion of body and soul in man that is neither a casual nor a separable
assemblage of parts nor a new amalgam, a tertium quid whose
ingredients each lose their own properties while uniting to inhere in
an individual human being. Although it is a composite, a human
person is, for Gilbert, a single being that is a res per se una.130
Vigorous as is this defense of the human person as a psycho-
somatic unit, it brings various difficulties in its train, which Gilbert
does not dispel. First, given his definition of nature on the human
level, it is hard to see how a man's human nature can be different
from his human person, since Gilbert equates both the nature and
the person with the man as a concrete subsistens. Second, it is hard
to see how a man's human nature can be part of a wider human
community, except mathematically. Finally, having proposed his
own definition of the human person, Gilbert states that it does not
apply to theological persons (non convenu theologicis personis) ,131 To be

126
Ibid., 1.83-91, 2.2, pp. 260-61, 265.
127
Ibid., 1.100-03, pp. 263-64.
128
Ibid., 2.9-10, 2.18-19, pp. 266-68. As Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, p.
163, has aptly noted, "The nature of the distinction between nature and person
remains an unclarified problem with Gilbert."
129
This point is rightly stressed by Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 102-04.
Abelard's position on the human soul, its separability from the body, and its
introduction into the body after the body is created, is brought out clearly by
Thaddeus Kucia, "Die Anthropologie bei Peter Abelard,'' in Petrus Abaelardus
(1079-1142): Person, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Rudolf Thomas (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag,
1980), pp. 224-27.
130
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. prologus secundus 12; In Boeth. contra Eut.
2.20-3.18, pp. 60, 268-75.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 139
sure, Gilbert makes this assertion because, in his view, a person is
not necessarily simple or purely spiritual. A person can be modified
by accidents. It is a subsistens in a way that the deity is not. Yet,
having stated that the persons of the Trinity are not substances,
properties, or relations, he insists on the idea that they are distinct
as persons,132 although without having endowed the idea of theo-
logical person with any comprehensible positive content.
If Gilbert does not offer a cogent positive exposition of Trini-
tarian theology, the confusion entailed by his vocabulary is at its
most acute in his treatment of the hypostatic union. In this area
there are two polemical agendas at work in Gilbert's thought. On
the one hand, he wants to attack Abelard for a Christology which
Gilbert sees as involving a too-divisible and too-adventitious view
of the communication of idioms in the incarnate Christ.133 On the
other, he wants to detach the assumptus homo formula for describing
the incarnation from the Adoptionist idea that the homo assumed by
Christ was a man already in existence.134 But Gilbert's semantic
criteria make these tasks intractable indeed. Gilbert argues that the
incarnate Christ has a single divine persona, here equated with the
divine essence and distinguished from that essence as found in
the Father and the Holy Spirit only numerically. This divine es-
sence unites with a human subsütens. At this juncture Gilbert stresses
three main points. First, the human aspect of the incarnate Christ
contains all the properties of a human body and a human soul.
Once united to the Word, it remains united to the Word. It is the
subsistent homo that Christ assumes, Gilbert stresses, not humanitas
since humanitas would lack the specific individuality of the man
Jesus. Second, the composite being resulting from the hypostatic
union is not a tertium quid. It retains all the properties of both man
and God, neither of which is changed by the union. Third, in taking

131
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. de Trin. 1.5.39, p. 147.
132
Ibid., 2.2.72-80; In Boeth. contra Eut. 3.65-74, pp. 178-80, 285-87.
133
Good treatments of this point are found in Els wijk, Gilbert Porreta, p. 448;
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 102-04; Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp.
163-89; Robert F. Studeny, John of Cornwall, an Opponent of Nihilianism: A Study of
the Christological Controversy of the Twelfth Century (Vienna: St. Gabriel's Mission
Press, 1939), pp. 89-91.
134
Good treatments of this point are found in Els wijk, Gilbert Porreta, pp.
404-44; Nikolaus M. Häring, "Sprachlogik und philosophische Voraussetzungen
zum Verständnis der Christologie Gilberts von Poitiers,,, Scholastik 32 (1957):
373-98; "San Bernardo e Gilberto," pp. 78-87; Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy,
pp. 163-89. For the patristic developments that encouraged such a view, see
Auguste Gaudel, "La théologie de Γ'Assumptus Homo5: Histoire et valeur doctri­
nale," RSR 17 (1937): 64-90.
140 CHAPTER THREE

on manhood, Christ does not take on a preexisting human persona,

and this, for two reasons. First, a persona is, by definition, a res per se
una. No person can be duplex. Both before and after the incarna-
tion, then, Christ can have one persona only, His divine persona.
Second, and since this is the case, what Christ assumes in the
incarnation is, simultaneously, a human body and a human soul,
the ingredients that make up a human subsistens (ea quae sunt homi-
nis), neither of which existed either separately or conjointly prior to
the moment of the incarnation.135
As Gilbert sums things up, a person cannot take on a person in
the incarnation, since no person can be duplex. Nor can a nature
take on a nature. For, if it was the divine nature that was incar-
nated, it would be impossible to explain why it was Christ Who
became man and not the Father or the Holy Spirit, since They
share the same nature. Nor could Christ have assumed a general
human nature, otherwise the man Jesus would not have been an
individual human being. Nor can a nature take on a person, for
here the lack of differentiation among the Trinitarian persons
would be combined with the Adoptionist heresy. So, Gilbert con-
cludes, in the incarnation, a divine person took on a human
nature.136 But, his vocabulary makes it difficult to grasp exactly
what he means by this formula. As we have seen, on the human
level, the difference between a person and a nature is all but
invisible, as Gilbert defines these terms. In stating that the Word
assumes homo, not humanitas, he wants to stress the individuality of
the human Christ. But this makes it hard to see how the human
Christ is consubstantial with other human beings. And, if He is not,
the universality of His saving work is severely compromised. On
another level, Gilbert says that the Word assumes homo when what
he really means to say is that the Word assumes an infra-human
and as yet unattached body and soul. In this latter connection, he is
as far from Christological nihilianism as he is free from Adoption-
ism. But, at the same time, he uses his terms inconsistently, and in
ways that allow them to be wielded against him.
While Gilbert's modern defenders have vindicated his
orthodoxy,137 it is certainly the case that he left a tangled legacy to

135
Gilbert of Poitiers, In Boeth. contra Eut. 4.21-127, pp. 292-314.
136
Ibid., 4.108, p. 310. The best analysis of Gilbert's Christology and its
problems is found in Häring, "Sprachlogik," pp. 373-98 and Nielsen, Theology and
Philosophy, pp. 163-89.
137
See, in particular, Elswijk, Gilbert Porreta, pp. 77, 318-64; Margaret T.
Gibson, "The Opuscula Sacra in the Middle Ages," in Boethius: His Life, Thought and
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 141

his successors. The fact that this was so gave Gilbert's disciples
pause, and inspired his earliest pupils, those working within Gil-
bert's own lifetime, to reassess the utility of his semantics as applied
to theology. Adaptation of Gilbert's views, on the part of the early
Porretans, begins almost immediately, and can be traced in disci-
ples of Gilbert active in the Paris region in the 1140s.
We may mention in passing a commentary on the Pseudo-
Athanasian creed dating to the early 1140s which, aside from
finding problems in Gilbert's notorious phrase "Deus non est
divinitas"138 preserves his reasoning and his terminology, even
when it is contradictory,139 because there is no consensus as to
whether it was written by an early Porretan or by Gilbert
himself.140 Certainly not from the hand of Gilbert is the Sententiae
divinitatis, written shortly after 1148. While more correctly defined
as a theological eclectic, the author is an identifiable adherent of
the Porretan tradition on the issues that concern us here. There are
several noteworthy points at which he backs off from Gilbert's
language. As with Gilbert, he has an anti-Abelardian brief, and for
the same reasons. He agrees with Gilbert's distinction between
abstract and concrete nouns as applied to God, and with the
principle that the divine properties are in the divine persons essen-
tially. But he departs decisively from the deus non est divinitas for-
mula, in the following words:
For is not divinity God and nothing other than God? I answer that
divinity is God and nothing other than God, by an act of reason but
not by the form of141speaking, by reason of faith, not by reason of
human philosophy.

Influence, ed. Margaret T. Gibson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), p. 223; Nikolaus
M. Häring, "Notes on the Council and Consistory of Rheims (1148)," MS 28
(1966): 39-59; "Petrus Lombardus," pp. 113-27; "Sprachlorik," pp. 373-98;
"The Case of Gilbert de la Porrée, Bishop of Poitiers (1142-54)," MS 13 (1951):
1-40; "The Porretans and the Greek Fathers," MS 24 (1966): 181-209.
138
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "A Commentary on the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed
by Gilbert of Poitiers," c. 33-39, 47-48, MS 27 (1965): 35-37, 38-39.
139
"Commentary," c. 14-16, 45-47, 108-16, pp. 32-33, 38-39, 48-50.
140
Häring, "Commentary," pp. 23-31, ascribes the work to Gilbert, while
Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, p. 44, thinks that it was written by an early
follower of his.
141
Bernhard Geyer, ed., Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilberti-
schen Schule 4.5, Beiträge, 7:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1909), pp. 68*-69*: "Non-
ne divinitas est Deus et non aliud a Deo? Respondeo, quod divinitas est Deus et
non aliud a Deo, actu rationis, sed non forma loquendi, ratione fidei, non ratione
humanae philosophiae." More on this point can be found at 6.1.4, 6.25, pp.
160*-63*, 170*-71*.
142 CHAPTER THREE

The author treats natura as referring to subsistentia.142 He does not,

however, discuss the specific sense in which substance, essence,
person, and properties apply to the deity. In his Christology, he
opposes the idea that the incarnate Christ is composed of separable
parts,143 and he repeats Gilbert's assertion that "non persona perso-
nam, nee natura personam, nee natura naturam, sed persona naturam
assumpsit."1** At the same time, he retains the Boethian definition of
person as the individual substance of a rational nature, which
Gilbert rejects, and he abandons Gilbert's distinction between homo
and humanitas in considering Christ's assumption of a human body
and a human soul. He states, although without explaining why,
that in this context the two terms mean the same thing, and that
they obviate equally Christ's assumption of a préexistent human
person.145
Much more thoroughgoing reassessments of Gilbert's theological
language were made by other early disciples of his. The author of a
treatise entitled Invisibilia dei, dating to ca. 1150, makes his own
swift response to the semantic and dogmatic controversies to which
Gilbert's views had recently led at Rheims. Our author has an
extremely lively awareness of both the philosophical and the
theological issues which these views had raised. His treatise leads
off with the Pauline idea that the invisible things of God are known
through the creation, which yields information about God to man
through his reason and his senses.146 This observation is a curtain-
raiser for the author's main theme, the correct grammatical and
logical ways of expressing that knowledge. With Gilbert, he argues
that composite created beings can best be denoted by distin-
guishing their durable and informing features, expressed by abstract
nouns, from their concrete manifestations, susceptible to accidents,
expressed by concrete nouns.147 What is striking, in his formulation
of this point, is the author's rejection of the Gilbertian terms
subsistentia and subsistens. He has evidently come to the conclusion
that they are a losing proposition, so he kisses them goodbye and
moves on without a backward look. He agrees with Gilbert that
every subject (res) is singular and that no subject is universal.148

142
Sint. div. 4.5, pp. 69*-70*.
143
Ibid., p. 69*.
144
Ibid., 4.1, 4.2, pp. 53*, 57*.
145
Ibid., 4.2, 6.2.1, pp. 55*, 163*-64*.
146
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "The Treatise 'Invisibilia dei' in MS. Arras, Bibl.
mun. 981 (399)," RTAM 40 (1973): 118.
147
Ibid., 40, 49-50, pp. 124, 126-27.
148
Ibid., 59-60, 62, pp. 128-29.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 143
Yet, here too, he departs from Gilbert in admitting the cogency and
utility of universal concepts, such as the idea of genus. He defines
the universal as a substantial likeness among things that differ by
their species, citing the Topica of Boethius as his authority.149 Since
he agrees with Gilbert that no res is a universal, how does he
interpret the Boethian universal which he admits? The author's
solution is to distinguish between the predication of an abstract
noun properly {per se) and its predication with reference to some-
thing else {per aliud). If, for example, one refers to the humanitas that
inheres in Peter as an individual human being, one predicates
humanitas per se; if one refers to the humanitas that links Peter with
other human beings, one predicates humanitas per aliud. Per aliud
predication is also a way of handling Peter's sub-personal attrib-
utes, such as the accidents that may modify his body, although in
this case the nouns used may be concrete.150
This argument provides an ingenious way of supporting the
overall tenor of Gilbertian semantics while remedying some of its
literal limitations. The author also thinks that one needs a still
more precise and exclusive way of denoting the radical uniqueness
of individual beings than Gilbert had provided, one that goes
beyond a person's proper name. After all, the terms humanitas and
homo can be applied properly to more than one human being. The
name Peter has likewise been given to more than one man. None of
these nouns denotes precisely what makes a particular man named
Peter a res per se una. The term that does the job, in the author's
view, is his Petritas, his "Peterness,"151 an interesting and perhaps
pregnant formula, and one that reveals the author's willingness to
coin neologisms and to break the enforced parallelism between
abstract and concrete nouns and the things they represent that
marks Gilbert's thought as well.
The author of Invisibilia dei is willing to depart even farther from
Gilbert in his theological language and method. He takes more
closely to heart than Gilbert the announced limits of a vocabulary
framed to describe composite created beings as adequate for speak-
ing about an utterly simple deity. His solution, and it is one not
envisaged by Gilbert, is to draw on the Pseudo-Areopagite's analy-
sis of the via affirmativa and via negativa}52 When it comes to the
affirmative way, he notes, the created order tells us that there is a

Ibid., 62-65, pp. 129-30.

Ibid., 66-68, pp. 131-32.
Ibid., 74, p. 132.
Ibid., 40-43, pp. 124-25.
144 CHAPTER THREE

gap between nature and the human intellect, since the mind can
separate by abstraction things that are conjoined in nature. This
thought provides him with an analogy for the transference of our
human way of thinking and speaking to the deity, and one which
accents its limits. Affirmative statements about God, the author
stresses, should not be understood literally. Thus, instead of trying
to enforce a rigid grammatical parity between theological and
non-theological language which simply does not work, he under-
scores instead the disparities between these two vocabularies and
the necessarily partial, or metaphorical, significance of anything
positive we say about God. This argument, as well as his case for
the via negativa,153 relies heavily on Dionysius. It reflects the au-
thor's marked alteration of Gilbert's semantics, although it is a
change made in aid of Gilbert's metaphysics.
The author is also responsive to critics who had held that Gil-
bert's merely numerical distinction among the persons of the Trin-
ity was not satisfactory. He abandons Gilbert on this point, in favor
of a position that Gilbert had opposed, the idea that the Trinitarian
persons manifest distinct properties which can be viewed as rela-
tions, especially paternity, filiation, and procession. Had the author
stopped there, he would have been able to marshal powerful sup-
port from Augustine. But, throwing away that advantage, he com-
pares these relations with accidents inhering extrinsically in a
subject without changing its basic nature.154 In this way, then,
while the author seizes correctly on a weak feature of Gilbert's
Trinitarian doctrine, his substitute position creates as many prob-
lems as it solves.
One final, and important, departure from Gilbert in Invisibilia dei
can be seen in the sources on which the author relies. As noted, he
draws on Dionysius in a thoroughly un-Gilbertian way. Equally
striking is his total omission of Hilary of Poitiers, one of Gilbert's
favorite authors. The source the author mines the most heavily is
Boethius, also a favorite of Gilbert's, but he draws a more authenti-
cally Aristotelian logic from Boethius than Gilbert does. At the same
time, there is an obvious point of connection between the author
and Gilbert in the heavy stress on grammatical and logical analy-
sis, of a specifically Gilbertian type, visible throughout the treatise.
None the less, this dependence is coupled with the author's desire
to jettison confusing Gilbertian terminology, to abandon Gilbertian

153
Ibid., 44-45, pp. 125-26.
154
Ibid., 124, 127-29, pp. 144-45.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 145

positions that are hard to defend, and to find less controversial

ways of carrying forward some of the essentials of Gilbert's project,
in the teeth of criticism.
Still more noteworthy, in these respects, since they were written
before the Council of Rheims had given Gilbert's theology its fullest
notoriety, are the two early Porretan sentence collections composed
in Paris shortly after the Parisian chapter of Gilbert's teaching
career was ended by his move to the bishopric of Poitiers in 1142.
We have encountered these sentence collections, framed as reporta-
tiones of Gilbert's teaching, in chapter 2 above, since they outline a
full-blown course in systematic theology. As we have noted, the
authors devote full and specific attention to the problem of theolog-
ical language in their schemata, assigning the first of their four-
teen books to that topic in general and considering its particular
application to Trinitarian and Christological language in Books 2
and 3. Like the author of the Invisibilia dei, these early Porretan
sentence collectors show how Gilbert's earliest pupils accepted, or
altered, his semantics and its theological ramifications. Both of
these authors are sensitive to the need to define the capacities and
limits of theological language more clearly than Gilbert does. Both
of them move away from a strict adherence to his terminology in
favor of a more traditional vocabulary. They tend to agree with the
substance of Gilbert's theology on the Trinity and on Christology,
but think that the language in which he had advanced it is counter-
productive, a fact indicating that these problems troubled Gilbert's
followers no less than his critics, and that this was the case well
before matters came to a head at Rheims. The authors' strategy is
to replace Gilbert's lexicon with a more familiar one, a move which
they justify in theory before they apply it in practice. In their
prefatory remarks, they observe that theological language must be
both true and apposite. Appositeness is to be found in words that
derive from the authority of the saints (ex aliqua auctoritate
sanctorum) } b b Newfangled, idiosyncratic terms (novitates sermonum)
are to be shunned.156 The authors follow this guideline by pointedly
ignoring the vexed question of whether dens is divinitas, by avoiding

155
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi Γ'
1.1-2, AHDLMA 45 (1978): 108; "Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti episcopi Pictavensis
II: Die Version der florentiner Handschrift" 1.1-4, AHDLMA 46 (1979): 46-47.
John Marenbon, "A Note on the Porretani," in A History of Twelfth-Century Western
Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
p. 353 n. 2 does not discuss the content of these works.
156
Sent. I 1.4, p. 108; Sent. II 2.35-36, pp. 53-54.
146 CHAPTER THREE

Gilbertian terms such as subsistentia and subsistens, and by em-

ploying language consistent with patristic usage. They also try
valiantly, if not always successfully, to define clearly and to use
consistently the terms they substitute for Gilbert's.
The authors observe that substantia has been applied both to the
Trinitarian persons and to the divine essence They share. They are
aware of the fact that, in Latin theology, substance has been used
as a translation and synonym of hypostasis or person in Greek. But,
in Greek theology, they note, substance means ousia, the single
essence shared by the divine persons.157 These authors go farther
than any Latin theologians of the time before Peter Lombard in
grasping this critical distinction. They decide, furthermore, to fol-
low the Greek usage systematically, applying substantia to the unity
of the divine essence exclusively. They can thus explain how the
Greek term homoousion may be rendered by the Latin consubstantialis,158
without getting bogged down in the different semantic functions of
abstract and concrete nouns, or in the question of whether the
properties of the Trinitarian persons are attributes comparable to
those that modify created beings, which bedevils Gilbert's handling
of this issue.
The early Porretans capitalize on this notable clarification of the
idea of substance, but then, in their treatment of nature and person,
they abandon the high ground they have won. Ignoring Gilbert's
subsistentia and subsistens in connection with the two latter terms,
they retain only his definition of a person as a res per se una. As to the
semantic content of that formula, they state that personal prop-
erties are simply whatever properties distinguish one person from
another. This argument shows that they, like Gilbert, are dis-
satisfied with Boethius's definition of a person as the individual
substance of a rational nature. But, compared with Gilbert's
floundering about on persona and his emergence with a formula
which, as he frankly admits, is useless with respect to the Trinitar-
ian persons, their own definition marks a salient improvement,
since it places no restrictions on what the properties may be in
different kinds of persons. The authors thus provide a term capable
of being used appositely for divine and human persons alike.159
In contrast with Gilbert, who allies nature with person, our
authors transfer natura decisively into the camp of substantia as
essence, as they have already defined it. With these tools in hand,

157
Sent. I 2.14, 2.36, pp. 110-11; Sent. II 2.1-4, pp. 47-48.
158
Sent. I 2.6, p. 110; Sent. II 2.4, 2.6, p. 48.
159
Sent. I 2.9, p. 112; Sent. II 2.9, p. 49.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 147

one would expect them to arrive at a less ambiguous explanation of

the hypostatic union than the one they in fact provide. With
Gilbert, they argue that the incarnation did not produce a new
tertium quid,160 that the Word assumed simultaneously a human
body and a human soul and not a preexisting human person,161 and
that, once the union had taken place, the divine and human compo-
nents were not partible.162 They also quote Gilbert's maxim, "nee
natura naturam nee persona personam nee natura personam sed persona
naturam assumpsit.9'163 But, in support of this formula, they get
ensnared in the reasoning which they offer in place of Gilbert's.
Although they reiterate Gilbert's definition of a person as a res per se
una, they fail to see why it provides the most economical answer to
the question of why one person cannot assume another person.
Instead of simply saying, as Gilbert does, that a duplex person is a
contradiction in terms, the early Porretan response, which is not
really explained, is that Christ's divinity would be diminished in
the incarnation if one person had assumed another person.164 Also,
having annexed substance to nature, the authors find it hard to
defend the idea that a nature did not take on another nature.
Indeed, they argue at cross purposes against the principle they are
trying to support at this juncture, by stating that there are two
substances in the incarnate Christ, the divine substantia and the
human substantia vel natura, equating the latter term with Christ's
humanitas composed of body and soul.165
On the divine side, the difficulty with this vocabulary is appar-
ent. It makes it impossible to explain why it was the Son Who was
incarnated, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit, since all three
possess the same divine nature, substance, and essence. If this were
not problematic enough, the early Porre tans also appeal to the
language of the school of Laon by saying that there are three
substances in the incarnate Christ, the Word, a human body, and a
human soul.166 Aside from contradicting their own two-substance
position, this claim muddies the distinction between nature and

160
161
Sent. I 3.6, p. 123; Sent. II 3.6, p. 56.
162
Sent. I 3.5, 3.10, p. 123; Sent. II 3.5, p. 56.
163
Sent. I 3.16, p. 136; Sent. II 3.8-16, pp. 57-58.
164
Sent. I 3.3, p. 122; Sent. II 3.3-5, p. 56.
Sent. I 3.3, pp. 122-23.
165
Sent. I 3.7, 3.10, pp. 123, 124; Sent. II 3.5, p. 56.
166
Sent. I 3.16, p. 126. The author of Sent. II 3.7, p. 56, confines himself to the
three-substance theory, thus regarding the body and soul of the human Christ as
substances before they were united with each other and with the Word; he refers to
them indifferently as substances and as natures.
148 CHAPTER THREE

person in the deity, a distinction on which the defense of the

Gilbertian formula depends, while at the same time, it confuses the
sense of substantia as that term applies to the infra-substantial
physical and spiritual ingredients making up the man Jesus. To
complicate matters still farther, one of the sentence collectors uses,
indifferently, three phrases to describe the hypostatic union. The
first is "a person assumes a nature" (persona assumpsit naturam), or,
sometimes, "a person assumes human nature" (persona assumpsit
naturam humanam). The second is "God was made man" (deus homo
foetus est). The third describes the union as "the conjunction of
divinity and humanity" (coniunctio divinitatis et humanitatis) ,167 The
author quite evidently fails to see that, both in Gilbertian terms and
in ordinary Latin, these propositions make different, and incom-
patible, claims. In addition, the third formula comes close to stat-
ing the principle, which both authors join Gilbert in rejecting, that,
in the incarnation, a nature takes on a nature. So, while the goal of
the early Porretans' handling of theological language is clearly to
disembarrass Gilbert's teachings of Gilbert's terminology, they do
not manage to attain this objective entirely.

T H E LOMBARDIAN RESPONSE

Peter Lombard's position with respect to Gilbert and his early

disciples is a twofold one. In his view, Gilbert, even more than
Abelard, has locked himself into a vocabulary which, aside from
being idiosyncratic and confusing, does not permit the kind of clear
distinctions between God and creatures which Trinitarian and
Christological theology demands. At the same time, Peter is per-
fectly willing to take a leaf from the book of the early Porretans, and
to unshackle the Gilbertian doctrines of which he approves both
from Gilbert's own terminology and from the lexical ambiguities
still remaining in the language of his early disciples. Peter finds that
the combined assistance of Augustine and Damascene is just as
helpful in addressing this part of his agenda in the area of theologi-
cal language as it is in refuting Abelard. He is deeply conscious of
the need for a consistent, precise, and comprehensible language,
whose semantic aptitudes and limits are clearly delineated and
systematically applied. In positioning himself vis-à-vis Gilbert and
the early Porretans, he rejects a view of the poverty of language so
acute as to reduce all theological statements to metaphor or to

Sent. I 3.16, 3.28, pp. 126, 128.

 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 149

gibberish, or to the via negativa. On the other side, he rejects as

arrogant and sophistic the claim that human linguistic conven-
tions, new or old, can encompass the divine reality.168 Peter's
response is to use the traditional language of the creeds, under the
guidance of patristic writers whose own approach to theological
language is a speculative one, and who are able to explain what
they mean by their terms in ways both wide and specific enough to
enable language to function as it must function in theology, without
forcing it into any one, preemptive, philosophical mold. In this
connection, the criteria Peter invokes in making his choices are
lucidity, consistency, and theological utility.
There are certain areas in which Peter follows Gilbert's lead. He
agrees with Gilbert that God is a radically simple being, in contrast
with creatures that may be composite, physical, and modified by
accidents. Following the Porretan sentence collectors, but with
more rigor, he annexes the terms substance, nature, and essence, as
the Latin parallels of the Greek ousia, to the divine nature viewed in
its absolute unity and simplicity, making use of Damascene to
clarify and to expand on a point which they had not been able to
elaborate in such detail.169 Peter also explains the advantages of a
doctrine of God that includes His operations as well as His essence,
which had inspired the author of the Invisibilia dei to reimport
Augustine into the discussion. But, drawing on Damascene here as
well, Peter takes the argument much farther. He grounds it on two
complementary contrasts. The first is the contrast between God's
immutability and the changeable world of nature. The second is
the contrast between the enduring, unconditioned, differentiation
and coinherence of the unmanifested Trinity and the ways in which
God manifests Himself, as the Godhead primarily, in the economy
of His creation and redemption.170 Both of these contrasts are based
on eternity as a central attribute of God, a principle that allows
Peter to dispose of Gilbert's objections to Augustine and to specify

168
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 23. c. 1.3, 1: 182; Tractatus de Incarnatione 1.6, 1.8,
1.9.1-2, ed. Ignatius C. Brady in Sent. 2: 59*, 60*, 61*-63*. This latter text
incorporates parts of Peter's commentary on St. Paul that were subjected to
revision in the light of his later teaching in the Sentences.
169
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 2. c. 1-c. 3, d. 3. c. 4, d. 4. c. 2.1-4, d. 8. c. 8.31,
d. 19. c. 7-c. 10, d. 23 c. 3.1, c. 4.2, d. 25. c. 1.1, c. 2.2-5, d. 27. c. 3.1, d. 33. c. 1.3,
1: 60-63, 67, 77, 79-80, 103, 165-69, 182, 185, 190, 192-94, 205, 241.
170
Ibid., 1. d. 3. c. 1.5, d. 8. c. 4-c. 7, c. 8.1-3, d. 19. c. 2, d. 34. c. 4.2, 1: 70,
98-101, 101-03, 160, 253. The issue, as Peter sees it, involves more than a stress on
God's immutability as a means of mediating between Bernard of Clairvaux and
Gilbert. Cf. Bertola, "II problema di Dio," pp. 135-50.
150 CHAPTER THREE

the limits, as well as the powers, of Augustine's psychological

analogies. The relations among the persons of the Trinity, he
shows, are not passing accidents but are personal properties struc-
tured permanently into the eternal inner life of the Trinity.171 And,
man's way of knowing willing, remembering, and loving, to which
the functions of the Trinitarian persons can be compared, is time-
bound, sequential, and rooted in a body. Between the conception,
the desire, and the consummation falls the shadow, for man, but
not for the timeless Trinity.172 Peter thus emerges with a stable
lexicon with which he can articulate and address metaphysical
issues in Trinitarian theology ignored by the shriller critics of
Gilbert, and one which enables him to explain the differences
between God and creatures and the distinctions in the personal
properties of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit better than Gilbert
and his followers.
Peter also eliminates some of the problems in the language which
Gilbert and the early Porretans had used in the field of Christology.
His substantive position is much closer to Gilbert's in this area
than it is in his Trinitarian theology. With Gilbert, Peter maintains
that Christ did not assume a préexistent human person but a
human body and a human soul, "the soul and body in which man
subsists" (anima et caro in quibus subsistit homo), which were not
conjoined prior to their union with the Word, which were assumed
by Christ at the same time, and which remained united to Him
thereafter.173 With Gilbert and the Porretan sentence collectors, as
well as Walter of Mortagne and Robert of Melun, he rejects the
Boethian definition of person as the individual substance of a
rational nature, both as objectionable in and of itself and as a way
of criticizing Abelard, maintaining that neither man's soul nor his
body can denominate his whole person. Peter uses this same argu-
ment to support a claim which the earlier Porretans and the author
of the Sententiae divinitatis had made, but had not defended, the idea
that we may use either homo, humana natura or humanitas to denote the
infra-personal human components assumed by Christ. As Peter

171
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 22. c. 5, d. 24. c. 8, d. 25. c. 3.3-4, d. 26. c. 3.1,
c. 8, d. 27. c. 2.3, d. 30. c. 1.1-7, d. 33. c. 1.1-10, c. 3.3-5, d. 34. c. 1.1-9, 1: 179-80,
189, 195, 203, 204-05, 220-22, 240-43, 245-46, 246-50.
172
Ibid., 1. d. 3. c. 2-c. 3.8, d. 19. c. 3-c. 4, 1: 72-76, 161-63.
173
Tract, deine. 1.31, 2: 75*; see also Sent. 3. d. 2. c. 1.1-c. 3.1, d. 3. c. 4.2-4, d. 5.
c. 1.1, c. 2.1, c. 3.1, 2: 28-29, 30-31, 36-37, 41, 46, 47. This point has been brought
out well by Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1; 84-89, 136-37; Jean Longère,
Oeuvres oratoires des maîtres parisiens au XIV siècle: Etude historique et doctrinale, 2 vols.
(Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1975), 1:83-85.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 151

sees it, in this particular context, it would be as mistaken to restrict

the appositeness of any of these terms as it would be to deny that
the incarnate Christ possessed a human soul. He links this seman-
tic directive to an economic argument derived from Damascene,
which permits him to expand on an important corollary of the
hypostatic union to which the Porretans gave short shrift. Just as
Christ assumed both a body and a soul, in order that both body
and soul might be redeemed, so the consubstantiality of the incar-
nate Christ with other human beings denoted by the terms humana
natura and humanitas serves as a bridge between His own identity as
a human being and His redemption of mankind. Looked at as a
phenomenon of created nature, that is to say, the human Christ is
both a unique individual man and a member of the human race.
Thus, it is appropriate to use both homo and humanitas to refer to His
humana natura.11*
Peter gives thorough consideration to Gilbert's view that a per-
son assumes a nature in the incarnation, which he supports. But he
rings several changes on this theme, on the basis of the distinction
he draws between a divine persona and a human persona. For Peter, a
divine person enjoys consubstantiality with the divine nature or
essence as such. On the other hand, a human person cannot be
equated with or exhausted by his humanitas. Peter's contrast be-
tween a Trinity in which the addition of another person to a person
already there does not yield "more God," and the quantitative
enlargement that occurs when one item is added to another mem-
ber of the same genus already present, is to be remembered here.
Aside from this basic difference between divine persons and human
persons, the incarnate Christ does not possess a human persona for
Peter any more than He does for Gilbert. Thus, it is correct to say
that a person assumes a nature in the incarnation. Peter, like
Gilbert, rejects Adoptionism. But, since he gives a clearer and fuller
content to natura on the human side of Christ's constitution, he has
a better defense against the charge of Christological nihilianism, in
that it is aliquid natura,115 and on two human levels, individual and
generic, that the Word took on humanity in the incarnation.

174
Peter Lombard, Tract, de Inc. 1.4, 2: 58*; Sent, 3. d. 2. c. 1.4, c. 2, d. 5.
c. 3.2-4, 2: 2&-29, 47-49. Cf. Schneider, Die Uhre, pp. 118-23, who argues
incorrectly that Peter departs from Gilbert in supporting this Boethian definition
oi persona.
175
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 10. c. 1-c. 2, 2: 72-76. This point has been noted
correctly by Brady, ad loc, p. 73 n. 1 and in his "Peter Manducator and the Oral
Teachings of Peter Lombard," Antonianum 41 (1966): 454-79; Elswijk, Gilbert
Porreta, p. 417; Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp. 261-74.
152 CHAPTER THREE

Peter also agrees that the divine nature cannot take on a person,
since what Christ assumed was infra-personal. Nor can a person be
a composite. At the same time, Peter accepts the idea, which
Gilbert rejects, that the divine nature can take on a human nature.
As Peter understands this idea, he associates it with a principle he
shares with Gilbert, the notion that no tertium quid results from the
hypostatic union; the properties of the two natures are not blended
or confused. He offers two arguments in support of this idea. First,
in the case of the divine Christ, the fullness of the divine nature
dwells in His divine person. And second, in the case of the human
Christ, natura denotes adequately the infra-personal components
that are united to the Word as well as the human Christ's more
general connection with the rest of mankind. Peter's preferred
formula for describing the hypostatic union is to say that "the
person of the Son assumed human nature, and that the divine
nature was joined with a human nature united in the Son" (et
personam Filii assumpsisse naturam humanam, et naturam divinam humanae
naturae in Filio unitam).176 Given the care with which Peter defines
and uses his terms, the meaning of this language to him, and to the
reader, is perfectly clear. Adding to his elucidation of the hypostatic
union his clarification of the term persona and a soteriological con-
cern not found in Gilbert, Peter joins him in rejecting any notion of
the communication of idioms in the incarnate Christ that would
denature the divine and human components or treat them as
partible or as accidental.
There is one other major area in which Peter's familiarity with
the language of both Gilbert and the early Porretans enables him to
clarify and to correct a confusing pair of opinions which he himself
had shared with the latter masters, along with Robert Pullen in one
case and along with the school of Laon, Robert, and the Summa
sententiarum in the other, but which he rejects decisively in his
Sentences. One is the view that the incarnate Christ can be under-
stood as possessing three substances, the Word, a human body, and
a human soul.177 The other is the idea that the incarnate Christ has
two substances, divinity and humanity.178 The encounter with Gil-
bert and his disciples made Peter realize that the twin-substance

176
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 5. c. 1.10, 2: 45. For the whole passage, see Tract.
de Inc. 1.4, 1.14-21; Sent. 3. d. 5. c. 1.2-12, 2: 57*-58*, 64*-68*, 42-46.
177
Peter Lombard, Sermo 43, PL 171: 559B-C.
178
Peter Lombard, Sermo 7, 9, 12, 55, 99, PL 171: 371C, 382A, 396A, 605D-
606B, 806B. The same gemina substantia language occurs in Peter Lombard, In
Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 1:3, PL 191: 1307C.
 THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE 153

language, despite its Augustinian roots, was not acceptable, be-

cause it might imply that there was no difference between the
person of the Son and the divine substance which He shares with
the Father and the Holy Spirit. At the same time, it might suggest
that the human Christ was a human substance, that is, a human
person already in existence when He was joined to the Word.179 As
for the three-substance theory, Peter concludes that it too must be
abandoned, because it involves an improper attribution of substantia
to the infra-substantial body and soul that the Word assumes.180
In these several ways, Peter Lombard reflects a certain depend-
ence upon Gilbert and the Porretans, even as he seeks to criticize
their use of theological language. In substance, Peter's Christology
has more in common with Gilbert's than it does with the Christol-
ogy of any of his other contemporaries. He is a critic of Gilbert's
Trinitarian theology. Peter joins Robert of Melun in going beyond
the narrow Aristotelian understanding of the idea of relation,
taught by Gilbert and others, expanding on and refining this point
in comparison with Robert. In specifying the positive content of the
properties of the Trinitarian persons, he makes far more pointed
the application of the Augustinian argument based on the analysis
of relative nouns. Peter also does more than any of his contempo-
raries to expose the limits of Gilbert's numerical handling of that
subject, as well as the treatment given to it by his would-be critics
in the school of Chartres. Even in those areas where he disagrees
with Gilbert and his disciples, however, he has learned from them
how to pose many of the issues which they raise concerning the
language appropriate to the speculative doctrines of the Christian
faith, where theological terminology is so crucial. The very difficul-
ties embedded in Gilbert's own lexicon, which provoked the clar-
ifications and retrenchments made by his pupils, were also an
indirect inspiration to the Lombard in his own quest for alternative
language that was understandable and that was adequate to the
assignments that theologians needed to impose upon it. In this
respect, the questions raised by Gilbert and the Porretans were
fully as important as those raised by Abelard, in setting the agenda
to which Peter responded in developing his own constructive
address to the problem of theological language. Thanks to his
efforts, to the extent that twelfth century scholastics attained a

179
180
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 6. c. 3.5, d. 7. c. 1.13-17, 2: 54, 63-64.
Ibid., 3. d. 2. c. 2.4, d. 6. c. 2.5, c. 3.1, c. 3.6, d. 7. c. 1.4-9, 2: 29, 51, 52-53,
54, 60-62.
154 CHAPTER THREE

common theological vocabulary capable of performing its doctrinal

tasks prior to the reception of Aristotle, that outcome was a con-
sequence of the Lombard's ability to meet the challenges made by
Gilbert and Abelard more successfully than anyone else at the time.
 CHAPTER FOUR

SACRA PAGINA

There is no doubt that medieval Christian thinkers saw the Bible as

the book of books and its study as the discipline of disciplines. Nor
is there any question of the privileged position which exegetes in
the twelfth century, as in previous centuries, gave to certain por-
tions of the biblical text. In the Old Testament, their favorite
section was the Book of Psalms, and in the New Testament, it was
the Epistles of St. Paul. The Psalms were seen as a guide to the
Christian life, while St. Paul was appreciated for the doctrinal
richness of his teachings and was revered as a model theologian. In
the first half of the twelfth century, these two subdivisions of the
Bible received more sustained attention than did any other parts of
the Old and New Testaments. They now did so, however, from
more than one quarter. The twelfth century continued to witness
interest in both the Psalms and St. Paul on the part of monastic
exegetes. As had always been the case, their goal remained to excite
unction and compunction in the minds of their monastic audience,
and their treatment of these texts drew on the meditative and
homiletic techniques embedded in monastic lectio divina. At the
same time, the emergence of scholastic theology in the first half of
the century created a new demand for a different kind of biblical
exegesis, a more systematic and detached study of the text geared
to the needs of doctrinal debate, and to the training of professional
theologians. The scholastics seized on the Psalms and St. Paul for
these purposes. For them, these portions of the Bible were not only
key sources of Christian doctrine, whether moral or dogmatic, but
also complex and composite segments of Holy Scripture whose
interpretation often required the help of other resources. Further,
the relation of the parts to each other, and to the whole, demanded
investigation. Hence, the exegesis of the Psalms and the Pauline
epistles were a test case for the developing hermeneutic principles
which the professionalizing of the liberal arts, no less than the
professionalizing of theology itself, brought to the fore in the read-
ing of the biblical text.1

1
The best introduction to this subject is Jean Châtillon, "La Bible dans les
écoles du XII e siècle," in L· moyen âge et la Bible, éd. Pierre Riche and Guy
156 CHAPTER FOUR

Among these scholastic exegetes of the Psalms and St. Paul in the
first half of the twelfth century, Peter Lombard holds pride of place.
Like his Sentences, Peter's commentary on the Psalms, composed
before 1138, and his Collectanea, or commentary on Paul, written
between 1139 and 1141, became instant classics in their own
sphere. In the schools of theology they at once became the most
frequently cited, copied, and studied exegetical works produced in
the twelfth century. Peter's exegesis was swiftly dubbed the Magna
glossatura, outpacing both the earlier Glossa ordinaria of the school of
Laon and the Media glossatura of Gilbert of Poitiers, as well as
contemporary and immediately subsequent Pauline glosses,
whether of Abelardian, Porretan, or Victorine provenance.2 Peter's
commentary on the Psalms likewise decisively replaced the Psalms
gloss of Gilbert of Poitiers and that of the Glossa ordinaria as the

Lobrichon (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), pp. 163-97. See also Heinrich Denifle,
"Quel livre servait de base à renseignement des maîtres en théologie dans
l'Université de Paris?" Revue thomiste 2 (1898): 149-61; Artur Michael Landgraf,
Introduction à l'histoire de la littérature théologique de la scolastique naissante, éd. Albert-M.
Landry, trans. Louis-B. Geiger (Montreal: Institut d'Etudes Médiévales, 1973),
p. 47; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. rev. (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1952), ch. 1-4; "L'Exégèse biblique du 12e siècle,"
in Entretiens sur la renaissance du 12 siècle, ed. Maurice de Gandillac and Edouard
Jeauneau (Paris: Mouton, 1968), pp. 273-83; "The Bible in the Medieval
Schools," in Cambridge History of the Bible: The Westfrom the Fathers to the Reformation,
éd. G. W. H. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 2: 197-220;
Gillian R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Wilfried Hartmann, "Psal-
menkommentare aus den Zeit der Reform und Frühscholastik," Studi Gregoriani 9
(1972): 313-66. A good summary of monastic exegesis is provided by Jean
Leclercq, "Écrits monastiques sur la Bible aux IX e -XII 3 siècle," MS 15 (1953):
95-106. Older but still useful guides include Artur Michael Landgraf, "Zur
Methode der biblischen Textkritik im 12. Jahrhundert," Biblica 10 (1929): 445-74;
"Familienbildung bei Paulinenkommentaren des 12. Jahrhunderts," Biblica 13
(1932): 61-72, 164-93; "Untersuchungen zu den Paulinenkommentaren des 12.
Jahrhunderts," RTAM 8 (1936): 345-68.
2
H. H. Glunz, History of the Vulgate in Englandfrom Alcuin to Roger Bacon: Being an
Inquiry into the Text of Some English Manuscripts of the Vulgate Gospels (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1933), pp. 219-24; Châtillon, "La Bible dans les
écoles," pp. 192-93; Jacques-Guy Bougerol, La théologie de l'espérance aux ΧΙΓ et
XIIIe siècles (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), 1; 9; Werner Affeldt, Die weltliche
Gewalt in der Paulus-Exegese: Rom. 13, 1-7 in den Römerbriefkommentaren der lateinischen
Kirche bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1969), p. 138; Z. Alszeghy, Nova creatura: La nozione della grazia net commentari
medievali di S. Paolo (Rome: Universitas Gregoriana, 1956), pp. 8-11, 23-24; Guy
Lobrichon, "Une nouveauté: Les gloses de la Bible," in Le moyen âge et la Bible, ed.
Pierre Riche and Guy Lobrichon (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), pp. 109-10. These
authors correct the position, stated by Smalley, Study, pp. 51, 64-65 and Margaret
T. Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 54-61, who stress
the continuities between the Glossa ordinaria and Peter Lombard's exegesis to the
point of obscuring his differences from his predecessors.
 SACRA PAGINA 157

scholastic commentary of choice, in a field marked by fewer com-

petitors, for this portion of the Old Testament. While all the
medieval testimonials to the Lombard's fame mention these two
works side by side with the Sentences as his chief contributions to
learning, he was known in some quarters, even beyond the schools,
as an exegete primarily. The anonymous author of a book list
compiled by a monk in the diocese of Arras in the last third of the
twelfth century, who attaches comments to the titles he catalogues,
has this to say about him:
Peter Lombard, the Parisian scholastic, later bishop of the same city,
is judged to be preferred most greatly over all the masters of his time
and expositors of the Scriptures because, thanks to the sharpness of
his intellect and the assiduousness of his labor, he shed light on so
many things in explaining the Scriptures that the teaching of the
doctors has become merely the glossing of his readings and the effort
to understand his teachings.3
In grasping why that outcome was the case, the Lombard's
handling of the Psalms and the Pauline epistles, in comparison with
the other scholastics of his time who glossed these texts, will reveal
what most scholastic readers wanted out of biblical exegesis and
why they preferred his work to its alternatives. The scholastic
exegetes with whom Peter will be compared are those falling within
the period ca. 1115 to ca. 1160. In the case of Psalms exegesis, there
are more apparent connections between monastic and scholastic
authors than is true for the glosses on St. Paul, and so a swift
comparison between these two groups of authors will be made as
well, to indicate their similarities and differences.
Of these two segments of the Bible, the Book of Psalms had a far
more extensive tradition of commentary from the patristic period
up to the twelfth century. Many more commentaries on Psalms
were produced by twelfth-century monks than commentaries on St.
Paul, for the obvious reason that the glossing of Psalms could be
and was seen as an adjunct to the chanting of the Psalter in the
monastic liturgy. The Psalms continued to be read, and meditated
upon, as a source of moral edification by the monks, as well as
being read typologically, pointing ahead to the life and teachings of

3
Nikolaus M. Häring, "Two Catalogues of Medieval Authors," FS 26 (1966):
211: "Petrus Langobardus scholasticus Parisiensis, postea eiusdem civitatis epis-
copus, magistri sui temporis et Scripturarum expositoribus eo maxime preferen-
dus iudicatur quod ingenio sagaci et usu assiduo tanta in exponendis Scripturis
luce claruerit ut pene magisterio doctoris non egeat qui glosarum ipsius lectioni
animum intendere voluerit." For the date and provenance of this catalogue, see
pp. 195-97, 206-08.
158 CHAPTER FOUR

Christ in the New Testament. To this older agenda, inherited from

patristic times, the twelfth-century scholastics attached a new in-
terest. To be sure, the scholastics retained the practice of reading
the Psalms polysemously, with an eye to both ethics and Chris-
tology. The new perspective they brought to the Psalms was the
desire to understand this book of the Bible in conjunction with
systematic theology. They brought to it and read out of it a concern
with dogmatic topics and an interest in evaluating the interpreta-
tions given to the text by the earlier authorities, Anglo-Saxon and
Garolingian as well as patristic, helped in some cases by methods of
thought derived from the study of the liberal arts.4

PSALMS EXEGESIS: T H E MONASTIC APPROACH

The continuities and discontinuities between monastic and scho-

lastic Psalms exegesis in our period can be illustrated clearly by
four examples, chosen from a range of monastic authors who wrote
both before and after Peter Lombard. The works selected for this
comparison are those by Letbert of Lille, Bruno the Carthusian,
Pseudo-Bruno of Würzburg, and Gerhoch of Reichersberg. These
authors express a variety of forms of contemporary monasticism,
ranging from the older Black Monks to a representative of a new,
reformed order. The comparison also draws on men who received
their education in the convent and on one who taught as a secular
master at a leading cathedral school before entering the monastery.
Without in any way exhausting the possibilities among monastic
expositors of the Psalms in the first half of the twelfth century, these
four will give us a representative sampling of them.
Letbert of Lille, whose In Psalmos LXXV commentarius was written
in ca. 1100-10,5 clearly addresses his work to his fellow monks,
urging them, in his gloss on Psalm 45:11, to use meditation on this
text as a means of focusing their attention on their cloistered calling
and turning away from worldly concerns.6 While Letbert addresses
Christological and ecclesiological issues, the balance of his exegesis
is weighted more toward tropology than toward typology; he cen-
ters on the personal moral message which the text holds for the
individual monastic reader. Letbert offers no accessus to the Book of

4
Hartmann, "Psalmenkommentare," pp. 313-66.
5
For Letbert's biography and the date of his work, see A. Wilmart, "Le
commentaire sur les Psaumes imprimé sous le nom de Rufin," R. bén. 31 ( 1914—
19): 258-76.
6
Letbert of Lille, In Psalmos LXXVcommentarius 45:11, PL 21: 830C-D. This text
is printed among the works of Rufinus of Aquileia.
 SACRA PAGINA 159

Psalms as a whole and gives a brief introduction only to a few

individual Psalms. He glosses each verse of the text, frequently
bringing in other books of the Bible to help explicate it. Letbert
does not mention overtly any of the many patristic authorities on
whom he draws. In this sense, his commentary is a veritable catena
of unacknowledged patristic readings. Augustine is a favorite of his.
He never discusses the readings of these authorities and sometimes
ignores the fact that they may provide alternative interpretations of
the same biblical passage.7 Occasionally he garbles his patristic
citations. But, principally, they are used as scholia to clear up
confusing references in the text, or as theological authorities who
answer questions and who thus close off discussion of them.
Another monastic exegete of the Psalms, but one who displays a
familiarity with some of the developments occurring beyond the
walls of the convent, is Bruno the Carthusian. His Expositio in
Psalmos was probably written between 1141 and 1154,8 after he had
become a Carthusian. It has a decidedly monastic flavor, although
Bruno's concern with current events and the range of his reading
may reflect a carryover of the mentality of the secular master he
had earlier been at the cathedral school of Rheims.9 An index of his
scholastic background is a mode of handling authorities that is
rather more sophisticated than that of Letbert. Bruno brings in
non-Christian as well as patristic sources.10 He does note occasions
when authorities disagree or when a single authority gives more
than one reading of the same line, and makes his own selection.
But, in such passages, he does not explain the reasons informing
these choices.11 Bruno tends to cite authorities very sparingly and
in an essentially decorative way, at times to provide scholia on
difficult words or phrases but largely to sum up aptly a point he
wants to make. He also takes pains to criticize unnamed "philo-
sophers" who draw Plato into their disputes about the Trinity,
although without indicating why he thinks this is inappropriate. He
praises, instead, ecclesiastical leaders who take pedagogical initia-
tives by travelling about to share their teachings. The example of

7
A good example is at Ps. 70:15, PL 21: 934C, where the alternative readings
are ignored.
8
Damien Van den Eynde, "Complementary Note on the Early Scholastic
Commentarii in Psalmos," FS 17 (1957): 149-72. Van den Eynde's dating has
been contested by Valerie I.J. Flint, "Some Notes on the Early Twelfth-Century
Commentaries on the Psalms," RTAM 38 (1971): 80-88.
9
Châtillon, "La Bible," pp. 173-75.
10
Bruno the Carthusian, Expositio in Psalmos 73, PL 152: 1009B. Here, his
authority is Josephus.
11
Bruno the Carthusian, In Ps. 77, 91, PL 152: 1045D-1049A, 1130A-C.
160 CHAPTER FOUR

Dionysius the Areopagite in France, which he gives to illustrate this

latter group, suggests a veiled attack on Peter Abelard.12 More
central to Bruno than these sallies is the monastic focus of his
commentary. His style is hortatory. He sometimes poses rhetorical
questions as if speaking aloud, suggesting that the text was written
for, or redacted from, an oral exposition. He refers to his readers as
hearers, auditores.13 Further, in his prologue, he compares the
Psalms with musical instruments, with which man sings God's
praises, treating the text as an adjunct to the liturgical chanting of
the Psalms in the monastic opus dei.1* He does not comment on
every passage of every Psalm but freely refers to lines that he does
not gloss, reflecting his assumption that the entire Psalter is in the
minds and ears of his audience. Bruno indicates that the text bears
several levels of meaning, the historical, the typological, the moral,
and the mystical.15 In practice, he gives scant attention to the
historical sense and to the typological. The role of such events in
the life of Christ to which the Psalms may point is to teach the
reader how to act and how to pray, to incite his piety and
devotion.16 In this case, then, the author, despite his scholastic
background, gives pride of place to his monastic orientation.
The contrast between monastic and scholastic Psalms exegesis
can be seen even more clearly in the next two examples. Pseudo-
Bruno of Würzburg wrote his Expositio Psalmorum in ca. 1150, well
after the glosses of Peter Lombard and of other scholastic commen-
tators. He draws on their work, selecting what he wants from them
and ignoring what he finds uninteresting or irrelevant. In that
latter category he includes the identification of the authorities they
cite and the analysis which they apply to these citations. What he
does, instead, is to content himself with their conclusions, incorpo-
rating them into his own largely moral exegesis. The place the
author accords to the Psalms in the context of the monastic life is
vividly indicated in his offering of a prayer, reflecting on the mes-
sage of the Psalm just discussed, at the end of each of his glosses, as
well as by his prayerful ejaculations inserted here and there in the
body of the gloss itself. The same focus is also reflected in the
conclusions he draws and in the allusions he makes. In glossing
Psalm 86:4 on the subject of vigils, he reads the text as a criticism of

12
13
Ibid., 106, PL 152: 1205B-C, 121 ID.
14
Ibid., 105, PZ, 152: 1198B.
15
Ibid., prologus, PL 152: 637B-638B.
16
Ibid., PL 152: 638B-639A.
A good example is ibid., 21, PL 152: 723C.
 SACRA PAGINA 161

monks who fail to maintain their alertness at the night services;17

and he repeatedly praises monastic simplicitas over secular learning,
seen as the secular folly which monks should leave behind them.18
Likewise, he thinks that the swallows mentioned in Psalm 103:18
signify "monachorum parvitatem" the deliberately chosen powerless-
ness of monks who have rejected the inheritance of the mighty,
while the swallows' nest signifies the monastery itself, built so that
its inhabitants can sing God's praises.19 Clearly, the Pseudo-Bruno's
aim is to draw on and to simplify the work of his predecessors, while
applying it to the stimulation of collective and individual monastic
devotion.
Another monastic example who was familiar with the scholastic
as well as the monastic glosses on the Psalms and who produced the
lengthiest commentary of the century on this Old Testament book
is Gerhoch of Reichersberg. His Expositions in Psalmorum, dating to
between 1144 and 1167/68, is likewise aimed at the edification of
monks and canons and the enrichment of their prayer life. But it
also tackles another aspect of the monastic agenda, the improve-
ment of the quality of religious life in the cloisters of the older
monastic orders. Hence, Gerhoch seeks to harness Psalms exegesis
to the reform of moral and institutional problems within the con-
temporary church.20 While he pays some attention to the typologi-
cal reading of the Psalms, his accent is ethical and his style is
homiletic. He cites both recent and contemporary authors, in large
chunks, scholastic and monastic alike, as well as patristic and
classical authors. Sometimes the authorship of these citations is
mis-attributed; sometimes the citations are to the point and at
other times not. The most noticeable stylistic feature of Gerhoch's
exposition is extensive digression. These digressions are not
scholastic-type quaestiones inspired by the biblical text but examples
of the author's tendency toward free association. Subjects on which
he expatiates, which may or may not be connected with the themes
in the Psalms being glossed, include the liturgy, ethics, ecclesiasti-
cal and monastic discipline, canon law, history sacred and profane,
legends, anecdotes, current events, and dogma. In the latter case,
Gerhoch takes up some dogmatic points controverted at the time

17
Pseudo-Bruno of Würzburg, Expositio Psalmorum 86:4, PL 142: 287C.
18
Ibid., 70:17, 91:6, 93:8, PL 142: 268A, 341C, 345C.
19
Ibid., 103:18, PZ, 142: 373D.
20
Good general orientations on this work are provided by Peter Classen,
Gerhoch von Reichersberg: Eine Biographie (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1960),
pp. 114—21 and Damien Van den Eynde, L'Oeuvre littéraire de Géroch de Reichersberg
(Rome: Antonianum, 1957), pp. 291-329.
162 CHAPTER FOUR

on which he takes a stand, such as the contritionist-confessionist

debate concerning penance. Here, he clearly sides with the confes-
sionists, attacking contritionism as a Greek heresy.21 Sometimes his
doctrinal observations reinforce the current consensus, as in his
remarks on the need for human collaboration with God's grace in
man's justification and in the remission of his sins. 22 But doctrinal
excurses of this sort do not reflect an effort on Gerhoch's part to
develop a theology out of Psalms or to work out the relationship
between the content of any one of the Psalms and the theology of
the Psalter more generally. Rather, they reflect the fact that, as an
exegete, he has a mind like a grab-bag. He has a tendency to get
sidetracked all too easily. This digressive trait is more evident in
the earlier sections of his commentary, which are much fuller in all
respects than are the later sections. By the time he reaches the end
of the gloss, Gerhoch appears to have run out of steam, and
contents himself with citing authorities, whether acknowledged or
not, one after the other, without even writing any continuity be-
tween them.

PRE-LOMBARDIAN SCHOLASTIC PSALMS EXEGESIS

The scholastic glosses on the Psalms dating to our target period

have a decidedly different appearance, as can be seen by a consid-
eration of the three most important precursors of Peter Lombard in
this connection, the Pseudo-Bede, the Glossa ordinaria, and Gilbert
of Poitiers. The identity of the Pseudo-Bede is not known, but
internal references in his work to contemporary events, such as the
investiture controversy, enable us to date it to the turn of the
twelfth century. The fact that the author is a school theologian is
visible in the technicality of the doctrinal issues he discusses,
whether as central points in his exegesis or as excursuses on the
Psalms. He displays a notable tendency to make logical distinctions
and to use grammatical analysis, as well as to draw widely on
patristic and classical authors.23 One striking feature of the Pseudo-

21
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, Expositionis in Psalmarum 31:5, in Opera inedita, 2 vols
in 3, ed. Damien and Odulph Van den Eynde and Angelinus Rijmensdael, with
Peter Classen (Rome: Antonianum 1955-56), 2 part 1: 52-56.
22
Ibid., 31:1, 2 part 1: 6.
23
A good general description is provided by G. Morin, "Le pseudo-Bède sur les
Psaumes et Y Opus super Psaltarium de maître Manegold de Lautenbach," R. bén 28
(1911): 331-40. See also Bernhard Bischoff, "Zur Kritik der Heerwagenschen
Ausgabe von Bedas Werken (Basel, 1563)," in Mittalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte
Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1966),
1:112-17. I would like to thank Dr. Margaret T. Gibson for this last reference.
 SACRA PAGINA 163

Bede that sets him apart from the monastic exegetes and that also
reveals his scholastic colors is his interest in the Book of Psalms as a
part of the Bible and in the question of authorship connected to it.
Is the Book of Psalms a single book, as Cassiodorus says, or five
books brought together under one heading, as Jerome maintains?
The author holds that this is a single book, although one written, as
Hilary of Poitiers states, by several different authors, as is clear
from the headings to each individual Psalm.24 This conclusion
reveals an exegete who does not hesitate to engage in controversy,
for the more typical view of the authorship of the Psalms, Jerome
and Hilary excepted, from the rest of the church fathers up through
the scholastic exegetes of the early twelfth century, was that David
had written them all.25
After a lengthy introduction to the Book of Psalms as a whole,
the Pseudo-Bede gives a brief explanation of each Psalm before
commenting on it. His exegesis accents overall themes. He consid-
ers each Psalm as a whole, and, once he has indicated what it is
saying in general, he confines himself to lemmatizing the few
phrases in each that may present difficulties. He agrees that the
Psalms bear a historical, moral, and mystical meaning. But it is the
typological significance of the text, especially its Christological
dimensions, that attract his primary attention. The breadth of his
reading is visible in the range of authorities he cites, as is his
attitude. He urges that philosophers have much of value to say on
the immortality of the soul,26 and cites scholia from Horace, Lucan,
and Macrobius.27 His patristic authorities, however, are infre-
quently cited by name and are treated as scholiasts more than as
theologians. Pseudo-Bede does not systematically adduce author-
ities and investigate the reasoning behind their conflicting readings
or interpretations. He tends to offer the opinions he takes from
them without analysis, as his own position. Sometimes he presents
an alternative reading but without indicating where it comes from
and whether it is compatible with the other reading or readings he
has given, and, if not, what reasons exist for choosing among them.
There are other areas in which the Pseudo-Bede, for all his evident
contributions, would be found wanting by a scholastic reader. In a
substantial number of cases, Psalms 94 through 100 and Psalms

24
Pseudo-Bede, De Psalmorum libro exegesis prologus, PL 93: 477B-D.
25
I am indebted to Theresa Gross-Diaz, in a personal communication of April
5, 1990, for this information.
26
Pseudo-Bede, In Ps. 87, PL 93: 960B.
27
Ibid., 9, 34, 89, 103, PL 93: 541C-D, 655D, 966C, 1005B.
164 CHAPTER FOUR

112 through 150, the author gives no commentary at all apart from
his introductory summary of the Psalm. And, in making theological
excurses from the text, his position is as noncommittal as it is
unexceptional. He does not take sides on the doctrines expounded.
Another important precursor of Peter Lombard's commentary
on the Psalms, and one that had an impressive shelf-life in the
twelfth century and after among readers whose needs were often
less professionally oriented than those of the scholastic theologians,
is the Glossa ordinaria, composed by Anselm of Laon and his associ-
ates between ca. 1080 and ca. 1130.28 It is not known when, during
that period, the gloss on the Psalms was produced, or who the
glossator responsible for it was. In its appearance, the Glossa ordi-
naria offers a marked contrast both with the work of the Pseudo-
Bede and with that of Gilbert of Poitiers and that of the Lombard,
in that it does not take the form of a continuous commentary.
Rather, it is a text of the Bible supplied with interlinear and
marginal glosses. The glossator opens his commentary with a
flourish, giving Jerome's preface to the Book of Psalms. He then
quotes Jerome, Cassiodorus, Augustine, and Remigius of Auxerre
on the nature of the Psalms, what the number of Psalms signifies,
their sequence, and the idea, taken from Augustine, that they
should be read with a Christological reference, or with reference to
the church and the kinds of people who comprise it. For these
various categories of people, the Psalms offer moral guidance on
what is required for penance, justice, and eternal life.29
The glossator neither comments on each verse, nor does he give

28
On the authorship of the Glossa ordinaria, the seminal work was done by Beryl
Smalley, Study, pp. 46-66 and more recently confirmed by Ermenegildo Bertola,
"La 'Glossa ordinaria' biblica ed i suoi problemi," RTAM 45 (1978): 34-78; R.
Wielockx, "Autour de la Glossa ordinaria" RTAM 49 (1982): 222-28; Lobrichon,
"Une nouveauté," pp. 105-07; Margaret T. Gibson, "The Place of the Glossa
ordinaria in Medieval Exegesis," in Ad litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval
Readers, ed. Mark D. Jordan and Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 5-27; "The Glossed Bible," intro, to the facsimile
reprint of the editio princeps of Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, Adolph Rusch of
Strassburg, 1480/81 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 1: vii-xi; A brief description of the
main features of the Glossa ordinaria is provided by Evans, Language and Logic,
pp. 41-47.
29
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria prologus, editio princeps, 4 vols. (Strassburg:
Adolph Rusch?, c. 1481), 1: unpaginated. Also found in PL 113: 841A-844C.
Princeton University Library, Ex 1.5168.1480. An anastatic reprint with introduc-
tion by Karlfried Froelich and Margaret T. Gibson has been published (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 1992), as noted in note 28 above. I will also give references to the PL
edition, although its weaknesses are acknowledged, for the convenience of readers
lacking access to the first edition or its reprint. I would like to thank Dr. Gibson for
her assistance in locating the copy of the Glossa ordinaria in the Princeton collection.
 SACRA PAGINA 165

the reader a sense of the overall message of each Psalm. What he

does do is to single out particular words and passages that he wants
to discuss, leaving to the reader the task of contextualizing them.
His explanations are of two types. Either they are scholia clarifying
difficult phrases, or they are restatements of what the Psalmist has
said, in the glossator's own words, or in the words, or in the
paraphrased sense, of a chosen authority. The author occasionally
supports or elaborates on the point by referring to other biblical
texts. The authorities on whom he draws the most heavily, usually
one for each passage lemmatized, are Augustine and Cassiodorus.
Other patristic authors to whom he appeals are Basil, Gregory the
Great, Theodore, and Jerome. Among the post-patristic writers, his
favorites are Bede and Remigius. Most of the time his citations of
these authorities paraphrase their opinions. But at times the glossa-
tor offers a fragmented quotation, of a type that makes his refer-
ences a mere finding tool. Following the example of the Carolingian
exegete, Florus of Lyon,30 he gives the first few words of the quota-
tion and the last few words, with the phrase "usque ad" in between
to indicate his omission of the main body of the quotation.
As for the content of his exegesis, the glossator adheres to both
the Christological and the moral reading of the Psalms as pre-
scribed by Augustine. The ethical and dogmatic conclusions he
draws from the text are, for the most part, theologically unexcep-
tional, and rarely touch on the debated issues of the day. He shows
no interest in moving beyond the simple statement of a theological
point into a fuller exploration or a speculative analysis of it. His
tendency to gloss individual words or phrases militates against a
commentary on the overall meaning of a given Psalm, as a text that
has a beginning, middle, and end and that conveys a specific
message. It also militates against the understanding of the Psalm-
ist's mode of argument or rhetorical strategy. These traits lead to
a treatment of the Psalms that is considerably more banal than
what can be found in many of the patristic exegetes on whom the
glossator relies. There is only one point at which a current theolog-
ical concern surfaces. In his gloss on Psalm 44, the author offers a
liturgical, ecclesiological, and Mariological observation reflecting
the contemporary effort to bind Mariology more closely to reflec-
tion on the church. This Psalm, he notes, is sung on the feast of the
Virgin, in the liturgy for the induction of virgins into the monastic
life, on feasts of the apostles and on Christmas day. While it speaks

Florus of Lyons, Expositio in Epistolas beati Pauli, PL 119.

166 CHAPTER FOUR

of the church in general, he adds, it refers to Mary in particular, as

the type of the church wedded to Christ at His incarnation.31 This
passage is the exception that proves the rule. Nowhere else in this
gloss can one read it as an index of theological interests specific to
the twelfth century.
Although the glossator, in his prologue, notes the existence of
diverse patristic opinions, he is basically not interested in dealing
with conflicting views in the body of his gloss. He is far more likely
to accent the concord of opinions when he can, as is the case, for
instance, with Psalm 105 and whether the phrase "alleluia, alleluia"
in the first verse belongs there. As he points out, Cassiodorus,
following Jerome, says it does and explains that alleluia here is
repeated for emphasis, on the analogy of the phrase "Amen, amen I
say unto you," found in the gospels. Augustine, he observes, agrees
with this point, and adds that the alleluias belong at the beginning
of this Psalm and not at the end of the previous one, because none
of the Greek codices of Psalms that he has consulted places these
words after Psalm 104.32 This is one of the few passages in the
Glossa ordinaria on the Psalms reflecting any interest in the active
comparison of different authorities on the same passage, or in the
consideration of the reasoning that lies behind their opinions, or in
suggesting the scholarly criteria to bear in mind in deciding which
view to follow.
Aside from this particular instance, there is little evidence on the
glossator's part of a real interest in offering any advice on how to
read the text. Rather, the Glossa ordinaria on Psalms can be de-
scribed less as a pedagogical tool for the training of scholastic
theologians than as a catena of the individual patristic and later
opinions which the author finds most helpful for each of the words
or phrases he chooses to lemmatize. In citing his authorities, he is
typically more interested in the conclusions they reach, especially if
they are expressed in a concise, maxim-like form, than in the
reasoning that has led the authority to his conclusion. In cases
where the glossator uses the usque ad formula for abbreviating his
quotations, it is impossible for the reader, in the absence of addi-
tional research on his own part, to see how the authority has gotten
to his destination. The glossator never refers to the context in which
the authority had written. He tends to overlook the theological and
philosophical issues which his authorities had often addressed in

31
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 2: In Ps. 44; PL 113: 911B-C.
32
Ibid., 2: In Ps. 105; PL 113: 1022A-B.
 SACRA PAGINA 167

their Psalms commentaries. He adheres instead to the task of

offering his own moral and typological exegesis in a spare, econo­
mical manner, without giving his own or his authorities' reflections
on the significance of the ethical, Christological, or ecclesiological
points which he extracts from their works and presents in a con­
densed and lapidary fashion.
The Psalms commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers, written between
1110/11 and 1117, was initiated while Gilbert was studying with
Anselm of Laon. It incorporates and expands on the Glossa ordinaria,
emphasizing the same authorities. It preserves the balance between
ethics and Christology found in that gloss on the Psalms. Gilbert
does not display here the interest in dialectic and semantics that
surfaces so forcefully in his later commentaries on Boethius. In his
glosses on the Psalms, he is less inclined than the Glossa ordinaria to
indicate by name the authorities whose views he summarizes. Still,
the earlier scholarship on Gilbert's as yet unedited Psalms com­
mentary accents the continuities between it and the Glossa ordinaria,
except for the fact that it is a continuous commentary and not a set
of marginal and interlinear glosses on the Biblical text.33 However,
the recent work of Theresa Gross-Diaz has shown that Gilbert can
truly lay claim to being the first seriously scholastic commentator
on the Psalms. In this respect, he is the single most important
precursor of Peter Lombard. Not only does Gilbert eschew the
devotional and hortatory approach to the Psalms typical of the
monastic exegetes, as do the Pseudo-Bede and the Glossa ordinaria,
he also systematically targets specific scholastic concerns not
emphasized by these two authors, which will be developed more
fully by the Lombard in the sequel.
One place where the winds of change can be felt immediately is
in Gilbert's accessus to the Book of Psalms. He agrees with the
Pseudo-Bede, Jerome, and Hilary, against the prevailing opinion,
that the book is an anthology, but he goes much farther than they
do. Not only is the Book of Psalms a composite book, he argues, it is
also an anthology composed of different types of Psalms.34 Some, for

33
H. C. van Els wijk, "Gilbert Porreta als glossator van het Psalterium," in
Jubileumbundel voor Prof. Mag. Dr. G. P. Kreling O.P. (Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de
Vegt Ν. V., 1953), pp. 292-303; Gilbert Poneta: Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée (Louvain:
Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1966), pp. 46-47; Bruno Maioli, Gilberto Porreta-
no: Dalla grammatica speculative alla metafiska del concreto (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979),
p. xxiii.
34
Theresa Gross-Diaz, personal communication, April 5, 1990; "Information
Management in the Twelfth Century Schools: The Psalm Commentary of Gilbert
of Poitiers or, 'Gilbert, We Hardly Knew Ye'," unpublished paper delivered in
168 CHAPTER FOUR

example, are penitential Psalms; others praise and celebrate the

deity; still others invoke God's aid against the speaker's enemies;
still others pray for comfort in times of tribulation. The Psalms of
these diverse types, Gilbert notes, are not placed together in the
Book of Psalms according to their thematic character, but are
scattered throughout the book. As a composite text, he points out,
the Book of Psalms has a rather haphazard scheme of organization,
both from the standpoint of the list of putative authors given and
from the standpoint of the subject matter of the Psalms themselves.
As an exegete, he recognizes that some readers may wish to pursue
a study of the different groups of Psalms thematically, tracing the
development of the theme from one Psalm to another within the
group. In order to facilitate investigations of this sort, Gilbert
supplies both a verbal and a visual key for indexing and cross-
referencing the different subdivisions that can be made within the
larger body of the text. In his prologue, he explains what the
categories are and which Psalms pertain to each of them, and he
reinforces these verbal finding tools with visual markers in the early
manuscript versions of his commentary.
At the same time, Gilbert is really the first scholastic exegete of
the Psalms to develop theological quaestiones out of the text, in the
context of his prevailingly Christological and moral emphasis.
Further, he consistently yokes these two exegetical agendas to each
other in a coherent manner, both in terms of form and content.
These features of his exegesis are found in both of the two redac-
tions of his gloss. The earlier of these gives very abbreviated lem-
mata, to which it then appends a running commentary combined
with quaestiones. In the second version, dating to Gilbert's years of
teaching at Paris, each page offers, in a double column format, the
entire text of each Psalm and, next to it, Gilbert's commentary and
quaestiones, with the authorities he cites flagged in the margins. In
addressing the content, Gilbert begins by noting that the Psalms
speak of Christ, and that they refer to Him both in the head and the

briefer form at the 24th International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo,

MI, May 6 1989; "The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: From lectio
divina to the Lecture Room," Northwestern University Ph.D. diss., 1992, pp.
63-115, 116-68, 211-55 for the treatment of this commentary's mise-en-page, its
accessus with the issues of authorship and order of the Psalms, and the independ-
ence of Gilbert from the Glossa ordinana, respectively; "From lectio divina to the
Lecture Room: The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers," in The Place of the
Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy van Deusen (Bingham-
ton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, forthcoming). I am
indebted to Dr. Gross-Diaz for allowing me to consult these papers and her
dissertation prior to publication.
 SACRA PAGINA 169

members. So, the Psalms must be read not only with reference to
the life of Christ in the New Testament, which they forecast, but
with reference to the moral lives of the Christians who make up the
church, His body. Now, these Christians are both perfect and
imperfect. The latter group is the audience to which the Psalms are
aimed, in order to draw them from imperfection to perfection.35
This general observation sets the stage for Gilbert's actual exege-
sis of each individual Psalm. In handling Psalm 1, he speaks of
conforming oneself to the new man, possible only through Christ.
This injunction prompts an analytical excursus into the nature of
vice and virtue. Gilbert shares in the contemporary consensus, in
which temptation was distinguished from sin and sin was located in
the voluntary consent of the moral subject. His three-part formula,
embracing thought, delectation, and consent (cogitatio, delectatio,
consensus) reprises one of the standard vocabularies for these stages
used by scholastics of the day.36 In considering the choice of virtue,
he accents not only the rejection of evil that it entails but also the
acceptance of God's law as the law of one's own being, as well as
perdurance in the good, while seeking goodness not with a sense of
sadness, fear, or duress, nor with an eye to its fruits, but for itself
alone. The proper motivation is the desire for the honestum, not the
utile. If one acts for this reason, according to Gilbert, one will be
enriched by the grace of Christ and bear good spiritual fruit, as well
as receive remission of sins and eternal life.37 The moral subject's
judgment and counsel, his conscious and voluntary choice and
inner motivation are central, in this mini-treatise on the psychology
of the ethical life which Gilbert extracts from the description of the
virtuous man in the first Psalm. It is clear that he is not content just
to sum up the content of each Psalm and to anchor his points with
the well-turned phrase of one authority or another.
Gilbert's handling of Psalm 2 accents Christ's spiritual power in
vanquishing His enemies and the enemies of Christians striving for
virtue today, in a reading that softens the military imagery in this
text. In this Psalm, Christ is held up not only as a protector but as a
model. It is His patience and confidence that arm Him, which
virtues the Christian should imitate.38 Another moral lesson that
hinges on Christ emerges in Gilbert's account of Psalm 3. The

35
Maria Fontana, ed., "Il commento ai Salmi di Gilberto de la Porree," Logos
13 (1930): 284.
3é
Ibid., pp. 286-87.
37
Ibid., pp. 288-90.
38
Ibid., pp. 290-94.
170 CHAPTER FOUR

David and Absalom story referred to here is to be read as a type of

Christ and Judas. At the same time, it is an appeal to humility;
those cast down will be raised up and glorified. One can also derive
insight into human psychology from this Psalm, Gilbert notes.
Each person possesses, within his soul, the conflicting drives of
David and Christ, on the one side, and of Absalom and Judas, on
the other, manifested in man's rational and irrational impulses,
respectively. The contest between these drives can be seen as a
battle between the angels and the devils over man's soul, Gilbert
concludes, but it is clear that he prefers the more psychological
account of this psychomachia.39 These brief glimpses, all that the
present state of Gilbert's Psalms gloss research allows to readers
dependent on the printed texts, make it clear that he is decidedly
interested in developing a real theology out of his exegesis of the
Psalms and that he is concerned with making both the text of
Psalms itself and his own gloss easy to use for students interested in
a more analytical approach to this book of the Bible than charac-
terizes the Glossa ordinaria.

P E T E R LOMBARD ON T H E PSALMS

Peter Lombard's commentary on the Psalms has typically been

seen as standing in the tradition of the Glossa ordinaria, so firmly
that it can be regarded as a mere re-elaboration of it.40 If such were
the case, it would be difficult to grasp why his commentary on
Psalms was the scholastic gloss of choice for this part of the Bible.
In understanding why such was the case, we need to highlight his
differences from the Glossa ordinaria, even though he certainly makes
extensive use of it. We also need to show how he capitalizes on
some of the concerns and techniques of Gilbert's Psalms commen-
tary and expands on them. To begin with, like Gilbert, Peter
provides his commentary with an elaborate accessus, designed to do
several things at once.41 Heading his agenda is the desire to reassert

39
Ibid., pp. 294-300.
40
Evans, Language and Logic, pp. 44—45; Joseph de Ghellinck, "Pierre Lom-
bard," in DTC (Paris: Letouzy et Ané, 1935), 12 part 2: 1953.
41
A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the
Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984), pp. 47-48, 54; A.J. Minnis and A.
B. Scott, ed., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1100-c. 1375 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 69-71, although the latter misdates Peter's exegetical
works. See, most recently, Marcia L. Colish, "Psalterium Scholasticorum: Peter
Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis," Speculum 67 (July
1992): 531-48.
 SACRA PAGINA 171

the claim that David was the sole author of all of the Psalms.42 This
opinion contradicts what the Pseudo-Bede had said, in the name of
a more prevalent tradition. Its defense is going to require some
fancy footwork indeed in the body of the commentary, as Peter tries
to explain away the authorship of Asaph, Heman, Ethan, and the
other names attached to the titles of some of the Psalms. So, it
demands a clear rationale. Peter seeks to provide one by way of
addressing other points he makes in his accessus. The objective or
intention of the author, he states, is to teach the reader how to
behave well, and so to attain eternal life. Duties vary at different
points in a person's life. The number of the Psalms is therefore
coordinated with the six ages of man, followed by the seventh age,
that of the resurrection.43 The book can also be subdivided into
three units of fifty Psalms apiece, corresponding with the Augustin-
ian themes of penance, justice, and eternal life. He gives examples
of each type of Psalm, with the incipits of Psalm 50, Psalm 100, and
Psalm 150 respectively. As a summa of the ethical life, the Psalms,
Peter says, were fittingly written by David, who was both a prophet
and an evangelist, inspired by the Holy Spirit, who spoke of the
coming of Christ and the church, and a sinner who himself experi-
enced God's forgiveness and learned humility when he repented.44
Peter thus yokes the issues of the author's intention, the subject
matter of the Psalms, and their number, to the purported au-
thorship of David.
As to the nature of the book itself, he disagrees with Jerome,
thinking it should be called a single book and not an assemblage
of books. To clarify this point he compares the Psalms with the Acts
of the Apostles and with the Epistles of Paul. All three of these
parts of the Bible are composites, but Psalms and Acts have a
unified theme. For this reason, Peter sides with Gassiodorus's
ruling that the Book of Psalms should be referred to in the
singular.45 Here, Peter goes beyond other exegetes who followed
the lead of Cassiodorus by importing his own textual analysis
into the question. Having discussed the author and his intention,
Peter moves on to the materia and modus tractandi aspects of his
accessus. On the first point, he agrees entirely with Augustine and
previous commentators that the subject matter is Christ and that

42
Peter Lombard, Commentarium in Psalmos Davidicos prologus, PL 191: 55A,
57C-D, 59B-C.
43
Ibid., PL 191: 56A-B.
44
Ibid., PL 191: 57C-D.
45
Ibid., PL 191: 58A-B.
172 CHAPTER FOUR

the Psalms should be read typologically as well as morally, in that

Christ is the new Adam, the source of the new man who replaces
fallen man. But he adds his own twist to this tradition. In refer-
ring to Christ as the head of the body which is the church, he
observes that the Psalms speak sometimes of Christ according to
His divinity, sometimes according to His humanity, and some-
times metaphorically {per transumptione); he gives examples of
each mode, citing Psalm 109, Psalm 3, and Psalm 21 as respec-
tive illustrations of each of them. Similarly, the Psalms speak of
the church in three ways, referring to the perfect, the imperfect,
and those evildoers who are merely nominal members of the
fold.46 Peter thus expands the range of ethical categories of
Christians to whom the Psalms are addressed or of whom they
speak; and he associates this theme with the issue of theological
language.
Moving to the modus tractandi, Peter agrees with Gilbert that the
order of the Psalms in the book reflects a mode of organization at
odds with the order in which they were written. He follows Gil-
bert's notion that the Psalms naturally fall into subdivisions
according to their themes, and that they could be regrouped in
sequences which show their interrelations with the other Psalms in
the sub-group of which they are a part, logically or chronologically.
In addition to offering the same kind of key as Gilbert provides in
his preface, as well as in his introduction to the individual Psalms,47
Peter offers an explanation of how the Psalms lost the more cogent
arrangement which he thinks they originally had. The prophet
Esdra, he states, faced with salvaging the Psalms when the library
at Babylon burned down, put them together in their current order.
Still, by flagging the cogent sub-groups and by cross-referencing
the Psalms within them, wherever they are presently located in the
text, Peter, like Gilbert, hopes to aid the reader keen on following
the development of ideas in the Psalms in each unit. In addition, for
Peter, this provision of a key is a means of conceptually reconstitut-
ing the original format of the book as it is believed to have been.48
Peter thinks that the first Psalm is a compendium of all the main
themes in the Psalms more generally, and he therefore gives it
extended consideration. A glance at this commentary of Psalm 1
will be useful in situating his approach in relation to that of the

46
Ibid., PL 191:59C-D.
47
E.g. In Ps. 21, 129, PL 191: 225B-266C, 1167B.
48
Ibid., prologus, PL 191: 59D-60B; Minnis, Medieval Theory, pp. 54, 140,
although Minnis does not note Peter's dependence on Gilbert here.
 SACRA PAGINA 173

Glossa ordinaria and Gilbert. The first Psalm, Peter affirms, states
the central ideas found in the Book of Psalms as a whole, with
respect to the author's intention, his subject matter, and his modus
tractandi. The Lombard observes that the Psalm is divided into two
parts, the first speaking about the beatus vir and drawing the reader
to his happy state by describing it in an appealing way; while the
second part speaks of the punishment of the wicked, frightening
the reader away from his behavior. Further, the author contrasts
the virtuous man with Adam, reminding the reader of the loss of
Eden and of his own inability to rid himself of sin without God's
grace. Once he has been put on the road to salvation by God, he
can exult, even though he faces difficulties along the way. The
Psalm, Peter continues, refers to the three forms of resuscitation
from the death brought about by sin which the Lord provides, "in
the house, at the gateway, in the tomb" {in domo, in porta, in
sepulchro) ,49 Next, the Psalmist describes the seat of the wicked, by
which he means the giving of bad example, the teaching and the
practice of sin. The first man sinned three ways, in thought, word,
and deed. And so, what was brought about by the first man, Adam,
must be removed by the new Adam, Christ.50 This thought leads
Peter, at the end of his preface to Psalm 1, to give, in germ, a
summary of the analysis of the psychogenesis of ethical acts which
he, like Gilbert, develops in the body of his gloss. Adam, he notes,
sinned in thought, in intention, and in act; in word, doctrine, and
custom (cogitatione, voluntate et actu, verbi, doctrina vel consuetudo) .51
First, he embraced temptation in thought, in the initial motion of
the soul {primus motus animae), which is venial. Then, he embraced
the delectation and consent {delectatio et consensus), which are mortal.
The sin resides in the mind's voluntary consent to temptation; and
this sin is then what Adam expressed in deeds, words, and habits.52
Here, in the preface, Peter offers not only a detailed analysis of
the psychology of ethical choice consistent with but fuller than that
of Gilbert, he also combines it integrally with his description of the
Psalmist's modus tractandi, providing a rhetorical as well as a themat-
ic analysis of Psalm 1 that can serve as a model for the accessus he
gives to the Psalms, both individually and collectively. In so doing,
he draws on most of the same sources used by the Glossa ordinaria
and Gilbert, adding only Alcuin to the citations from Jerome,

49
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 1 prologus, PL 191: 60A.
50
Ibid., PL 191: 62A.
51
Ibid., PL 191: 60C.
52
Ibid., P I 191: 60D.
174 CHAPTER FOUR

Cassiodorus, Augustine, Bede, and Remigius on which they call.

But he has put the entire question of what the exegesis of the
Psalms is out to accomplish on a much more solid and clearly
articulated foundation.
Moving from the preface to the text of Psalm 1 itself, Peter does
something else that sets his exegesis apart, and that he repeats in
his handling of all the Psalms. Rather than giving the gist of the
Psalm and then merely lemmatizing individual words or phrases,
without showing how they occur in the text, he quotes each verse in
full, and then discusses the meaning of each verse. In that connec-
tion he addresses the significance of the individual words or phrases
that he thinks merit attention, or expands on the theological issues
which he thinks warrant more extended treatment. Thus, for exam-
ple, in Psalm 1:1, he observes that the beatus vir who does not
respond to the counsels of the impious is a man who does not live in
a condition of estrangement from God {regio dissimilitudinis). In
analyzing that state, he takes pains to make it clear that man's
occupancy of this zone does not result from an involuntary, cosmic,
Neoplatonic "fall of the soul" but that it is the consequence of
man's exercise of moral choice.53 Or, another example, at Psalm
1:2, he explains that the law which the virtuous man meditates on
day and night is Christ.54
In deriving these explanations, Peter draws on other passages of
the Bible and on the authorities cited by the Glossa ordinaria and
Gilbert, especially Cassiodorus and Augustine. But he uses these
sources more integrally and less telegraphically. Rather than being
cited to close off discussion, they are brought into the gloss to
trigger their own, and Peter's, more extended reflections on the
meaning of the Psalm. The whole tenor of Peter's gloss is to seek,
and to find in his authorities, ways of opening up the text, ways of
dilating on its theological content, and ways of making connections

53
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 1:1, PL 191: 61B. One finds a similar understanding of
regio dissimilitudinis, as the generic state of sinful man, stated repeatedly in the
Lombard's sermons. See Sermo 4, 12, 13, 21, 23, 36, 55, 99, 111, 112, PL 171:
357A-B, 397A, 404D, 435D-436A, 445C, 525C, 601C, 850D, 857C. It also occurs
in Peter's In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas 2:23, PL 192: 126C-129A. For the evolution
of this theme from its Neoplatonic beginnings to this very generic Christian sense
in the twelfth century, see J. C. Didier, "Pour la fiche Regio dissimilitudinis"
Mélanges de science religieuse 8 (1951): 205-10; Ét ienne Gilson, "Regio dissimilitudinis
de Platon à Saint Bernard de Clairvaux," MS 9 (1947): 108-30; Margot Schmidt,
"Regio dissimilitudinis: Ein Grundbegriff mittelhochdeutscher Prosa im Lichte sei-
ner lateinischen Bedeutungsgeschichte," Freiburger Zeitschriftßir Theologie und Philo-
sophie 15 (1968): 63-108.
54
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 1:2, PL 191: 62B.
 SACRA PAGINA 175

between it and other parts of the Bible where similar moral

teachings are presented, especially the Pauline Epistles. His
strategy is the antithesis of that of the Glossa ordinaria, which seeks
to explicate disconnected lemmata as concisely as possible. In-
stead, Peter always relates the points he makes on each passage to
the central theme of the Psalm, as he has spelled it out in his
accessus. He also clearly leads the reader along the itinerary that he
had mapped out in that accessus, indicating when his comment on
the first part of the Psalm, on the virtuous, has been completed, and
he is ready to pass on to the second part, on the iniquity of the
wicked.55 The relation of the parts of the Psalm, and of his gloss on
it, to the whole, is always kept firmly before the reader's eyes.
The features of Peter's exegesis of Psalm 1 which we have just
examined are standard for his treatment of all the other Psalms. At
the same time, here and elsewhere in this work Peter elaborates a
method and a theological content that are specific to this commen-
tary on the Psalms and that set it apart from preceding glosses. He
goes farther in developing theological quaestiones out of the text of
Psalms than any other exegete of his time. Sometimes he presents
an early version of a doctrine which he develops or changes later in
his career, and sometimes he offers a position that already articu-
lates a basic teaching that he retains and that appears in much the
same shape in his Sentences. A good example of the first type is his
handling of penance in his gloss on Psalm 4:6. Here, he describes
penance as involving the three Augustinian stages of contrition,
confession, and satisfaction, which he calls poenitentia, lamentum, and
satisfactio or opera justa, the third stage involving the decision to
abandon the life of sin and to change one's inner attitude. 56 He does
not, however, raise the burning question, which made penance a
richly disputed topic in this period, of when, in this sequence of
events, the penitent receives God's forgiveness, although Peter was
later to come down squarely on the side of contritionism. His
analysis of the same subject in his gloss on Psalm 33 likewise
reflects no differentiation, as yet, among the stages in the sacra-
ment, in Peter's current thinking.57 Another case in which Peter's
Psalms commentary serves as a trial run for an argument which he
later changes is the question of whether Christ's human nature
should receive worship (latria) or only veneration (dulia), which
arises in his gloss on Psalm 98:5. There, he asserts that our adora-

55
Ibid., PL 191: 64A.
56
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 4:6, PL 191: 87B-C.
57
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 33, PL 191: 319C-321A.
176 CHAPTER FOUR

tion of the human Christ should properly be dulia,56 a view he

reverses in the Sentences,59 thanks largely to the fact that he was later
sensitized to this issue by his reading ofJohn Damascene, who had
not been available to him when he wrote the Psalms gloss, as well
as by a fuller consideration of Augustine on the subject.
Also striking are the passages where the exegesis of the Psalms
affords Peter the opportunity to work out fully developed theologi-
cal positions which he continued to teach. One noteworthy case in
point is the nature of the four moral states in which mankind will be
resurrected at the end of time, which recurs in his discussion of Last
Things in the Sentences.60 At Psalm 1:6, commenting on the state-
ment that the impious will not rise up in the judgment, he begins by
observing that there are two resurrections, the resurrection of the
soul, when we rise up from sin, and the resurrection of the body, in
the next life. There will be four orders of people in the latter state,
he affirms, drawing on Jerome and Augustine. Some, like the
apostles and other saints, will judge but will not be judged them-
selves. Others, like the infidels and those who have persevered in
sin up to the end, do not judge and are not themselves judged
either. The reason why neither of these groups will be subjected to
judgment at the end of time is that they have already been judged.
The saints have already won Heaven, thanks to their supereroga-
tory virtue, while the infidels and obdurate sinners have already
condemned themselves to perdition. Finer discriminations are
needed, however, for the other two groups of people. One of these
orders contains people who are judged and saved, as middling good
(mediocriter boni). The other contains people who are judged and
condemned, as middling evil (mediocriter malt). So, he concludes,
among both the damned and the saved there are two registers of
souls, one of which contains people whose posthumous fate is
sealed before they die, and the other of which contains people with
grayer areas in their moral lives, whose ultimate destinations in the
hereafter are not decided immediately but which are determined
eventually, after further evaluation or purgation.61
In explaining this doctrine, Peter goes beyond his sources,
adding an analogy of his own devising to clarify the status of the

58
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 98:5, PL 191: 895B.
59
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IVlibris distinctae 3. d. 9. c. 1-c. 6, 3rd ed. rev., ed.
Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 2: 68-71.
*° Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 47. c. 3, 2: 538-40.
61
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 1:6, PL 191: 64C-65C.
 SACRA PAGINA 177

two classes of the damned and saved. The former may be compared
with two kinds of criminals within a principality. One is the crimi-
nal who breaks the law of the land, on some particular point. The
other is the rebel who, rejecting the authority of the law and the
government as such, seeks to overthrow it. The prince, Peter notes,
fitly punishes the second type of criminal in a different way than he
punishes the first, and more harshly. Since the rebel, in effect, has
committed an act of war against the prince, he is put down by force
of arms; for he has rejected the jurisdiction of the law and its
processes over himself in the very act of rebelling. On the other
hand, the first kind of criminal is proved to be a lawbreaker and is
sentenced in the context of judicial deliberation.62 As for the two
classes of the saved, the perfected saints do not need judgment,
since they have already gone beyond the requirements of the Gos-
pel. They have demonstrated their commitment and their irre-
proachable virtue and fidelity by their deeds and sufferings. Those
who are middling good have died in a state of repentance but their
record is mixed. They require further reparation and purgation
before being received into Heaven.63
The foregoing account is certainly the most elaborate example of
a doctrine developed out of Psalms exegesis that Peter carries over
into his mature theology. Other examples that might be cited,
which he treats with greater concision, are his handling of the
hypostatic union, the idea of substance, and the modes of fear in the
moral life. At Psalm 64:5, he crisply states that the Word assumed
human nature in a unity of person (unitas personae). Christ, he
observes, did not assume a human person; rather, He assumed the
nature of man (naturam quippe hominis assumpsit).6* As for substantia, at
Psalm 68:2 Peter sets forth a definition that avoids a specifically
Aristotelian understanding of the term and that makes it available
for proper attribution both to creatures and to the Deity. All kinds
of substances, he asserts, can be viewed as beings that possess the
qualities intrinsic to themselves (eo ipso quo sunt). Thus, not only are
men, animals, the earth, and the heavens substances, so is the
divine nature shared by the persons of the Trinity. In short, Peter
here equates a being's substance with its inborn nature, whatever
kind of nature that may be.65 Although examples could be multi-
plied, a third, and final illustration under this heading is Peter's

Ibid., PL 191: 65C-D.

Ibid, P I 191:66B-67B.
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 64:5, PL 191: 584B.
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 68:2, PL 191: 627B^D.
178 CHAPTER FOUR

doctrine of the four kinds of fear in the moral life, one which was
widely held in this period, and which he extracts from the line in
Psalm 127 where those who fear the Lord are called blessed. The
four kinds of fear are worldly or human, servile, initial, and chaste
or filial. The first involves fear of bodily harm or loss of worldly
goods, and is an unworthy motive for moral action. Servile fear
involves actions undertaken so as to avoid punishment. It may
provide negative reasons for doing good, but its motivation is not
sufficient to win blessedness. Initial fear, the fear of the Lord that is
the beginning of wisdom, begins to exclude servile fear from the
soul and to substitute for it the motive of charity. For its part,
chaste or filial fear is motivated by love alone. It inspires us not
only to flee from evil but also to walk in faith. Only those who
possess this fourth type of fear, Peter concludes, are united to
Christ.66 In all these cases, and in others that might be cited, Peter
uses his exegesis of the Psalms to articulate in brief theological
positions to which he gives more extended elaboration, along the
same lines, later in his career.
There are three other areas in which Peter's Psalms commentary
is a rehearsal for the theological teaching he develops as a systema-
tic theologian, areas in which we can see him working out his
theological method as well as the substance of his theology. These
dimensions of his Psalms gloss include his querying of the accuracy
of the biblical text, his application of the artes to its explication, and
his handling of the authorities whom he more typically harnesses to
that task, especially when he detects real or apparent conflicts
among them. In the first case, the accuracy of the text, Peter stands
out, among contemporary exegetes of Psalms, in his concern for
textual corruptions or the tamperings of previous readers in their
very act of transmitting the text. The point may be as minor as the
title of a Psalm, as is the case with his gloss on Psalm 40. Here, he
claims, Jerome changed the title from Infinempsalmus David to In
finem intellectusfiliisCore. At the root of his objection is both the
desire to insist on David as the author of all the Psalms as well as
his concern with Jerome's alteration of this title. Some codices of
the Psalms, he notes, contain the information that Jerome effected
this change; others do not. Peter also observes that the Hebrew and
Septuagint Greek versions of the Psalms lack Jerome's new title,
but that Haimo of Auxerre and the Glossa ordinaria mistakenly
follow Jerome. He himself argues that Jerome's tampering with the

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 127:11, PL: 1161D-1162D.

 SACRA PAGINA 179

title constitutes an interpretation of the biblical text, and not just a

translation or transmission of it. Jerome, in his view, was providing
a historical gloss on the Psalm, since the sons of Core at one point
entered David's service. This fact helps us to date the composition
of the Psalm. The gloss was then, incorrectly, incorporated into the
title proper. In any event, Peter proposes to read this Psalm as
pertaining to the life of Christ. From this standpoint, he asserts,
what is important about Core is that the name can be interpreted
as meaning Calvary, the place of the crucifixion. Now Jerome
himself, in his gloss on Psalm 84, is the source of the latter scholium,
while Augustine, in his comment on Psalm 85, concurs in that
view.67 Three things are of interest in this textual analysis. First,
there is Peter's concern with uncovering mistakes in the transmis-
sion of the text and in accounting for how they occurred. Second,
there is his felt need to criticize his own immediate sources, Haimo
and the Glossa ordinaria, for their own failure to question Jerome in
the light of the information available about his interpolated title.
Third, there is his technique of cross-referencing his authorities in
their comments on other Psalms to derive the reading he chooses
for the problematic reference to Core.
A second example, which likewise displays Peter's interest in
comparing alternative texts of the Psalms, is his handling of Psalm
67:9, which refers to Sinai. Peter observes that the Roman Psalter,
along with Augustine and Cassiodorus, read Mount Sinai here. On
the other hand, the Septuagint, which he is following, omits the
word "Mount." To sort out this problem, Peter goes back to the
demonstrative pronoun linked to Sinai in the Hebrew text of
Psalms, which, he notes, can be understood to refer to the word
"Mount." Peter has relied on Jerome for this philological scholium.68
The whole passage reflects his awareness that the text of the Psalms
has a history, in both liturgical and strictly biblical forms, and in a
variety of languages, as well as his own inclination to rely on
pre-Vulgate texts, such as the Septuagint, as closer to the original
Hebrew version.
The third instance in which Peter deals with a discrepancy in the
text is a far more dramatic one. It involves a passage which one of
his authorities, Augustine, flags down and explains in a manner not
noted by the Glossa ordinaria or by any other Psalms commentator of
this period who glossed the line in question. The problematic line is

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 40 prologus, PL 191: 4O7D-409B.

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 67:9, PL: 191: 605C.
180 CHAPTER FOUR

in Psalm 70:17 "Because I am not acquainted with business deal-

ings, I will enter into the mighty deeds of the Lord" (Quoniam non
cognovi negotiations, introibo in potentias Domini). Now, there was a
tradition of assessing the morality of mercantile activities derived
from Anselm of Laon and his followers, although it arose from their
comments on 1 Thessalonians and not Psalm 70. Anselm sees a flat
contradiction between the mercantile profession and salvation,
arguing that merchants are invariably motivated by greed and that
they practice fraud and deception. Two of his disciples, however,
while taking the point that greed and fraud are vices, soften and
actually reverse Anselm's negative judgment by pointing out that
not all merchants are in fact afflicted by these vices. Lacking such
sinful motivations, which lie in men and not in the professions they
practice, merchants can be virtuous people who perform a useful
social function.69 While the glossator responsible for the Psalms in
the Glossa ordinaria, like the rest of his équipe, was associated with
Anselm of Laon, it does not occur to him to adopt either the
negative or the positive assessment of the morality of commerce
produced by the Laon masters. His solution to this problem is a
non-solution; he simply ignores this line in Psalm 70 and does not
gloss it.
On the other hand, the Lombard is familiar with the handling of
commerce by Anselm and his disciples, and clearly sides with those
who reject Anselm's opinion of merchants. In so doing, he also
reflects a more thorough familiarity with Augustine's Enarrationes in
Psalmos, which uncovers and resolves the difficulties in Psalm 70:17
with a textual analysis of Augustine's own. Peter agrees that the
merchant who is inspired by greed alone and who lies about the
value of the goods he buys or sells is a perjurer and a blasphemer,
who cannot truly sing the praises of God and who would be a
hypocrite to try. He also agrees that these vices inhere in men, and
not in the professions they practice, which can indeed be conducted
without these vices. For all professions can be exercised both vir-
tuously and viciously, depending on the intentions of the prac-
titioner. As with all other professions, so with commerce, he
concludes, "for the art knows nothing of vice" {ars enim nescit
vitium).70
The basic source for the reading of Psalm 70:17 that inspires this
analysis is in certain fourth-century versions of the Psalms which

69
Marcia L. Colish, "Another Look at the School of Laon," AHDLMA 53
(1986): 20-21.
70
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 70:17, PL 191: 652A.
 SACRA PAGINA 181

provided the text used in the Milanese Psalter,71 a fact indicated by

Augustine. In his own commentary on this Psalm, Augustine notes
that, in a number of exemplars familiar to him, the line reads
"Because I am not acquainted with literature" {Quoniam non cognovi
litteraturam) and that others give numerationem for litteraturam. Augus-
tine concedes that it is difficult to reconcile these discordant textual
variations. Having already argued that intentionality conditions
the morality of commerce in a gloss on negotio, he finds a happy
resolution of the dilemma represented by numeratio and litteratura.
These terms, he points out, can also refer to professions, the mathe-
matical and literary disciplines of the liberal arts, which arts, he
concludes, even as with mercantile activities, can be practiced
honestly or dishonestly.72
This information, supplied by Augustine, suggests that Peter is
working with a pre-Vulgate text of Psalms, possibly one deriving
from one version of the Psalter or another, since the Vulgate
restores litteraturam for negotiationem and transfers the word to verse
15 of the Psalm. It might be noted parenthetically that litteraturam
turns out to be just as problematic a reading in that locus as is
negotiationem. Modern Scripture scholars have replaced both words
with numerationem, to yield the following reading in the English of
the Revised Standard Version of the Bible: "My mouth will tell of
Thy righteous acts/ Of Thy deeds of salvation all the day/ For their
number is past my knowledge./ With the mighty deeds of the Lord
God I will come,/ I will praise Thy righteousness, Thine alone"
(Psalm 71:15-16). This reading makes altogether more sense than
anything that Peter, or Augustine, are able to provide on the basis
of the information available to them. None the less, Peter's resolu-
tion of the moral issue embedded in the problematic line as he
reads it is of considerable interest in twelfth-century terms, for it
indicates a familiarity with Augustine on his part that is highly
specific and to the point, and one that recognizes his widening of
the scope of the professions to which the general ethical principle at
stake can be applied. Augustine's witness to the fact that Jerome
was capable of introducing what he believed to be corrections, as
well as corruptions, into the Vulgate text of the Psalms receives a
hearing, in Peter's gloss, which it does not receive in the work
of other contemporary exegetes, a fact which points in turn to
a thorough and independent study of Augustine's Enarrationes in

71
Augustine, Enanationes in Psalmos 70, ed. D. Eligius Dekkers and Joannes
Fraipoint, CCSL 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), editorial note ad loc, p. 956.
72
Ibid., Sermo 1.17-19, CCSL 39: 954-58.
182 CHAPTER FOUR

Psalmos on the Lombard's part, and one that goes well beyond the
attention which that work received elsewhere in this period.
Not only does Peter use his authorities more independently than
is the case with other Psalms commentators, as the above-men-
tioned example suggests, he also uses a wider range of sources and
he approaches them more critically. There are a number of points
at which he brings forward his knowledge of the classical authors
and of contemporary development in the liberal arts to help un-
ravel diflBcult passages. Sometimes his glosses betray a reading of
the classics to which he does not refer overtly. Such a case is his
comment on the injunction in Psalm 36:28 to depart from evil and
do good. Cassiodorus here remarks, he notes, that the two-part
structure of this line suggests that conversion is a process that takes
some time. Peter himself adds the observation "for no one becomes
beautiful all at once" (nemo repentefitpulcher), an unacknowledged
echo of Juvenal's comment, on the obverse of the point, that "no
one ever became bad all at once" (nemo repente fuit turpusime) .73 In
interpreting another double, or two-part statement, the promise in
Psalm 71:13-14 that the souls of the poor will be saved, they will be
redeemed from their debts; Peter treats the passage as an example
of an equipollent argument,74 a logical technique in the armory of
dialecticians since the second half of the eleventh century.
More typically it is the patristic and Carolingian authorities in
the Christian tradition on whom he draws. Peter is much more
sensitive than the other scholastic glossators of the Psalms to the need
to compare alternative interpretations of the biblical text, to assess
the reasoning of the authorities, to decide whether their readings are
compatible, and, if he judges that they are not, to offer a principled
reason for choosing the authority he accepts, while at the same time
providing criteria for the reader's own evaluation of sources.75
There are a number of cases where he finds the alternative views of
different authorities compatible. One reason for such compatibility,
when Peter sees it, is that different authorities can be read as
referring to different aspects of the same phenomena. Thus, at
Psalm 10:3, he notes that there are two theories on how the moon
gets its light, one saying that the moon possesses its own light and
the other saying that it derives its light by reflection from the sun.
Since the interpretation Peter gives to this Psalm is ecclesiological,
he argues that both of these theories apply to the church. The first

73
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 36:28, PL 191: 374B; cf. Juvenal, Sat. 2.83.
74
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 71:13-14, PL 191: 663D.
75
Glunz, History of the Vulgate, pp. 214-15.
 SACRA PAGINA 183

theory refers to the spiritual legacy of the church, which enables it

to shine as a channel of grace. But the church has a physical
dimension as well, which is suggested by the second theory, since,
in this respect, it derives its light from Christ, the sun of justice.
Thus, both interpretations make sense, allegorically.76 In the case
of another example, the line "your eyes see justice" in Psalm 16:3,
Peter observes that Alcuin reads "eyes" here as the divine illumina-
tion that enables our physical eyes to see, while Augustine inter-
prets "eyes" as the eyes of the heart. Since man possesses both a
physical and a spiritual nature, these opinions are both acceptable
as referring to one or another of these natures.77 It may be noted
that the Glossa ordinaria also presents these two opinions, but with-
out discussing the differences between them or whether or not they
can be reconciled.78 A third example of compatible readings seen as
applying to different aspects of the same reality occurs in Psalm
43:28. As Peter points out, Alcuin and Jerome interpret the line
"Rise up, o Lord, and come to our assistance," as a prayer to God
to lift us from earthly to heavenly concerns by causing us to
recognize that this conversion will occur through His grace and not
through our own merit. Augustine and Cassiodorus read the line as
a prayer to Christ offered by the martyrs, asking Him to initiate the
second coming and the heavenly resurrection of their own tor-
mented bodies, and to end the persecution of those still alive. These
two readings, he holds, are perfectly compatible, as applying to
Christians in general and to a particular subset of Christians at the
same time.79
In glossing other passages of the Psalms, Peter offers another
mode of reconciling discrepant readings, here referring to a general
exegetical principle for interpreting the Psalms which he had outlined
in his accessus to the book as a whole, the notion that the text yields
more than one level of meaning. On one level, the text refers to
Christ or the church; on another level, it offers moral lessons. Thus,
for instance, the "difficult paths" mentioned in Psalm 16:5 can
mean the passion and crucifixion endured by Christ, as Augustine
has it, and also the virtues that men acquire with difficulty, as
Jerome and Augustine, in another passage, maintain.80 The same
combination of typology and tropology, connected by the idea that

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 10:3, PL 191: 148C-149A.

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 16:3, PL 191: 179A.
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 2: In Ps. 16:3; PL 113: 866B.
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 43:28, PL 191: 435R-436B.
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 16:5, PL 191: 180C.
184 CHAPTER FOUR

Christ's behavior gives man a model to follow, controls Peter's

reconciliation of Augustine's moral reading of Psalm 54 and the
Christological reading given by Cassiodorus, Jerome, Alcuin, and
the Glossa ordinaria, at various points in this Psalm.81 Along the
same lines, tropology and anagogy can be combined in different but
compatible interpretations. At Psalm 110:10, Peter observes, Cas-
siodorus, Alcuin, Haimo, and the Glossa ordinaria read the praise of
God referred to in the text as man's movement from fear of the
Lord to wisdom in the present life, while Cassiodorus also sees it as
the confession of praise offered to God by the saved in the life to
come, when they are fully liberated from evil and can adore God
eternally. These readings Peter clearly sees as complementary since
they speak to two stages in man's life which the polysemous struc-
ture of the text itself is here addressing.82
Peter also confronts cases where authorities disagree and where
he finds a need to make choices between positions that cannot be
reconciled. Sometimes his decisions are informed simply by com-
mon sense and the need for clarity. Thus, in his prologue to Psalm
104, he points out that, while both Augustine and Cassiodorus
divide this Psalm into six parts, they make the divisions in different
places. As he sees it, Cassiodorus does a better job of following the
logic of the Psalm's argument in his subdivision than Augustine
does, and this is his reason for following the former and rejecting
the latter.83 The authorities are not necessarily compatible in their
interpretations of difficult lines, either. This is the case with Psalm
72:16. Commenting on the false happiness of the wicked, the Psalm-
ist contrasts it with the afflictions he has undergone as he strives
to follow the path of virtue. The comparison, he notes, is pointed,
and poignant; and in the line in question the Psalmist says that this
subject is one he has tried hard to understand, and that it was too
difficult for him to grasp (Existimabam ut cognoscerem hoc; labor est ante
me), at least until he considered the final destiny of the wicked and
virtuous alike. What is the object, the hoc, referred to in this
sentence? Peter points out that both Cassiodorus and Alcuin think
that it means more than one thing. One reading is that it is the
truth, and that the Psalmist is indicating that he possessed only the
first grade of wisdom at the point when he applied this statement to
himself. The same authorities, however, say that the line can also

81
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 51:1, 51:15, 54:25, PL 191: 509A-510A, 512A-513A,
517A.
82
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 110:10, PL 191: 1008A-C.
83
Peter Lombard, In Ps. 104 prologus, PL 191: 945D.
 SACRA PAGINA 185

refer to foolish people who had debated against God and who have
now been converted away from that practice. Peter himself is not
taken Ijy either of these opinions, finding the second, in particular,
inappropriate (inconveniens). Instead, he moves to a different view,
put forth by Augustine and Alcuin, which says that the Psalmist
had vainly sought to understand God's justice and the fact that evil
people sometimes enjoy earthly happiness. But now, he has put the
matter of earthly requital behind him as a mystery that cannot be
resolved in earthly terms, but only in the light of the posthumous
outcome.84 In this case, Peter's preference stems from his own
desire to read the line lemmatized in the context of the argument of
the Psalm as a whole. The third opinion reflects such a reading,
and it thus makes better sense out of verse 16 than the decontex-
tualized or irrelevant interpretations offered in the first two opin-
ions cited. The fact that a single authority, Alcuin, has given all
three readings as possible is an index of the fact that authorities are
not always working at the top of their form in interpreting the
Bible. They may need to be cited against themselves in the effort to
discover the sense of the text.
In the examples just considered, Peter engages in a critique of
some authoritative readings by showing that other authorities
make a more convincing case for the alternative opinions they
present. There are also instances in his Psalms commentary where
he takes issue with authorities on his own account, disagreeing with
them because, in his own view, they are in error. Thus, at Psalm
51:4, which states that God will destroy evil men in the end, remove
them from their tabernacles, and root them out, Augustine, Cas-
siodorus, and the Glossa ordinaria understand the tabernacles to
mean the secular vainglory of which God will deprive the wicked.
Peter disagrees with this reading. In his view, the tabernacles refer
to the church, in which the wheat and the tares are mingled in this
life. Later on, God will purge the wicked from the church and save
the good. Peter offers this interpretation as his own opinion, which
he prefers because he thinks it makes better sense of the Psalm,
read ecclesiologically, than the opinion of the authorities cited.85
In the foregoing example, Peter's preference stems from his
exegetical agenda. There are other cases in which his rejection of
certain authorities is based on a difference in doctrinal outlook.
One of his favorite authorities, Augustine, comes in for this kind of

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 72:16, PL 191: 674A-675A.

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 51:4, PL 191: 497B-D.
186 CHAPTER FOUR

criticism on more than one occasion. In commenting on the Psalm-

ist's hatred of lying at Psalm 5:6, Peter gives a reprise of Augus-
tine's Contra mendacium, crisply repeating his definition of a lie, in
that work, as a false statement made with the deliberate intention
to deceive. But, while Augustine goes on to classify eight types of
lies, of increasing seriousness, before ruling out the acceptability of
lying for any reason at all, including, a fortiori, pious fraud, Peter
takes a rather different tack. He distinguishes three, not eight, types
of lies, and finds some lies permissible. One type is, precisely, the
pious fraud, of the sort perpetrated by the Hebrew nurses in the
book of Exodus who thereby managed to save the infant Moses
from the wrath of Pharaoh. This deception he praises as prudent
and legitimate, although he modifies this argument in the Sentences.
A second type of lie he admits is one that Augustine defines not as a
lie but as a falsehood told without blame, the joke or tall tale told
merely to amuse, which deceives no one. Peter's third type of
acceptable lie, however, is also one that Augustine flatly rejects.
This occurs in a situation where a person remains silent when asked
a question, answering which might cost him his life. This action, or
failure to act, is acceptable, according to Peter, because the pro-
vocation is so extreme, and also because the person in question is
not actually making a false statement. 86 For Augustine, on the other
hand, silence can be equated both morally and semantically with
speech. In circumstances when silence conveys an understood mes-
sage or an understood response to the questioner, one can lie by
remaining silent. Further, for Augustine, no provocation whatever
justifies lying. In this case, then, Peter does not hesitate to take a far
softer line on lying than Augustine does, on the grounds that
Augustine's rigor is unrealistic and unacceptable.
Another area in which Peter joins some contemporary theolo-
gians in softening the harshness of Augustine's teaching is the
morality of sexual relations in marriage. He has much more to say
on this topic both in the Collectanea and in the Sentences, but his
Psalms commentary already indicates the later directions of his
thought. Like every other Christian thinker in his period, Peter was
confronted by the Augustinian account of the transmission of orig-
inal sin from parents to children through the unavoidable sexual
feelings accompanying the procreation of offspring. In Augustine's
case, this doctrine was linked to the opinion that the experience of
lust itself was a consequence of original sin, which remained a part

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 5:6, PL 191: 98A-D.

 SACRA PAGINA 187

of human nature even in the case of Christian spouses redeemed by

faith and baptism and joined in holy matrimony, a state in which
he listed offspring as one of the goods of marriage which must not
be frustrated. None the less, Augustine held that the sexual pleas-
ure experienced by spouses was always tainted and at least venial-
ly sinful. Like many of his contemporaries, Peter wrestled with the
perceived contradictions in this Augustinian doctrine. In addition,
he felt a need to defend marriage, and the sexual relations leading
to procreation, against the Catharist heresy. In glossing Psalm
50:6, "I was conceived in sin," he states his agreement with Augus-
tine's account of the transmission of original sin. But, he takes
sharp exception to the condemnation of the sexual relations of
spouses as inevitably sinful. Not so, says Peter. These relations are
exempted from sin because they serve the goods of marriage; and,
in marriage, this work is chaste (Nam hoc opus castum in conjunge) .87
In looking at Peter as an exegete of the Psalms more generally,
then, one can see in this maiden venture the earmarks of the scholastic
theologian he was to become. One can also see his understanding of
biblical exegesis as the training ground for the making of profes-
sional theologians, even though he did not, apparently, compose
this gloss as a teaching text and lectured on the Psalms only at the
end of his career in the classroom, at the instance of his pupils. The
exegetical method he develops in this, his earliest work, sets him
head and shoulders above the other available scholastic commenta-
tors on the Psalms in addressing the needs a non-monastic audience.
While he stands in the tradition of the Glossa ordinaria and Gilbert of
Poitiers, using many of their sources and ideas, the degree to which
he handles his assignment differently is striking. First and most
noticeably, he expands on Gilbert by providing an accessus to each
Psalm as well as to the Book of Psalms as a whole, analyzing the
argument in every Psalm, its rhetorical structure, and its role as an
illustration of the overall themes informing the Book of Psalms in
general, as well as its function as a unit in the particular subset of
Psalms to which it belongs thematically and to which it is keyed.
He then quotes and comments on each line of each Psalm, avoiding
a hit-or-miss approach or an arbitrary selection of lemmata. His
use of authorities goes beyond that of his immediate predecessors,
both in depth, range, thoroughness, and pertinence. He is con-
cerned with presenting and citing their views fully, and without
ellipsis. He is eager to explore their reasoning, using it to open up

Peter Lombard, In Ps. 50:6, PL 191: 487D-488A.

188 CHAPTER FOUR

theological reflection rather than to terminate it with an ipse dixit.

He notes the areas where the authorities disagree. Sometimes he
shows that they can be reconciled, as speaking to the moral or the
typological levels which, he agrees, the text possesses, or to different
but complementary aspects of a single problem. At the same time,
he accepts the fact that some disagreements are not capable of
being reconciled. When this is the case, he offers his own reasonable
suggestions for why one opinion should be preferred to another. His
criterion is generally to prefer the opinion that makes the most
sense out of the text. He does not hesitate to reformulate or reject
an authority whose views fail to square with Peter's own theological
opinions. There are a few places where Peter brings the artes to bear
on exegesis and where he reflects on the problems deriving from
textual variations and corruptions. But his chief goal, consistent
with his moral, Christological, and ecclesiological reading of the
Psalms, is to work out an ethical and dogmatic theology on such
topics as the nature of Christ, on human nature, especially man as
the image of God, on virtue, vice, sin, and the sacramental re-
medies for it in penance and marriage. These topics link his exeget-
ical ruminations on the Psalms with his later work as a systematic
theologian, whether he retains his early views or modifies them in
the light of his ongoing research and reflection.
In all these respects, Peter's commentary on the Psalms lays a
foundation for his commentary on the Pauline Epistles, a work
which provides a still more acute index of his achievement as a
scholastic exegete, in an area where the competition was more
abundant and in which the theological stakes were considerably
higher. In this exegetical field, many more of the entrants were
scholastic than monastic writers. In this field, as well, the differ-
ences in approach between authors in these two professions are
even more sharply etched than is the case with the exegesis of
Psalms. Briefly put, monastic commentators on St. Paul approach
him with precisely the same goals in view as they bring to the
Psalms. While they do not fail to note the doctrinal points made by
the apostle, their chief concern is Paul's ethical teaching and the
inculcation in their monastic readers of the devotional attitudes
suitable to their calling. Two such monastic authors, William of St.
Thierry and Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, illustrate well the range of
monastic approaches to Pauline exegesis found in Peter Lombard's
day.
 SACRA PAGINA 189

PAULINE EXEGESIS: T H E M O N A S T I C APPROACH

William's gloss on Romans 3:27, "piety is the true wisdom"

(pietas est vera sapientia)88 is the theme song of his entire commentary.
Written between 1138 and 1145, this work takes specific issue with
the scholastics, personified for William by Peter Abelard, whom he
does not name but whom he clearly identifies with the wisdom of
the worldly philosophers, the profane novelties, and the vain pre-
sumption which he writes in order to repress. His introduction
recognizes that many theological questions have arisen, in his time,
out of the text of Romans. His objective, as he puts it, is not to enter
into these debates, debates concerning matters that transcend the
human mind, but rather to quell them with ammunition drawn
from the fathers, above all Augustine. Adhering to the most author-
itative sources in the tradition, which he in no sense seeks to put to
the test, he plans to rephrase them in his own words, without
indicating which source he is citing. William pointedly notes, as
well, that he will refrain from decorating his work with references to
the poets and the fabulists. He wants merely to write in all humility
for the sake of stirring up the reader's piety, reinforcing this aim
with a prayer offered up to God as he concludes these prefatory
remarks.89
Both the style of the commentary which follows and William's
exegetical emphasis carry forth this announced project. In a
homiletic and repetitive vein, interlarded with pious ejaculations,
he passes lightly over the more speculative doctrines of Paul in
Romans and lets the weight of his commentary fall on the moral
corrolaries which he sees as flowing from Paul's teaching on jus-
tification. Given these purposes, William feels that he can dispense
with a general introduction providing an accessus to Romans, and
moves ahead without further ado to the glossing of every line. His
emphasis can clearly be seen in his handling of some of this epistle's
most famous passages. In glossing Romans 1:19, for instance,
where the apostle states that the invisible things of God can be
known through the creation, William makes no effort to enter into a
positive discussion of the scope and character of natural theology.
Indeed, this is a subject that he wants to ventilate as little as
possible. The message he wants to convey in his comment on this
line is that, given what Paul has said, the gentiles cannot be

William of St. Thierry, Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos 3:27, PL 180: 579D.

Ibid., praefatio, PL 180: 547A-548D.
190 CHAPTER FOUR

excused for failing to know and to do what is morally correct.90

Continuing, he takes sharp issue with the philosophers who claim
that they can discover God's eternity, immutability, intelligence,
intelligibility, wisdom, and truth through a rational examination of
the creation,91 in a diatribe that completely loses touch with Paul's
positive statement in this passage. Unlike Paul, William wants to
argue that men can come to a knowledge of God only through
grace, and not through an inspection of nature, a position that
leads him to skew Paul's own argument. At the same time, William
wants to inspire moral conversion in his audience. This goal leads
him to focus repeatedly on a constellation of ideas concerning
moral choice and moral behavior. He accents the point that inner
intention is more important than external ethical action, that sin
and virtue lie in consent, that the faith that justifies is the faith that
works in love, that God expects man to cooperate with Him in the
working out of his salvation.92 Despite William's heavy reliance on
Augustine, the moral theology with which he emerges emphasizes
human free will much more that either Paul or Augustine does, in
his effort to stress the moral responsibilities of his readers and in his
desire to exemplify, in his own person, the teacher's proper role of
consolation and exhortation.93
It is true that William's place in the theological debates of his
time and his zealous attack on Abelard may account for the special
pleading that distorts his reading of Romans. Our second monastic
example, Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu (ca. 1080-ca. 1150) was a figure
less in the limelight, who had less of a public image to defend. His
commentary on Romans may thus be used to gain a sense of what a
more standard and less tendentious monastic exegesis of that epis-
tle would convey. The exact date of his work is not known, but it
clearly post-dates the Pauline commentaries of Peter Abelard and
Peter Lombard, because Hervaeus makes use of their introductory
remarks in his own accessus. As with these scholastic exegetes,
Hervaeus explains why the Epistle to the Romans is the first epistle
given in the New Testament, although it was not the first one
written by Paul. He observes that Paul wrote it, along with his
other epistles, to instruct and remind the newly founded churches
about the gospel. Other than that, he does not expatiate on the

90
Ibid., 1:19, PL 180: 558C.
91
Ibid., 1:24, PL 180: 558D-560B.
92
Ibid., 3:20, 3:24-25, 3:38, 7:19, 7:22, 8:27-30, 12:1-2, PL 180: 577D, 578D,
581A-B, 621A-C, 622A-B, 640A, 669C-672A.
93
Ibid., 12:4-7, PL 180: 672C-674C.
 SACRA PAGINA 191

particular circumstances in the Roman church to which Paul

speaks here, unlike both Abelard and the Lombard. While he
notices that faith is a main theme of this epistle, this fact is less
important to him than the moral consequences of belief. Paul, in his
estimation, wrote to teach the Romans "how they should live and
believe" (quomodo vivant et credant).94 But faith is only the foundation
of the virtues. The final cause of the epistle is morals, the conducing
of the contemporary twelfth-century audience to beatitude. For this
reason it is less important, for Hervaeus, to try to contextualize
Paul's message in his own time, for the community to which he
wrote, than it is to extract from the epistle the general features of
his ethical teaching, which apply to the present, so that current
readers will receive ethical guidance.95
Hervaeus is even less forthcoming than William in referring to
patristic authorities and, like him, is completely uninterested in
indicating that their readings may disagree. He chooses what he
wants from the exegetical tradition, without naming his sources,
and weaves this material seamlessly into his own commentary,
presenting it as his own opinion. His chief stylistic tactic is repeti-
tion, hammering in his points over and over again with references
drawn from other books of the Bible to aid the reader's reflection.
Like William, he shies away from dogmatic speculation and looks
primarily for the moral message that can be extracted from the
Pauline text. In handling the invisibilia dei passage, for instance,
Hervaeus acknowledges that natural reason can discern, by means
of the creation, that the creator is eternal and omnipotent. God is
known best, he adds, through his noblest creation, man, although
this knowledge is not sufficient for salvation. The main point he
wants to make in glossing this passage is not to specify the relations
between reason and revelation. Nor is his main goal to consider
either the modes of human knowledge or the analogies of the deity
in nature and man. Rather, he wants to stress that, given man's
dignity, his fall, and his redemption, man should strive for the
highest good.96 Throughout his commentary, the moral theology
developed by Hervaeus is largely unexceptional. Although he tends
to read Paul on the flesh and the spirit in a more dualistic manner
than the sense of the text might indicate, he offers a generic, and
even a banal, exhortation to moral activism that depresses Paul's

Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, In Epistolam ad Romanos praefatio, PL 181: 594A.

Ibid., PL 181: 595A-596C.
Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, In Ep. ad Romanos 1:19-24, PL 181: 609R-611C.
192 CHAPTER FOUR

emphasis on faith and that largely avoids the complexities in his

treatment of grace and free will.

PAULINE EXEGESIS AMONG T H E LOMBARD'S SCHOLASTIC

PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES AND T H E LOMBARD'S
COLLECTANEA

In turning from the monastic commentators on Paul to the

scholastic predecessors and contemporaries of the Lombard, we
find ourselves in an environment where it was seen as necessary to
associate Pauline exegesis with a different set of concerns and to
approach Paul with a different exegetical method. For, in the eyes
of the scholastics, Paul, more than any other New Testament
writer, was both a source of Christian doctrine and the first major
interpreter of it. In addition to being a model theologian, he was an
authority who conveyed the Christian message differently to the
different communities to which he had preached. Hence, he had not
always written with the same emphasis, and he needed the help of
other resources in his interpretation. More than any other biblical
author, therefore, Paul was a test case for the development of
hermeneutical strategies that could, at the same time, clarify his
own theology, sort out the tradition of Pauline commentary and
extract what was truly helpful, and use the findings so obtained as a
foundation for theological speculation and construction. In grasp-
ing why Peter Lombard's Collectanea was deemed by other scholas-
tic theologians of his century to have met the challenges posed by
Pauline exegesis better than any other, we will need to compare it,
as we have done with his Psalms commentary, with other scholastic
exegeses of Paul available in his time. Similarly, our target period
will be ca. 1115 to ca. 1160. In so doing, we will consider four main
areas. First, there is the physical format and presentation of the
material in the commentary itself. Next, there is the exegete's
address to the text, how he discovers what Paul has said and how
he introduces the text to his readers. Thirdly, we will consider the
exegete's solution of problems in the text and his handling of
authorities in so doing. And, finally, we will assay the way in which
Pauline exegesis serves as a means by which the author develops
his own theological outlook.
The physical format of the Collectanea is, initially, its most notice-
able feature, especially if one comes to it after examining other
Pauline commentaries of the period. Commentators at this time
typically used, in some combination, the continuous or running
commentary, the gloss on individual words or phrases, and the
 SACRA PAGINA 193

theological question drawn from the text for more extended

discussion.97 In most cases the gloss and the question hold pride of
place, threatening to usurp the continuous commentary and even
to ignore the text of the epistle itself. To make use of such works,
the reader has to have a copy of Paul along with the commentary,
in order to see how, or whether, the glosses or questions are related
to the sense of the epistle. In contrast, Peter gives the reader Paul's
entire text, quoted in coherent subdivisions. He begins by offering a
running commentary on each of these subdivisions, before lemma-
tizing individual passages he wants to gloss or developing theolog-
ical questions. He thus offers a better balance than any exegete of
his time between the general need for an understanding of Paul's
argument and the more technical requirements of scholastic
readers.98 The only contemporary exegete of Paul who also quotes
chunks of the apostle's text before adding his own analysis is
Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu. But, as we have noted, Hervaeus wrote
after Peter Lombard and may well have derived this idea from him.
Also, as we have seen above, Hervaeus is not interested in
positioning his reading of Paul in the tradition of patristic and more
recent commentary. In this respect as well the Collectanea has a
format that makes it much easier to use than its competitors. From
the Glossa ordinaria to Robert of Melun's Quaestiones de epistolis Pauli,
most exegetes use the "usque ad" technique of Florus of Lyon to cite
their authorities, offering only the first and the last few words of the
quotation. Thus, the citation is a mere finding tool. In order to use
it, the reader has to have a library as extensive as that of the
exegete. On the other hand, Peter gives either a complete quotation
of the passage cited, or a detailed paraphrase of it, so that the
reader can follow Peter's argument without having to look up
references at every turn. In making both Paul and the authorities
adduced fully available to the reader, the Collectanea, as a commen-
tary, is a one-stop operation. And, from the very earliest manu-
scripts, the information is displayed visually in the manner just
described. Its format alone thus makes the Collectanea, physically,
the most usable work of Pauline exegesis of the period.99
97
Gustave Bardy, "La littérature patristique des 'Quaestiones et responses' sur
l'Écriture sainte," Revue biblique 41 (1932): 210-36, 341-69, 515-37; 42 (1934):
14—30; Bernardo C. Bazân, "La quaestio disputata" in Les Genres littéraires dans les
sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales: Défininition, critique et exploitation
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d'Etudes Médiévales, 1982), pp. 33-34; Lobrichon,
"Une nouveauté," pp. 93-114; Smalley, Study, pp. 42-86; Ceslaus Spicq, Esquisse
d'une histoire de l'exégèse latine au moyen âge (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), pp. 62-108.
98
Lobrichon, "Une nouveauté," pp. 109-10.
99
Ibid.
194 CHAPTER FOUR

Closely related to Peter's responsiveness to the needs of readers

in this respect is his desire to present the epistle as a text, and Paul
as an author, whose aims and strategies of argument require ex-
planation if the reader is going to grasp the epistle's sense. Now, all
twelfth-century exegetes possessed the brief introductions to the
books of the Bible, including the Pauline epistles, provided by
Jerome. Many of them, like the authors of the Glossa ordinaria, are
content merely to repeat these potted introductions. The Lombard
aligns himself with another group of exegetes, including Peter
Abelard, who instead supply their own elaborate accessus ad Paulum,
using the same approach as other scholars of the time to the texts
they sought to interpret.100 While Abelard and the Lombard share
this taste, and while they indeed cover much of the same ground in
their assessment of the circumstances in which Paul had written,
the nature of Paul's audience, and the subdivisions of his argument,
the Lombard stands out for the degree to which he lets his accessus
control his actual reading of the text. For his part, Abelard tends to
forget his introductory remarks almost at once, rushing off onto a
host of peculiarly Abelardian theological tangents in the body of his
commentary, many of which have only the most tenuous connec-
tion with the agenda of Romans, the one Pauline epistle which he
glosses, as he has outlined it. This fact makes it clear that Abelard's
real reason for studying Romans is to use Paul ex post facto to
support some of the idiosyncratic and controversial positions which
he had already taken.101
This same approach influenced two other mid-century scholastic
exegetes, Robert of Melun and the anonymous Abelardian author

100
On this development in general, see Edwin A. Quain, "The Medieval
Accessus ad auctores," Traditio 3 (1945): 215-64, who makes passing reference to
exegetes on p. 261 nn. 1 and 2. More recent treatments which include discussions
of accessus to books of the Bible in the twelfth century include Minnis, Medieval
Theory of Authorship, ch. 1-2 and Minnis and Scott, ed., Medieval Literary Theory and
Criticism, pp. 69-71, although both confine themselves to Peter's commentary on
the Psalms without discussing his Pauline glosses. For the Lombard on St. Paul,
see Marcia L. Colish, "From sacra pagina to theologia: Peter Lombard as an Exegete
of Romans," Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 1-19; "Peter Lombard as an Exegete of
St. Paul," in Ad litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval Readers, ed. Mark D.
Jordan and Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1992), pp. 71-92.
101
Peter Abelard, Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos prologus 1.1, ed.
Eligius M. Buytaert in Peter Abelard, Opera theologica, CCCM 11-13 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1969-87), 11: 43-55 for the accessus and Abelard's other introductory
remarks. His departures from this agenda in the body of the work have been noted
by Buytaert, ibid., pp. 17-20; Rolf Peppermüller, Abaelards Auslegung des Römer-
briefes, Beiträge, n.F. 10 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972), pp. 10-24.
 SACRA PAGINA 195

of the text known as the Commentarius Cantabridgensis. Both know,

and use, the Abelardian and Lombardian accessus. And, both follow
Abelard's lead in presenting it and then abandoning it in the
pursuit of their own theological excursions, some of which drift
perilously far from the Pauline mainland. To be sure, Peter also
makes excursuses of his own in his theological questions on the
Pauline epistles. But he is careful to root them in Paul's context and
to steer the reader firmly back to Paul when he is finished. Peter's
treatment of exegesis as a primarily rhetorical assignment in this
sense reflects his desire to present Paul to his readers as a working
theologian, and not just as a source of theological raw materials.
This commitment also requires, for Peter, an understanding of
Paul in his own time and place, and a literal reading of his text. It
must be stressed here that it was the scholastic exegetes, such as
Peter, who were chiefly concerned with retrieving a literal and
historical reading of the text. This point may require some insis-
tence, because the prevailing views on this subject still rely heavily
on the work of scholars who have paid it inadequate attention. For
instance, Henri DeLubac and Ceslaus Spicq stress the pervasive-
ness of the taste for a polysemous reading of the Bible in the twelfth
century, and ignore or soft-pedal those forms of exegesis which do
not fit into this mold.102 The impulse toward literal exegesis is
credited by Beryl Smalley to the Victorines.103 But, in giving them
the credit, she pays insufficient attention to two facts. The first is
that the literalism of the Victorines, their quest for the hebraica
Veritas, was confined to the Old Testament; it did not extend system-
atically to the New Testament. And second, they sought to recover
the historical sense of Scripture not for the purpose of doctrinal
analysis but in order to build a contemplative superstructure on top
ofthat foundation.104 A partial corrective to the traditional picture
of twelfth-century exegesis has been supplied by Marie-Dominique
Chenu and Gillian Evans, who accent the ways in which scholastic
exegetes imported into their work the technical contributions of

102
Henri DeLubac, Exégèse médiévale: Les quatre sens de l'écriture, 2 parts 1-2
(Paris: Aubier, 1961-64); Spicq, Esquisse, pp. 70-71; "Pourquoi le moyen âge
n'a-t-il pas davantage pratiqué l'exégèse littérale?" RSPT 30 (1941-42): 169-79.
103
Smalley, Study, pp. xvii, xxi, 83-195.
104
Grover A. Zinn, "Historia fundamentum est: The Role of History in the Con-
templative Life according to Hugh of St. Victor," in Contemporary Reflections on the
Medieval Christian Tradition: Essays in Honor of Ray C. Petty, ed. George H. Schriver
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1974), pp. 138-44, 146-58. See also Châtillon,
"La Bible," pp. 186-88, 194.
196 CHAPTER FOUR

their colleagues in the liberal arts.105 But this style of exegesis

might, or might not, associate itself with a primary interest in the
literal or historical level of the Pauline text. On the other hand, the
scholastics wanted to grasp the literal sense of Paul's teaching
because they wanted to use it as a basis, and a model, for dogmatic
speculation and construction. Their interest in the historical setting
in which Paul had written derived largely from their perception
that this background was a help in understanding what he had
said, and also from their desire to place Paul in historical perspec-
tive as a means of contextualizing his teachings. It was the scholas-
tic exegetes, and above all Peter Lombard, who promoted this idea
in its most widespread form, as an adjunct to getting their Pauline
theology straight.
In this connection, too, Peter's reading of Paul is striking in
comparison with that of his immediate predecessors and contem-
poraries. The Glossa ordinaria offers a no-frills summary of Paul, or,
at least, of those lines which the glossator lemmatizes; but he
sometimes gives Paul a polysemous reading. The glossator is gener-
ally content to rephrase what Paul, or some patristic reader of Paul,
has said, in his own words, and rarely goes much farther.106 Gilbert
of Poitiers, whose glosses on Paul date to ca. 1130, is even more
consistently interested in connecting the literal and allegorical
senses of the text.107 And, while independent in other respects,
Abelard's commentary on Romans, dated provisionally to the years
1135-39, does not depart from the Laon tradition on this point.108
By contrast, apart from a single passage in 2 Thessalonians on the
Antichrist, the Lombard's exposition of Paul pays rigorous atten-
tion to the letter and to the historical context of each Pauline
epistle.
The most sustained example of the Lombard's contextualization

105
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957),
pp. 329-37, 344-45; Evans, Language and Logic, passim.
106
Evans, Language and Logic, pp. 41-47.
107
Vincenzo Miano, "Il Commento alle Lettere di S. Paolo di Gilberto Porreta-
no," in Scholastica: Ratione historico-critica instauranda (Rome: Pontificium Athe-
naeum Antonianum, 1951), pp. 171-78; Maurice Simon, "La Glose de l'épître aux
Romains de Gilbert de la Porrée," RHE 52 (1957): 68-70. For the date of this
work, see Elswijk, Gilbert Porreta, pp. 57-58; Maioli, Gilberto Porreta, pp. xxxiii. I
have not inspected the manuscripts myself.
108
Damien Van den Eynde, "Les écrits perdus d'Abélard," Antonianum 37
(1962): 468; confirmed by Buytaert, CCCM 11: 16; Peppermüller, Abaelards Ausle-
gung, p. 10; "Exegetische Traditionen und theologische Neuansätze in Abaelards
Kommentar zum Römerbrief,,, in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 1974), pp. 117-19. For the date, see Buytaert, CCCM
11: xxii-xv.
 SACRA PAGINA 197

of Paul is his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. As with

previous scholastic commentators on this text, he reprises Jerome's
brief introduction, which observes that Paul wrote to a group of
converts from Judaism, that he wrote in Hebrew not in Greek, and
that he attacked the vice of pride. The Glossa ordinaria stops there,
and it is only at verse 7:8, where the apostle refers to Melchisedech
and the Lévites, that the glossator makes any effort to connect
Paul's actual argument to this stated agenda. 109 For his part, Peter
takes the argument of Jerome found in the Glossa ordinaria as his
starting point but goes on from there, with a full and detailed
introduction of his own, in which he emphasizes the point that
Paul's whole strategy in Hebrews is to remind the Jewish converts
of the Old Testament events and prophesies which have been
fulfilled in the revelation of Christ. Peter urges that Paul is, indeed,
the author of Hebrews even though his salutation in this epistle
differs in style from those prefacing his other epistles, notably by
omitting reference to his name and his status as an apostle. This
tactic, according to Peter, is a deliberate omission on his part.
Following Jerome, he observes that Paul was sensitive to the fact
that his name was hateful to the Jews. Hence, he does not identify
himself, lest this opinion prevent his readers from profiting from his
message. Likewise, Paul's omission of his status as apostle is de-
signed to teach a lesson in humility, since the major thrust of the
epistle is that faith is sufficient, and that the Jewish converts cannot
pride themselves on their former status as the chosen people or on
their observance of the ceremonial law. Peter notes as well that
Paul has written this epistle in Hebrew, and that it displays a style
more eloquent than in his other epistles (et longe splendidiore et
facundiore stylo quam aliae resplendeat). This fluency is attributable to
the fact that Hebrew is his native language. As Peter observes, the
apostle's overall strategy in Hebrews is to emphasize the connec-
tions between the truths adumbrated in the Old Testament and
those perfected in the New, "as if there, as a shadow, and here, as
the truth" (quasi ibi umbra, hie Veritas).,110
This preface sets the stage for Peter's thoroughly typological
analysis of Paul's Old Testament references. Conscious of the fact
that this is Paul's own tactic, he amplifies on it himself. At Hebrews
1:8-12 and again at 1:12-14 he weaves additional quotations from

109
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: Epistola ad Hebraeos praefatio; PL 114:
643A, 655A-B.
110
Peter Lombard, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos argument, 1.1-7, PL 192: 399A-
401 A: The quotations are at 400B and 401A respectively.
198 CHAPTER FOUR

the Psalms into the main body of Paul's text, and combines them
with other Old Testament passages that bolster the apostle's own
technique of argument. 111 At chapters 7 and 8 Peter explores in
detail the parallels between Melchisedech and Christ and between
the Levitical priesthood and the Christian priesthood, accenting as
well the superiority of the latter in that it is not confined to any one
tribe or group; further, the sacrifice of Christ is greater than the
sacrifices offered by the Old Testament priests in that it is the
sacrifice of God's own son for the whole human race, rather than
the sacrifice of a purely created being for a limited community.112
Throughout, and responsive to Paul's intentions, Peter preserves a
balance between the continuities linking the old and new covenants
and the consummation of the former in the latter. For its part, the
Glossa ordinaria makes no comment on why Paul interlards his
argument with references to the Psalms and other passages from
the Old Testament and tends to emphasize the differences between
the two covenants while omitting their continuities.
There are two coevals of Peter who, although they paraphrase
his introductory remarks, ignore the Pauline agenda which those
remarks announce, in their actual handling of the text. The Abelar-
dian author of a commentary on the Pauline epistles called the
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, produced between 1141 and 1153,
alludes to Paul's main theme in passing only twice, in a gloss
otherwise notable primarily for the heavy attention it pays to
dogmatic matters and for its unusual number of digressions and
irrelevancies. Glossing Hebrews 5, he asks how the Old Testament
sacrifices remitted sin. On Abelard's authority, he responds that
they did so only partially, saving their practitioners from Hell and
assigning them to Purgatory instead. What he really wants to talk
about are the differences between these two posthumous states.
Similarly, he argues, circumcision, even in its own time, was less
efficacious than baptism in the Christian dispensation. The author
goes on to note that Christ received both rites even though He
needed neither. In these passages, the relations between the Old
and New Testaments stressed by Paul slip away into discussions of
Last Things and Christology which are not germane to Paul's
argument in this context.113 The author's only other effort to re-

111
Ibid., PL 192: 410C-414A.
112
Ibid., PL 192: 447B-460C.
113
In Epistolam ad Hebraeos, in Commentarius Cantabridgensis in Epistolas Pauli e
schola Petri Abaelardi, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf, 4 vols. (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1937-45), 4: 724-25, 734. On the dating of this commentary,
see Landgraf's analysis, 1: xv.
 SACRA PAGINA 199

spond to Paul's agenda is also found in his gloss on the same

chapter. How, he asks, are we to understand the idea that Abra-
ham is our father in faith? The question suggests to him the idea
that faith, not circumcision, was salvific in Old Testament times
since some men, like Abraham, were saved by their faith before
circumcision was instituted. So far, so good. But, from this point he
moves to an idea which Paul could not have addressed, a critique of
monks who devote their wits to the praise of poverty, from which he
segues to a recapitulation of the aut liberi aut libri topos as treated by
Jerome and Theophrastus. This batch of apparent non sequiturs is
loosely strung together and connected to Paul by the thought that
people should do whatever they do for the right moral reasons, not
for reasons that may be externally applauded or condemned, a
conclusion which the glossator caps with a quotation from Jerome
which is actually a citation of Gregory the Great.114 As this passage
illustrates, Abelard was not always fortunate in his disciples. Nor,
in this case, is Paul or the reader seeking to discover his concerns in
Hebrews.
Another exegete of Hebrews in our target group is Robert of
Melun, whose commentary on Paul dates to ca. 1145—55 and who
draws on both the Lombard and on Abelard. Robert's interests
stray even farther from Paul's text than do those of the Cambridge
commentator. He raises only two questions that even touch on it,
the comparison between Melchisedech and Christ and the sense in
which Abraham is our father in faith. His treatment of the first
question is extremely abbreviated, both as a comparison and as a
contrast, while he fails to take Paul's point about the second.
Discussing how variousfiguraecan be understood as descent from
the loins of Abraham, Robert treats the connection between Abra-
ham and the rest of mankind physically, not in terms of faith.
Robert's chief concern here is how this connection can be true of
Christ since Christ lacked original sin, which is transmitted physi-
cally through the loins of the parents.115 With this problem we drift
perilously far both from Paul's subject matter and his meaning.
While Robert's commentary is replete with other debates and
questions, none of them bears any particular relationship to the
text of Hebrews.
The glossing of Paul's Epistle to the Romans also supplies good

114
Ibid., 4: 738-41.
115
Robert of Melun, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos, in Quaestiones de Epistolis Pauli, ed.
Raymond-M. Martin (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1938), pp. 302-
04. For the date, see Martin's analysis, pp. lvi-lvii.
200 CHAPTER FOUR

examples of Peter's willingness to let a literal and historical reading

of the text, as well as Paul's own theme, direct his theological
reflections on it, in a manner that stands out from that of other
contemporary exegetes. His sense of Paul's agenda in this epistle
enables him to connect passages of Romans often treated as sepa-
rate items by other commentators. Peter recognizes that they are
related to each other in Paul's argument. Connected passages,
which he reads conjointly in this way, are Paul's injunctions on
obedience to worldly authority in Romans 13:1—6116 and his criti-
cisms of chambering and wantonness later in that chapter and of
Jewish dietary practices in chapter 14.117 The Glossa ordinaria deals
with Romans 13:1-6 in an extremely perfunctory manner, simply
restating Paul's advice in the form of a deductive syllogism and
adding Augustine's idea that rulers must be obeyed as a punish-
ment for sin.118 Abelard turns this portion of his commentary into a
mini-treatise on political theory, designed to defend the subject's
right to resist a tyrant, defined as a usurper, who therefore lacks
divine authorization. 119 The fact that Paul is neither advocating nor
even considering the rights of subjects in this passage escapes
Abelard's attention. Robert of Melun focuses his attention on
another non-Pauline concern, the distinction between secular and
ecclesiastical authority.120 So does the Victorine author of the
Quaestiones et decisiones in Epistolas divi Pauli, dating to the years
1155-65, in raising the question, which he fails to answer, of
whether a ruler should be obeyed if his commands contravene the
will of God.121
Apart from introducing issues that had not been on Paul's mind
in Romans, none of these exegetes tries to explain what Paul's
advice on rulership is doing in this particular epistle. The reverse is
the case with the Lombard. He sees Paul's main goal in this
passage as the repression of pride and the inculcation of humility,
which is part of the wider message of Romans.122 Paul is here

116
Peter Lombard, In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 13:1-6, PL 191: 1503D-1506C.
117
Ibid., 13:13-14, 14:1-3, PL 191: 1510B-1513A.
118
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: Epistola ad Romanos 13:1-6; PL 114: 512C.
119
Peter Abelard, In Ep. ad Romanos 13:1. CCCM 11: 286.
120
Robert of Melun, In Epistolam ad Romanos 13:1 in Quaest. de Ep. Pauli, pp.
152-54.
121
(Quaestiones et deäsiones in Epistolas divi Pauli q. 299-301, PL 175: 505A-C.
122
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos prologus, 13:1-6, PL 191: 1300C-1302A,
1503D-1506C. Afleidt, Die weltliche Gewalt, pp. 139-46, 153-66, 189-98, does not
distinguish adequately between the Lombard's handling of this text and that of his
immediate predecessors and successors.
 SACRA PAGINA 201

addressing the men who wield authority as well as their subjects.

Rulers, he notes, are being enjoined by the apostle to acknowledge
their dependence on God and their responsibilities to their subjects.
They have a divine mandate; and they will be held accountable for
the way they exercise it. Subjects are being enjoined to patience
and obedience, in recognition of the fact that rulers have to punish
evildoers. On both sides, Peter observes, Paul is talking about
duties, not rights. In particular, Paul is emphasizing the need for
concord within the Roman Christian community, composed as it is
of both pagan and Jewish converts. Whatever their origins, the
members of the Roman church should live in harmony under their
leaders, whichever element happens to be represented more strong-
ly in the leadership; and the leaders should govern without fear or
favor toward one group or another in the community.
Peter then goes on to read Paul's advice about feasting and
foodstuffs in the next section of Romans as a follow-up of the
apostle's more general teaching on community relations. Peter gets
the idea that Paul's views on eating in Romans are conditioned by
the needs of the pagan and Jewish converts from the Glossa
ordinaria123 and goes on from there. Roma la golosa was evidently
alive and well in the first century A.D., he points out, and the
apostle was well aware ofthat fact. His attack on overindulgence in
food and drink is thus aimed specifically at the formerly pagan
Romans; he urges them instead to make their natural needs the
measure of their intake and, otherwise, to treat food medicinally.
For Paul, the Jewish converts also have their own culturally in-
duced blind spot with respect to food, and he directs his remarks
about the supersession of the Mosaic dietary laws to them. In
commenting on these passages Peter is concise and to the point.
He is concerned only with linking Paul's advice to both segments
of the Roman community to each other and to the wider theme of
Romans. On the other hand, other twelfth-century exegetes of
Romans tend to get sidetracked by this part of the epistle. Abelard
uses his exegesis of Romans 13:13 to flaunt his knowledge of Ovid
as an authority on the connection between feasting, drinking, and
sexual excess.124 On the Jewish dietary laws, he brings forward an
irrelevant comparison of authorities who disagree on the propriety
of eating the flesh of animals used in pagan sacrifices.125 Paul
does take up that subject, but not in Romans 14. Although the

Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: Ep. ad Romanos 13:13; PL 114: 514B.
Peter Abelard, In Ep. ad Romanos 13:13, CCCM 11: 295.
Ibid., 14:23, CCCM 11: 307-11.
202 CHAPTER FOUR

Cambridge commentator does not gloss that theme in Romans, he

does, at length, in his commentary on 1 Timothy. Picking up on the
point that food should be used medicinally, he considers how
various authorities have classified foods in this respect. He is fascin-
ated and bewildered by the fact that Ambrose listed garlic as a
medicine, not as a food. After wrestling with this point for some
time, he concludes that Ambrose's bizarre tastes are a consequence
of his Lombard origins.126 This is, no doubt, a fascinating window
into the world of medieval gastronomic trivia. But it cannot be said
that this commentator, or Abelard either, has shed much light on
why Paul is interested in food in Romans, in contrast with Peter
Lombard.
Peter's consistent interest in contextualizing Paul and in allow-
ing Paul's goals and rhetorical strategies to control his own inter-
pretation does not mean that Peter regards a literal and historical
reconstruction of Paul as his sole obligation. There is another
dimension to Peter's handling of Paul which must be appreciated,
the application of historical criticism to Paul as a biblical writer. As
we have noted above, both canonists and theologians in the early
twelfth century were developing historical and other modes of
criticism as it attached to patristic and other post-biblical author-
ities in the effort to ascertain how weighty their authority was, how
generally it had been intended, and the degree to which if could be
magnified or relativized in aid of contemporary needs and debates.
What is less well known is the fact that exegetes such as the
Lombard were willing to extend the same kind of criticism to Paul
himself. In so doing, they show a keen sense of the changes which
the church had undergone over the centuries, changes in its beliefs
and doctrinal emphases no less than changes in its institutions.
Like others in this group, Peter accepts this phenomenon of change,
not necessarily as a sad departure from the apostolic age held up as
a timeless norm, but rather as a natural development, and one that
permits us to see that what made sense in the ecclesia primitiva may
not be appropriate in the here and now. Peter's historical criticism
of Paul, in this sense, partakes more of the contemporary theolo-
gians' "moderns versus ancients" conception of the primitive
church than it reflects the canonists' desire to modernize or rein-
vent the primitive church as an ideal. A few examples will serve to
illustrate this point.
To begin with, there are cases in which Peter treats develop-

In primam Epistolam ad Timotheum 4:34, in Comm. Cant., 3: 579.

 SACRA PAGINA 203

ments in church history simply as facts we need to know in order to

understand what Paul is saying, in a manner fairly neutral with
respect to Paul's authority. Thus, in commenting on the apostle's
warning against building doctrine on false foundations in Romans
15:15-22, Peter observes that Paul was referring here to the
pseudoapostolic tradition and the apocrypha, which had not yet
been weeded out of the biblical tradition, since Paul wrote prior
to the establishment of the canon of Scripture. 127 Another com-
paratively neutral historical scholium, but one suggesting the tran-
sitoriness of the church's institutional arrangements, is Peter's
discussion of the women whom Paul addresses or refers to in his
epistles, as exercising a leadership role in the church, and his
reaction to Paul's countervailing rule that women remain silent in
church. In commenting on this apparent contradiction at
1 Corinthians 14:34—40, he sees the injunction to silence as con-
ditioned, for this particular community, by the apostle's desire to
correct moral and doctrinal error which had been spread by the
teaching of women immediately before his composition of the epis-
tle. Here, then, Paul's rule is a tactic designed to correct a local
abuse and is not a general prohibition. Customs of this type, Peter
concludes, are not fixed, in contrast to the substance of the
gospels.128
The silence of women recurs in 1 Timothy 2:12-15, and here it is
a theme which Peter orchestrates rather differently. In this passage,
he accounts for Paul's rule as a corollary of the subjection of wives
to husbands as a punishment for original sin. But his main point is
to criticize Paul, who goes on to say that women can none the less
be saved through childbearing. Peter regards this claim as ludi-
crous. He does not hesitate to explain why. Like men, he observes,
women will be saved by their faith, their love, and their persistence
in virtue, whether they are married or single, fruitful or barren.
Childbearing cannot be regarded as salvific, since it is a natural
biological function found in women as such regardless of their
beliefs. At 1 Timothy 3:5-6, Peter notes that Paul himself had no
objection to the then-current practice of ordaining women as
deacons, a fact which Peter then uses to undercut the apostle's
apparent relegation of women to purely domestic roles. 129 It might

127
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos, PL 191: 1524C.
128
Peter Lombard, In I Epistolam ad Corinthios, PL 191: 1672R-C.
129
Peter Lombard, In I Epistolam ad Timotheum 2:12-15, 3:5-6, PL 192: 340A-
342C, 345D-346A. The moral equality of the sexes in the Christian life is a point
he also makes at In Epistolam ad Colossenses 3:6-17, PL 192: 282D-283A.
204 CHAPTER FOUR

be noted, as a footnote to the Lombard's exegesis of 1 Timothy,

that the Cambridge commentator enthusiastically endorses his cri-
tique of Paul on women. Yoking it with an opinion of Abelard's, he
amplifies Peter's point about female leadership in the church by
observing that abbesses nowadays perform functions similar to
those of the female deacons of Paul's time; and, furthermore, abbes-
ses fitly exercise the teaching office in the church.130 This argument,
like Peter's, uses historical criticism to point up Paul's apparent
inconsistency. The argument underscores the exegete's own prefer-
ence for one aspect of Paul's teaching, seen as normal to Paul, over
another, seen as an aberration from that norm, bringing to bear on
the text the fact that institutions and the rules governing women, in
this case, do change, and appropriately, over time.
There are two other contexts, marriage and the coming of Anti-
christ, in which Peter imposes a much more stringent mode of
historical criticism upon Paul in the effort to limit the force of his
authority. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, where Paul con-
cedes marriage but urges that those who can remain celibate, like
himself, Peter pointedly dismisses the apostle's preference for
celibacy and uses the occasion to develop a treatise on marriage
that highlights the essentials of the position on marriage which he later
develops in the Sentences, Peter insists that marriage is a good thing
and a sacrament which was instituted in Eden before the fall.
Marriage is grounded in the present consent of the spouses. Their
sexual relations, when ordered to the ends of marriage, are either
not sinful at all or at most minimally sinful and excusable. Customs
regarding marriage have changed over time. This being the case,
Paul was mistaken in regarding marriage not as a requirement but
as an indulgence. In truth, Peter states, the reverse is the case; it is
continence that is the indulgence. Marriage, after all, is the calling
followed by the many. Theologians and preachers, from Paul to the
present, he implies, have a duty to address the realities in the lives
of most believers. After all, continence requires a special grace
which God concedes to very few, a fact which Paul ought to have
kept in mind. Peter hastens to add that marital chastity and fidelity
are also charisms and gifts of God, but they are distributed more
widely. Given the fact that the apostle is aware of all this, Peter
finds Paul both logically and theologically inconsistent in his
advocacy of the celibate life.131

In pnmam Ep. ad Timotheum, in Comm. Cant., 3: 251, 261, 274—76.

Peter Lombard, In I Ep. ad Corinthios 7:1-28, PL 191: 1585D-1597A.
 SACRA PAGINA 205

But how is it, Peter asks, that the apostle has arrived at these
misguided conclusions? It is at this point that Peter detonates the
exegetical time-bomb that he has dropped. Paul's counsel on all of
these matters, he points out, was predicated on his belief that the
second coming of Christ was imminent, a belief that encouraged
him to advise against marital entanglements for those who were
single. Now, this belief about the impending end of the saeculum is,
to be sure, a historical datum about Paul and his times. But, Peter
continues, as we are well aware, this world is very much still with
us. Thus, we can and should adjust our perspective on marriage
and celibacy accordingly. Not even Paul deprived married people
of future glory, he observes, implying that Paul's teaching is not
wholly consistent even judged in the light of its now superseded
eschatological expectations. But the full force of Peter's historical
criticism of Paul on marriage in 1 Corinthians is to use it to qualify
Paul's theological authority on this subject to the point of dismiss-
ing it and to legitimate his own sharp departures from Paul on the
theology of marriage.132
In addition to misinforming Paul's views on marriage, his
teaching on the imminent end of the age yields some other difficul-
ties which Peter seeks to iron out, with the effect of scaling down
Paul's authority, by means of historical criticism. The problem is
located in the discrepancies between Paul's handling of the Anti-
christ in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In his accessus to these epistles,
Peter acknowledges the fact that Paul was responding to the Thes-
salonians' curiosity about Last Things, and the errors they had
embraced on that subject. The content of the two epistles, he notes,
is quite similar, even redundant. Whence, it remains unclear {licet
obscure) why Paul felt the need to repeat himself.133 This is especially
obscure given the inconsistent descriptions of Antichrist in these
two epistles. The difficulties involved lead Peter to depart from his
usual exegetical practice. This is the one place in his commentary
on Paul where he adds to a strictly literal reading of the text a
spiritual dimension, for reasons which will now be apparent. In
1 Thessalonians, Paul depicts Antichrist as a supernatural being,
who will reign for three years before being killed by the Archangel
Michael. On the other hand, in 2 Thessalonians, he identifies the

132
Ibid., 7:29-35, PL 191: 1597B-1598D. For Peter's fuller views on marriage,
see Sent. 4. d. 26-d. 42, 2: 416-509.
133
Peter Lombard, In Epistolam I ad Thessalonicenses argument; In Epistolam II ad
Thessalonicenses argument, PL 192: 287D-290A, 311A-312C. The quotation is at
311A.
206 CHAPTER FOUR

Antichrist with the Roman Empire of the first century A.D. The fall
of the Antichrist is thus equated with the downfall of the Roman
Empire as a world power. This discrepancy had been noticed in the
Glossa ordinaria. The glossator had amplified on the account in 1
Thessalonians, drawing on Daniel for additional information on
the Antichrist and the Apocalypse, but he had repeated the Roman
imperial version of the story in glossing 2 Thessalonians without
trying to square these two accounts. 134 Peter seconds his strategy on
1 Thessalonians, bringing additional Old Testament prophetic
material to bear on Paul's scenario in that epistle.135 But he takes a
rather different tack on 2 Thessalonians. Warming to his task, he
advises his readers that Paul was not forecasting the fall of Rome as
an actual historical event. Paul was, no doubt, upset by the
persecution inflicted on Christians by the emperors during his time.
But Peter was aware that the Roman Empire later declared Chris­
tianity its official religion and protected the church. Thus, an
understanding of Rome different from the one offered by Paul must
be supplied in order to remedy the limitations of Paul's view read
literally.
Peter's solution is to associate Rome, in 2 Thessalonians, not
with the political imperium of Nero but with the spiritual imperium
of the Roman church, and to turn Paul's argument around by 180Ώ.
The fall of Rome cannot mean the future political collapse of an
empire that has not been in existence for centuries. Rather, it
means the falling away of the churches from the Christian faith and
from obedience to Rome. The sense of Paul in 2 Thessalonians
would thus be that Christ will not return to judge the world until all
Christians have apostasized and all churches have fallen into
schism. Peter has recourse to Augustine and Haimo of Auxerre for
this interpretation. He depoliticizes the 2 Thessalonians account
still further by refusing to identify Antichrist with any human
leader, whether of church or state. The Antichrist, he says, will be
the son of the devil, but by imitation not filiation. He will arise in
Babylon, out of the tribe of Dan, as the Old Testament foretold.
But this notion must be read broadly, to include the Greeks as well
as the Jews. For, just as Christ possesses a fullness of divinity, so the
Antichrist possesses a fullness of malice, and his activities embrace
all the sons of pride of whatever nation. The key point Peter makes
is that the reign of Antichrist represents a negative spiritual condi-

134
Bib lia latina cum Glossa ordinana, 4: Epistola I ad Thessalonicenses 4:15, 5:3;
Eputola II ad Thessalonicenses 2:3, 2:6-7; PL 114: 618D-619B, 622A-D.
135
Peter Lombard, In Ep. I ad Thess. 5:1-11, PL 192: 306A-308A.
 SACRA PAGINA 207

tion, which mankind will help to bring about by allowing faith to

wane and charity to grow cold. In so arguing, Peter reject's Paul's
equation between Antichrist and the historical Nero. His spiritualiz-
ing of the idea of Antichrist permits Peter to treat Nero not as the
literal Antichrist but as a type of the Antichrist to come. To be sure,
Nero's activities, like those of the other persecuting emperors, were
evil and can be seen as having been inspired by the devil. But, Peter
concludes, "Nero and the others are shadows of the future, that is,
Antichrist, just as Abel and David were figures of Christ" (et sunt
Nero et alii umbra futuri, scilicet Antichristi, sicut Abel et David fuerunt
figurae Christi).136 This resolution of the problem of Nero as Anti-
christ found warm support from Peter's immediate successors.137
In developing this theology of Antichrist, Peter does not confine
himself to contextualizing and relativizing Paul's belief in the light
of superseded apostolic expectations and the warping experience of
persecution. He goes on from there to reinterpret the whole subject
as pointing to a more general, and a less purely institutional,
mystery of evil in which the infidelity of the churches is paralleled
by the falling away from faith and charity on the part of individual
Christians. He thus finds a way of handling Paul's treatment of
Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians that is compatible with the account
in 1 Thessalonians while expanding Paul's more historically lim-
ited political position into a universal moral doctrine, thus yoking
his historical critique of Paul with a constructive theology of Anti-
christ, and one which draws on other post-biblical authorities and
on his own ingenuity in the interest of clarification.
This leads us to another striking feature of Peter's Collectanea in
comparison with other commentaries on Paul dating to our target
period, his use of patristic and more recent authorities, both to
provide a running commentary on the text and to assist in the
unravelling of problematic passages. His recourse to such author-
ities for the light they shed on Paul is both deft and apposite. In
particular, he is more concerned than are other scholastic exegetes
of Paul during his time with confronting the fact that the author-
ities may not agree in their interpretation of Paul. When this is the
case, Peter seizes on the fact as an opportunity to explain, by his

136
Peter Lombard, In Ep. II ad Thess. 2:1-16, PL 192: 317B-321D. The quota-
tion is at 318C. At 318D-319A Peter refers specifically to Nero and to the Augusti-
nian point that he would have to be kept alive miraculously or resurrected
specially in order to serve, literally, as the Antichrist. With Augustine, he finds this
idea ridiculous.
137
In secundum Epistolam ad Thessalonicenses 2:1-16, in Comm. Cant, 3: 539-41;
Robert of Melun, De Epistola ad Thessalonicenses prima 2:7, in Quaest. de Ep. Pauli,
p. 296.
208 CHAPTER FOUR

own word and example, how theological reasoning can be brought

to bear on the conflicts among the authorities. In this connection,
we see in his work as a Pauline exegete the same kinds of method-
ological concerns that he displays in his Psalms commentary and
that surface even more systematically in his Sentences. In Peter's
case, there is an organic relationship between his study of the sacra
pagina and the teaching of systematic theology, from the standpoint
of methodology no less than from the standpoint of doctrinal
development.138
Consistent with his handling of conflicting authorities on all
subjects in the Sentences, Peter's treatment of this problem in his
exegesis of Paul accents two important methodological principles,
which were often ignored by his contemporaries. In the first place,
he finds it insufficient to resolve conflicts by the tactic of nude
countercitation. The inadequacy ofthat method is plainly visible in
the Glossa ordinaria. The glossator responsible for the Gospels of
Matthew and Mark takes exception to Origen on salvation and on
angels, and seeks to neutralize him by citing Augustine or Bede
against him. But the commentary does not stop to explain why
Origen's position is unacceptable and why Augustine and Bede are
preferable.139 On the other hand, Peter explains the reasoning that
leads his authorities to the conclusions they adopt, giving his
readers the capacity to judge the merits of those conclusions. At the
same time, he is aware of the fact that the same authority some-
times contradicts himself. This circumstance may result from the
rhetorical requirements of the arguments made by the authority at
various points in his oeuvre. It may result from the fact that he has

138
The most important studies of these interrelations have been made by
Ignatius C. Brady, in his prolegomena to Books 3 and 4 of the Sentences, 2: 8*-52*,
coupled with his edition of three texts reflecting Peter's earlier exegetically derived
positions on the incarnation, the Eucharist, and marriage, ibid., pp. 53*-87*,
which can be compared with his handling of these themes in his reworking of
Rom. and 1 Cor. and in the Sentences. This material supplements Brady's earlier
discussions of Peter's life and works in "Peter Lombard: Canon of Notre Dame,"
RTAM 32 (1965): 277-95 and "Peter Lombard," in New Catholic Encyclopedia (New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967), 11: 221-22. On the double redaction
of the Collectanea, see also Jean Leclercq, "Les deux rédactions du prologue de
Pierre Lombard sur les Épîtres de S. Paul," in Mise. Lomb., pp. 109—12; Ermene-
gildo Bertola, "I commentari paolini di Pietro Lombardo e la loro duplice re-
dazione," Pier Lombardo 3: 2-3 (1959): 75-90. On the connection between exegesis
and theology in the Lombard, see also Glunz, History of the Vulgate, pp. 232-58;
Gillian R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic
Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 42. These treatments of the point
supersede Smalley, Study, p. 75.
*39Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: In Matthaeum 25:48, In Marcum 1:2, 3:29; PL
114: 166D, 179C, 193C.
 SACRA PAGINA 209

genuinely changed his mind. But these considerations need to be

taken into account in deciding whether the authority's views in one
case cancel out his views in another, or whether the problem in
Paul's text on which one is seeking help from the authority can be
resolved within the framework of that authority's thought more
generally. Some examples will illustrate how Peter handles issues of
this type.
At Romans 2:3-6, for instance, he grapples with the question of
whether the sin against the Holy Spirit can be remitted. Some say,
he observes, that this sin cannot be remitted because the souls of
such sinners are so hardened by despair that they cannot feel the
need or the desire for penance. Others say that the sin cannot be
remitted because such sinners do not actually do penance, even
thought they are capable of it. Peter adduces Augustine on Mat-
thew in support of the first position and Augustine on Mark in
support of the second. Now, Peter has another resolution of the
question that he wants to advance and he rests his case on a third
argument, made by Augustine on John. There, Peter notes, the sin
against the Holy Spirit is held to be irrémissible not because the
sinner cannot or does not repent; he can indeed repent, but he does
so rarely and with great difficulty. This conclusion Peter finds the
most persuasive of the three and also compatible with the broader
outlines of both Augustinian and Pauline theology. For, to say that
this type of sinner could not repent would be to undercut his own
freedom to respond to the grace of repentence. Equally, if not more
important, it would limit the freedom and power of God to extend
mercy in converting the sinner. This example is a nice index of the
Lombard's awareness of the fact that Augustine is not a monolithic
source, and also of the fact that one can discover, through an
analysis of his reasoning in assorted loci, which Augustinian posi-
tion is not only the most Augustinian, on the basis of its theological
consistency with his idées maîtresses, but also which Augustinian
position sheds the most light on Paul.140
Another case of conflicting authorities is one which required far
more of a virtuoso turn to resolve, the vexed debate between
Augustine and Jerome, arising from the text of Galatians, over
whether the apostle Peter had dissimulated his beliefs, as a mission-
ary tactic, and whether Paul had been right in criticizing him on
that account. This had been a sticky issue from the patristic period
onward, not only because it raised the question of whether apostles

Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 2:3-6, PL 191: 1340A-D.

210 CHAPTER FOUR

can lie, or err, but also because Porphyry had seized on this text,
and the clash it provoked, as a means of taxing the Christians with
being immoral and inconsistent. Jerome had stated that Peter had
dissimulated his faith in participating in Jewish dietary practices,
while Augustine had rejected that possibility out of hand. The
Lombard's first line of attack is to bring the Acts of the Apostles to
bear on Galatians. Acts, as he notes, shows that, on another occa-
sion, Peter ate the flesh of animals used in pagan sacrifices, but
without having participated in those sacrifices or having approved
of them. This kind of dietary practice, he continues, is permitted
elsewhere by Paul if it does not give scandal. By analogy, then, in
Galatians Peter was fully aware of the suspension of the Jewish
dietary laws by the new dispensation but he followed them in this
instance so as not to alienate the people he sought to convert. Peter
here was acting out a species of Paul's own advice, to become all
things to all men for the sake of winning souls. With this reasoning
in mind, Peter argues that we can say that Jerome is literally
correct in stating that the apostle Peter behaved like a Jew, when he
was a Christian. But Augustine is even more correct in stating that
Peter's behavior was not mendacious. In the Lombard's view,
Peter's actions were above board (honesta) because they were
guided by good intentions. For his part, Paul was misinformed. His
own intention to preach the gospel vehemently was a good inten-
tion, although on this occasion it had prevented him from grasping
what Peter was really doing. Therefore, Paul was wrong to attack
Peter. Peter's missionary zeal was also good, but it too had pre-
vented him from seeing that, in the new dispensation, Jewish and
gentile practices are not matters of indifference and that his mis-
sionary tactics might therefore be counterproductive. Thus, the
Lombard treats both apostles as well-intentioned, although he does
not think that either apostle translated his intention into appropri-
ate action in the case at issue. He also sees the merits of the
positions of both Augustine and Jerome, although with a preference
for Augustine's.141
A comparison between the Lombard and other contemporary
exegetes of Galatians shows how much his analysis of the patristic
authorities on this passage helped to clear the air. The Cambridge
commentator thinks that Peter can be excused because he was not
truly lying, and because of the difficulties attached to evangelizing
the Jews. His gloss on this text gives no indication that there is a

141
Peter Lombard, In Epistolam ad Galatas 2:14, PL 192: 109D-114A.
 SACRA PAGINA 211

patristic debate on it.142 But Robert of Melun has clearly profited

from the Lombard's exegesis. After reviewing his reasoning, Robert
supplies an elegant refinement on it. He concludes that both apos-
tles behaved in ways that can be thought of as wrong, externally.
But both can be excused, because they acted in good conscience,
and there were mitigating factors in each case.143 Robert thus
retains the balance between correct intention and appropriate ac-
tion central to the Lombard's analysis but invokes the principle of
dispensation and the lesser of the two evils as a way of reconciling
Augustine and Jerome. And, like the Lombard, Robert shows how
Paul's authority can be weighed and judged, and relativized, in the
light of post-biblical authority and the ingenuity of the expositor.
While it is typically the confrontation of conflicting authorities or
the effort to extract theological principles from the time-bound
perspectives of the apostolic age that engender these displays of
ratiocination, there are also cases in which the Lombard draws on
the disciplines of the trivium as tools of analysis in his Pauline
exegesis. As we have already seen, his accessus to each epistle exerts
a firm control over his handling of his commentary in each case,
suggesting the centrality of the discipline of rhetoric for him as a
source of hermeneutical principles. Less pronounced, but also pre-
sent, are his appeals to logic, although it has to be said that they are
sparing in comparison with the Abelardians and Porre tans. Both
metaphor and logical analysis help Peter to gloss Romans 8:20-23,
where Paul describes the entire creation as groaning and travailing
as it awaits salvation. Now, the proper subject of salvation is man,
not the rest of creation, says Peter. So, what does the phrase "all
creation" mean here? It can be regarded, he observes, as a univer-
sal (universale locutione). But it is a universal not in the sense that it
collects the individual traits of all beings but rather in the sense
that it collects all the traits of the singular beings, namely men, who
are to be saved; for all aspects of human nature—mind, body, and
spirit—are saved. At the same time, since he is composed of mind,
body, and spirit, man is a microcosm of the rest of creation, and it is
saved, metaphorically, in him.144 There are two passages in the
same epistle where the Lombard rephrases the text at issue in the
language of cause-effect relationships. In commenting on the point
that one man brought sin into the world and one man redeemed it,

142
In Epistolam ad Galatas, in Comm. Cant., 2: 351.
143
Robert of Melun, In Epistolam ad Galatas 2:11, in Quaest. de Ep. Pauli, pp.
245-46.
144
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 8:20-23, PL 191: 1444C-D.
212 CHAPTER FOUR

he argues that the role of Adam and Christ as causes is not

isomorphic. While Christ is the sole cause of the redemption He
effects, Adam is not the sole cause of damnation when it occurs,
since the actual as well as the original sins of Adam's posterity are
involved. Also, the potentiality for damnation does not always get
actualized, since God's grace can overcome sin and does in some
men.145 Similarly, in glossing the point that the law gives rise to sin
because of man's inability to adhere to it, Peter also treats the topic
in the language of cause-effects relationships. The law, he notes, is
not the efficient cause of sin, but rather the occasion of sin.146
The examples discussed thus far have shown some of the ways in
which Peter uses the artes, the authorities, and his own knowledge
and ingenuity to provide a literal and historical understanding of
Paul. The Collectanea also provides excellent documentation of his
use of Paul as a resource for the development of his own theological
views, in relation to the scholastic concerns and controversies of the
day. One hotly debated topic, already noted above, which was
given much publicity by the career of Abelard, was the proper role
of philosophy in the theological enterprise. Peter takes a definite
stand on this subject in his Romans commentary, quite pointedly
against Abelard as well as against critics of Abelard of the stamp of
William of St. Thierry. As a sequel to the idea that the invisibilia dei
can be known though created nature, Peter remarks that some
divine attributes are accessible to natural reason (ratione naturale),
including God's eternity, omnipotence, and goodness. The best of
the pagan philosophers, he adds, taught that God was incorporeal,
incommutable, and simple. Reprising Plotinus and Porphyry, as
transmitted by Marius Victorinus, he continues, the same philos-
ophers held God's happiness to lie in His being, life, and thought
{esse, vivere, intelligere), three activities which, although distinct, are
united in His being.147 This deft introduction of the earliest Latin
Christian Neoplatonist on the Trinity into the debate provides
Peter with ammunition against Abelard's own appeal to Neopla-

145
Ibid., 5:15-16, PL 191: 1392D-1394B.
146
Ibid., 7:12-13, PL 191: 1420B.
147
Ibid., 1:19-23, 11:33-36, PZ, 191: 1326B-1329A, 1495A. This substitution of
one Neoplatonic triad for another is ignored by Johannes Schneider, Die Lehre vom
dreieinigen Gott in der Schule des Petrus Lombardus (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag,
1961), pp. 21-22. For the transmission of Victorinus, see David N. Bell, "Esse,
Vivere, Intellegere: The Noetic Triad and the Image of God," RTAM 52 (1985):
5-43. For the range of contemporary readings of the invisibilia dei passage, see
Artur Michael Landgraf, "Zur Lehre von der Gotteserkenntnis in der Frühscho-
lastik," New Scholasticism 4 (1930): 261-88.
 SACRA PAGINA 213

tonism to support the claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a
mystery of the faith requiring revelation, but a philosophical idea
equatable with the One, Nous, and World Soul. The same argu-
ment arms Peter for his attack on Abelard's notorious denomina-
tion of the Trinitarian persons as power, wisdom, and goodness.
This passage reveals a Peter Lombard who is far from unapprecia-
tive of the philosophical issues embedded in contemporary dogma-
tic controversies, and far from being an obscurantist, as he is so
often type-cast. At the same time, he makes it clear in his discussion
of predestination, at Romans 1:7 and 8:29,148 that he dissociates
himself from Abelard's effort to recast this theme into the logical
problem of necessity, possibility, and future contingents. And, he
agrees with Paul at Colossians 2:48 that we should not be deluded
by the beguiling speech of philosophers, a reading which, as follow-
ers of Abelard, the Cambridge commentator and Robert of Melun
energetically protest.149
If his exegesis of Paul affords Peter the opportunity to cross
swords with recent and current antagonists, it also gives him the
chance to pilot the reader along the current of the contemporary
mainstream. A salient case in point is his interpretation of Paul on
justification in the Epistle to the Romans, where he states, firmly
and crisply, the contemporary consensus position.150 In discussing
the faith that saves the Romans, whether of pagan or Jewish
background, Peter makes three main points about justification.
First, nothing man knows or does before God grants him faith can
increase his merit. Second, faith can be understood in three ways.
There is faith as the intellectual assent to theological propositions.
There is faith as the acceptance of someone's word as trustworthy.
Neither of these kinds of faith justifies; for the devil possesses faith
of this sort. To be salvific, faith must combine assent and trust with
the love that informs the good deeds bonding Christians to each
other and to God. Justifying faith, then, is the faith that works in
love. Peter's third point is that, while good works done before or
without faith have no merit, good works done in faith and love do
have merit, even if the intention to perform them is frustrated by
circumstances that prevent their expression in external deeds. As

148
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 1:7, 8:29, PL 191: 1310B-1311D, 1449B-
1450B.
149
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Colossenses 2:48, PL 192: 270D-272B; In Epistolam
ad Colossenses, in Comm. Cant., 3: 490-91; Robert of Melun, In Epistolam ad Co-
lossenses, in Quaest. de Ep. Pauli, pp. 264—65.
150
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 1:8-10, 3:19-4:8, PL 191: 1322D-1325A,
1358D-1367C.
214 CHAPTER FOUR

he sums up this analysis at Romans 3:27, Peter states "for the

intention makes the deed good, and faith directs the intention,"
underscoring thereby yet another hallmark position in the mid-
twelfth-century theological consensus.131
In Romans 6:12-14 and 7:7-8, Peter provides the psychological
understanding that undergirds that intentionalist outlook in
another statement of the contemporary consensus, this time on the
psychogenesis of ethical acts.152 In an analysis whose substance and
language can be found widely in this period, including Peter's own
gloss on Psalm 1, as noted above, and one which reappears in the
Sentences, Peter subdivides the stages of ethical choice into three,
labeled temptation (propassio), contemplation of the temptation or
delectation (delectatio), and the conscious decision to succumb to it
(consensus). While man, after the fall, is inclined to sin, Peter stresses
that this inclination is not itself sin; nor is its outcome in sin
inevitable. Neither is temptation a sin. For, the desires that lead to
temptation arise in the moral subject involuntarily. It does not lie
within his power to prevent them from occurring. Where he does
exercise judgment and voluntary choice is in the next two stages. At
the point of delectatio, once he has recognized the fact that the
temptation is, indeed, a temptation to sin and not just a feeling
whose pursuit is morally good or neutral, he has the option of
entertaining it or rejecting and resisting it. The outcome of his
choice in the delectatio stage is seen in the final, or consensus stage. If
the subject has voluntarily assented to the propassio through delecta-
tio, then he commits himself to it at the point of consensus. Consent,
for Peter, is where the essence of the sin lies, and this, irrespective of
whether or not the subject has translated the sinful intention into
action.
These are just two examples out of a number of passages in
Peter's commentary on Paul where the doctrine stated is not only
Peter's own, but an opinion of mid-twelfth-century theology more
generally. While he certainly draws on his glosses on the other
Pauline epistles in the same way, his mining of his Romans gloss in
the construction of his systematic theology is particularly notice-

151
For the contemporary consensus on intentionalism in the moral life, see, in
particular, Robert Blomme, La doctrine du péché dans les écoles théologiques de la première
moitié du ΧΙΓ siècle (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1958),
passim and esp. pp. x, 15-87, 165-217, 223-94, 330-35, 343-59; also Artur
Michael Landgraf, "Die Bestimmung des Verdienstgrades in der Frühscholastik,"
Scholastik 8 (1933): 1-40; Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux ΧΙΓ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles,
vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1948-59), 2: 494-96.
152
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 6:12-14, 7:7-8, PL 191: 1407C, 1416D.
 SACRA PAGINA 215

able. It has been tracked carefully by Ignatius G. Brady, the most

recent editor of the Sentences, in his annotations ofthat text. Themes
from Romans that resurface in the Sentences in more or less the same
form include Peter's analysis of the sin against the Holy Spirit,
justification, and the psychology of ethical choice, which we have
already discussed, and also original sin, the nature of actual sin,
grace and free will, and Christ's human nature. In some cases Peter
expands on what he has said in his Pauline gloss; in other cases he
streamlines his treatment of the topic. He may combine the mate-
rial in his gloss with additional citations and reflections. But he
generally relies on the gloss in these areas to provide building
blocks for the Sentences as well as a guide to how the theological
questions should be put, and which authorities to call upon in
answering them.153
Peter's commentary on Paul, finally, allows us to chart the
interplay between his exegesis and his systematic theology in areas
where his teaching changed and developed over time. A particular-
ly accessible case in point is the Christology which he propounds in
his gloss on Romans, for here we have editions of his earlier and
later versions of the Roman commentary as well as his ultimate
position in the Sentences. Peter's remarks on Christology in Romans
1 in the first redaction of his Romans gloss are straightforward, and
show little awareness of the debates on theological language in-
spired by the contemporary study of Boethius's theological
tractates.154 But the second redaction of the gloss and the final
edition of the Sentences show that Peter had been sensitized to these
issues by his reading of Gilbert of Poitiers and John Damascene in
the 1140s and early 1150s. His encounters with these two sources
can be dated with certainty within this period.155 Gilbert was well

153
Ignatius C. Brady, prolegomenon to Sent. 2: 12*—13*, 19*.
154
Peter Lombard, Tractatus de Incarnatione, ed. Ignatius C. Brady, in Sent. 2:
54*-76*.
135
Gilbert's work was known to the Lombard not only textually but through
the Paris chapter of Gilbert's teaching career, from ca. 1137 until his departure to
receive the bishopric of Poitiers in 1142. Peter also knew the work of Gilbert's
earliest disciples in the Paris area, as well as being one of the periti involved in the
consistory of Paris in 1147 and the council of Rheims in 1148, at which Gilbert's
views were subjected to official scrutiny. On this, see Marcia L. Colish, "Gilbert,
the Early Porre tans, and Peter Lombard: Semantics and Theology," in Gilbert de
Poitiers et ses contemporains: Aux origines de la logica modernorum, ed. Jean Jolivet and
Alain de Libera (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987), pp. 229-50; "Early Porretan Theo-
logy," RTAM 56 (1989): 58-79. For the dating of Peter's encounter with the work
of John Damascene, see Eligius M. Buytaert, "St. John Damascene, Peter Lom-
bard, and Gerhoh of Reichersberg," FS 10 (1950): 323-43.
216 CHAPTER FOUR

known for the terms subsistentia and subsistens which he applied,

respectively, to the formal aspects of beings and to their concrete,
phenomenal aspects. While he asserted that this distinction did not
extend to the deity, he none the less attributed these terms to the
deity. This was confusing enough. But Gilbert also had to grapple
with the term substantia, because it was in the creed. He was
uncomfortable with it, especially as regards the incarnate Christ,
since it did not mean the same thing as either subsistentia or subsistens in
his own lexicon. His solution is really a non-solution, and it is one
shared by his earliest disciples—the attribution of substantia both to
the divine and to the human natures of Christ.156 This problematic
Porretan idea is echoed in the second redaction of Peter's gloss on
Romans 1:3 in the phrase "we recognize therefore the twin sub-
stance of Christ" (Agnoscamus igitur geminam substantiam Christi).157 As
we have noted above, this is language which he shares not only
with the Porretans but with a number of other contemporary
theologians. Peter does refer to John Damascene in this passage,
but he has not yet absorbed all the implications of his position. As
we can see in the Sentences, however, Peter later realized that the
Porretans had taken over the ambiguous vocabulary of Boethius.
Damascene clarified for him the fact that the Greeks meant the
divine essence by substantia, and that, if one accepts that definition,
it should be used consistently and exclusively with that denotation.
So, in the Sentences, he drops the twin-substance language, despite
the fact that it goes back to Augustine. He uses substantia to refer
only to Christ's divinity, and employs the terms humana natura or
humanitas to denote His humanity.158
Gilbert had also offered an understanding of the communication
of idioms in the incarnate Christ which we have discussed in
chapter 3 above and which we can see reflected, in part, in the
second rescension of Peter's Romans gloss, and reworked in the
Sentences under Damascene's influence. As will be recalled, Gilbert's
formula runs: "A nature does not take on a nature, nor a person a
person, nor a nature a person, but a person takes on a nature" (Nee
natura naturam, nee persona personam, nee natura personam, sed persona

156
Colish, "Gilbert," pp. 231-38.
157
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 1:3, PL 191: 1307C. The same language
occurs in sermons of Peter dating to the same period in his career. See Peter
Lombard, Sermo 7, 9, 12, 55, 99, PL 171: 371C, 382A, 396A, 605D-606B, 806B.
158
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 2. c. 1-c. 3, d. 3. c. 4, d. 4. c. 2.1-4, d. 8. c. 8.31, d.
19. c. 7-c. 16, d. 23. c. 3.1, c. 4.2, d. 25. c. 1.1, c. 2.2-5, d. 27. c. 3.1, d. 33. c. 1.3;
Sent. 3. d. 2. c. 1.4, c. 2, d. 5. c. 3.2-4, d. 6. c. 3.5, d. 7. c. 1.13-17, 1: 60-63, 67, 77,
79-80, 103, 165-69, 182, 185, 190, 192-94, 205, 241; 2: 28-29, 47-49, 54, 63-64.
 SACRA PAGINA 217

naturam assumpsit). For Gilbert, a nature cannot assume a nature in

the incarnation. If this were the case, the human Christ would not
have been the individual man He was. Also, it would be impossible
to explain why it was the Son Who was incarnated and not the
Father or the Holy Spirit, since they share the same divine nature.
As for why a person cannot take on a person, Gilbert adverts to his
definition of a person as a res per se una. No person can be duplex, by
definition; no being can have more than one person. The persona of
the incarnate Christ is His single, divine, persona, Gilbert's argu-
ments on the first two parts of his formula explain why he thinks a
nature cannot take on a person in the incarnation. But he also
rejects the third possibility because it would open the door to
Adoptionism, by suggesting that the Word assumed a human being
already in existence. Thus, Gilbert concludes, a divine person took
on a human nature, but it is a nature which he understands as a
human subsistens, the body and soul which make up this particular
man but which were not attached either to each other or to the
Word prior to the incarnation.159
Peter takes much of this doctrine to heart. In the second redac-
tion of his Romans commentary, he agrees that "God took on a
human nature in the unity of His person; . . . for He did not assume
the person of a man, but the nature" (Deus humanam naturam in
unitate personae suscepit; . . .non enim accepit personam hominis, sed
naturam).160 In the Sentences, he continues to reflect on this idea and
sees a problem in understanding Christ's human nature only as the
concrete individual subsistens of the man Jesus. His reading of
Damascene makes it clear to him that, if Gilbert is followed on this
point, the incarnation would have consequences for no one but
Jesus. The man Jesus would have no necessary connection with
other human beings, and the universality of the Savior's work
would be severely compromised. Importing this soteriological
dimension of the doctrine into Gilbert's formula, the rest of which
he continues to find persuasive, Peter argues, finally, that the natura
understood in the phrase persona assumpsit naturam must refer both to
the individual homo that results from the union of Christ's human
body and soul at the moment of His conception and His wider
humana natura or humanitas, in order to ensure both His concrete
historicity and His consubstantiality with the rest of the human

159
Colish, "Gilbert," pp. 237-39.
160
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 1:3, PL 191: 1307B. This language is
repeated at 1312A-1313C.
61
^ Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 2. c. 1.4, c. 2, d. 5. c. 3.2-4, 2: 28-29, 47-49.
218 CHAPTER FOUR

The commentary on Romans yields another excellent example of

a doctrine whose development we can track in Peter's thought by
comparing it with the Sentences, the nature of Christ's saving work in
the atonement. Here, we lack an edition of the relevant section of
the first redaction of his Romans gloss; but the text of the second
redaction shows that, at the time when it was written, Peter was
still a supporter of the "rights of the devil" mode of viewing this
problem,162 and that he shared some of the views of Anselm of
Canterbury, who had opposed the "rights of the devil" position in
his Cur deus homo, although without winning many supporters in the
immediate sequel. At Romans 5:8-10, Peter begins by noting that,
since God is omnipotent, He could have redeemed mankind some
other way than by the incarnation and passion of Christ. He agrees
that the way that God in fact chose was more appropriate (con-
venientior) than any of the other possibilities. One reason why this is
the case is that the misery of fallen man lies in his ability to grasp
the hopelessness of his situation and his own full responsibility for
it. This realization leads him to despair over the loss of eternal life,
and to frustration over the fruitless desire to possess it. Since Christ
is the Son of God and hence immortal, He can extend that immor-
tality to man, freeing man not only from mortality itself but also
from despair and frustration. Christ turns man's despair and frus-
tration into hope.
At the same time, according to Peter, Christ is proof against the
devil. He agrees with those theologians who maintain that the
devil's sway over man is not just. The devil wields power, but not
legitimate authority over man, a situation which God tolerates,
even though it constitutes a usurpation of His own authority. Now,
for Peter, Christ overcomes the devil, not by brute force, not by a
military or political exercise of divine omnipotence, but through
His justice. Christ is wholly good, wholly blameless as a man. His
undeserved sacrifice on the cross is a just recompense to God for the
evil man has done, repaying God over and above man's debt. His
action is suitable, because Christ serves as a moral example as well
as a redeemer. God wants man to imitate Christ by following the
path of justice, not force. Christ, for Peter, must be a God-man in

162
Good general accounts of the proponents of this theory are provided by D. E.
de Clerck, "Droits du démon et nécessité de la rédemption: Les écoles d'Abélard et
de Pierre Lombard," RTAM 14 (1947): 32-64; "Questions de sotériologie
médiévale," RTAM 13 (1946): 150-84; Jean Rivière, "Le dogme de la rédemption
au XII e siècle d'après les derniers publications," Revue du moyen âge latin 2 (1946):
101-02; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1984), pp. 161-81.
 SACRA PAGINA 219

order for this justice to be effective. If He were not a man, He could

not have been put to death. If He were not God, He would not have
had the capacity to offer an infinitely acceptable gift that was
certain of reception by the Father, since the Father and Son are
already united with each other in the bond of love.163
This analysis, in Peter's Romans gloss, shows an Anselmian
approach by accenting the idea that justice must be served, not
only in the sense that the damage done to God's honor by man's fall
must be repaired, but also in the sense that Christ's justice must be
imitated by man. As with Anselm, Peter sees Christ as imputing to
man a gift which Christ Himself has earned. This imputed gift is
something objective, eternal life and freedom from the devil as an
external ruler. Christ's saving work also brings a subjective gift to
man, the substitution of hope for sinful man's frustration and
despair.
Now, if we compare this analysis of the atonement with Peter's
treatment of the same topic in his Sentences, we will be able to see a
striking reformulation of his teaching, marked by two notable
features. First, he has been deeply influenced by the more subjec-
tive and affective understanding of the atonement found in such
contemporary theologians as Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abe-
lard. Second, and as a consequence of that fact, while he retains
some vestiges of the "rights of the devil" theory, he dramatically
reinterprets it.164 Peter's point of departure in the Sentences is that
Christ won man's redemption through His ethical merit as a man,
a merit reflecting the fact that, at all times in His life, His will was
in perfect conformity with the will of God. So important is this
point, for Peter, that he adds the claim that the passion of Christ
was not itself necessary. It was important, to be sure, but only
because it illustrated what every other act and intention of the

163
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Romanos 5:8-10, PL 191: 1384D-1387A. Peter gives
the same opinion in In Ep. ad Hebraeos 1:11-18, PL 192: 420B-424A.
164
Peter Lombard, Sent 3. d. 18. c. 1-c. 5, 2: 111-29. Good accounts of Peter's
teaching on the atonement in the Sentences include Fritz Bünger, "Darstellung und
Würdigung der Lehre des Petrus Lombardus vom Werke Christi (Sentent. Ill,
dist. 18-20)," Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie 49 (1902): 92-126; J. Patout
Bums, "The Concept of Satisfaction in Medieval Redemption Theory," Theological
Studies 36 (1975): 285-304; Robert S. Franks, The Work of Christ: A Historical Study of
Christian Doctrine, 2nd ed. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1962), pp.
167-76; J. Gottschick, "Studien zur Versöhnungslehre des Mittelalters," Zeitschrift
fir Kirchengeschichte 22 (1901): 35-67; Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 2: 170-253,
338:Jean Rivière, "Le mérite du Christ d'après le magistère ordinaire de l'église,
II: Époque médiévale," RSR 22 (1948): 234-38. For a more detailed account, see
chapter 7 below, pp. 459-70.
220 CHAPTER FOUR

incarnate Christ manifested throughout His life, His perfect obedi-

ence and perfect humility. While the passion did not increase the
perfect merit that Christ already had, in a qualitative sense, merely
giving Him another occasion to reflect that merit, the drama and
pathos of Christ's sufferings displayed His love for His fellow men
as well as His obedience to God. This love energizes human beings,
empowering them to reorder their own loves, to respond to the
grace of God, to love Him in return, and to extend love to their
human neighbors. Once man's love has been reoriented in this
way, he is able to reject the false loves that lead him into sin. His
bondage to sin is broken; and he is now ready to tread the paths to
glory that lead to beatitude. As Peter sees it, the devil's power is
nothing other than the bondage to sin that lies within the soul of
fallen man. The devil has been radically internalized and made a
function of man's psychology of sin.
This theory of the atonement requires, for Peter, a Christ Who is
a God-man, but for reasons different from those advanced by
Anselm, by the traditional defenders of the "rights of the devil"
position, and by the Peter of the Romans gloss. Christ must be a
man, he argues, otherwise He would not have been able to turn
around the hearts of other men and motivate them to love in
response to His own love. Christ must be God so that He Himself
remains immune from sin. His perfect merit is the merit Christ
earns as a man; but what guarantees it is the special divine grace
that the Word grants to the human Christ thanks to Their intimate
union. This sinlessness is important not because it assuages God's
anger or His wounded dignity, and not because it is needed in order
to change God's mind about man. Rather, Christ's sinlessness is
important because it enables Him to possess, and to display, the
perfect humility that inspires and empowers the change of heart
required for man's liberation.
While Peter's commentary on Romans is thus a rich source for
doctrines which he modifies or abandons in his later work, no less
than for positions that he later retains, other Pauline epistles also
inspired him to articulate ideas which he set aside in the Sentences.
With other theologians in his period, Peter is a vigorous defender of
the doctrines of the real presence and concomitence in treating the
Eucharist. He likewise stresses the need for its reception in the
salvation of Christians. While he shares the orthodox consensus
view that the Eucharistie elements are changed into the body and
blood of Christ at the time of the consecration, he is just as hard
pressed as are his compeers in finding adequate language in which
to describe that change. In his exegesis of 1 Corinthians, he is also
 SACRA PAGINA 221

concerned with the question of what would be received if the

consecrated elements were consumed by a mouse, a topic that had
been in the theological literature since the Carolingian age and
which had been given a new and polemical currency by the use of
the idea, on the part of Berengar of Tours and more recently by the
Cathars, that the mouse receives Christ's body and blood. As with
other contemporary theologians, Peter, in his Pauline exegesis, feels
a need to refute this attack on the real presence doctrine.165 In
glossing 1 Corinthians 11:20-25, Peter tacitly invokes the distinc-
tion between the consecrated species, the sacrament alone (sac-
ramentum tantum), and the body and blood of Christ, the sacred
reality which the sacrament contains {res sacramenti). He also articu-
lates the view that only a communicant who possesses faith in the
real presence actually receives the res sacramenti and not the mere
sacramentum tantum. While he admits that he cannot explain how the
sensible attributes of the consecrated elements can inhere in entities
which no longer exist as bread and wine after the consecration, he
supports the idea that a mouse which accidentally consumes them
receives just the physical attributes of those elements.166
By the time he wrote the Sentences, however, Peter's thought had
changed on this topic, and in two respects. First, he now is certain
that the change which the elements undergo is a substantial
change, not an accidental or a formal one. The accidents of bread
and wine remain. In addressing the problem of how they can do so,
he contrasts two opinions. One view states that, by an act of God,
these accidents are capable of enduring although the material being
that subtends them has now been changed substantially. Partisans
of the second view think that a certain amount of the substance of
the bread and wine remains after the change instituted by the
consecration, sufficient to provide a material substratum in which
the accidents can inhere. As Peter notes, this second opinion is
contradicted by the authorities who say that the change from bread
and wine into the body and blood of Christ is full and complete.
Peter does not himself resolve this debate in the Sentences,167 perhaps
not surprisingly, given the exiguousness of the philosophical vocab-
ulary pertinent to this task available prior to the reception of

165
On this whole debate, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 2: 207-22; Gary
Macy, "Of Mice and Manna: Quid mus sumit as a Pastoral Question," RTAM, 58
(1991): 157-66; "Berengar's Legacy as a Heresiarch," in Auctontas und Ratio:
Studien zu Berengar von Tours, ed. Peter Ganz et al. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,
1990), pp. 55-67.
166
Peter Lombard, In I Ep. ad Cor. 11:20-25, PL 191: 1638C-1645D.
167
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 11. c. 2.5-10, 2: 29&-99.
222 CHAPTER FOUR

Aristotle. He has, none the less, clarified the issues to a fair extent,
spelling out what the two opinions cited entail and where their
problems lie, in comparison with his address to this question in his
1 Corinthians commentary. On the other hand, and despite the
continuing interest in it shown by other theologians of the day, he
now concludes that the reception of the Eucharist by a mouse is an
utterly frivolous subject, which does not even merit discussion. He
treats it with peremptory dismissiveness: "What then does a mouse
receive? What does it eat? God knows!"168
A final example of a doctrine on which Peter's thought under-
went change, a change which we can document by comparing his
Collectanea with his Sentences, is the hypostatic union. In this case, he
moves from a definite position in his Pauline exegesis to a more
circumspect and openended one in his systematic theology. The
hypostatic union is a question of considerable importance, both in
its own dogmatic right and because Peter's teachings were sub-
jected to criticism on this topic after his death. Opponents taxed
him with having advocated Christological nihilianism, or the view
that, in His human nature, the incarnate Christ was nothing. This
position simply cannot be found in the Sentences, where Peter out-
lines the three leading theories of the hypostatic union taught
during his time, the assumptus homo theory, the subsistence theory,
and the habitus theory. He indicates that all three of them are
orthodox; all three of them receive support from the authorities;
and all three are problematic. He leaves the question open.169
Recognition of the fact that he had done so was what ended the
controversy about his alleged teaching on this subject, leading to
the vindication of Peter's orthodoxy at the Fourth Lateran council
in 1215. Now, of the three opinions, the one hardest to defend
against the charge of Christological nihilianism was the habitus
theory. In holding that Christ took on a human nature the way a
person puts on a habit or garment, its proponents made themselves
liable to the charge that the humanity of the incarnate Christ was
merely accidental and adventitious, in their teaching.

168
Ibid., d. 13. c. 1.8, 2: 314: "Quid ergo sumit? Quid manducat? Deus novit!"
Noted by Macy, "Of Mice and Manna," p. 160 n. 16. For further discussion of
this point, see chapter 8 below, p. 581.
169
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 6-d. 7, 2: 49-66. On this debate, see Horacio
Santiago-Otero, "El nihilianismo cristológico y las tres opiniones," Burgense 10
(1969): 431^3; Walter H. Principe, William of Auxene's Theologv of the Hypostatic
Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 1: £-12, 68-70;
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte 2 part 1; 84—89, 121, 136-37. For a more detailed
 SACRA PAGINA 223

There was, however, a point in Peter's career when he seriously

entertained the support of the habitus theory, his gloss on Philip-
pians 2:1-8. Drawing here on both Augustine and Boethius, he
reviews four modes of change. Change occurs, in the first place,
when an accident modifies a subject. Another kind of change
occurs, for instance, when food is eaten and is assimilated into the
body of the eater, transformed substantially into his flesh and his
energy. A third type of change is the kind in which neither sub-
stance nor accidents change, as when a ring is placed on a person's
finger. Finally, there is change in which accidents change, not in
their nature but in their form, in acquiring a different shape or
appearance. A change of this last type occurs when a person puts
on a garment which then takes on the shape of the wearer's figure.
In Peter's view, in the Philippians gloss, this fourth kind of change,
the kind of change associated with the habitus theory, is an adequate
description of the hypostatic union, explaining how the Word could
take on the form of a servant without His divinity being diminished
thereby.170 At the same time, Peter emphasizes elsewhere in the
same passage that the manhood Christ took on was fully real and
that He possessed a fully human body and a fully human soul;
further, neither His divine nor His human nature was changed by
the fact of His incarnation.171 This assertion clearly blunts the force
of a nihilianistic reading of his espousal of the habitus theory in the
Philippians gloss. But its presence there, despite his decisive later
change of mind in the Sentences, may suggest how his critics decided
that he was, and had remained, an advocate of that theory.
Peter's Collectanea thus shows, even more extensively than his
commentary on the Psalms, the centrality of his study of the sacred
page as the context in which he first began to work out his theo-
logical method and his doctrinal positions, both those he later re-
tained and those he altered during the course of his career, whether
in response to continuing reflection and additional research, in
reaction to contemporary opinions he found problematic, or in
accord with the prevailing consensus. Both his substantive ex-
planations, his handling of authorities, and the accessibility of his

account of the three opinions and the Lombard's analysis of them, see chapter 7
below, pp. 417-27.
170
Peter Lombard, In Epistolam ad Philippenses 2:1—8, PL 192: 235A-D. Cf.
Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus q. 73, ed. Almut Mutzenbecher,
CCSL 44A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), pp. 209-12; Boethius, Contra Eutychen et
Nestorium 4—7, in Boethius, The Theological Tractates, ed. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand,
and S.J. Tester (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 92-120.
171
Peter Lombard, In Ep. ad Philippenses 2:1-8, PL 192: 231D-234C.
224 CHAPTER FOUR

ideas to the reader in the format and emphasis of his gloss help to
explain the popularity of the Lombard as a scholastic commentator
on Paul. In drawing on the disciplines of the artes, his terminology
is clear, straightforward, and easy to understand. His position on
the utility of philosophy and natural reason in theology, on the one
hand, and their limits, on the other, is circumspect, knowledgeable,
and moderate. Therein lies much of the success of his appeal to
non-Christian sources, in an age when other exegetes were using a
bizarre or rébarbative lexicon or were invoking philosophy and the
artes in defense of highly questionable conclusions. There are other
features of Peter's exegetical work which also recommended them-
selves to contemporary readers. There is his rigorous adherence to
the accessus method, which controls his commentary on each
Pauline epistle, giving the reader a clear road map so that he
always knows where he is in Paul's itinerary. There is also Peter's
balanced combination of the continuous commentary, the glossing
of individual words and phrases, and the development of theologi-
cal quaestiones on a more extended basis.172 Peter gives more attention
to questions and to theological speculation than do his immediate
predecessors. At the same time, in comparison with his immediate
successors, his questions are related more integrally to the con-
tinuous commentary, and the reader is never allowed to lose sight
of the text from which the questions are derived, as a text. However
long an excursus he may make, Peter always guides the reader
firmly back to Paul's argument. And, however much he may dis-
agree with Paul's emphasis or take stands on controversial issues in
his questions, they never become non sequitur s or theological flying
Dutchmen. Further, Peter aims systematically at reading the text of
Paul literally and historically, and interpreting it ad mentem Pauli,
whether he subjects it to historical criticism or not. He adduces
more authorities in resolving vexed questions than either his prede-
cessors or his successors, taking many cues from his forerunners on
where to look for help but engaging in his own wideranging per-
sonal research. He chooses his authorities aptly and he analyzes
and deploys them perceptively. He is thoroughly committed to the
task of showing the reader how to evaluate them when they conflict.

172
The mix among the gloss, the question, and the continuous commentary,
and the sources for each, as well as the shift in taste toward the question by the end
of the twelfth century, are treated by Smalley, Study, pp. 42-86; Lobrichon, "Une
nouveauté," pp. 93—114; Bardy, "La littérature patristique des 'Quaestiones et
responses';9 R. biblique 41: 210-36, 341-69, 515-37; 42: 14-30.
 SACRA PAGINA 225

All these traits enabled the Lombard to put his own personal
stamp upon his work as a biblical exegete. They helped, as well, to
shape his approach, and that of his students, to the wider tasks of
theological system-building and doctrinal construction which he
takes on later in the Sentences. The intimate and organic connection
he maintains between these related forms of theological study make
it clear why his fellow scholastics received his exegetical work with
such enthusiasm. It also helps to clarify how that exegetical work
could play the integral role which it certainly did play in his own
approach to theological education. His address to the sacra pagina
thus made it possible for the Lombard to set biblical exegesis and
systematic theology alike on a decisive new course.
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

When one comes to Book 1 of the Sentences of Peter Lombard from

the other systematic theologies of the day, one is struck immediate-
ly by three of its features. First is the sheer amount of space that
Peter devotes to the doctrine of God. This distribution of effort
reflects his desire to give sustained attention to a subject that is of
absolute theological primacy, and one that had engendered many
current controversies that required careful, thorough, and well-
informed analysis. It was necessary to clear a path through these
debates so that the theologian, and the readers he served, could fix
their gaze on God as the supreme being and the supreme good Who
alone is worthy of enjoyment as an end in Himself. A second feature
of his treatment of God in the first book of the Sentences that sets it
apart from the work of his contemporaries is the scheme of organ-
ization he uses. As we have noted in chapters 2 and 3 above, Peter
solves thereby many of the problems of overlap, redundancy, lexi-
cal unclarity, and logical inconsistency that mar the writings of
other theologians of the day. Peter begins with man's knowledge of
God and proofs of God's existence. He moves next to the distinction
between nature and person in the Trinity. He concludes with an
extended consideration of the divine nature as such and in its
principal attributes, both God as transcendent and as unman-
ifested, and God as the creator and sustainer of the universe. Aside
from being neat and orderly, this division of the material provides
Peter with an economical means of highlighting the third, and most
important, feature of his doctrine of God, his focus on God as
absolute being, inexhaustible and unbounded by His workings in
man and nature. The Lombard's goal here is to reclaim, for west-
ern Christian thought, a theology of divine transcendence, yet one
that, at the same time, radically de-Platonizes the doctrine of God.
Ermenegildo Bertola, the modern scholar who has done more
than any other to call attention to this dimension of Peter's theolo-
gy, sees his achievement as a successful effort to mediate between a
too-abstract doctrine of God on the part of Gilbert of Poitiers and a
too-concrete doctrine of God on the part of Bernard of Clairvaux.1

1
Ermenegildo Bertola, "II problema di Dio in Pier Lombardo," Rivista di
ßosofia neo-scolastica 48 (1956): 135-50. Bertola is closely seconded by Giuseppe
228 CHAPTER FIVE

There is much more to the story than this. Quite apart from the
transcendental and Platonizing features of Bernard's theology
which Bertola's interpretation ignores,2 the accent on the divine
essence in Peter's thought which he rightly stresses must be seen,
more broadly, as a critique of the limitations of the economic view
of the deity quite common in western theology at this time, no less
than as a critique of an immanental or emanational understanding
of God that would confuse the creation with the creator or that
would make His actions responses to internal necessities of His own
being. In this respect, Peter's doctrine of God needs to be posi-
tioned no less firmly vis-à-vis those of Hugh of St. Victor, Peter
Abelard, and the Chartrains. Even without these polemics, the
focus on the divine essence holds an appeal for Peter on other
levels. It permits him to cut directly to the metaphysical implica-
tions of the doctrine of God, which he sees as having a profound
and enduring interest and importance. This, in turn, enables him
to develop a mode of intellectusfideithat provides a metaphysical
rationale for the donnée of revelation on God. And, while his
anti-Platonism anticipates an Aristotelian metaphysics and theolo-
gy in certain respects, making his doctrine of God in Book 1 of the
Sentences hospitable to Aristotelianism avant la lettre, Peter's doc-
trine of God does not sacrifice a living God, a God of agency, on the
altar of a God as essence.
Peter's organization of his material in the first book of the Sen-
tences, and some of his doctrine of the Trinity, have been discussed
already, in chapters 2 and 3 above, under the headings of the
theological enterprise and the problem of theological language.3
There, we emphasized the schematic neatness and clarity of his
approach, both in disposing swiftly and definitively of issues he
feels a need to treat, but not to expatiate on at length, and in
allocating large amounts of space to doctrines and debates that

Lorenzi, "La filosofia di Pier Lombardo nei Quattro libri delle Sentenze" Pier
Lombardo 4 (1960): 24—28. Other scholars who have noted this emphasis on the
divine essence in Peter's theology include Cornelio Fabro, "Teologia dei nomi
divini nel Lombardo e in S. Tommaso," Pier Lombardo 4 (1960): 79-81; Etienne
Gilson, "Pierre Lombard et les théologies d'essence," Revue du moyen âge latin 1
(1945): 61-64; Ludwig Hödl, Von der Wirklichkeit und Wirksamkeit des dreieinigen Gottes
nach der appropriativen Trinitätstheologie des 12. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Max Hueber
Verlag, 1965); Johannes Schneider, Die Uhre vom dreieinigen Gott in der Schule des
Petrus Lombardus (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1961), pp. 25-30, 224-26.
2
Good treatments of these aspects of Bernard's doctrine of God are found in
Marie-Dominique Chenu, "Platon à Cîteaux," AHDLMA 29 (1954): 99-106;
F. A. Van den Hout, "Pensées de Saint Bernard sur l'être," Cîteaux 6 (1955):
233-40.
3
See above, pp. 79-80, 11 £-31.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 229

required extended discussion. We also noted the logic of his han-

dling, at the outset, the connected questions of the powers and
limits of reason and of philosophical argument in establishing the exist-
ence of the deity, both as a single supreme being and as three and
one, as a means of refining and correcting Hugh of St. Victor, on
the one side, and Abelard, on the other. His definition of the terms
to be applied to the divine nature as such, and to the Trinitarian
persons in Their relation to each other, and his specification of a
concept of relation for this purpose that avoids the limits of both
relative nouns, in the grammatical tradition, and of relations
understood as accidental modifications of substance, in the tradi-
tion of Aristotelian logic, sets the stage, lexically speaking, for his
critique of the theological terminology of both Abelard, Gilbert of
Poitiers, and the Chartrains. It also enables him to reassign func-
tions attributed by theologians of a Neoplatonic or economic bent
to individual Trinitarian persons to the deity as such, without
foregoing a crisp and lucid understanding of the personal distinc-
tions within the Trinity from a strictly intratrinitarian vantage
point. While recalling that schematic considerations and the need
to develop and to use a clear and consistent vocabulary set much of
Peter's agenda here, especially given the state of play when he
entered the field, in the present chapter we need to move beyond
these considerations to the positive doctrine of God which they
undergird.

MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD: PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE

The first issue in positive theology which Peter takes up, having
stated at the outset that God is one, in essence, and three, in
persons,4 is the question of what sort of positive knowledge of God
may be possessed by man. It is notable that Peter never ventilates
the doctrine of the via negativa. Positive knowledge is the only kind
of knowledge of God that he considers. He first lays out the evi-
dence of Scripture, and then the evidence available through natural
reason, culminating in proofs for the existence of God and analogies
of the Trinity in created nature, and their limits. This overall mode
of attack is traditional. As Peter himself notes, it is grounded in
Augustine's De trinitate. As has been pointed out, many of the same
authorities are cited in support of the same, or similar, epistemolog-

4
Peter Lombard, Sentential in IV libris distinctae 1. d. 2. c. 2.1, 3rd ed. rev., ed.
Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 62.
230 CHAPTER FIVE

ical claims by contemporaries such as Hugh of St. Victor, the

author of the Summa sententiarum, Abelard, and Robert of Melun.5
Yet, Peter puts his own order on this material and uses this stand-
ard topos as a means of taking a stand on the knowability of God
that is distinctive, amid the range of current treatments of the
subject. Unlike Hugh, Robert, and Abelard, in laying out the Old
Testament and New Testament testimonies to God's existence as
three and one, he does not multiply citations. His technique,
rather, is to streamline this operation, paring it down to those
biblical texts that anchor his point most effectively, and then to
move on.6 His treatment of this part of the topos is altogether much
leaner than that of other contemporaries who invoke it, and his
address to the Old Testament witnesses lacks the air of anti-Jewish
polemic sometimes found in writers of the Abelardian school who
make use of the same material.
Even more his own is Peter's handling of the proofs of God's
existence, and of His nature as three and one, available from a
consideration of the created universe. To begin with, this topic was
one that not all scholastic theologians in the first half of the twelfth
century felt obliged to treat. No member of the school of Laon, for
instance, takes it up. Nor do Gilbert of Poitiers or his earliest
disciples. While Abelard and his followers are deeply committed to
the idea that pagan philosophers, especially the Platonists, are
witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity, the proof of God's exist-
ence, as such, does not interest them. Aside from the Lombard, the
three theologians of the day who do offer proofs of God's existence
are Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Pullen, and Robert of Melun. It is
worth comparing the Lombard's approach to theirs.

H U G H OF ST. VICTOR, ROBERT PULLEN, ROBERT OF MELUN

The earliest of these three twelfth-century efforts to prove God's

existence, and, in many ways, the least useful, is Hugh's. As was
noted above in chapter 2, a large part of the difficulty with Hugh's
proofs lies in the location which they occupy in Book 1 of his De
sacramentis. Concerned as he is with the way God manifests Himself
to man in the work of institution and restitution, and the accessibil-
ity to man of knowledge of God as so mediated,7 Hugh launches his

5
Noted by Brady, ad loc, 1: 63; Schneider, Die Uhre, pp. 12-13, 15, 21-23.
6
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 2. c. 4-d. 3. c. 1.1, 1: 63-69.
7
These tendencies in Hugh's theology have been noted by Roger Baron, Science
et sagesse chez Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1957), p. 139; Johann
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 231

project in the De sacramentis not with God as the ontological ground

of the world and man but with an account of creation in which the
emergence of creatures in the order put forth in Genesis jostles
uncomfortably with the creation as a means of access to a creator
held to have produced all creatures at the same time, despite the
way that this process is described in Genesis. In the effort to explain
how primordial causes differ from God, Hugh backs up to provide a
brief introduction to the Trinity, and how it may be known, thus
waiting until the third part of Book 1 to develop his proofs.8 He
situates them in the context of the two modes of access man has to
the knowledge of God, revelation and a rational consideration of
the natural world, each of which in turn can be subdivided into two
parts, internal and external. With respect to God's work of institu-
tion in the natural order, the physical world serves as an external
and visible source of information about God as the creator, accessi-
ble to human reason, although reason cannot go the full distance
here, since the physical world cannot show God to be three and
one. The correlative internal mode of rational investigation which
yields a knowledge of God is the mind's examination of itself, since
the mind of man is made in God's image. These two forms of
rational inquiry, external and internal, provide the basis for Hugh's
proofs of God's existence. Hugh offers three proofs. The first is
addressed to the mind's examination of itself. This examination
shows that the human mind can grasp transcendental ideas and
perfections, and can harbor concepts such as eternity and immuta-
bility which it cannot find in its own experience. Thus, a higher
cause possessing these perfections must be posited to exist to
account for the ideas about them which man finds within his own
mind. Two proofs then flow from the mind's examination of the
visible world. Here, Hugh invokes the argument from motion to a
first, incorporeal, and immutable mover and the argument from
design to an intelligent and benevolent orderer. In all these cases,
inductive logic leads to a deity with the attributes required to serve
as the cause of effects ascertainable by reason in the mind of man
and in the created universe.9

Hofmeier, Die Trinitätslehre des Hugo von St. Viktor dargestellt im Zusammenhang mit den
trinitarischen Strömungen seiner Zeit (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1968), pp. 108-
91, 19S-95, 197-268, 297-303; Jakob Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St.
Viktor (Würzburg: Andreas Göbel, 1897), pp. 37-39, 47-57; Christian Schütz, Deus
absconditus, Deus manifestus: Die L·hre Hugos von St. Viktor über die Offenbarung Gottes
(Rome: Herder, 1967), pp. 22-89.
8
See above, pp. 57-60.
9
Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentisfideichristianae 1.3.10, PL 176: 222A-223B.
Good discussions of these proofs are provided by Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre,
232 CHAPTER FIVE

The deity in question, however, is the deity as such, not a deity at

the same time three and one. Bearing in mind that Hugh has
inserted these proofs into the De sacramentis following his introduc-
tory remarks about the Trinity and man's knowledge of it, his
conclusions leave the reader wide ofthat mark. Rallying to the task
that still awaits him, Hugh next considers in what respect reason
can know that the first cause is also three persons. He appeals to
Augustine's De trinitate for two arguments designed to tackle this
assignment. One of these is far less responsive to the question than
the other. Hugh first invokes Augustine's distinction between the
Son as the Word eternally generated in the mind of the Father
{verbum occultum) and the Word as revealed and as physically ac-
cessible to man {verbum manifestum).10 In so doing, he fails to note
that the Augustinian point is addressed to the consubstantiality
and coeternity of the unmanifested Son with the Father, an argu-
ment developed by Augustine against the Arians, and that it does
not provide a third term, which is needed if he is going to provide a
rational argument for, or an analogy of, the Trinity, whether in
created nature or in the human mind. Abandoning that tack, and
understandably so, Hugh then moves to one of Augustine's three-
term analogies of the Trinity in the human mind, the mind, its
notice of itself, and its love of itself {mens, notitia, amor).u While
potentially not as useful as the analogy of memory, intellect, and
will developed by Augustine further along in his De trinitate, the
Augustinian analogy that he has chosen points to the inner life of
the Trinity. This is a fact which Hugh fails to appreciate. Referring
next to the Trinitarian formula ingenitus-genitus-procedens, as a par-
allel to mens-notitia-amor, he then treats both relational formulae as
comparable to the names power, wisdom, and goodness, as applied
to the Trinitarian persons, without seeing that he is conflating and
confusing an economic view of the Trinity with a view of the
Trinity in se in which the attributes of power, wisdom, and good-
ness do not serve to distinguish any one of the Trinitarian persons
from the others.12 At the same time, Hugh does not indicate how
the ingenitus-genitus-procedens formula can be grasped by the human

pp. 61-77; Kilgenstein as reprised by Urbain Bakus, "Dieu d' après Hugues de
St.-Victor," R. bén. 15 (1898): 109-23, 200-14.
10
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.3.20, PL 176: 225A-B.
11
Ibid., 1.3.21, PL 176: 225B-D.
12
Ibid., 1.3.22-24, 1.3.26-31, PL 176: 226A-D, 227C-234C. Hugh makes a
similar conflation of these two ways of viewing the Trinity in his Tractates de
trinitate, ed. Roger Baron in "Tractatus de trinitate et de reparation hominis du MS.
Douai 365," Mélanges de science religieuse 15 (1961): 112.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 233

mind from an inspection of itself or of created nature, the epistemo-

logical framework which he is using as the context for this inquiry.
Nor does he indicate whether wisdom, power, and goodness are
rational data, and, if so, whether they can be classified as internal
or externat. Other problems accompany Hugh's analysis. While he
certainly wants to exempt the deity from change and from
accidents,13 he does not display any sensitivity to the fact that the
idea of relation, which he invokes in discussing both the mens-notitia-
amor and the ingenitus-genitus-procedens formulae, requires any defini-
tion or qualification, despite the current debate this very point was
exciting and despite the fact that Augustine himself treats it speci-
fically in the De trinitate, Hugh's major source here. Also, although
he had stated that reason cannot know that God is three and one in
full, he does not follow Augustine's lead in indicating where any of
these Trinitarian arguments or analogies falls short.
Looked at as a whole, then, Hugh's treatment of the proofs of
God's existence, and of His nature as three and one, offers a
scrappy and incomplete initiation into this topic while, at the same
time, it points to the wider organizational and lexical burdens
under which the De sacramentis labors. Hugh's most positive con-
tribution lies in the examples of a posteriori reasoning from effects to
causes as a means of establishing the deity as the basis for phe-
nomena which the human mind can perceive in itself and in created
nature. He does not succeed in capitalizing on this advantage, or
even in adhering to his announced agenda in dealing with the
Trinitarian part of this self-imposed assignment. He does not make
full use of the patristic and contemporary resources apposite to the
issues he raises. And, insofar as his handling of the Trinitarian
analogies and names is designed to set up his treatment of Trinitar-
ian theology more generally, whether as positive doctrine or as
anti-Abelardian critique, it points to his pervasive terminological
vagueness and to his tendency to confuse the Trinity in se with the
Trinity ad extra and to emphasize the latter so heavily that the deity
as such, in His transcendent determinations, whether as Godhead
or as Trinity, gets lost in the process.14

13
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.3.25, PL 176: 227A-C.
14
A good crisp assessment of this point is provided by Edmund J. Fortman, The
Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1972), p. 190. See also Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre, pp. 114-27; A. Mignon,
L·s origines de la sco las tique et Hugues de Saint-Victor, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux,
1895), 1: 302-05; Jergen Pedersen, "La recherche de la sagesse d'après Hugues de
Saint-Victor," Classica et mediaevalia 16 (1955): 103-04, 106; Jerome Taylor, comm.
on his trans, of Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1961), pp. 113-14.
234 CHAPTER FIVE

If Hugh of St. Victor tries manfully to provide a coherent episte-

mological framework for his proofs of God's existence, which is only
partially sustained in the execution, Robert Pullen offers the most
laconic of such contemporary proofs, while making no attempt
whatever to explain why he takes the trouble to do so or what
connection, if any, this exercise has with the rest of his doctrine of
God. Unlike Hugh, Robert places his proof at the very beginning of
his Sentences. He offers a single and very simple proof. All things that
exist require a cause, he notes; and things that come into being and
pass away require a first cause without beginning or end.15 This
proof reprises a familiar Augustinian-Platonic emphasis on eternity
as a prime attribute of the deity, in contrast with the transience
marking beings in the temporal order; it is not an argument from
design, as is asserted by F. Courtney.16 In any event, having offered
this proof, Robert makes no effort to take the Augustinian high road
on the role of reason in eliciting natural or psychological arguments
either for the Trinity or for the doctrine of God more generally. His
proof is followed immediately by a remark on theological language
that challenges the appositeness and semantic coherence of the very
noun deus;17 then, ignoring the lexical obstacle which he has placed
in his own path, he proceeds to talk about the deity, and the
Trinity, as if he had never made this point, and with as slight an
appreciation of the need to define and to use terms clearly and
consistently or to address contemporary debates on this subject as
the members of the school of Laon. His proof thus stands at the
head of his Sentences, inert. It is not drawn into any kind of logical,
epistemological, or theological connection with anything else he
has to say about God. Robert Pullen evidently leads off with the
proof because he feels that it is appropriate to include one. But he
offers his readers no insight into why he thinks this is the case, or
what relation, if any, the proof is supposed to have to the rest of his
theology of the divine nature, either substantively or methodologi-
cally. On the question of rational indiciae of the Trinity he has
nothing to say.
The third mid-twelfth-century theologian to offer a proof of
God's existence, Robert of Melun, combines it with a defense of
philosophy as a source for the doctrine of the Trinity along Abelar-
dian lines. His location of his discussion of these points reflects his

15
Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo 1.1, P I 186: 674D-675A.
16
F. Courtney, Cardinal Robert Pullen: An English Theologian of the Twelfth Century
(Rome: Universitas Gregorianae, 1954), pp. 55-56.
17
Robert Pullen, Sent. 1.1, 1.4, PL 186: 675A-B, 680C, 682A.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 235

modified adherance to the schema of Hugh's De sacramentis. Not-

withstanding his dependence on Hugh and Abelard, Robert
emerges with an approach to the proof of God's existence that is
genuinely fresh, in comparison with Hugh and Robert Pullen. As
we have noted in considering the schema of Robert of Melun's
Sentences, he takes over Hugh's broad conception of sacrament as its
conceptual foundation, and orders his theology under two head-
ings, the sacraments of the Old Testament and the sacraments of
the New Testament. Instead of giving separate and express treat-
ment to what reason and pagan authorities supply about God's
work of institution, Robert assimilates this topic into his treatment
of the creation account in Genesis, a topic which he, like Hugh,
takes up before he addresses the nature of the creator, whether in
His divine nature as such or under the heading of Trinitarian
theology.18 While this mode of address reflects Robert's perpetua-
tion of Hugh's overlapping of chronology, cosmology, and episte-
mology, Robert does move up his consideration of the role of
rational proofs in establishing God's existence and nature to a
somewhat earlier point in his first book.
Robert makes a valiant initial attempt to salvage and to combine
the basic positions of Hugh and Abelard on the knowability of God
by human reason and on the utility of the pagan philosophers in
this connection. Given the opposition between those two masters
on these subjects, is not surprising to note that Robert's effort here
does not meet with full success. In support of Abelard, he tries to
yoke Augustine's acknowledgement of the help he received from the
books of the Platonists to the claim that, when the philosophers
treat the same subjects as the Bible, we can accept this pagan
witness as referring to the divine essence.19 Although he concedes
that the philosophers do so imperfectly, and although he ignores
the fact that Augustine in the passage cited is referring to the
incarnation of Christ and to the limitations of the Platonists in this
connection, and not to the existence of God or to the Trinity, he
proceeds to affirm that the pagan philosophers, especially the Pla-
tonists, support the doctrine of the Trinity. It is this Trinitarian
position, as articulated by the Platonists, he asserts, that St. Paul
was referring to in the Epistle to the Romans when he spoke of the
invisibilia dei as knowable through the phenomenal world. Without

18
See above, pp. 72-76.
19
Robert of Melun, Sententie 1.1.5, ed. Raymond-M. Martin, in Robert of
Melun, Oeuvres, 4 vols. (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovainiense, 1932-52), 3
part 1: 168-69.
236 CHAPTER FIVE

pausing to ask whether the Platonic triad of the One, Nous, and
World Soul can truly be described as an aspect of the visible
creation, and without taking account of the critics of Abelard's
application of this idea to the Trinity or of Abelard's own softening
of the line he takes on the World Soul in his later works, Robert
concludes that the objections of pagans to the doctrine of the
Trinity are groundless, on their own testimony, as are the objec-
tions of the Jews on the basis of the evidence for the Trinity in the
Old Testament.20 While this effort to vindicate Abelard may satisfy
Robert, the reasoning on which he bases it involves a misappro-
priation of both Paul and Augustine and a reverence for Abelard
that is more enthusiastic than it is circumspect.
Robert's next move is to try to conflate this alleged textual
evidence of the Platonists' defense of the Trinity with Hugh's
account of man's four ways of knowing God, both through nature
in an interior and exterior sense, and through revelation in an
interior and exterior sense. In so doing, however, he departs from
Hugh's epistemology in three ways. First, as we have just seen, he
accords far more weight to the argument from Platonic theology
and cosmogenesis than Hugh is willing to grant. Second, he argues
that man's interior rational knowledge of God, achieved through
his inspection of ideas in his mind that do not derive from man's
experience of created nature, can be obtained only with the aid of
divine illumination. Hugh himself does not impose this stipulation
on man's rational knowledge, whether internal or external. Finally,
Robert asserts that all the modes of knowledge of God available to
man in this life remain incomplete.21 Now, if one were to place the
Hugonian analysis of natural reason and revealed knowledge with-
in Hugh's wider framework of the modes of knowledge, adding to
them contemplation and the knowledge of God enjoyed by the
saints in the next life, something which Robert does not do here,
then this claim could be sustained. However, in its own sphere,
Hugh treats the a posteriori demonstration of a perfect, eternal
deity, an immutable prime mover, and a benevolent and intelligent
creator as an activity that natural reason can accomplish, and
accomplish on its own.
Despite the maladroitness of this mélange of Hugh and Abelard
with which it is associated, the proof of God's existence provided by
Robert is a rather original one. The most striking thing about it is
20
Ibid., 1.2.8-9, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 292-307.
21
Ibid., 1.3.2, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 6-10. For Hugh on this point, see M. L.
Fuehrer, "The Principle of Similitude in Hugh of St. Victor's Theory of Divine
Illumination," American Benedictine Review 30 (1979): 80-92.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 237

that Robert situates it within a discussion of causality in general.

There are three types of causes, he observes, first, final, and in-
termediate. First causes are so called because they are the first to
have effects; final causes are so called because they are the last to
have effects. This way of posing the issue indicates that Robert
views causation from a temporal standpoint, not according to the
order of being. In this sense, he continues, intermediate causes
have more in common with first than with final causes, in that they
initiate causation in their own sphere of activity and competence.
Quoting Hugh here, Robert describes them as primary causes
within their own genera (in suo genere prime cause). This statement,
however, is accurate of intermediary causes only in an operational
sense, for they receive their capacity to function as causes from the
first cause. Robert cites the example of parents, who take the
initiative in engendering offspring, offspring who are the effects of
their parents' causal actions. But the capacity of the parents to
undertake these causal actions is derived from the first cause. As
causes, the parents are not absolute within their own sphere, since
they act "in conjunction with the first cause" (cum adiuncto prime
cause). Now the first cause, which is absolute, is God alone. No
other causes are coeternal with Him. Other causes may work
through motion or the transference of their own being to their
effects, as is the case with the engendering of offspring by parents.
But God, as a cause, remains unchanging, a point Robert anchors
with a quotation from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy 3.9. God,
Robert concludes, does not transfer His own esse to other beings when
He creates them, when He exercises His direct causation upon them,
or when He empowers them to act as intermediary causes. This being
the case, the first cause must have a necessary existence.22
Both this analysis of causation and the idea that God can create
without distributing His own divine essence to other beings are
destined to crop up elsewhere in Robert of Melun's doctrine of
God, and we will encounter them again below. With respect to his
proof of God's existence, Robert's use of these principles bears
comparison with the proofs of Robert Pullen and Hugh of St.
Victor. Unlike both of these masters, Robert of Melun looks not at
the effects in nature that require causal explanation, but at the
behavior, and limitations, of secondary or efficient causes in nature.
His intermediate causes need both empowerment and assistance on
the part of the first cause. Insofar as he endows this first cause with
other attributes that distinguish it from other beings, the attributes

Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.2.1, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 263-65.

238 CHAPTER FIVE

on which he focuses are not eternity, as with Robert Pullen, or

supreme intelligence and benevolence, a status as the prime mover,
or transcendent perfections, as with Hugh. Rather, he emphasizes
the immutability and incommutability of the divine essence in
God's activity as a cause. This last point is a link between Robert of
Melun and Peter Lombard, as is the fact that Robert develops a
proof that has an integral connection with other features of his
doctrine of God. At the same time, in moving from Robert to Peter
we move to the most elaborate arguments for God's existence to be
found in mid-twelfth-century theology.

The Lombard

Peter's positioning of his proofs for God's existence reflects, in the

first instance, a rejection of the strategy adopted by Hugh and by
Robert of Melun and a willingness to take a leaf from the book of
Robert Pullen. From his point of view, it does not make sense to begin
with the creation. Rather, after determining what can be known about
God and proved about His existence and nature, the first step is to
clarify the meaning of theological language as applied to the deity,
so that a cogent distinction between the Godhead and the Trinitarian
persons can be drawn. Following that, the attributes and activities of
the deity as such can be explored, including His role as creator. This
plan of attack inspires Peter to place his proofs quite early in Book 1 of
his Sentences. As noted, he leads off with some lexical clarifications,
stating at the outset that essentia applies to the divine nature rather
than to the Trinitarian persons. He then presents a trim and carefully
selected assortment of Old and New Testament testimonies to the
Trinity. At this juncture he does not raise the question of the
testimony supplied by the pagan philosophers, a topic he takes up
later, so his omission of it here must be seen as quite deliberate.
Instead, he moves directly from the witness of biblical revelation to
a consideration of how God's existence and nature may be known
from a rational examination of the created universe.
The warrant Peter offers for the plausibility of rational proofs is a
twofold one. Both Augustine and Paul have affirmed that God has
left His traces in His visible creation. In particular, Peter draws
heavily on the Epistle to the Romans and on his earlier gloss on the
invisibilia dei passage in the Collectanea. This being the case, it may
be helpful to recall how Peter handles that text as an exegete. As
was noted in chapter 4,23 Peter's gloss on the invisibilia dei passage

See above, pp. 212-13.

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 239

serves as an occasion for him to attain two interlocking objectives at

the same time, the critique of Abelard and the articulation of his
own positive position on the utility of pagan philosophy in acquir-
ing a knowledge of God. Peter firmly rejects the association of the
One, Nous, and World Soul with the Trinity, and, with it, Abe-
lard's claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a mystery of the
faith for which revelation is required, but a teaching fully available
to reason and found in the Platonists. For his part, Peter does not
scorn either the philosophers or the appeal to reason here. Natural
reason is an epistemic reality for Peter, and one that affords access
to a knowledge of a number of divine attributes. These include
God's eternity, omnipotence, goodness, incorporality, simplicity,
and incommutability. And, he agrees, the best of the pagan philos-
ophers concur in the idea that reason is capable of establishing
these conclusions. As for the Trinitarian claim, Peter deftly shifts to
another Neoplatonic triad, that of esse, vivere, intellegere, a principle
made available by Marius Victorinus. Actually, the triad of being,
life, and thought had first been applied to the deity by Candidus,
the Arian antagonist whom Victorinus sought to refute. It accorded
well with the Arian view that God the Father exists on a higher
metaphysical plane than the Son, since esse has to be seen as a
metaphysical substratum for any of the activities that the being in
question may engage in.
Sensitive to that point, Victorinus himself, in the course of his
debate with Candidus, changed this initial Neoplatonic triad to
another one, the triad of moving, thinking, and acting (movere,
intellegere, agere).2* This latter triad was a more serviceable support
for an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in which all three persons
are seen as metaphysically equal and in which their activities are
mutually coinherent. While Peter, in his Romans gloss, does not
reveal a familiarity with this shift in Victorinus's argument, even
though his own doctrine of the Trinity would have made him
sympathetic to it, his citation even of this first triad, against Abe-
lard's triad, is more than a debater's point and more than a display
of his own philosophical erudition. It reflects, as well, a pervasive
and underlying concern with the salvaging of a doctrine of the

24
Marius Victorinus, Ad Candidum Arrianum 19; Adversus Arrium 1.4, 1.43, 1.52—
53, 3.4, 3.7-11, 3.17, 4.13-15, 4.21-22; DeHomoousio 3, in Marius Victorinus, Opera
theologica, ed. Paul Henry and Pierre Hadot, CSEL 83: 1 (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-
Tempsky, 1971), pp. 36-37, 59-60, 13S-34, 148-51, 197-99, 202-11, 222-24,
243-48, 256-59, 281-82. The changed triad also appears in Marius Victorinus,
Commentarium in Epistolam Pauli ad Philippenses 2:68 in Opera exegetica, ed. Franco
Gori, CSEL 83:2 (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986), p. 188.
240 CHAPTER FIVE

Trinity that sees the definition and description of the Trinitarian

persons as confined, rigorously, to the traits each person uniquely
possesses vis-à-vis the other two persons. With this, Peter's exam-
ple here also reflects his thoroughgoing distaste for a treatment of
the Trinity that would ascribe to any of the individual persons
attributes that, in his view, apply properly and exclusively to the
divine nature as such.
- Peter's extended reference to his own commentary on Romans,
as a curtain-raiser to his proofs of God's existence, thus makes a
telling and pointed statement. What he undertakes to prove here is
to be proved about the Godhead, not about individual Trinitarian
persons. What is to be proved about the deity, also, is to be proved
by natural reason from the sensible evidence of the creation, and it
finds corroboration in pagan philosophy. On the other hand, pagan
philosophy does not and cannot provide proof of the doctrine of the
Trinity. At best, it can provide analogies, not demonstrations. This
established, Peter offers four proofs of God's existence, which also
specify some of the deity's prime attributes. The first combines two
of the a posteriori proofs offered by Hugh of St. Victor. Observing,
with Robert Pullen, that all created beings must have causes since
they are incapable of causing themselves, he yokes the argument
from effects to a first cause with the argument from design; the
coherent order of nature in which these effects of the first cause are
disposed bespeaks the existence of a first cause that is, at the same
time, an intelligent cause. Peter's second proof could also be de-
scribed as an a posteriori proof, although it subtly moves him from
induction to a more analytical mode of reasoning. Created beings
are mutable, he notes; they must hence derive their being from a
ground of being that is immutable. The analysis of being itself
serves to undergird Peter's third and fourth proofs. The inspection
of being yields the conclusion that it exists in a hierarchical order,
with graduated degrees of excellence. Thus, there must be a su-
preme being, and one that is not merely the highest being at the top
of the chain of being, but still part of the chain. Rather, a being that
is truly supreme would have to transcend all other beings, whether
corporeal or spiritual. As well as possessing degrees, and this moves
Peter to his fourth proof, created being displays the characteristics
of changeability and compositeness. These traits also point to the
need for a creator that is a single, simple essence, not composed of
diverse parts, not subject to change, and not subject to modification
by accidents. The prime attributes of the deity that have been
elicited by means of these proofs are the deity as first cause, as
intelligent, as immutable, as one, and as simple. The theme of
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 241

immutability has received the most attention, playing a key role in

both the second and the fourth proofs. With this group of divine
attributes in hand, Peter finds that, by analyzing their implications,
he can derive the attributes of omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness
as well, as traits inhering in the Godhead.25 This conclusion arms
him, from the very beginning, for his more extended later attack on
Abelard's ascription of power, wisdom, and goodness as proper
names to the Trinitarian persons.
The proofs also require further commentary as an index of
Peter's approach to the doctrine of God more generally. Peter
evidently takes the examination of created nature as his point of
departure. But his proofs are metaphysical as well as physical
proofs. He is concerned less with examining the ways in which
created beings act than with considering the structure of created
being and what it requires as a necessary metaphysical substratum.
In treating the deity as that necessary ground of being, he is as
interested in delineating the respects in which the divine mode of
being is radically different from, and transcendent of, the world of
created being as he is in showing the ways in which the world of
created being is ontologically dependent upon God and connected
to Him. This emphasis points to a sharp contrast in tonality
between Peter's proofs and those of Hugh of St. Victor and Robert
of Melun. Unlike Hugh, Peter is not presenting himself in these
proofs primarily as a natural theologian eager to show how God
manifests Himself in the creation. And, unlike Robert, when he
thinks about causation he thinks about more than the conditions
enabling beings to act in particular events. He thinks as well, and
more fundamentally, about the conditions that enable them to exist
at all. His analysis of priority and posteriority in the treatment of
causation is not based on the notion of temporal sequence. It is
based on the order of being, not on the order of time. Peter's proofs
thus display more than a deft strategist at work, laying the founda-
tions for the polemics he wants to conduct later in Book 1 of the
Sentences. More fundamentally, they bespeak Peter's felt need to
assert a doctrine of God whose role as the necessary ground of
being of everything else that exists in no sense infringes on the
unconditioned transcendence of the divine essence. In recapturing
divine transcendence, Peter in no sense opts for a God Who is the
One beyond being. Rather, his God is pure and untrammeled
being, in all its force, being as such. Peter's placement of the

25
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 3. c. 1.1-6, 1: 68-70.
242 CHAPTER FIVE

deity on this metaphysical plane is important, in its own right, in

reimporting this emphasis, purged of Platonism, into twelfth-
century theology. It also lays the groundwork for his approach to
Trinitarian theology and for his analysis of the divine attributes
which he develops later in Book 1 of the Sentences, as well as for his
handling of the relations between God and the world throughout
his theology.
Having offered his proofs for God's existence and nature, Peter
next considers the related questions of whether, and how, the
creation offers proofs of the Trinity, through its vestiges in creation.
Here, he begins forthrightly by remarking that, in this connection,
we cannot treat of proofs, but only of similitudes. He emphasizes
that vestiges of the Trinity are to be understood as analogies of the
Trinity. They are not to be viewed in any sense as substantial
participations of God, whether of the incommutable, simple sub-
stance of the Godhead or of the personal characteristics of any of
the Trinitarian persons.26 With respect to the Godhead, the divine
essence, by definition, cannot be divided and conveyed to other
beings since it is simple, unitary, and incommutable. Any kind of
emanationist or participationist understanding of God's relation to
the world would contradict that fact, and lead to a quasi-
pantheism. As for the Trinitarian persons, Peter has already
alluded to this point in his Romans gloss and he develops it in
extenso below. The determinations of the Trinitarian persons lie in
Their relationship to each other, not in Their relations with creatures.
As for the vexed question of the alleged testimonies to the Trinity in
the pagan philosophers, Peter now pulls the issue out into the open
and gives his final opinion on it. While the philosophers, he says, may
have noted some of the Trinitarian analogies, "they saw the truth as if
through a shadow and from afar, and they were deficient in their
grasp of the Trinity" {quasi per umbram et de longinquo viderunt veritatem,
déficientes in contuitu Trinitatis); and this because the contemplation of
creatures is not sufficient to provide knowledge of the Trinity
"without the teaching and the revelation of inner inspiration" (sine
doctrinae vel interioris inspirationis revelatione) .27
This being the case, Peter follows the lead of Augustine's De
trinitate in seeking analogies of the Trinity above all in the human
mind. In comparison with Hugh of St. Victor, who uses the same
tactic, Peter is more authentically Augustinian, and in two ways. In
the first place, he gives full weight to the analogy of memory,

Ibid., c. 1.7-8, 1: 70-71.

Ibid., c. 1.9, 1: 71.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 243

intellect, and will, as well as bringing in the analogy of mens, notitia,

and amor. Secondly, he pursues, with Augustine, the limits of these
analogies as well as their suggestive force as similitudes. Memory,
intellect, and will provide a good analogy, Peter observes, because
we have here not three lives, three minds, or three essences. Each of
these faculties is the function of the same, single, subsistent mind.
Each is distinct, although they are functionally interrelated. With
Augustine, Peter emphasizes the point that this analogy falls short
of the Trinity, for the single human mind in which memory, intel-
lect, and will inhere is a rational spirit attached to a body and
conditioned, in its modes of knowledge and action, by that fact,
while God is pure spirit and incorporeal. Striking a note which he
plans to treat much more fully in the sequel, he adds that these
three mental functions are understandable with respect to each
other and that, in this connection, their names are relative nouns;
the relationships involved are not to be seen as the accidental
qualifications of substances, which can come and go. Here, he cites
the precise passage of Augustine's De trinitate 9.4 where Augustine
speaks directly to the problem of relatives from both a logical and a
grammatical standpoint.28
Peter spells out the limitation of this analogy still farther. A man
possesses these three faculties of memory, intellect, and will, but
together they do not comprise the sum total of his being. On the
other hand, the three Trinitarian persons do comprise the totality
of God's being. There are three of them, and no more. On another
level, the man who possesses these three mental faculties is a single
human person, while there are three persons in the Trinity.29 In
comparing this line of argument with Augustine's own elaboration
of the limits of his own analogy in the final book of the De trinitate,
one can detect a notable difference in emphasis between Peter and
his chosen authority here. What fascinates Augustine above all is
the analysis of the functional similarities and dissimilarities be-
tween the Trinity and the human mind. Indeed, it is in this context
that he works out much of his psychology of human knowledge. For
Peter, on the other hand, it is the arguments drawn from the structure
of being that exert the most powerful attractive force on his imagina-
tion. He looks at the human mind and at the Trinity both from the
standpoint of their essence, not their modes of operation.
As we have noted, Peter is not content to rest his case on the
analogy of memory, intellect, and will. He also adverts to the

Ibid., c. 2, 1: 71-74.
Ibid., c. 3.1-2, 1: 74-75.
244 CHAPTER FIVE

analogy of mens, notitia, and amor. Strictly speaking, in the light of

what he has already set forth, Peter does not need this second
analogy in order to complete his argument, at least if he were
content to argue merely by recycling Augustine's De trinitate. While
it is true that much of the force of his analysis here derives from the
fact that he has mined that text with more pertinence, point, and
circumspection than Hugh of St. Victor, his introduction of the
mens-notitia-amor analogy at this juncture and the way in which he
handles it indicate that Peter is establishing his own priorities in
the use of his Augustinian materials. This point is a constant
reminder of the fact that, in understanding Peter as a theologian,
we have to pay attention to how his mind works on and with his
authorities. We learn very little about his intellectual temperament
by the mere statistical listing of his citations. With respect to the
mens-notitia-amor analogy, it appeals to Peter as a way of concluding
his treatment of the Trinitarian similitudes because he sees in it the
image of a parent, a child, and the love passing between them. To
be sure, he could have used the analogy of the lover, the beloved,
and the love that unites them, which Augustine also includes in his
De trinitate, for this purpose. But the relation between mens and
notitia is preferable, for Peter, because it suggests a more conscious
and intellectualistic mode of regard. At the same time, in this
analogy, we do not have a relationship between two distinct es-
sences, as is the case with the lover and beloved and the parent and
child alike. Rather, we have the mind's own intellectual acknowl-
edgement of itself. In Peter's estimation, this makes the mens-
notitia-amor analogy a more fitting similitude of the consubstantial
Trinitarian persons. There is still another reason why Peter prefers
this analogy over the lover, beloved, and love model. In the latter
analogy, it is impossible to envision the love relationship as always
having been in place, rather than as having come into being when
the lover and beloved met. On the other hand, the mind's self-
knowledge and self-love can be seen as continuous and permanent
determinants of the mind itself, and not as having begun at a
particular moment in the mind's history. The mens-notitia-amor anal-
ogy is thus better able to illustrate the relations of the Trinitarian
persons, which are eternally structured into Their being.30 And, for
Peter, relatedness, whether seen in the analogy of the mind know-
ing and loving itself or in the analogy of the love and knowledge
bonding two human persons, is the highest and most perfect reality
of all. It may be significant that while, with Augustine, Peter can

Ibid., c. 3-c. 4, 1: 75-77.

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 245

find areas where the analogy of memory, intellect, and will falls
short, he suggests no limitations at all to the analogy of mens, notitia,
and amor with which he brings this part of his argument to a close.

NATURE AND PERSON IN THE TRINITY

As we have already had occasion to observe, Peter next makes a

forthright and clearheaded decision as to how to proceed. Instead
of moving on to the divine nature as such, followed by the Trinity,
and instead of moving back and forth between these two subjects,
as do many theologians of the time, and confusingly so, Peter's goal
is to clarify how the Trinitarian persons should be understood
before turning to the divine essence, considered first in and of itself
and next in terms of the ways in which it relates itself to the
universe and to man. He proceeds in this fashion because, given his
chosen mode of attack on Trinitarian theology, and given his
objections to the terminology of Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, and of
many theologians who sought to criticize these masters, he needs to
address the problem of theological language systematically, and at
length. This question received extended consideration in chapter 3
above. Here we may reprise the essential points that Peter estab-
lishes. First, he rigorously equates the divine substance and nature
with the divine essence, which he uses consistently to refer to the
Godhead shared by the Trinitarian persons and not to the persons
individually. He stresses that this divine essence is immutable,
eternal, incommutable, simple, and incomparable, and that, in this
respect, "God alone is called essence or being" {Deus ergo solus
dicitur essentia vel esse).31 God utterly transcends created beings.
Further, Peter treats being not as an attribute of God but as a
description of His nature as such. This view of God distinguishes
Him from created beings, including spiritual beings possessing
immortal souls, since the latter are changeable, they come into
existence at a particular point in time, and they are capable of being
modified by accidents, of developing vices and virtues, and of acquir-
ing learning and the arts, and are subject to shifting inclinations and
passions. In contrast, God is, always and totally, His own qualities.
There is nothing in God that is not God, the only conclusion compati-
ble with the radical unity and simplicity of the Godhead.32
This doctrine serves not only to differentiate God clearly from
creatures, it also provides Peter with the foundation on which he

31
Ibid., d. 8. c. 1.7, 1: 96.
32
Ibid., c.l-c. 8, 1: 95-105.
246 CHAPTER FIVE

builds his distinction between nature and person in the Trinity. He

stresses that each of the Trinitarian persons possesses the divine
essence fully, and in precisely the same way. His argument here, it
will be recalled, undergirds his handling of the mathematical
claims about the Trinity put forth by both Gilbert, Thierry of
Chartres, and Clarenbald of Arras; he shows thereby that the
Trinitarian persons are not numerical parts of a whole, or items of
the same type collected together, or quantitative additions to the
divinity that any one of Them possesses. This same outlook also
inspires Peter to modify Augustine in urging that the divine essence
cannot be seen as a metaphysical substratum for the Trinitarian
persons, understood as existing on a different level of being from
Them, and one more fundamental or abstract. 33 This point is worth
emphasizing, for it was misinterpreted later in the twelfth century
by Joachim of Fiore, who took Peter to be saying exactly the
opposite of what he did say. Joachim claimed that Peter advocated
a quaternity composed of the divine essence, as one item, and the
persons of the Trinity, as three other items. This charge was
formally rejected at the Fourth Lateran council in 1215; and, while
Joachim's treatise against the Lombard was suppressed and has
not survived, his position can be reconstructed from teachings
found elsewhere in his work, from a pseudonymous and intransi-
gent Joachite defender of it writing in the early thirteenth century,
and from the documents of the council itself.34 In sharp contrast
with that erroneous reading given to his teaching by the Joachites,
Peter insists that the divine essence shared by the Trinitarian
persons, is the one and identical divine essence, that They each
possess it perfectly and in the same way, and that terms predicating
that divine essence can be applied substantially to the Trinitarian
persons only in Their capacity as co-essential sharers of it and not

33
Ibid., d. 19. c. 8, 1: 166.
34
See the Liber contra Lombardum, ed. Carmelo Ottaviano (Rome: Reale
Accademia d'ltalia, 1934), pp. 74-76, 78^-80, 111-250 and the editor's comm. at
pp. 81, 83-86. Other reconstructions supporting the fact that Joachim and his
followers radically misinterpreted Peter are Antonio Crocco, Gioacchino da Fiore: La
piîi singulare ed affascinantefiguradel medioevo cristiano (Naples: Edizioni Empirico,
1960), pp. 103-39; E. Randolph Daniel, "The Double Procession of the Holy
Spirit in Joachim of Fiore's Understanding of History," Speculum 55 (1980):
469-70; Giovanni Di Napoli, "Gioacchino da Fiore e Pietro Lombardo," Rivista di
filosofia neo-scolastica 71 (1979): 621-63, 675-85; Fortman, The Triune God, pp.
196-97; Harold Lee, "The Anti-Lombard Figures ofJoachim of Fiore: A Reinter-
pretation," in Prophesy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed.
Ann Williams (London: Longman, 1980), pp. 129—42; Bernard McGinn, The
Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York:
Macmillan, 1985), pp. 165-68.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 247

in Their personal determinations.

For Peter, the personal traits that do distinguish the members of
the Trinity from each other and that enable us to distinguish
between person and nature in the deity are, exclusively, the rela-
tions structured eternally into the Trinitarian family that are spe-
cific and unique to each person vis-à-vis the other persons. In
articulating this dimension of his Trinitarian theology, Peter
achieves two goals at the same time. One is to reassert the Latin
Christian emphasis on the unmanifested Trinity as the prime
metaphysical reality. To this end, it is the relations of the Trinitar-
ian persons to each other, as unbegotten, begotten, and proceed-
ing, which are constitutive, differentiating them and bonding them
to each other in a timeless and transcendent way, apart from
anything They may reveal of Themselves to man in the cosmologi-
cal or charismatic orders. Peter's insistence on this point reflects his
distaste for an economic view of the Trinity that would limit what
we can know about the Trinity or what is interesting about the
Trinity to what the Trinity may choose to manifest about Its
individual or collective interactions with nature and man. To put
the point another way, in recovering the unmanifested Trinity in
this manner, Peter is saying that the Trinity, as unmanifested, is none
the less not a Trinity that remains entirely hidden from man and
unknowable except through negative theology or mysticism. For, as
he shows so clearly, one can reflect upon and appreciate the Trinity in
se, by means of positive theology, particularly if one rejects the transla-
tion of hypostasL· as substantia and the Boethian definition of persona as
applied to the Trinitarian persons, which yields three deities, and if
one makes a careful point of spelling out the differences between the
relations that are eternal properties of the Trinitarian persons vis-à-vis
each other and the concept of relation derived both from Aristotelian
logic and the grammar of relative nouns.
Peter's second objective is closely related to this first one. If the
properties of the Trinitarian persons are eternal, immutable, and
transcendent, they are also properties unique to each of the persons
as an individual; they apply to no other person within the Trinity.
It is the ability of Trinitarian names to measure up to this criterion
that defines their literal admissibility as Trinitarian names, for
Peter. Other names, and the aspects of being they denote, cannot
distinguish one Trinitarian person from another. Hence, they can
apply properly only to the divine nature as a whole. While a large
part of Peter's motivation in developing this position is his desire to
rule out power, wisdom, and goodness as proper names of the
Trinitarian persons, as Abelard and others taught, he anchors the
248 CHAPTER FIVE

point in a wider discussion of the characteristics of the divine

nature that are one in the Trinity, subdividing them into several
categories. First, there are the determinations of the deity as a pure
and perfect essence, the deity Who is being as such, viewed quite
apart from other beings that may come into being and pass away.
Immutability, unity, eternity, simplicity, incommutability, and the
like provide the concepts and language enabling us to consider the
common essence shared by the Trinitarian persons in this radically
transcendent sense. Next, there are the determinations of the divine
nature that God manifests in His creation and governance of the
universe. Omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness, and the traits that
can be extrapolated from these principles, are apposite here. Like-
wise, these traits are forms of agency in which all the Trinitarian
persons share jointly and fully whenever they are exercised. On
another level, the interaction with human beings in the order of
redemption, all three persons of the Trinity are also coactive,
although here one or another of Them may act as the delegate of
the Godhead. In this category Peter places such forms of agency as
are denoted by nouns such as judge, redeemer, sanctifier, and gift.
Yet, although particular Trinitarian persons may be entrusted with
these roles, when They carry them out, They do so on behalf of the
entire Trinity, bestowing divine justice, or divine grace, as such,
and not the qualities unique to Themselves as individual Trinitar-
ian persons. For, as Peter has already clarified, the properties
unique to each Trinitarian person are not His activities ad extra?5
Finally, there are the figurative ways of appreciating the deity's
interactions with the world and man, denoted by terms embodying
a transferred meaning, such as splendor, mirror, character, and
figure. These require relatively little investigation, for Peter, and
they do not impinge that heavily on his Trinitarian theology or on
his doctrine of God. Indeed, in addition to accenting the unity of
the Trinity in action, at both the transcendent and at the man-
ifested levels of reality on which the deity acts, Peter seeks to avoid
collapsing the former into the latter, and he wants to preserve as
large a zone of affirmative and literal positive theology as he can.
While much of the subject matter treated by the Lombard under
the heading of Trinitarian theology is formulated, in the first in-
stance, under the rubric of the problem of theological language, for

35
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 14. c. 2, d. 22. c. 3, 1: 127-28, 179. This Lombar-
dian position, maintained against the more economic understandings of the Trin-
ity in Peter's day, is treated well by Hödl, Von der Wirklichkeit und Wirksamkeit der
dreieinigen Gottes.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 249

reasons which we have indicated, the positive doctrine of the deity

as three and one that emerges from this consideration provides him
with tools for addressing other questions pertinent to Trinitarian
theology-which other scholastics either ignored or to which they
provided different answers. In this connection it is remarkable how
narrowly some of the leading theologians of the day cast their nets.
Gilbert of Poitiers has absolutely nothing to say about the doctrine
of God in general, or, indeed, about the Trinity, except to press it
into the Procrustean bed of his own idiosyncratic vocabulary.
While the author of the Sententiae divinitatis modifies some of Gil-
bert's arguments, he too confines Trinitarian theology to the sub-
ject of theological language. The same can be said for Robert
Pullen. Aside from the vexed question of the comparison of the
Trinity to the Platonic triad of One, Nous, and World Soul and the
problems resulting from their attribution of power, wisdom, and
goodness specifically and preeminently to the Trinitarian persons,
and aside from their persistent application of the inapposite analo-
gy of the bronze seal to the Trinity, Abelard and his disciples have
little to add to Trinitarian theology either. In addressing himself to
the doctrine of the Trinity more broadly, therefore, Peter finds a
need to engage in discussion with other contemporary theologians,
and not merely these more highly publicized controversialists.
One of these larger questions to which he devotes attention is the
engendering of the divine persons. God the Son, it is agreed, is
begotten, God the Father unbegotten. But, can it be said that God
engenders Himself? The Abelardian power-wisdom-goodness mod-
el provides neither a clear answer to this question, nor an answer to
the question of why one of these divine attributes should be envis-
aged as engendering, or as flowing from, another. Abelard raises
this problem more than once, without being able to resolve it.36 The
author of the Summa sententiarum, on the other hand, draws a distinc-
tion between divine person and nature here. While God can be said
to engender God in the sense that the Father, as a Trinitarian
person, engenders the Son, as a Trinitarian person, it is erroneous,
he maintains, to say that the deity engenders either Himself or
another deity, since this would conflict both with God's unity and
eternity.37 Peter is aware of the form in which both theologians put
this issue. He is sympathetic to the handling of it given in the
Summa sententiarum and to the author's indication that Augustine's
36
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 4.118-19; Theologia "scholarium" 2.148-68,
ed. Eligius M. Buytaert and Constant J. Mews in Peter Abelard, Opera theologica,
CCCM 11-13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 196S-87), 12: 324-25, 13: 480-89.
37
Summa sententiarum 1.11, PL 176: 59D-61A.
250 CHAPTER FIVE

De trinitate can be used helpfully here. He develops this topic in

rather greater detail, however. Agreeing that, if we say that God
engenders Himself, we would be admitting that there is more than
one God and that there is something prior to God, he adds, citing
Augustine, that this claim is unacceptable because no entity engen-
ders itself. This principle is a principle of being, in general. In the
case of created beings, it is valid because all such beings are caused
by other beings. In the case of God, it is valid because He is being
as such, uncaused, existing in and of Himself.38 Here, Peter shows
his propensity for putting questions pertaining to the doctrine of
God on a metaphysical level. At the same time, he recognizes that
this may not be sufficient to quell those voluble and argumentative
thinkers (garruli ratiocinatores) who insist on framing the question in
the form of tricky propositions designed to entrap the unwary. As
they would have it, if God the Father engenders God, then He
engenders a God Who is either God the Father or a God Who is not
God the Father. If the latter, then there is more than one God. If
the former, then He engenders Himself. Peter's solution is to re-
formulate the first hypothesis by inserting into it a qualifying term,
so that it now asks if God the Father engenders God the Son.
Having done so, he can proceed without being constrained, by the
form of the proposition, to argue either for ditheism or for the
self-generation of the Father, since it can be shown that, although
the Father and Son are distinct as persons, and are related to each
other as persons by their respective paternity and filiation, they are
identical in their divine aseity, with respect to their possession of
the divine nature. 39
Having shown his colors in the field of logic, Peter makes a point
of reminding the reader of the distinction between the divine sub-
stance and essence and the divine persons which he has already
drawn. While the divine substance and essence can be predicated
of all three persons of the Trinity, we cannot predicate a triple
personhood of the divine essence without tritheism. With this point
kept firmly in mind, we can conclude that the Father does not
engender Himself. To do so would be to engender another God.
What He engenders is not another God but another person.40
Along the same lines, Peter asks whether the Father engenders the
divine essence, whether the divine essence engenders the Son,
whether the divine essence engenders the divine essence, and
38
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 4. c. 1.1, 1: 77-78.
39
Ibid., c. 1.4, 1: 78. On this point, see also Fortman, The Triune God, pp.
196-97.
40
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 4. c. 2.1-3, 1: 79-80.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 251

whether the divine essence is neither engendering nor engendered.

Having taxed his opponents with confusing the Godhead with the
Trinitarian persons and having drawn the clear distinction be-
tween them that he draws, Peter proceeds to answer all these
questions with a firm "no." The questions, and others like them,
are mal posée, because they ignore the fact that engendering, and
being engendered, are activities that apply, and can only apply, to
the Trinitarian persons, and not to the divine essence or substance.
Peter concludes this protracted analysis by making three main
points. First, and here following Augustine's De trinitate 5.7.8, he
reminds the reader that the terms Father and Son are relative terms
that do not refer to the divine substance. Next, insofar as one can
find other texts in Augustine and other authors on the Trinity, such
as Hilary of Poitiers, who are less precise in their use of language,
he urges that they be understood in the sense of the first Augustin-
ian citation he has given. Finally, he anchors his conclusion by
remarking that, in order to emphasize that substance does not
engender substance in the Trinity, we should say that the Son and
the Holy Spirit are of the same substance as the Father (eiusdem
substantiae cum eo), capping this observation with a quotation from
Augustine's Contra Maximinum not brought to bear on this argu-
ment by any of his contemporaries to hammer in the idea that the
same argument applies to the Holy Spirit as to the Son.41
The foregoing topic is a good example both of Peter's outlook
and of his methodology. While he may initially sieze on a point as
raised by another recent theologian, he expands on it, connecting it
to wider issues and bringing a broader range of authorities and a
more penetrating analysis to bear on it. And, while clearly adept at
logic, he dislikes the attempt in some quarters to try to collapse
metaphysical questions into dialectical ones, especially when the
logical propositions used fail to make the proper distinctions in the
terms at issue. These same traits inform his handling of a related
question, discussed even more widely in the period, as to whether
the Father generates the Son by will or necessity. On this point,
Augustine had stated that neither was the case, in his De trinitate.
Some theologians, such as Roland of Bologna and the authors of
the Summa sententiarum and Sententiae divinitatis, are content simply to
restate Augustine's conclusion and to let it go at that.42 Robert of
Melun seeks to go beyond this mode of Augustinian ipse dixit by

41
Ibid., c. 2.4-d. 5. c. 3, 1: 80-88. The quotation is at d. 5. c. 2.17, 1: 87.
42
Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius M. Gietl (Amster-
dam: Editions Rodopi, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1891 ed.]),
252 CHAPTER FIVE

offering some reasoning in support of the same conclusion. To say

that the Father engenders the Son either by will or necessity, he
notes, would be to imply that there is some cause or constraint
under which the Father operates, which is inadmissible. Engender-
ing by nature, on the other hand, requires no such limitations. This
is not to say, Robert adds, that the Father did not want to engender
the Son. To be sure, He did want to do so; but the conclusion
makes it clear that He did so freely.43 On the other side of the
debate stood one of the followers of Gilbert of Poitiers, whose
response to the question of whether the Father engenders the Son
by will or necessity was not "neither" but "both;" according to
him, the Father exercises His will here, but in a manner not in
contradiction with His nature, and of necessity, but with a necces-
ity not involving constraint.44
Amid this spectrum of views, Peter comes the closest to Robert of
Melun both in his conclusions and in his mode of attack on the
problem, although with a crisper sense of the need to refute the
Porretan position. In comparison with Robert, and others who join
him in supporting Augustine here, he feels a need to put the
question into the framework of the divine nature more fully. He
begins by anchoring the answer "neither" with the same Augustin-
ian text that other contemporaries use, but goes on from there. As
for the claim that God acts of necessity, he agrees that it is in-
admissible, since God does nothing under constraint. Nothing at
all, not even His own nature, forces Him to act in any particular
way. As for the claim that the Father engenders the Son by will, the
problem with an affirmation of this statement is that, if the Father
could will to engender the Son, and since His will is unconstrained,
He could also will not to engender the Son. This conclusion cannot
be sustained, for, as Peter has already explained, engendering and
being engendered are eternal and unchanging personal determina-
tions of the Father and Son. In any event, Peter asks, is not God's
will identical with His very being? Yes, he answers, in the sense
that everything that is in God is God. He has no attributes that are
not His, by nature. But one can also answer this question negative-
ly. For, just as God does not will personally everything that hap-
pens in the created universe, this particular reality is not one

p. 31; Bernhard Geyer, ed., Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilberti-
schen Schule 6.B.2.5, Beiträge, 7:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1909), p. 165*; Summa
sent. \J,PL 176: 53C-54C.
43
Rober of Melun, Sent. 1.4.17, 1.4.19, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 133-35, 139-90.
44
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi I"
2.37, AHDLMA 45 (1978): 119.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 253

subject to His will. Willing involves making a decision. Decision-

making is an activity that occurs in time. There was not and cannot
be a prior decision on the part of the Father at some point in time to
engender the Son. For, to admit that conclusion would be to grant
the Father priority to the Son, in point of time, or in point of power.
But, the Father and the Son are equal in power, and equal in
eternity, although They manifest these qualities, in Their mutual
interrelations, as begetter and begotten.45 This argument serves to
emphasize at the same time God's freedom, in the sense of His
exemption from both internal and external constraints, and the
idea that the transcendent Trinitarian relationships are eternal and
are not occasioned by time and circumstance. At the same time,
Peter can reemphasize, against the Abelardians, the point that no
Trinitarian person is preeminent in any one of the determinations
of the divine essence, even as he thereby criticizes current heretics
who deny full divinity to the Son.46
In addition to this painstaking consideration of the relation
between the Father and the Son, stemming as it does not only from
the challenge of Christological heresies in this period but also from
the debates among orthodox theologians, Peter displays a deep
concern with the theology of the Holy Spirit. Not only does he
devote extended attention to the intratrinitarian status of the Spirit
but he also has much to say about His mission ad extra. The first of
these concerns springs both from the ongoing need to defend the
western doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit against
the Greek church and from Peter's more general interest in finding
a purely intratrinitarian way of defining the Holy Spirit as a
Trinitarian person, in aid of his larger project of clearly distin-
guishing divine persons in Their unmanifested state from the divine
nature. At the same time, he reflects a contemporary interest in the
role of the Holy Spirit in the religious lives of Christians. The
attention he pays to this subject stems from a felt need to explore it
more fully. But it was also triggered, to a very considerable extent,
by the handling of the Holy Spirit by Abelard. Peter's treatment of
the Holy Spirit indicates that he has paid careful attention to the
dossier of authorities assembled by Abelard on this topic, both in
the Sic et non and in his successive theological works, and also that
the tactic of brute denunciation used by critics of Abelard's posi-
tion, such as Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry, did
not constitute an adequate mode of refutation that could still pay

45
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 6. c. 1-d. 7. c. 2.3, 1: 89-94.
46
Ibid., d. 9. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 103-10.
254 CHAPTER FIVE

honor to Abelard's desire to emphasize a feature of Trinitarian

theology whose importance Peter freely conceded.

The Critique of A be lard

Because Abelard's teaching on the Holy Spirit supplies such vital

background, both positively and negatively, for Peter's own, and
because the contemporary polemics surrounding it often sparked
more heat than light, it is worth outlining this debate, noting both
the constants in Abelard's position and the shifts in his treatment of
it over time. To begin with, a large part of the problem lay in the
fact that Abelard's doctrine of the Holy Spirit was tied in with his
assertion that the doctrine of the Trinity could be known by natural
reason, and that Plato's Timaeus and other philosophical works in
the Platonic tradition served to document that claim. This position
is one which Abelard stated with no qualifications in his earliest
theology, the Theologia "summi boni"?1 Another complication is that
from the outset, Abelard invoked the doctrine oïfabula or involucrum,
the exegetical technique of peeling away metaphorical veils to
arrive at a core of doctrine that had itself been framed in allegorical
terms by its author, to explain his reading of the Platonists. This
technique was associated in the contemporary mind with the doc-
trine of creation, stemming from the Timaeus, currently under inves-
tigation by thinkers associated with the school of Chartres.
Two points must be made about this association, or lack of it,
between Abelard and the Chartrains, especially since it engendered
confusion at the time, confusion which is still with us in some
quarters. In the first place, there is a detectable family resemblance
among the thinkers committed to the Chartrain project, despite
their individual differences, and irrespective of whether they them-
selves studied or taught at Chartres, 48 a family resemblance that
distinguishes them from Abelard. The Chartrains have two prin-
cipal traits in common. First, they are not primarily interested in
theology, either Trinitarian theology as such or the charismatic

47
Peter Abelard, Theologia "summi boni" praefatio, 1.5.38-39, ed. Constant J.
Mews, CCCM 13: 85, 98-99. The preface states plainly, p. 85, "quod fidem
trinitatis omnes homines naturaliter habent." Cf. Walter Simonis, Trinität und
Vernunft: Untersuchungen zur Möglichkeit einer rationalen Tnnitätslehre bei Anselm,
Abaelard, den Viktorinern, A. Günther und J. Froschammer (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht,
1972), pp. 43-49, who claims that, while Abelard goes farther in this direction
than anyone in his time, he is not a total rationalist.
48
The repeated attempt to torpedo the idea of the school of Chartres by
Richard W. Southern, "Humanism and the School of Chartres," in Medieval
Humanism and Other Studies (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 61-85; Platonism,
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 255

activities of the divine persons in the religious lives of Christians.

Rather, they are cosmologists. Their chief interest in the Trinity is
as a source of cosmic causation. After considering the way the
universe was brought into being, the Chartrains stop discussing the
deity and turn their attention to their real subject, the structure and
function of the phenomenal world. In the second place, in reading
the Timaeus and related philosophical literature, they are dealing
with texts whose authors presented teachings on natural science
and cosmogenesis in the form of allegory and myth. Thus, the
Chartrains' use of involucrum as an exegetical technique is addressed
to the task of finding the literal meaning set forth indirectly by these
texts.
On the other hand, Abelard is primarily a theologian. He is
deeply interested in the Trinity, which constitutes most of what he
has to say in his theologiae under the heading of faith, the beliefs that
Christians have to possess in order to be saved. He is also deeply
interested in the charismatic role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian
life. While he does address cosmogenesis in his Hexaemeron and
while he does not hesitate to bring philosophy to bear on that
subject, the Hexaemeron is a late work of his, undertaken in response
to queries from Heloise and her nuns, which situates the subject in
the exegetical tradition of Genesis commentary. As a theologian
Abelard is not particularly concerned with the structure and func-
tion of the physical universe. Unlike many sentence collectors of the
period, he does not deal with the creation in his theologies. Second-
ly, while he invokes the language of fabula and involucrum, his use of
it is quite different from that of the Chartrains. Where they seek to
extrapolate literal truths about cosmology from pagan authors who
expressed themselves allegorically, Abelard seeks to read literal
statements from the Platonic philosophers as assertions of theolog-
ical truths about the Trinity, found in revelation, which, all other

Scholastic Method, and the School of Chartres (Reading: University of Reading, 1979);
and "The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres," in Renaissance and Renewal
in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 113-37, has, in our view, been refuted
successfully by Peter Dronke, "New Approaches to the School of Chartres,"
Anuario de estudios médiévales 6 (1969): 117-40; Nikolaus M. Häring, "Paris and
Chartres Revisited," in Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegu, ed. J. Reginald
O'Donnell (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), pp. 268-
329; and Hans Liebeschütz, "Kosmologische Motive in der Bildungswelt der
Frühscholastik," Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 1923-24, pp. 110-43. The most
recent guide to the literature of this debate, which also criticizes Southern's thesis,
is Olga Weijers, "The Chronology of John of Salisbury's Studies in France
(Metalogicon, II. 10)," in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. Michael Wilks, Studies
in Church History, Subsidia, 3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 114-16.
256 CHAPTER FIVE

Christians held, were mysteries of the Christian faith. In the twelfth

century itself, a double confusion was perpetrated by William of St.
Thierry. Reading with more prejudice, haste, and zeal than com-
prehension, he accused Abelard of reducing Trinitarian theology to
physical science, while at the same time he accused William of
Conches of teaching a rationalist doctrine of the Trinity.49 This
confusion, on one side or another, has been perpetuated by some
modern scholars,50 although we are indebted to a distinguished
host of others for sorting out the differences between Abelard and
the Chartrains in this connection.51 This is not to say that the

49
William of St. Thierry, De erroribus Guillelmi de Conchis, PL 180: 333A-D.
50
See, for instance, Hennig Brinckmann, "Verhüllung ('integumentum') als
literarische Darstellung im Mittelalter," in Der Begriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelal-
ter: Stellvertretung, Symbol, Zeichen, Bild, ed. Albert Zimmermann (Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1971), pp. 321-22, 328-29; Wilfried Hartmann, "Manegold von Lauten-
bach und die Anfänge der Frühscholastik," Deutsches Archiv ßir Erforschung des
Mittelalters 26 (1970): 78-79, 82; Edward Filene Little, "The Heresies of Peter
Abelard," University of Montreal Ph.D. diss., 1969, pp. 191-92, 222-30; Enzo
Maccagnolo, trans., // Divino e il megacosmo: Testifilosofiae scientifici delta scuola di
Chartres (Milan: Rusconi, 1980), p. 74; Simonis, Trinität und Vernunft, pp. 51-53;
Anneliese Stollenwerk, "Der Genesiskommentar Thierrys von Chartres und die
Thierry von Chartres zugeschreibenen Kommentare zu Boethius 'De trinitate',"
University of Cologne Ph.D. diss., 1971, pp. 5-8, 37.
51
Among the scholars who have clarified this point may be noted Joseph A.
Dane, "Integumentum as Interpretation: Note on William of Conches' Commentary
on Macrobius (1, 2, 10-11)," Classical Folia 32 (1978): 201-15; Peter Dronke,
Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1974), pp. 14-67, 100-13, 178; Mariateresa Beonio-Brocchiere [Fumagalli] and
Massimo Parodi, Storia déliafilosofiamédiévale da Boezio a Wyclif (Bari: Laterza,
1989), pp. 214-15, 226; Tullio Gregory, "Abelard et Platon," in Peter Abelard, ed.
Eligius M. Buytaert (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1974), pp. 42-^46, 51;
Anima mundi: Lafilosofiadi Guglielmo di Conches e la scuola di Chartres (Florence: G. C.
Sansoni, 1955), pp. 126-32; "Il Timeo e i problemi del platonismo médiévale," in
Platonismo médiévale: Studi e ricerche, Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, studi
storici, 26-27 (Rome: Sede dell'Istituto, 1958), pp. 122-50; "Uanima mundi nella
filosofia del XII secolo," Giornale critico deltafilosofiaitaliana 30 (1951): 494-508;
Edouard Jeauneau, "L'usage de la notion d'Integumentum à travers les gloses de
Guillaume de Conches," in "foctio philosophorum": Recherches sur l'Ecole de Chartres
(Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1973), pp. 127-79; Lawrence Moonan, "Abe-
lard's Use of the Timaeus," AHDLMA 56 (1989): 33-41, 55-72; Brian Stock, Myth
and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), pp. 43-62; Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the
Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), pp. 30-34, 36-48; intro, to his trans, of Bernard Silvestris,
The Cosmographia (New York, Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 10-12. See
also Eileen Kearney, "Peter Abelard as a Biblical Commentator: A Study of the
Expositio in Hexaemeron," in Petrus Abaelardus (1079-1142): Person, Werk und
Wirkung, ed. Rudolf Thomas (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1980), pp. 199-210; Ludwig
Ott, "Die platonische Weltseele in der Theologie der Frühscholastik," in Parusia:
Studien zur Philosophie Piatons und zur Problemgeschichte des Piatonismus. Festgabe fur
Johannes Hirschberger, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva GMBH, 1965), pp.
308-15; J. M. Parent, La doctrine de la creation dans Vécole de Chartres (Paris/Ottawa:
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 257

comparisons between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with the
Platonic One, Nous, and World Soul are unproblematic, in either
of these quarters. But it helps considerably to see that a different set
of problems is associated with the Abelardian and with the Char-
train projects.
Considering the reactions to his Theologia "summi boni", Abelard
appears to have nuanced his position on the Holy Spirit in his later
works. In the Theologia Christiana, while continuing to argue that the
Platonic doctrine of the World Soul is a fabula or involucrum, in his
own sense of the term,52 he now describes the Holy Spirit more
guardedly as endowing the universe with life, as it were (quasi vitam
universitatis posuit) and emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is not on an
ontological level subordinate to that of the Father and the Son but
that He is consubstantial with the Father and Son.53 But if Abelard
draws back somewhat in his second theologia, he returns to the fray
in his third theological work, the Theologia "scholarium", trying to
advance his cause with new arguments and expanding his brief to
include the Son as the Platonic Nous side by side with the Holy
Spirit as the Platonic World Soul. He restates his earlier position on
the pagans' rational grasp of the doctrine of the Trinity, which, he
states, they foreshadowed fully as much as the doctrine of monothe-
ism. Evidently, however, he is now willing to concede that more
than reason was required. The Platonists, he now asserts, were
recipients of divine grace, enabling them to perceive and to teach
the Trinitarian faith in all its details.54 This effort to cast Plato as a
Christian inspired by grace is bolstered by Abelard with two new
and equally shaky arguments. In one section of this work, Abelard
seeks to exculpate Plato's theology from the charge of subordina-
tionism by arguing that, for Plato, the Nous and World Soul were
coeternal with the One and that they were on the same metaphysi-
cal level.55 This misconstruction of Plato is accompanied by citations
from other philosophers whose theology, as Abelard presents it, is
compatible with the doctrine of the Trinity. Among these he cites
Seneca, who, as a Stoic, was both a monotheist and a monist,

J. Vrin/Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1938), pp. 37-58, 70-81; J. G. Sikes, Peter

Abailard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 67-68; Stollenwerk,
"Der Genesiskommentar," pp. 49-50; Haijo Jan Westra, intro, to his ed. of The
Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Attributed to
Bernardus Silvestris (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), pp.
23-33.
52
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 1.9&-107, CCCM 12: 112-17.
53
Ibid., 1.71-78, 1.96, 1.123, CCCM 12: 101-04, 124.
54
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" praefatio, 1.94-103, 1.107-09, 1.123-34,
CCCM 13: 313-14, 356-58, 360-61, 368-73.
55
Ibid., 2.174, CCCM 13: 492.
258 CHAPTER FIVE

treating as authentic the correspondence between Seneca and St.

Paul forged in the fourth century.56 While Abelard continues to
describe the Platonic Nous and World Soul doctrine as an involu-
crum, he also continues to read a literal Platonic teaching as a
statement about Christian theology,57 although he softens this
assertion to some extent by stating that all theological statements
and all applications of logic to theology need to be understood not
literally but metaphorically (translative).56 This disclaimer notwith-
standing, however, his conclusion remains "that all men may have
faith in the Trinity by nature" (Quod fidem trinitatis omnes homines
naturaliter habeant).59 And, the functions which Abelard ascribes to
the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Theologia "scholarium" are
scarcely free from difficulties. As the embodiment of the Platonic
Nous, the Son, he says, can be understood as the exemplary forms
of created beings in the mind of God, while the Holy Spirit, as the
World Soul, is the providential order in which God disposes the
creation, as well as the donor of charisms to men.60
Now, there was more than one way to handle the idea of exem-
plary causes in the tradition of Christian Platonism. One could,
with Augustine, equate them with the mind of God, making them
neither Platonic forms understandable as prior to or independent of
the deity nor as primordial causes brought into being by the deity
with which He shares the work of creation. Or, with John Scottus
Eriugena, one could regard them as created and creative, in the
second category of John's divisions of nature. Both of these possibil-
ities were considered by Hugh of St. Victor and by the Chartrains.
Abelard does not really indicate where, in this tradition, he wants
to position his own view of exemplary causes and whether, or how,
he can deal with the problem of making the Son less than coeternal
with the Father and as distinct enough from creatures so that He
cannot be seen as identical with the forms of individual substances.
As for the Holy Spirit as World Soul, Abelard wants to maintain
that He is equal with the Father and the Son, and that, in this
respect, He proceeds from both of Them. Yet, the Holy Spirit is
treated here as an aspect or an effect of creation, and not as a
creative force Himself. Since the sole functions Abelard grants to
Him have to do with the management of the created universe and

56
Ibid., 1.198, CCCM 13: 403-04.
57
Ibid., 1.147-48, CCCM 13: 379-80.
58
Ibid., 2.80-93, CCCM 13: 447-58.
59
Ibid., 2.182-83, CCCM 13: 497, continuing on this point through 2.184, p.
498.
60
Ibid., 1.37, 2.172-73, CCCM 13: 333, 491-92.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 259

with the inner lives of Christians, it is not at all clear how the Holy
Spirit can be seen as coeternal with the Father and the Son, and not
as coming into being in order to undertake these cosmological and
charismatic assignments once the world and man have been cre-
ated. Abelard's Holy Spirit would seem to have had no role at all
prior to the creation of the universe and man. His activities seem to
depend on the existence of a temporal, phenomenal order.
Abelard does not resolve any of these problems in his Theologia
"scholarium", but he does make one final attempt to soften his
position in his Dialectica, the last work in which he takes up any of
these arguments. Here, he does draw a distinction between the
Holy Spirit as a member of the Trinitarian family, coeternal,
consubstantial, and coequal with the Father and Son, and the Holy
Spirit as manifested in the creation. This Trinitarian person can be
differentiated, as a being, from His functions in time, with respect
to human beings. In the Dialectica, Abelard drops entirely the
cosmological dimension of the work of the Holy Spirit as described
in the Theologia "scholarium" and, with equal, if late-blooming pru-
dence, he leaves out the Son or Nous as a provider of exemplary
forms. He also now treats the Platonic World Soul as an allegorical
reference to the way in which the Holy Spirit spreads His gifts in
the souls of believers, rather than describing it as a literal parallel
to the third person of the Trinity.61
In comparing Abelard's handling of the Holy Spirit, in any of
these incarnations, with Peter Lombard's doctrine of the Trinity as
manifested, four points are immediately noticeable. In the first
place, Peter rejects early on the notion of the manifestations of the
Trinity, as known by revelation, as having any anticipations or
parallels in the pagan philosophers or as accessible to human
reason by nature. Rather, as we have seen, it is the divine nature of
the unmanifested Trinity which natural reason and earlier philoso-
phy are able to clarify. When it comes to the manifested Trinity,
Peter is an unabashed fideist. In this connection, he expresses the
orthodox consensus of his time. Secondly, Peter is not interested in
talking about cosmology, in any sense, under the heading of the
activities of the individual Trinitarian persons. He deals with
the creation in Book 2 of the Sentences, and God's governance of the
world, later in Book 1, under a different heading altogether, that of
the activities of the Godhead as such, in which all the Trinitarian

61
Peter Abelard, Dialectica 5.1.4, 2nd ed., ed. L. M. DeRijk (Assen: Van
Gorcum, 1970), pp. 558-59. These shifts in Abelard's position are also noted by
Dronke, Fabula, p. 178.
260 CHAPTER FIVE

persons jointly and equally share. Thirdly, he draws heavily on a

point he had made earlier, the incommutability and transcendence
of the Trinitarian persons, in Their divine nature, vis-à-vis other
beings, to strengthen the distinction, hinted at by Abelard in the
Dialectica, between the Holy Spirit as unmanifested and as man-
ifested in His charisms. And, finally, Peter expands considerably on
the mission of the Holy Spirit to man, in comparison both with
Abelard and with other contemporary thinkers who take up this
topic, with the possible exception of Rupert of Deutz.
Peter's opening salvo is the observation that, in His mission to
man as sanctifier in the temporal order, just as in His intratrinitar-
ian role in the eternal order, the Holy Spirit proceeds equally from
the Father and the Son. In both respects, He can be called love
{amor, cantos, dilectio) in a special sense. Although, to be sure, we
can say that "God is love," as the apostle John does, with reference
to the divine nature as such, and with reference to all the persons of
the Trinity as well. Yet, in His intratrinitarian role, and this harks
back to Augustine's Trinitarian analogies, the Holy Spirit is the
love bonding the Father and the Son and flowing from both of
Them. In this understanding of the Holy Spirit as love one has a
being fully consubstantial with the persons Whose love He is. And,
in contrast with Abelard's handling of the Holy Spirit, whether as
goodness or as the World Soul, one has, in this determination, a
rock-solid defense against the position of the Greeks. One also has a
way of explaining why the terms begotten and unbegotten do not
refer appropriately to the Holy Spirit in this context, since the flow
of mutual love makes comprehensible another mode of derivation,
namely double procession.62 While Peter takes from other theolo-
gians, notably Abelard and the author of the Summa sententiarum, a
number of cues as to which authorities to make use of here, his
argument on the double procession of the Holy Spirit against the
Greeks calls upon an authority he names as Jerome, but who has
been identified by Ignatius Brady as Syagrius, author of the Regulis
definitionum contra haereticos, on the point that the unbegotten-
begotten language is not appropriate to the Holy Spirit, and why.
As Peter notes, "Jerome" has a different understanding of these
terms from Augustine, the authority on whom all western theolo-
gians rely. Augustine means by ingenitus underived from anyone
else. "Jerome," on the other hand, means by ingenitus non-genitus,
that is to say, not born, leaving the way open to the idea of
procession. For its part, the term genitus has to be ruled out, for the

Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 10-^i. 13, 1: 110-25.

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 261

Holy Spirit, otherwise there would be more that one Son in the
Trinity. As Brady has noted, the Lombard is the only theologian of
his time to have known and to have made use of Syagrius, and his
application of this authority makes possible a clearer exposition of
the doctrine in question that anyone else achieves.63
In His mission to men, as well, Peter argues that there is a
double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son,
and that, although the task of diffusing charity into the hearts of
men and enabling them to love both God and their neighbors is the
work of the entire Trinity, this mission is entrusted by the entire
Trinity to the Holy Spirit. There are two central points Peter
wishes to emphasize in developing this position. First, since the
Holy Spirit is equal to the Father and the Son, in carrying out His
charismatic activities He communicates the grace of the whole
Trinity. Secondly, and here he relies heavily on Bede and on his
own earlier argument, Peter stresses that what the Holy Spirit gives
is divine grace. He gives the gift of grace; He does not communicate
Himself or the divine essence as such to the believers who receive
His charisms.64 Here, Peter harks back to the distinction between
God's essence, as incommutable, and the personal determinations
of the Trinitarian persons vis-à-vis each other, on the one hand,
and, on the other, the effects of divine action as manifested in the
created world and in the sanctification of Christians. This distinc-
tion must be preserved in order to avoid any trace of pantheism or
participationism in considering the interactions between God and
creatures. In speaking of the Holy Spirit as the love bonding
believers to each other, and to God, therefore, Peter means, strictly,
the effects of the Holy Spirit, which assist man in developing the
virtue of charity and other virtues. The notion of the Holy Spirit a$
charity in His mission to man was later rejected by Thomas
Aquinas and some other thirteenth-century scholastics.65 In taking
that line, they appear to have read Peter as the participationist that
he decidedly was not, and either objected to his position on that
account or wished to advance a different way of viewing the effects
of grace, under the headings of created grace or Aristotelian habitus.
Understanding the reception of the Holy Spirit in the sense that
Peter gives to that idea, he next raises the question of whether

63
Brady, Sent. 1: 125 n. ad loc.
64
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 14. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 126-28.
65
Noted by Fortman, The Tribune God, p. 197; Edward A. Synan, "Brother
Thomas, the Master, and the Masters," in St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274-1974: Com-
memorative Studies, 2 vols., éd. Armand Α. Maurer et al. (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 2: 227.
262 CHAPTER FIVE

believers who receive this gift can transfer it to other men. Peter
comes down squarely on the negative side of this debate. People
who receive the gifts of the Spirit, he argues, do so according to a
purely human capacity. They do not become divinized in the event.
Insofar as they accept these gifts in order to minister to other
people, the ministers, in that capacity, serve only as instruments
through whom God communicates His grace to others. It is always
God Who gives the gifts of the Holy Spirit, whether He does so in a
direct way or through human agents.66 Peter's handling of this
point illustrates well, and reinforces, his temperamental disinclina-
tion to view the Christian's incorporation into the order of grace
through the gifts of the Holy Spirit as anything more than his
achievement of his full humanity.
Pausing briefly to observe that the Holy Spirit both gives and is
given, His temporal procession being both His own donatio and an
operatio of God as such,67 Peter moves on to the point that this
temporal mission is twofold, and this in two respects. First, and in
this connection there is a parallel here with the temporal mission of
the Son, there is the visible mission of the Holy Spirit, in the form of
a dove, as well as His invisible workings in the souls of men.
Second, the first stage of His temporal mission, like the Son's,
occurs in the historical past, during the earthly life of Christ, while
the second, or current stage, takes place in the ecclesiastical dis-
pensation, following Christ's resurrection and sending forth of His
apostles.68 In the case of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, then,
there is an eternal process of filiation, or spiration, as the case may
be, and a two-stage temporal mission. At the same time, Peter is
careful to alert his reader to a point he plans to develop in detail in
the third book of the Sentences. The temporal missions of the Holy
Spirit are not strictly analogous to those of the Son. For in the case
of the manifestation of the Son to mankind, we have the union of
the Word, as a Trinitarian person, with human nature in the
incarnate Christ. This personal union continues to be the mode by
which the Word interacts with mankind in the ecclesiastical
dispensation.69 The same is not the case with the Holy Spirit. This
contrast has been inserted here to reinforce the observations made
by Peter above, concerning the difference between the gifts of the
Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit Himself. In completing his discus-

66
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 14. c. 3, 1: 129-30. For the debate on this issue, see
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 1: 169-85.
67
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 15. c. 1.1-3, 1: 130-31.
68
Ibid., d. 16. c. 1.1-2, 1: 138-39.
69
Ibid., d. 15. c. 5-c. 8, d. 16. c. 4-c. 5, 1: 134-37, 139-40.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 263

sion of the invisible mission of the Spirit in the hearts of the faithful,
he continues to insist on this distinction. The Holy Spirit does not
communicate Himself, as the divine substance. His gifts are not to
be understood as pantheistic substitutions of divine virtue for hu-
man capacity. Rather, they are to be understood as forms of
empowerment, stimuli enabling the believer to develop moral and
spiritual potentialities that are strictly human. These gifts are given
as He wills, and not to the same degree in all people. When they are
received, we cannot say that the Holy Spirit is "in us" in the same
way in which our natural created spirit is part of our natural
human constitution. Reminding the reader that this whole topic of
the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit is one of those areas in
which we speak of God in a relative sense with respect to time (de his
quae relative dicuntur de Deo ex tempore), he concludes his discussion of
the Holy Spirit, fuller by far than what we find in other contempo-
rary. theologians, by observing that he plans to treat these gifts
further, in another place.70 This he does, as we will see below in
chapter 8, in his consideration of man's moral life.

T H E DIVINE NATURE IN RELATION TO THE CREATION

The remaining topics dealing with the doctrine of God which

Peter addresses in Book 1 of his Sentences all concern features of the
deity looked at from the standpoint of the divine nature as such,
rather than from the perspective of the Trinity. He has carefully
laid the foundation for all the questions he treats here, in his earlier
discussion of the total coinherence of all the divine determinations
in the divine essence and also in his insistence on the point that the
incommutable deity remains transcendent of, and unconsumed by,
His manifestations of Himself to other beings or His interactions
with them. In one way or another, these principles inform Peter's
handling of all the questions remaining under the heading of the
deity, questions which are all, in this sense, interconnected in his
presentation of them. There are three principal issues which he
treats here, all responsive to contemporary debates, and all provid-
ing occasions for Peter not only to offer his solutions to these
debates but also to put his own distinctive doctrine of God to work
in so doing. These issues all involve the way in which the deity
interacts with the world and could be taken up in any order. We
will consider first the problem of God's ubiquity; then the relation

70
Ibid., d. 17. c. 1-d. 18. c. 5.2, 1: 141-59. The quotation is at d. 18. c. 5.2, 1:
189.
264 CHAPTER FIVE

between God's foreknowledge, predestination, and providence and

freedom and contingency in the created order; and, finally, the
most vexed question of all in this area, the question of whether God
could do better, or different, than He does.

God's Ubiquity

While God's ubiquity was not a topic that inspired accusations of

heresy in this period, it did draw considerable attention, and it
affords an excellent vantage point from which we can view
approaches to the divine nature in the early twelfth century, and
what Peter thought needed clarification in this area. Early in the
century, a number of theologians took a stand on God's ubiquity
that made them liable to the charge of an immanentalism so
unqualified that is was indistinguishable from pantheism. Anselm
of Laon typifies this problem, without being conscious that such is
the case. He states that "the divine essence is essentially in all
things" (divina essentia essentialitersit in omnibus). At the same time, he
contradicts himself later in the same passage by stating that God's
presence in creatures "is not to be understood essentially" (non est
intelligendum essentialiter).71 Anselm's followers compound the dif-
ficulty. Agreeing that God is in all creatures essentialiter, they add,
without explanation, that this essential divine presence may occur
in different ways in different creatures and that this presence may
be thought of as well as the divine power and substance (potentia,
substantia) J2 A similar position is taken by Robert Pullen, who
holds that God is ubiquitous "not only potentially but also essen-
tially, not as divided into parts but as completely everywhere" (non
solum potentialiter sed et essentialiter, non per partes divisus, sed ubique
totus), although without His purity being affected or His infinity
being circumscribed spatially.73
Understandably, some theologians in our period were made
more than a little nervous by such claims and sought ways of
retaining the idea of God's ubiquity that would not force them to
fall into this kind of pantheistic morass. Early in the century,
Honorius Augustodunensis offered one sort of solution. God dwells
everywhere, potentialiter, he argues, although substantially He

71
Anselm of Laon, Sententie divine pagine 1, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in Anselms
von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919), p. 5.
72
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 286, 288, 315, ed. Odon Lottin in Psychologie et
morale aux Χ1Γ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles, vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1948-
59), 5: 232, 233, 251.
73
Robert Pullen, Sent. 1.9, PL 186: 689C-690A. The quotation is at 689C.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 265

dwells in the intellectual heaven.74 Honorius essays no explanation

of what any of these terms mean, which may be the reason why this
particular.effort to combine God's ubiquity with His transcendence
had no takers later in the century. For his part, Hugh of St. Victor
gives a critique of the pantheist reading of God's ubiquity and little
else. God, he argues, is not substantially or essentially present in
corporeal beings. Since He is infinite, He cannot be physically
circumscribed.75 This treatment of the problem confines the ubiqui-
ty issue to creatures that have bodies. And, while it denies the
pantheist mode of divine ubiquity, Hugh does not indicate if there
is a positive concept of divine ubiquity that he can support. In
relation to Hugh, the author of the Summa sententiarum takes one step
backward and one step ahead. He agrees that God cannot be
localized and that God is pervasive in the universe, substantially.
He states that what he means by "substantial" in this connection is
not the presence of God's essence in creatures, but rather God's
effects in the order and disposition of mutable beings, as a cause
and per dispositionem. Yet, despite this apparent backing away from
total immanentalism, he continues to insist that the divine sub-
stance is everywhere (Haec divina substantia ubique tota est, et in ipsa
sunt omnia).76 If he is serious about the qualifications he makes, one
wonders why he retains an idea of substance that leads him to this
contradictory conclusion. For his part, the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis, agreeing that God cannot be bounded spatially and that
He is immutable, urges that He is not omnipresent in the world
essentialiter; rather, He is ubiquitous as the sustainer of the universe,
per sustentationem.77 But, on the manner in which God performs this
function he remains silent.
The author in Peter's environment who comes the closest to him
in offering a positive alternative to an essentialist or substantialist
way of understanding divine ubiquity, and who presents an
account that bears some relation to the rest of his doctrine of God,
is Robert of Melun. He situates this question in the context of God
as cause, in relation to created beings as causes, and in the context
of God as a being in comparison with the esse of other beings. He
draws the same kind of distinction here as undergirds his handling

74
Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 1.10, éd. Yves Lefèvre in L'Elucida-
rium et les lucidaires: Contribution, par l'histoire d'un texte, à l'histoire des croyances
religieuses en France au moyen âge (Paris: É. de Boccard, 1954), p. 362.
ß
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.3.17, PL 176: 224B-D. Noted by Kilgenstein,
Die Gotteslehre, pp. 91-102.
76
Summa sent. 1.4, PL 176: 48B-49A. The quotation is at 48B.
77
Sent. div. 6.A, pp. 156*-158*.
266 CHAPTER FIVE

of these related issues in his proof of God's existence. According to

Robert, in understanding God's mode of presence in the universe,
one must differentiate between what is being, simply (quid sit aliquid
simpliciter esse) and what is being by derivation from something else
(aliquid ex aliquibus esse). Simple, underived being is necessary being
(ipsum esse necesse est) and is God. Now, he continues, we can
attribute the word esse properly both to God and to creatures,
depending on whether we are using the term to denote simple or
derived being, respectively. Whichever choice we make, we then
have to use esse with a transferred meaning (translatio verborum) in
applying it to the other kind of being. Robert then offers a lengthy
discussion of the propriety of the similitudes that result, when the
verbal traffic goes in either direction, including a consideration of
the via negativa. But his whole line of argument is designed to refute
the claims of those theologians who defend the idea that God shares
His essence with creatures, that He is substantially present in the
creation, or that He serves as the form of created beings. The
differences between simple, underived being and created being
which he has outlined make this kind of arrangement a metaphysi-
cal impossibility. As Robert concludes, God is not ubiquitous by
His essence, but by His governance and by His effects in the
creation.78 An unusual way of posing the question in itself, Robert's
handling of the ubiquity problem is also interesting in that, while
he presents it, in the first instance, as a metaphysical issue, he
resolves it largely by means of a semantic argument.
As we turn from Robert of Melun to Peter Lombard on God's
ubiquity and His mode of presence in creation we note a similar
interest in rejecting an immanental or pantheistic approach to the
subject and a similar concern with avoiding the blurring or mixing
of two different types of being. For his part, however, Peter attacks
the problem in a different way, and positions it on a wider canvas.
He begins by observing that God can be in other things by essence,
power, and presence. As for the first, there is one and only one
non-divine being with which God unites Himself essentially. This is
the man Jesus in the incarnation of Christ. Both the human and the
divine natures of Christ are retained, without being blended into a
tertium quid in the hypostatic union. Just as the incarnate Christ is,
metaphysically speaking, sut generis, so this case is the unique
instance of God's essential union with a creature, and is the excep-
tion that proves the rule. Peter mentions this exception in order to
78
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.5.46-55, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 258-76. A good treatment
of this point is found in Ulrich Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre des Robert von
Melun (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1964), pp. 294-317.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 267

get the topic of God's essential union with creatures off the agenda
more generally, as a fundamentally inappropriate way of regarding
God's presence in the world. With respect to other existing beings,
he continues, God is present in them as the ground of their being.
He exercises this ontological function without thereby serving as
their form or definition. With this analysis of the divine ubiquity,
grounded in the structure of being, in place, Peter proceeds to use it
to explain how God can be present in all times and places without
being conditioned or circumscribed by location or change.
Moving beyond God's presence, in this sense, in the order of
creation, Peter also considers His presence in the order of grace. To
be sure, the dwelling of the deity in the saints by grace has to be
distinguished from His ubiquity in the universe, since all creatures
require a ground of being without exception, and in the same way,
while not all men are saints and, even among those who are, their
charisms differ. The point of contact or carryover between the order
of creation and the order of grace, for Peter, is the idea that God
exercises His power in these two zones in directly parallel ways. In
neither area does He communicate His essence or substance.
Rather, what He communicates is His power (virtus). And, in both
cases, He communicates this virtus in such a way as to leave intact
the creaturely status of the beings to which, or to whom, He
communicates it. Just as there is no blending or merging of the
divine nature with the natures of created beings in the world, so His
dwelling in the saints through His grace in no sense divinizes them
or alters their purely human status. Harking back to the observa-
tions he had made on the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit, Peter
emphasizes that God's relationships with the world, whether direct
or indirect and whether all-inclusive or centered on the elect, do not
involve the participation of one kind of being into another kind of
being.79 And, as to Peter's positive understanding of God's presence
in the world and in the inner life of man, he offers here, as we have
seen, the distinction between essence and virtus, a notion he spec-
ifies still more clearly by distinguishing, with respect to God's
love, its eternity and immutability secundum essentiam, and its dis-
tribution to different people differently, secundum ejficientiam.80 In all
these respects, Peter's treatment of the ubiquity question is even
more broadly gauged than Robert of Melun's. It provides a correc-
tive to immanentalism that rests on his clear and systematically

79
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 37. c. 1.1—c. 3.5, 1: 263-68. A good discussion is
found in Ludwig Ott, Untersuchung zur theologischen Briefliteratur der Frühscholastik,
Beiträge, 34 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1937), pp. 208-11.
80
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 32, 2: 184-87. The quotations are on p. 186.
268 CHAPTER FIVE

applied distinction between the transcendent deity, incommutable

in His essence, and the effects of His working in nature and grace,
which both grounds all created beings in a metaphysically prior
order of being and empowers those human beings who are called
and chosen to attain the fullness of their human nature.

God's Foreknowledge, Province, and Predestination and Free Will and

Contingency

Another constellation of questions concerning the divine nature

in God's relation to the world that received wide attention in the
first half of the twelfth century was the problem of God's foreknowl-
edge, His providence, and His predestination in relation to free
will, the agency of secondary causes, and contingency. In address-
ing this topic, twelfth-century thinkers had a range of authorities on
whom to draw, authorities who accented different aspects of the
problem and who harnessed it to different agendas. Even within the
same author one could find a different emphasis, at different points
in his oeuvre. Augustine, one of the most important of these re-
sources, had drawn a sharp distinction between God's foreknowl-
edge, as neutral, and His providence, as affording a sizeable space
for the agency of secondary causes, in the effort to place the sole
responsibility for moral evil on the misdirected use of human free
will, in his early and in his anti-Manichean works. Later, faced
with the need to refute the Pelagians, he had retained the notion of
God's foreknowledge as neutral, and, while also retaining the idea
that His providence includes both events He causes directly in the
natural order and those effected by other agents, he had empha-
sized predestination as God's direct causation in the order of re-
demption and had decreased the scope of free will. Another important
authority in this area was Boethius. While familiar with Augus-
tine's treatments of this problem, he sought, in his Consolation of
Philosophy, to include fate within the scenario, as the bearer of good
and bad fortune but as operating under the ultimate control of the
deity, while emphasizing the rational transcendence of the turmoil and
suffering that misfortune could bring in the light of that broader
understanding of it. Earlier, however, he had treated these issues
in a much more strictly logical manner, in his translation of and
commentary on Aristotle's De interpretation, the locus classicus of the
Stagirite's treatment of necessity, possibility, and contingency. Ar-
istotle himself was concerned in this work both with the modes of
causation and contingency that occur in the natural order, which
can be tested empirically, and with possibility and necessity in
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 269

the order of logic. For his part, Boethius as a commentator had

accented the logical side of Aristotle's analysis, and had not hesi-
tated to reformulate some of the Stagirite's arguments, turning
them into propositions verifiable in terms of formal logic and not in
terms of their empirical testability.
In examining the approaches taken to these questions by Peter,
his contemporaries, and his immediate predecessors, one is struck
by the one-sidedness of the address of many of them to the re-
sources provided by both the theological tradition and the school
tradition on these matters. A number of authors touch only on a
few aspects of the problem and omit much else. Some confine
themselves only to the implications of the doctrine for man's moral
life or salvation. There is not a clear consensus, across the period,
as to which divine attribute this constellation of ideas should be
seen as illustrating. In some quarters, a purely logical approach is
taken, to the point of excluding the theological dimensions of the
topic. Some authors get hopelessly tangled up in formulations of
the subject that leave them impacted with the detritus of their own
poorly framed questions. In the judgment of Calvin Normore, Peter
Lombard's handling of this subject was the most influential of any
thinker of the twelfth century, and deservedly so. Not only does
Peter display a wide-angle approach to it, a sureness of touch as to
how to address it, and solid arguments against the positions with
which he disagrees, but his positive treatment of the doctrine
grounds it firmly in the principle of God's knowledge.81 This
strategy enables Peter to take account of the idea of possibility in
the fields of logic and natural philosophy without confining it to
those modes of thought, thus drawing together the Boethian-
Aristotelian emphasis of his principal antagonist, Abelard, with a
stress on the importance of the subject from the perspective of the
divine nature, on the theological side of the debate.
Since Abelard set so much of the agenda here, it is worth begin-
ning with his attack on the problem. The first and most important
point to be made is that Abelard viewed this whole issue primarily
as a logical, not as a theological, one. He takes it up, initially, in his
early logical works, written before he decided to move on to theo-
logy. When he did make that transition, he retained the logical mode
of handling it. This fact is worth noting, in and of itself. Equally

81
Calvin Normore, "Future Contingents," in Cambridge History of Later Medieval
Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 363-64. Normore rightly associates this
position with Peter's stress on God's freedom.
270 CHAPTER FIVE

important is the kind of logic that Abelard draws out of, or applies
to, his Boethian-Aristotelian materials. In this connection, his
understanding of the scope of logic itself needs to be recalled, since
it affects powerfully his overall method and also the kinds of claims
he would be able to make for his logical arguments on this subject
when he transposes them into his theological works. Notwithstand-
ing the fact that he begins by commenting on the Aristotelian texts
available in the Latin school tradition, Abelard takes from Boethius
and sharpens a Stoic-Megaritic approach to logic as a formal art.
In his earliest works, he confirms that, for him, logic is a science of
concepts, not a mode of analysis whose goal is to seek verification of
its conclusions in the world of nature or in the ontological order.
Concepts may, initially, derive from things. But, once in the mind,
they are usable, comprehensible, and meaningful in propositional
form apart from things. It is the formal structure and relations of
the propositions and the terms that comprise them that determine
the truth claims they make. Asserted initially in his commen-
taries,82 these same principles are developed by Abelard in his own
logical treatises, both in his express statements defining the nature
and scope of logic as such83 and, implicitly, in his reformulations of
syllogistic arguments drawn from his authorities, in which argu-
ments that involve priority and posteriority in time, or conditions
that are verifiable empirically, are converted into propositions and
syllogisms that display exclusively logical relations.84 The fact that
Abelard's logic is not envisioned by him as capable of establishing
any truth but the intrapropositional truth of formal logic has re-
ceived general recognition from modern students of his philos-
ophy.85 The fact that a logic understood as a science of discourse,
82
See, for example, Peter Abelard, Editio super Porphyrum; Glossae in Categorias;
Editio super Aristotelem de Interpretation*; ed. Mario Dal Pra in Peter Abelard, Scritti
di logica, 2nd ed. (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1969), pp. 5, 61, 84-85, 105-06,
110-13.
83
Peter Abelard, Logica "ingredientibus", ed. Bernhard Geyer in Peter Abelard,
Philosophische Schriften, Beiträge, 21:1-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919-27), 21 part
1: 17, 20-21, 28-29, 60-61; 21 part 2: 112-15; 21 part 3: 307-10, 320-22; Logica
"nostrorum petitioni sociorum", ed. Bernhard Geyer in Peter Abelard, Philosophische
Schriften, Beiträge, 21:4 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1933), p. 585, Dialectica 2.1.1.4,
2.28, pp. 153-60, 163-64, 210-13.
84
Peter Abelard, Dialectica 3.1.4, 4.1.2 ff, pp. 270-309, 469-532.
85
Dal Pra, intro, to his ed. of Scritti di logica, pp. xxi-xxiii; Mariateresa Beonio-
Brocchieri [Fumagalli], "La relation entre logique, physique et théologie chez
Abelard/' in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (Leuven: Leuven University
Press, 1974), pp. 153-63; The Logic of Abelard, trans. Simon Pleasance (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, 1969), pp. 13-23, 2&-36; Geyer, comm. on his ed. of Philos. Schriften, 21
part 4: 621-33; Jean Jolivet, "Abélard entre chien et loup," Cahiers de civilisation
médiévale 20 (1977): 312-18; Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard, 2nd ed. (Paris: J.
Vrin, 1982), pp. 19-22, 44-45, 67-72, 74-77, 96-104, 229-335; Martin M.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 271

not as a science of things, a logic understood as having jurisdiction

only within its own realm and as unable to establish truth any-
where else, would make an imperfect instrument of theological
analysis, does inspire Abelard at times to argue that theological
language is metaphorical, or to invoke arguments from theological
appropriateness. But it does not dampen his enthusiasm for the
claim that dialectic, "to which the judgment of all truth or falsity is
subject" (cut quidem omnis veritatis seu falsitatis discretio ita subiecta est),
should be used to demonstrate the teachings of the Catholic faith
and to refute heretics.86
The first theological topic to which Abelard gives logic this
somewhat ambiguous assignment, on his own accounting of it, is
God's providence and future contingents. Abelard takes up this
issue for the first time in his Logica "ingredientibus", where he indi-
cates, by his very address to it, his desire to treat it as a topic in
formal logic. He urges that the subject of future contingents be
taken out of a temporal framework altogether. Past, present, and
future, to be sure, are conditions that occur in nature. But the
problem, he argues, should be treated on a conceptual and not on a
natural level.87 Our concepts, whatever their content, exist as if in
the present. This report, from the precincts of logic, is used by
Abelard to reinforce the analogy made in Augustine's Confessions
between the soul's present memory, attention, and expectation as
reducible to the soul's present action and the eternity of God,
dwelling in the eternal present. But Abelard's analysis, unlike
Augustine's, is based on the workings of propositional logic, not on
those of human psychology. One can, he notes, argue against those
who think that God's providence is undermined by natural con-
tingency and human free will, equating God's providence with
universal divine determinism. This can be done, he shows, as
Augustine had done it, by distinguishing between providence and
predestination. As he reads this distinction, providence is under-
stood as God's foreknowledge of what will happen, whether good or

Tweedale, Abailard on Universals (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Com-

pany, 1976), pp. 93-95, 130-37, 185-88, 210; Richard E. Weingart, The Logic of
Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abailard (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1970), pp. 11-31. The principal dissenters are DeRijk, intro, to his ed. of
Dialectica, pp. xxiii-xxviii, xl, lv-lix, xcv-xcviii and Lucia Urbani Ulivi, La psicolo-
gia di Abelardo e il "Tractatus de intellectibus" (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1976), pp.
85-93, 95-100, who follows DeRijk in holding that the achievement of a purely
formal logic was Abelard's goal but that he did not actually arrive at that
destination.
86
Peter Abelard, Dialectica 4.1 prologus, p. 470.
87
Peter Abelard, Logica "ingredientibus", 21 part 1: 26-27.
272 CHAPTER FIVE

bad, whether caused by God Himself or by the actions of men or

other secondary causes. On the other hand, predestination is con-
fined to God's determination of those things He wills to occur by
His own direct agency, specifically the granting of grace to the
elect. As with the late Augustine, Abelard holds that this grace has
two aspects. It prepares the elect to respond to God's call and it
helps them to persevere in it. Strictly speaking, predestination is
the grace of preparation, and it can be distinguished from the gift
that makes salvation possible once that initial grace has been
received. Since predestination has this consequence, we can say
that its causative effect is always good. Now God knows from all
eternity which men He will endow with grace. He also knows which
sins men will commit, although He does not cause them.
This Augustinian attack on the question is in no sense the whole
story, for Abelard; nor, in his estimation, is it the most interesting
way to address it. He next introduces Boethius's reprise of the key
chapter in Aristotle's De Interpretationen where a more strictly physi-
cal and logical account of necessity, possibility, and contingency is
provided. In chapter 9 of that work, Aristotle frames the issue in
terms of a sea battle that may or may not be fought tomorrow.
There is always the possibility that the captains may cancel the
battle because the rulers they represent have settled their differ-
ences. Or, hostilities may still prevail, but bad weather may prevent
the battle from taking place. The natural or human contingen-
cies involved in these possibilities lie within the structure of natural
laws and the nature of man. But whether of not they will be
activated so as to prevent or call off the battle is a matter of chance
or contingency. With this analysis in mind, Abelard now distin-
guishes providence from fate. Fate he sees as the natural necessities
built into the physical order. Fate is ineluctable in the sense that,
once the relevant physical laws of cause and effect are set in motion,
the outcomes flowing from them will necessarily follow. God knows
that these consequences will occur if these physical laws are acti-
vated, since He created the universe with the natural laws in
question. At the same time, agreeing with Aristotle and Boethius,
Abelard observes that there are areas of contingency and human
choice here which determine whether or not these natural laws, and
their consequences, will be activated in a particular instance. He
adds that there are also physical events which God permits to
happen—miracles, for instance—even though they occur outside of
the causal nexus of the laws of physics. This observation aside,
along with Aristotle and Boethius, he accents the idea that crea-
tures, as they are created, possess certain built-in capacities to do
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 273

or to refrain from doing what they choose. Giving an Aristotelian

example here, he notes that a man, by nature, is capable of sitting
down, but whether he will do so at a particular moment is a matter
of choice, not necessity, on his part. The same analysis applies to a
man's capacity to sin. The fact that God knows how the man will
exercise this capacity does not mean that God causes him to sin,
just as God does not personally cause the other outcomes that are
effects of contingencies.
Thus far, Abelard has shifted an initially Augustinian argument
preoccupied with grace and predestination to an Aristotelian argu-
ment for possibility and contingency as compatible with a universe
in which natural laws impose their own physical necessities. He
now proceeds to shift his argument once again. Still another way of
handling the problem is to transpose it from the realm of necessity,
possibility, and contingency as they operate in the natural order to
the realm of modal propositions. This option is even more attrac-
tive to Abelard, since, once the subject has been reformulated in
these terms, the propositions in which they are framed express the
ideas of possibility and necessity and their relationships according
to the formal structure of the propositions used. The conclusions
flowing from these propositions can be evaluated in terms of
whether they follow logically from their antecedents quite independ-
ent of times, places, and conditions that may or may not exist in
the physical or metaphysical order. From this perspective, Abelard
now seeks to expose the logical fallacy of the claim that God errs if
it can be shown that anything can happen in a way different from
the way in which it does happen. The rule he invokes here is this: if
the antecedent is possible, the consequent attaches the judgment
"Yes, it is possible'' to the proposition itself, not to the subject
matter or content stated by the antecedent. His treatment of this
rule is a clear articulation of the strictly logical approach to the
problem of possibility and necessity he is taking at this juncture, an
approach which he also advocates as more elegant and satisfactory
than the ones that he had set forth before presenting it.
If one applies this kind of formal logical analysis to the question
of foreknowledge and predestination, as defined above, it follows
that propositions admitting of possibility and contingency can be
constructed from propositions in which foreknowledge is asserted.
Also, as Abelard points out, it depends on how the word "differ-
ently" (aliter) is used in propositions that hypothesize on whether
things could have turned out differently from the way they do turn
out. Aliter can be used as a relative term, and also as a negative
term. Its causal force is stronger in the latter usage. In the former
274 CHAPTER FIVE

case, when aliter is used as a relative term, the presence of logical

possibility can be entertained without a contradiction with fore-
knowledge, in stating a contingent claim. The use of hypothetical
syllogisms to structure the propositions in question here itself
emphasizes the formal quality of the logical analysis involved.88
It is perfectly obvious what Abelard is trying to accomplish in
this handling of the question of God's foreknowledge and future
contingents in the Logica "ingredientibus". In moving from a theo-
logical account derived from the late Augustine to a physical account
derived from Aristotle to a strictly logical account of the issues, to
which he is guided by Boethius, he places his arguments in, what is,
for him, an ascending order of importance and persuasiveness.
Even though Abelard gives a far more elaborate treatment of the De
interpretation formulation of the problem than Boethius does in his
commentary on that work, taking it through its paces in great
detail, and offering a host of variant syllogistic forms in which the
ideas involved can be stated, situating them within the larger
context of the logical rules for affirmation, negation, and contradic-
tion, and yoking them to an express discussion of hypothetical
syllogisms, equipollent propositions, and their probative force, he
ends by reducing the Aristotelian position to the position of formal
logic far more systematically than Boethius does. Abelard grants
more authority to formal logic than to anything else in his handling
of this problem, reading across Aristotle and across Boethius him-
self to obtain a more consistently post-Aristotelain logic than his
sources provide. He shows his instinct for moving away from
theological reasoning, in redefining the divine nature, or proposi-
tions which refer to it, as part of the subject matter of formal logic.
While Abelard does admit that the debate at issue can be
approached in other ways, the other alternatives are clearly less
compelling and persuasive, for him. Above all, the logical sense of
propositions is his point of conclusion, whatever sense they may
have in the world of physical or metaphysical reality.
Abelard also takes up these same questions in his Theologia
"scholarium". His argument here is similar to that in the Logica
"ingredientibus" except for the fact that he frames the issue of future
contingents here along the lines of Aristotle's account of the sea
battle in De interpretatione 9, giving attention to the claims made in
terms of natural law as well as in terms of formal logic. The main
differences between his initial treatment of the subject and this one
are that, in the Theologia "scholarium", Abelard wants to accent

Ibid., 21 part 3: 426-47.

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 275

man's freedom and responsibility in the moral life under the head-
ing of contingency; and he wants to emphasize more strongly the
point that God can suspend the natural law when He performs
miracles. From a logical standpoint, as well, Abelard here frames
the question of the compatibility of God's eternal foreknowledge
and contingent events in the light of the nominalist theory of the
univocity of the noun in its signification, although its consignification
in statements using the past or future tenses of the verb may reflect
shifts in our knowledge or our description of what the noun signifies.89
Abelard returns to the argument offered in the Logica "ingredienti-
bus" for a third time in his most mature logical work, the Dialectica,
there offering a refinement on it.90 He reprises the point that past,
present, and future are categories irrelevent to God, since He lives
in the eternal present. He also repeats the observation that God so
ordains things that some events are capable of occurring contin-
gently, and that, when this happens, these contingencies do not
conflict with divine providence. Nor do events which, as God
ordains them, occur of necessity as consequences of the laws of
nature which He put in place. In this work, Abelard moves as well
from the Augustinian and Aristotelian arguments to attach the idea
of possibility to the logical relations between antecedent and conse-
quent propositions that formulate the alternatives in hypothetical
form. At the same time, in the Dialectica Abelard admits that the
idea of necessity also attaches properly to actual natural outcomes,
and that, even propositionally, a future contingent can only be
defended as a possibility. This conclusion imparts a rather more
Aristotelian coloration to his handling of necessity and possibility
than he had given to it in the Logica "ingredientibus". Another shift is
that, in the Dialectica, he omits the distinction between God's
foreknowledge and God's causation in treating divine providence.
He collapses these two ideas into a view of providence that takes it
to mean God's legislation for, and action in, the natural order, and
not merely God's oversight ofthat order. The theme of predestina-
tion and grace likewise departs from Abelard's agenda in this work.
These shifts in emphasis notwithstanding, the bottom line for his
handling of the entire question, both early and late, remains formal
logic, not the divine nature.

89
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium"3.5, 3.87-116, CCCM 13: 526, 536-47.
This nominalist feature of Abelard's argument has been brought out by William J.
Courtenay, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained
Power (Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina, 1990), pp. 44—50. I am indebted to Professor
Courtenay for this reference.
90
Peter Abelard, Dialectica 2.2.10-11, pp. 217-22.
276 CHAPTER FIVE

The vast majority of theologians in the first half of the twelfth

century found the Abelardian attack on God's foreknowledge and
future contingents unacceptably narrow, and even reductionistic.
There are several whose objections are grounded in the logic of
Aristotle's De interpretation, and who either fail to take Abelard's
point about the advantages of formal logic or who are aware of his
claims for it and reject them in favor of a logic that could give equal
weight to proofs verifiable in the world of real being. What we
should probably describe as a pre-Abelardian approach to the issue
is found in one of his erstwhile masters, William of Champeaux.
God's providence and predestination are the only questions he is
known to have raised concerning the divine nature. His handling of
the second topic offers a straightforward summary of the position of
the late Augustine, with one very striking exception. William
agrees that God, from all eternity, grants to His elect the grace of
preparation, justification, and perfection. Where he departs from
Augustine, a move that will attract unfavorable notice elsewhere in
this period, is in stating that, since God knows ahead of time who
will use free will to consent to the good, He chooses these people as
His elect.91 In handling providence, William equates it with causa­
tion, understanding it in the Aristotelian sense, as the physical laws
of nature. He does not bring foreknowledge to bear on this topic,
treating it along the lines of De interpretation 9. He agrees that the
natural order contains effects that follow necessarily from their
natural causes, and that this same natural order also contains
beings capable of exercising free choice or of acting contingently.
Since this is the arrangement established by God's providence, it is
not in conflict with that providence.92 Another author in our
period, and one who would have had available Abelard's fullest
arguments on this point but who reflects a preference for the De
interpretation account, is a disciple of Gilbert of Poitiers, working in
Paris in the early 1140s. He frames the problem in terms of the
distinction between natural events that occur as the result of abso­
lute necessities, stemming from the endowments or limitations of
the given natures of the beings involved, and natural events con­
ditioned by the choices of free agents or of other contingencies that
can also be seen as a part of the natural range of possibilities which
they enjoy. He agrees that God provides for both kinds of events

91
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 240, ed. Odon Lottin in Psychologie et
morale aux Χ1Γ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles, vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1948-
59), 5: 199-200.
92
Ibid., no. 237-38, 5: 195-98.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 277

even though He does not cause either kind directly.93

Much more typical, among objections to Abelard's teaching, is
the idea that God's providence ought to be considered as a theo­
logical problem, under the heading of the divine nature. Many
theologians of the day seek to reroute this topic and to take it up in
the context of their discussion of one divine attribute or another.
Until Peter Lombard tackled the question, they arrived at no
consensus as to which divine attribute was its natural habitat. In
addition, few give sustained or well-rounded attention to the prob­
lem and some encumber it with difficulties of their own invention.
A good reflection of these traits can be seen in Anselm of Laon and
his followers. On predestination, Anselm shares with William of
Champeaux the problematic claim that God foresees which of the
persons whom He justifies will persevere, and that He grants them
election on that account.94 While not as critical of Augustine on this
point as William, Anselm's formulation of it suggests that the deity
predestines such people because of their foreseen merits, rather
than giving them the grace of preparation that enables them to
acquire merit. As for the wider issue of providence, predestination,
and human freedom, Anselm treats it under the heading of God's
will. Here, he says, we can distinguish the will of God's essence
(voluntas essentie), as manifested in the order and disposition of the
universe, the good will of God (voluntas dei bona), operating in His
saints and inspiring them to love God and their fellow man, and the
will of God through precept (voluntas dei pro precepto), that is, the
moral rules God lays down for men. Anselm adds that, while man
is obliged to obey God's will in all three areas, and while God
foresees whether or not a man will do so, He does not constrain
human freedom in that foresight.95 This analysis, scanty as it is,
manages to compound two major problems. First, and this reminds
us of Anselm's handling of the divine ubiquity, is his equation of
the natural order with God's essence. Second, he does not seem to
appreciate the fact that, while men can reject God's grace and His
moral law, exempting themselves from the laws of nature does not
constitute an option for human beings. In any event, Anselm is not
particularly interested in God's relation, as a cause, to the natural
order. His real interest, so far as it goes on this topic, lies in its
moral implications only.

93
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 2.41-45, p. 121.
94
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 11, ed. Odon Lottin in Psychologie et morale aux
ΧΙΓ et Xir siècles, vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbays de Mont-César, 1948-59), 5: 22.
95
Ibid., no. 31-32, 34, 5: 33-35.
278 CHAPTER FIVE

Other masters associated with Anselm of Laon appear to have

been sensitive to the difficulties with his teachings here and, at
some points, offer rectifications, clarifications, or amplifications of
it. One of the things they share with him is the treatment of God, as
cause, in relation to created agents, under the heading of God's
will. The will of God, they observe, can be understood four ways,
as efficient, approving, conceding, and permitting (efficiens, appro-
bans, concedens, permittens). God's efficient will constitutes His direct
causative action, and also His indirect causation in cases where
man is given the capacity to function as an efficient cause in his own
sphere. God exercises His approving will when He looks with
pleasure on something He finds gratifying, or, at any rate, when He
chooses not to prevent or impede something He finds less appeal-
ing. God's conceding will comes into play when He gives His
express permission for an event caused by a secondary agent, an
event of which He approves. God's permitting will can be seen at
work when He allows something to occur even though He does not
approve of it. In this fourth sense, we can say that God permits
evils to occur. And, in the wider sense of this fourfold distinction,
we can differentiate God's precepts and prohibitions from His
counsels, although they are all species of the unitary will of God
which moral agents remain free to disobey.96 In discussing provi-
dence the Laon masters reprise the distinction made in their defini-
tion of God's fourfold will, observing that this is simply another
way of looking at what God does vis-à-vis the world and that His
arrangements include the existence of free agents, capable of func-
tioning as secondary causes in the field of moral action, and that
God's foreknowledge does not annul the freedom of such agents or
prevent Him from tolerating the unpleasing things He may permit
them to do. In contrast, God's predestination is confined to what
God causes directly with respect to the salvation of the men He
elects. Anselm's followers return here to an authentically Augustin-
ian version of this doctrine of election while affirming that the grace
granted by means of it requires man's cooperation.97 Here, all
concern for contingency in the natural order has receded from view

9f
' Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 290, 294, 5: 235-37, 240; Sententie Anselmi, ed.
Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2—3
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1919), pp. 63-64. The source of this argument is Anselm
of Canterbury's De concordia and philosophical fragments, as has been noted by
Gillian R. Evans, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp.
133-34.
97
Sent. Anselmi, pp. 90-92; Sentences of Probable Authenticity, no. 115; Sentences of the
School of Laon, no. 299, 304, 5: 94, 241, 243.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 279

in favor of a purely moral analysis of the problem. And, while

human free will is assumed, it is not really explained. The other
salient difficulty with the school of Laon on this subject is the
overlaps and redundancies in the fourfold subdivision of the divine
will which they outline.
Another set of problems is imported into this topic by Honorius,
who takes it up under the heading of God's omniscience. God, he
states, has known the past, present, and future from the moment of
creation—a confusing point, since it makes it seem as if God's
omniscience came into being only when the world did.98 Honorius
adds that the universal plan was always present in God's mind,
making it difficult to see in what sense the past of the universe could
have been known by God. Honorius makes a conflation here be-
tween the idea of creation in the mind of God, an idea known
eternally, and its phenomenal reification in time." It is on this
decidedly shaky foundation that he proceeds to erect his considera-
tion of foreknowledge and predestination. Honorius is as abrupt as
he is straightforward here. He offers a bare-bones summary of
Augustine on both points. God knows whatever will happen, he
notes, whether by His own direct causation, by His indirect action,
or by the contingent actions of free agents. Nothing happens with-
out a cause, although the cause is not always a necessary cause. For
its part, predestination involves the direct causation of God and it
determines, of necessity, who will be saved.100 Honorius does not
offer any express analysis of providence here. The difficulty in his
account lies not so much in its highly abbreviated nature as in the
confusion between God's eternal knowledge and the divine knowl-
edge and action in time on which it is grounded.
A similar problem afflicts Hugh of St. Victor's handling of God's
foreknowledge, providence, and future contingents, exacerbated, in
his case, by the heavily economic view of the deity that he main-
tains. He begins his discussion of this topic by stating that God's
foreknowledge implies the existence of the creation, for, if there had
been no created universe, there would have been nothing for God to
foreknow. What Hugh fails to notice, initially, is that this position
makes the creation necessary to the creator. When this difficulty
does come to his attention, he finds that he has painted himself into
a corner by his manner of posing the question. It does not occur to
Hugh that the content of what God foreknows may be independent

Honorius, Elue. 1.13, p. 363.

Ibid., 1.15, p. 363.
Ibid., 1.21-31, pp. 413-16.
280 CHAPTER FIVE

of attributes that are intrinsic to His nature or necessary to Him. A

related difficulty stemming from Hugh's formulation of the issue is
that it constrains him to limit God's foreknowledge to events that
are going to take place, or that are going to come into being at a
future time, while admitting that God does not foreknow what is
not to be, even though it is possible to include the latter under the
heading of alternatives which He may have considered and re-
jected. Along the same lines, Hugh understands a contingency as
something that was possible before it came into being, at the point
when it had not yet eventuated. His analysis here forces him to
exclude from the category of contingency events, or actions, that
have the capacity to be, or not to be. It also fails to provide him
with an adequate distinction between contingencies that occur
through the agency of secondary causes possessing the God-given
capacity to choose, and events not yet in being which God will
cause directly when He brings them into being. It cannot be said
that Hugh has profited very fully from the range of accounts of
contingency available during his time, whether they accent ethics,
physics, metaphysics, or logic.101
One thing clear about Hugh, however, is that he is primarily
interested in how this whole question factors into the doctrine of
predestination. Although he is not concerned with the cosmological
dimensions of the subject, he does draw a clear, and largely Au-
gustinian, distinction between providence and predestination. By
providence he means the provision by God of what creatures need
and what is good for them, both now and in their future state.
While this definition is generic enough to encompass the laws of
nature and the moral law, Hugh does not specify whether God's
role here is direct or indirect, or what freedom of action remains for
the creatures so provided. For Hugh as for Augustine predestina-
tion is the preparation of grace. It can be seen as a particular
subcategory of providence under which God personally decides
whom He is going to elect, and gives these people the necessary
grace. The principal contrast Hugh draws here is between predes-
tination, as God's decision to do what He is going to do directly, in
the order of grace, and God's foreknowledge of what He is going to
permit. While in tune with Augustine here, Hugh gives an analysis of
the relevant terms that is rather jejune by Augustine's standards.102
Two other mid-century theologians who likewise confine them-
101
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.2.14-18, PL 176: 211D-213B.
102
Ibid., 1.2.19-21, PL 176: 213B-D. On this point, see Heinrich Köster, Die
Heilslehre des Hugo von Sankt-Viktor: Grundlagen und Grundzüge (Emsdetten: Heinr. &
J. Lechte, 1940), pp. 120-29.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 281

selves to the implications which this topic has for man's moral
activity and salvation are Robert Pullen and the author of the
Summa sententiarum. Robert offers a treatment of providence and
foreknowledge that is uncharacteristically laconic, for him, one that
stresses the difference between knowledge and causation. As he
notes, God knows, from all eternity, what is happening in the
present and what will happen, contingently, in the future, without
thereby causing these events, events which Robert presents, exclu-
sively, as the outcomes of man's moral choices. He has nothing to
say about causation in the physical order and little to say about
either providence or predestination.103 The Summa sententiarum takes
up this question under the heading of God's wisdom, treating
God's knowledge of what is, of what will be in the future, of His
own governance of the universe, and of whom He plans to save.
Despite this forthright beginning, the author's analysis meanders
into a number of relatively trivial issues and is curiously inconclu-
sive. He follows Augustine and Boethius in saying that divine
foreknowledge is neutral, not causative. Having established that
point, what he does with it is to argue that God can foreknow
unimportant matters without losing sight of major ones. He next
moves to the question of whether God can foresee what is not going
to happen. Leaving that question open, he moves to predestination,
his real subject here. Predestination, he stresses, involves God's
direct causation, in contrast with His foreknowledge, which may or
may not include matters in which God plans to act directly. The
main issue he wants to raise about predestination is to confirm
Abelard's opinion that God cannot adjust, upward or downward,
the number of people He predestines to salvation.104
This view was being challenged, even by masters positively
influenced by Abelard in many respects, such as Roland of Bolo-
gna. Roland is uncomfortable with the idea that God cannot save
more people than He does save, or empower more people to please
Him than He does. Roland fails to find a convincing argument that
enables him to allay his disquiet on this score, even though he
draws a distinction between God as an intrinsic cause and God as
an extrinsic cause that might have offered at least a partial
solution.105 Nor does Roland see that his claim that God can
foreknow, or permit, more than He does might provide him with a

103
Robert Pullen, Sent. 1.13. 1.15, 1.16, PL 186: 700R-702C, 708D-710C,
714B-718B.
104
105
Summa sent. 1.12, PL 176: 61C-62C.
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 62-67.
282 CHAPTER FIVE

parallel argument.106 The author of the Summa sententiarum offers

better grounds for supporting Abelard here than Roland gives for
rejecting him, grounds with which Roland was evidently not ac-
quainted. He treats the problem as a logical one. God cannot alter
the number of people whom He predestines, he urges, because,
were He to do so, God would be contradicting His own eternal
decree, which is impossible. This conclusion, he observes, can be
seen as one instance of the larger logical point that God can do
anything except what is self-contradictory.107
While there was no consensus among theologians in this period
about which divine attribute provided the most cogent context
within which to consider providence, foreknowledge, predestina-
tion, and future contingents, Robert of Melun is unique in taking
up this constellation of ideas under a number of different headings
at the same time, namely, God's will, God's knowledge, and God's
power. In the first two of these instances, his treatment of the topic
can be seen as an extension of the analysis of God as cause, in
relation to created causes, which looms so large in Robert's doc-
trine of God. He first addresses the question from the perspective of
God's will. His argument bears some traces of the teaching of the
school of Laon, but it is far more circumspect and streamlined.
God's will, he begins, can be equated with God's essence and, as
such, regarded as the first cause. Both the world order and the
moral order, which God wills and causes, are orders in which some
creatures function as causes in their own genus or sphere of activ-
ity. The latter comprises the realm of contingency and freedom,
and it is compatible with the divine order. In this context Robert
also considers the differences between what God wills directly,
what He wills through intermediaries, and what He permits, using
the distinction among God's operation, precept, prohibition, and
permission that had become the standard replacement for the
subdivisions in God's will offered by the Laon masters.108
Robert next takes up the same subject under the rubric of God's
knowledge. Just as is the case with God's will, so His knowledge is
identical with His being; and God's being is eternal. It is also
unchanging, in contrast with the knowledge of other beings, who
can learn and forget. With this foundation laid, Robert supports
the position that God cannot foreknow more than He does fore-

106
Ibid., pp. 67-84.
107
Summa sent. 1.12, PL 176: 63A-64D.
108
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.2.2-3, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 265. On this argument, see
Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 283-93.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 283

know, by definition, while at the same time he argues that this

conclusion does not place limitations on God. The things God
foreknows that He will do are things which He none the less
disposes freely. Robert agrees that foreknowledge is neutral and not
determinative. It includes events which, God knows, will occur
contingently, and which He allows to occur contingently. God also
foreknows what He will cause directly, such as the predestination of
the elect. With Augustine, on this latter point, Robert defines
predestination as the grace of preparation, and contrasts it with
God's governance of the world order.109 Abbreviated as it is, this
account preserves a good balance between the cosmological and
theological dimensions of the subject.
The most elaborate discussion of this topic in Robert's theology
is the one he takes up under the heading of God's power. He begins
by distinguishing, for purposes of comparison, among the ways in
which power is exercised among men. All are indirect. There is the
case of a ruler who orders his subject to do something, moving the
subject to act on the basis of his authority, although the subject is
the person actually performing what has been ordered. Then, there
is the case in which one person contributes to an outcome carried
out by someone else, by helping to finance it or by making needed
materials or conditions available. Thirdly, one person may act as
the supervisor of a project, directing the other people who do the
actual work. Robert suggests that these indirect modes of exercising
power bear some analogy to the ways God exercises His power in
human affairs, but he does not pause to offer concrete theological
illustrations of the point. Rather, he moves on to discuss two other
ways in which the deity exercises His power in the world. First, He
creates the universe out of nothing. In this connection, God is the
sole author or cause. Second, God puts into place the natural
operations and actions proper to man. Robert agrees that it is God
alone Who endows man initially with these capacities, and that He
conserves man's ability to make voluntary choices as well as to
translate those choices into actions. But the collaborative role of
God in these processes does not conflict with human free will.
Robert draws a useful distinction here between man's exercise of
volition in the carrying out of his natural activities, on the one
hand, and the function of human free will in the order of grace, on
the other. He also distinguishes modes of human behavior in these
two orders where direct divine causation is needed and where it is

109
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.6.20, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 315-16. On this argument,
see Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 252-82.
284 CHAPTER FIVE

not. He also observes that, whether God acts directly or indirectly

in man's moral activity, He is not the subject of that activity and
He is not responsible for the use man makes of the deity's own
collaboration or empowerment. And, while he concedes that God
sometimes enables human beings to go beyond their own strength,
Robert's emphasis in this entire account is on the idea that, in both
man's spiritual and moral life, God has arranged matters so that
man can act with his own powers, just as natural phenomena can
act in terms of their natural causative powers.110 While Robert thus
brings a physical dimension into play in this discussion, his em-
phasis rests on man's moral liberty in relation to God's power,
although he does not associate this point, at this particular junc-
ture, with the doctrine of predestination.
Robert's threefold treatment of the question has the merit of
enabling him to explore most of the dimensions of the problem of fore-
knowledge, providence, predestination, and contingency, although
it also has a disadvantage. In none of the contexts in which he
brings it up does he address all the relevant aspects of the problem.
A certain amount of repetition is also, of necessity, involved in his
inability to decide whether God's will, God's knowledge, or God's
power has a better claim than the others as the most appropriate
home for the topic. To a certain extent this redundancy and lack of
decisiveness cancel out the breadth of vision which Robert brings to
the subject, in comparison with the often quite sketchy treatment it
receives at the hands of most other theologians of the period. But,
perhaps the most important weakness of Robert's argument, to
which he does not advert openly but which has the effect of under-
mining his whole analysis from the start, is the fact that he supports
Abelard's view that wisdom, power, and goodness inhere in the
individual persons of the Trinity in a preeminent way, and are
appropriate personal names for them. If this claim is taken serious-
ly, in the present connection, then one would have to admit that, in
two of Robert's three analyses of foreknowledge, predestination,
and contingency, he is really talking about the properties of the first
two persons of the Trinity individually, and not about the Godhead
in general. Robert never acknowledges the fact that, if he wants to
maintain his position on the Trinity, that very position seriously

110
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.7.33-36. This citation derives from a portion of
Robert's work that remains unedited. Our account is based on the analysis of the
doctrine in the manuscripts provided by Raymond-M. Martin, "El problema del
influio divino sobre las acciones humanas, un siglo antes de Santo Tomas de
Aquino," La Ciencia tomista 5 (1915): 178-93; Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre,
pp. 228-44.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 285

compromises his intended handling of these features of the divine

nature in its relationship with the creation and with man.
In that very connection, Peter Lombard makes his own attack on
this problem perfectly plain. The question of God's foreknowledge
and related matters is the first topic he takes up after completing
his discussion of the Trinity. He states crisply that this subject, and
all the questions that follow in the remainder of Book 1 of the
Sentences, treat of God with reference to the divine substance pos-
sessed in common by the Trinity.111 He also shows his colors at once
by aligning himself with theologians such as Honorius and the
author of the Summa sententiarum by treating this constellation of
ideas under the heading of God's knowledge, recognizing that it is
easier to annex to this mode of analysis the related questions
concerning God's causation than it would be if one tried to cover
the necessary ground under the heading of His will or power. Peter
begins, typically, by giving his definitions of the key terms. In so
doing, he makes it clear that, in handling this topic, his chief focus
is going to be on the divine nature as a theological and metaphysi-
cal reality. While God's role as a cause in the physical order is going
to receive some attention and while care is going to be paid to the
logical consistency of his arguments, and to those of thinkers whom
he criticizes, Peter never lets the reader forget that he is writing
about God here, and that the subject at issue is not a mere pendant
to, or illustration of, the sciences of natural philosophy or logic.
God's knowledge is one and simple, he begins. Yet, it can be
thought of, in relation to man and the creation, in terms of fore-
knowledge, disposition, predestination, and wisdom. Foreknowl-
edge is God's knowledge, from all eternity, of all things that will
happen, whether for good or for ill. Disposition can be regarded not
only as God's general governance of the universe but also as His
foreknowledge of the laws of nature that He will put in place before
He creates them. Similarly, predestination covers the preparation
of grace which God grants directly to His elect and His salvation
and coronation of them with bliss in the next life, as well as His
knowledge from all eternity of which human beings they will be.
Wisdom, finally, is God's knowledge of all things, whether past,
present, or future.112 Having mentioned the dimension of time in
setting forth these definitions, Peter next addresses a set of prob-
lems with which Hugh of St. Victor and Honorius had wrestled
111
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 35. c. 1, 1: 254.
112
Ibid., c. 1-c. 6, 1: 254—58. On predestination as the grace of preparation in
the Lombard, see Johann Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1932), pp. 105-15, 141-58, 204-06.
286 CHAPTER FIVE

ineffectively. Supposing that there were no temporal order at all,

and hence no future in which events not yet in being might take
place, and given that God's knowledge is one with His essence,
would this not mean, he asks, that God's very being would be in
jeopardy? Peter answers this question in the negative. As he
observes, when we speak of God's foreknowledge, disposition, and
predestination with respect to the created world and man, we speak
in a relative sense (relative, ad aliquid), just as we do when we refer to
the deity as the creator. Such activities vis-à-vis other, created,
beings as these relative terms denote in no sense exhaust or dimin-
ish the infinite reservoir of being as such which the divine nature
possesses, prior to and apart from the creation. Further, there are
two ways of regarding foreknowledge. First, if we consider the
subject matter, the future, on which God's foreknowledge is exer-
cised, as capable of being there, or not, then His foreknowledge can
be understood as relative to the future. But, secondly, if we think of
the knowledge that God possesses, with which He is able to know
the future when it eventuates, then we speak of His knowledge with
respect to His essence, whether or not the temporal world exists at
all, or any particular eventuality that may take place within it. In
any event, since He is eternal, God knows all things from eternity.
His knowledge is not limited by the temporal order applying to
creatures.113
This solution responds effectively to the dilemmas propounded
by Hugh and Honorius and at the same time addresses the ques-
tion, raised but not answered by the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum, of whether God foreknows those future contingents that are
not going to eventuate. For, as Peter continues, he next makes the
point that, in the second sense of foreknowledge which he has just
indicated, God's knowledge is of His essence; it would be incorrect
to say that, because He knows all things, all the things that He
knows are God or that they share in His essence. Here, he stresses,
we have to distinguish between what God is, and what God has in
His presence or has within Him. As an illustration of that point,
Peter notes, God knows who the elect are; but the elect are human,
not divine. They are in God's presence, not His nature. Similarly,
God knows the evils that will occur, without being identified with
them, just as He knows the good things that will occur and that He
will approve, good outcomes which, in this case, He helps along, to
a greater or lesser extent, being partially or wholly an auctor as well
as a knower. For the creation and the temporal order are from

113
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 35. c. 7-c. 9, 1: 255-58.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 287

God. They are not of God; that is, they are not of the same nature
as God. Here, Peter acknowledges the utility of Abelard's distinc-
tion between the univocal signification of a noun and the differing
consignifications it may have in statements using the past, present,
and future tenses of the verb. He also indicates the limitations of
this argument, from his own perspective.114 What is strikingly
Lombardian about this whole analysis is Peter's success in finding
a cogent substitute for the reduction of this problem to an exercise
in formal logic. At the same time, he retains a philosophical no less
than a theological perspective on it, by grounding the subject in the
metaphysical distinction between God viewed in His transcendent
essence and God viewed in those aspects of His being that He
displays in His relations with other beings.
Peter moves on, then, to a series of other questions pertinent to
God's foreknowledge that had been raised and, in his view,
answered unsatisfactorily by other masters. He deals in a swift and
streamlined manner with God's foreknowledge and its relationship
to causation, relying here on Augustine and other patristic sources
and not on Boethius and Aristotle. Foreknowledge, he agrees, is not
causative. There are some things that God knows, contemplating
them in His own mind before He brings them into phenomenal
existence as their one and only cause, as is the case with the created
universe. In this example, He causes the things He knows, not vice
versa. In the case of contingencies, such as the willed actions of
created beings who possess free will, God foresees the consequences
of contingent actions but does not cause them. His lack of direct
causation here is in no sense a failing or imperfection in the divine

114
Ibid., d. 36. c. 1-c. 5, d. 41. c. 3, 1: 25&-63, 293. Peter's use of this
Abelardian, or more generally nominalist, idea is noted by Marie-Dominique
Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957), pp. 93, 96, 99; Artur
Michael Landgraf, "Nominalismus in den theologischen Werken der zweiten
Hälfte des zwölften Jahrhunderts," Traditio 1 (1943): 192-94, 199; Schneider, Du
Uhre, pp. 43-44, 53; Courtenay, Capaäty and Volition, pp. 53-55; "Nominales and
Nominalism in the Twelfth Century," in ^tionum varietates: Hommage à Paul
Vignaux, ed. Jean Joli vet et al. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991), pp. 17-20, 23-29. For more
on this topic, see Marcia L. Colish, "Peter Lombard and Abelard: The Opinio
Nominalium and Divine Transcendence," Vivarium 30 (May 1992): 139-56. Stephen
F. Brown, "Abelard and the Medieval Origin of the Distinction between God's
Absolute and Ordained Power," in Ad litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval
Readers, ed. Mark D. Jordan and Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 199-215, reprises both Abelard's position and the
Lombard's argument against it, treating that argument correctly as one that
criticizes Abelard for failing to distinguish between God's power and God's will.
On the other hand, Brown does not note either the Lombard's contribution to the
ordained/absolute power distinction or the appeal made by both Abelard and the
Lombard to the opinio nominalium.
288 CHAPTER FIVE

nature, or in the divine foreknowledge. For He chose to create

beings with free will and He knows how they will freely exercise
it.115 This section of Peter's discussion both rebukes authors who
feel that they need five times as much space to treat the same
subject and reminds the reader that the divine nature is the per-
spective from which he thinks it ought to be examined. The exercise
is designed to enlighten the reader about God, the subject of this
book of the Sentences, not about the behavior and constitution of
creatures.
Another feature of God's foreknowledge that requires discussion,
not only in and of itself but because of its bearing on predestination,
is its immutability and its exhaustive coverage. As Peter observes,
God's knowledge, like His essence, cannot changé, enlarge, or
diminish. God may direct His attention to this or that subject, or
not, without changing His knowledge. Since He is omniscient and
always has been, He knows things that have not yet occurred in the
temporal order, and beings that have not yet come into existence.
In the case of contingent outcomes, He knows whether or not they
will occur. With respect to such future events, beings, and outcomes,
this does not mean that God knows them better when they do
occur. For, while they are conditioned by time, He is not; He has
always been omniscient. In this respect, God cannot know more
than He knows because that would be a self-contradiction, a point
on which Peter agrees with the author of the Summa sententiarum,116
As for predestination, Peter notes, reminding the reader of his
definition of terms at the beginning of this section of Book 1 of the
Sentences, predestination is included in what God foreknows but it is
different from foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is not causative,
while predestination is causative, referring specifically to God's
direct decision to extend the grace of preparation and perseverance
to those people He chooses to save.117 Here Peter summarizes the
standard late Augustinian teaching that was the consensus position
on predestination in this period. At the same time, he uses the
argument just developed on the immutability of God's foreknowl-
edge to criticize versions of that teaching that he finds aberrant or
problematic. In the first place, there is the question raised by
Abelard and debated by the author of the Summa sententiarum and by
Roland of Bologna as to whether God can alter the number of the
115
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 38, 1: 275-79.
116
Ibid., d. 39. c. 1.1-c. 4.3, d. 41. c. 3, 1: 280-83, 292-93. On this point, see
Schneider, Die hhre, pp. 54—55.
117
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 39. c. 4.3, 1: 283-84. Peter makes the same point
in Sermo 112, PL 171: 860C. See Schneider, Die Uhre, pp. 55, 57-60.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 289

elect. Given the way in which Peter has framed his argument here,
he can dispose of the idea that God could make such a change as a
non-question, not only from the standpoint of God's will but also in
the light of God's immutable omniscience. Just as God does not
alter His eternal decree, so, since He knows eternally what that
decree will be with regard to His elect and since His knowledge
never changes, the alteration of God's arrangements here is a
non-possibility.118 There is also the question of the relation between
election and the behavior of the elect. Here, Peter wants to criticize
the position of William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon. For the
elect, predestination enables them to be justified, to live uprightly,
to resist temptation, to persevere in the good, and to attain beati-
tude in the next life. God foreknows that the elect will respond
appropriately to the grace He extends to them, just as He knows
that the reprobate will fall into sin, although in the first case He
actively prepares the elect for their salvation while He prepares
nothing for the reprobate. But, Peter insists, with Augustine and
against Anselm and William, God does not choose the elect be-
cause He foresees that they will respond positively to His grace and
earn merit. Rather, what He foresees is the fact that His grace will
provide the elect with the enabling condition for their acquisition of
merit after the fact.119 Before leaving this topic it should be noted
that, while Peter, like the majority of theologians of his time, takes a
strongly Augustinian line on predestination, there is one important
respect in which they all depart from Augustine here, a point that
also will condition their handling of the theme of grace and free
will. There is no trace whatever of Augustine's doctrine of the
irresistibility of grace to be found in any of these twelfth-century
theologians, a calculated omission that deserves to be understood
as a criticism of Augustine on their part.
In the case of God's foreknowledge and related matters, as can
be seen from the above, Peter demonstrates clearly that this con-
stellation of ideas can be treated in as sweeping a manner as need
be from the perspective of God's knowledge. He succeeds in address-
ing a broad range of substantive questions, raised in a variety of
contexts by other theologians, irrespective of whether the masters
in question approach them from the standpoint of logic, Aristote-
lian or Abelardian, causation, or other divine attributes. Through-
out, he grounds his support for the compatibility of contingency
and free will with divine foreknowledge, and with the existence of
118
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 40. c. 1, 1: 285-86.
1,9
Ibid., c. 2.1-d. 41. c. 1, 1: 286-92.
290 CHAPTER FIVE

direct divine causation in some areas, not on the relations between

necessity and possibility in natural philosophy or in formal logic
but in the distinction between the transcendent God and the God
Who acts, in a variety of ways, in the world He created, but without
being exhausted or consumed by His economic role. Peter's re-
solutely metaphysical address to this question enables him to put it
on as philosophical a foundation as is true for Aristotle or for
Abelard, although it is a metaphysical foundation, and one that
also affords a good vantage point from which to consider the
specifically theological dimensions of these problems as well.

Can God Do Better or Different Than He Does?

Much the same can be said for Peter's handling of the single most
controversial question concerning the divine nature to be agitated in
this period, can God do better or different than He does, which
Abelard brought to the fore and which his opponents met with only
mitigated success in attacking before it was seized on by Peter. Organ-
ically related, both in content and style, to his handling of the problem
of necessity and possibility, although not presented in his logical
works, Abelard's defense of the position that God cannot do better
than He does is first stated in his Theologia Christiana, then developed in
a somewhat modified form in his Theologia "scholarium", and then
reprised with only a modest change in his commentary on Romans.
While Abelard does draw on arguments from theological
appropriateness in addressing this issue, he relies more heavily on a
propositional formulation of the question which, on its own
accounting, appears to have been aimed against the contemporary
master, Joscelin of Soissons. Joscelin argued that, if things happen
otherwise than as God foresees, God would be capable of being
mistaken. In attacking this position, Abelard first takes up and
then abandons a highly useful Augustinian idea, found in the
Enchiridion. There, Augustine argues that God's omnipotence
means God's ability to do whatever He wills. This understanding of
divine omnipotence was known to other contemporary theologians
from the school of Laon to the author of the Summa sententiarum and
beyond. Among its advantages, it makes it possible to rule out
actions requiring a physical body, as well as sinning, lying, or other
forms of immoral behavior that would constitute imperfections
were they to be divine options, without thereby limiting God's
power.120 Abelard first accepts this distinction between God's will

Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 63-64; Summa sent. 1.13-14, PL 176: 64D-70B. On this
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 291

and God's power in the Theologia Christiana but then makes no effort
to apply it constructively.121 He moves, rather, to another distinc-
tion. God's power can be viewed in two ways, he observes. There is
His providence, through which He establishes the world order, and
His counsel, exhortation, admonition, approval, or disapproval,
which God directs specifically to human beings as moral agents, to
whom He may wish to accord His grace. Now, Abelard continues,
human beings are bound by God's arrangements in both respects.
They are not exempt from the laws of nature; and they also must
abide by God's moral law. Abelard is not concerned, at this junc-
ture, with man's freedom or lack of it within these dispensations.
Rather, the question he wants to raise is whether God's arrange-
ments themselves, in either area, are the best possible ones. Could
God have enacted a better law of nature or a better moral law?
Abelard answers in the negative, offering three reasons. First, he
notes, the contemplation of the possibility that God's natural or
moral law could have been different, and better, would cause a
great deal of anxiety to man, from which God is kind enough to
exempt him. Second, it would not be fitting for us to think of God as
able to do better, but as none the less not doing so. And third, the
specific lack of theological appropriateness attaching to the second
point lies in the fact that it would derogate from God's goodness. If
God can do better than He does, and fails to do it, then He cannot
be regarded as supremely good. Or else, it would mean that He is
supremely good but that this goodness is capable of being impeded
by an insufficiency of power to act on God's part.
Abelard now moves to supplement this argument from theologi-
cal appropriateness with an argument from logic, saving the best
for last in his own strategy of debate as he had on the subject of
necessity and possibility. To do better than God does, he asserts, is
a logical impossibility, given the claims made by an antecedent
proposition which states that God is good, omnipotent, and be-
nevolent, an antecedent which, in Abelard's view, makes logically
necessary a consequent proposition which states that God always
makes the best possible use of these qualities. Having started with
the Augustinian distinction between God's power and will, which
he abandons despite its utility, Abelard now collapses God's
power into His will because he thinks that this conclusion follows

point, see Ivan Boh, "Divine Omnipotence in the Early Sentences," in Divine
Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspec-
tives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 185-211; Sikes, Peter
Abailard, pp. 126-32.
121
Peter Abelard, Theologia christiana 5.17-57, CCCM 12: 354-72.
292 CHAPTER FIVE

logically, a maneuver that has not been seen as logical by all of his
commentators.122 Perhaps more problematically, Abelard's han-
dling of this question as a logician forces God to act in a certain way,
which Abelard deems to be the best possible way, out of an internal
necessity of His own nature. As he puts it, "what He wills, He
must will necessarily, and what He does, He must do necessarily"
(Quae vult, necessario velit, et quae facit, necessario faciat). Logical ne-
cessity constrains God's behavior, behavior which, he states, takes
place inevitably (inevitabiliter) .123 Thus, as Abelard would have it,
God was constrained to create the universe, to create it the way it
is, to share His beatitude with his creatures, and to provide them
with the particular moral laws and modes of salvation that He has
provided. God's freedom, in this analysis, is sharply circumscribed
by God's goodness.
Reactions to Abelard's argument in the Theologia Christiana were
not slow in coming. In some respects the most interesting objection
of all came from the early Porretans, who could have used it equally
well against Abelard's teaching on necessity, possibility, and future
contingents. The Porretans appear to have been the only theolo-
gians in this period who were sensitive to the technical features of
Abelard's logic, and willing to turn it against him. As they observe,
Abelard's logic is a formal logic. Its project is to establish what is
logically verifiable within the intramental world of predication,
inference, and the interrelations of propositions. It is not a logic
that claims it can verify its conclusions in the world outside the
mind, and it does not seek to do so. Thus, hoisting Abelard on his
own petard, they point to the intrinsic limits of the logic he taught
as an instrument of theological research. That megaton bomb
having been detonated, the Porretans go on to argue that God
could have made things better, not in the sense that He could have
exercised greater power or wisdom in making the arrangements
that He did make, but in the sense that the creatures which He
made are themselves imperfect, and could be better than they
are.124
No doubt more of a virtuoso turn than the more conservative

122
Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 120-24, 126-32; Weingart, Logic of Divine Love, pp.
32-33. Paul L. Williams, The Moral Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1980), pp. 5, 63-84, ignores these logical claims
entirely.
123
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 5.42, CCCM 12: 366.
124
Sent. mag. Guleberti I 2.38-39, p. 119; Nikolaus M. Haring, ed., "Die Sententie
magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi II: Die Version der florentiner Handschrift"
2.38-42, AHDLMA 46 (1979): 54.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 293

theologians of the day could manage, this Porretan line of argu-

ment had no notable repercussions. Much more typical of the
reaction against Abelard is the critique of Hugh of St. Victor. Hugh
translates Abelard's argument into an entirely theological one. In
his estimation, Abelard has gone overboard in his defense of God's
unbounded goodness, to the point of failing to do full justice to
God's power and freedom. He urges that these latter two attributes
need more support. Hugh also stresses the point that only the
creator is perfect, without realizing that it is not responsive to
Abelard's claim that the creation and the moral law are the best
possible.125 Perhaps a more serious weakness in Hugh's analysis is
that he does not clarify why one divine attribute should be
preferred over another, or sacrificed if it is seen to conflict with
another aspect of the divine nature. The desire to accent God's
power or freedom, in his own case, thus seems to be just as much a
matter of the theologian's own arbitrary taste as the exaggerated
emphasis on God's goodness which Hugh ascribes to Abelard.
Another contemporary effort to come to grips with the Theologia
Christiana argument and also one that is largely unresponsive to
Abelard, even though it seeks a more middle of the road position, is
the one made by Robert Pullen. He agrees that God could have
made a world different from the one He did make. Leaving aside
the claim that the world He made is the best possible one, which
Abelard defends, Robert focuses on the argument that, having
decided to make the world we have, God is not going to abdicate
from His providential rule over it, by destroying it and creating the
different world He could have created. Thus, Robert concludes,
God wills nothing other than what he does, in fact, ordain.126 This
conclusion, we may note, does not consider the issue of whether
God can will something other than what He does will. It subsumes
the divine attribute of goodness, and even of power, under the
heading of God's de facto choices. Robert assumes here, without
making it explicit, the Augustinian idea that God's power can be
understood as His capacity to accomplish what He wills. But, his
emphasis on the point that God will not recede from what He has
accomplished distracts Robert from the task of demonstrating that
there were other choices which God could have made.
The author of the Summa sententiarum also appeals to Augustine
here, in a more overt and systematic way. He agrees that God's
125
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.2.22, PL 176: 214A-216D. This argument is
noted by Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre, pp. 212-23.
126
Robert Pullen, Sent. 1.15, PL 186: 710C-D, 712D-714B. This argument is
noted by Courtney, Robert Pullen, pp. 75-80.
294 CHAPTER FIVE

omnipotence should be understood in the light of His ability to do

whatever He wills, as well as in the absence of conditions that
would impose limitations on the deity. He treats the question of
whether God could do better than He does as a pendant of that
analysis. The fact that God willed the present arrangements, for
this master, does not mean that God's options were limited, or that
He was constrained to make the choices that He made. God could
not be wiser or better than He is. But He could have created a
world with better physical or moral laws.127 How that conclusion is
related to the premise that God is all-wise and supremely good,
however, the author does not succeed in establishing. The issue, for
him, is less the defense of God's omnipotence as such than the way
in which God chooses to display it. But his answer ultimately rests,
as Hugh's does, on a personal preference for the idea of God's
freedom.
Under the pressure of criticism, particularly from those contem-
poraries who argued that his accent on God's goodness was incom-
patible with God's omnipotence, Abelard returned to the fray with
another effort to coordinate these divine attributes in the Theologia
"scholarium" and in his Romans commentary. In responding to
other masters cool to his effort to frame the problem in terms of
logic, he pays more attention, in the Theologia "scholarium" version
of his argument, to the question of which divine attribute deserves
the most attention.128 He continues to maintain that God's power
and goodness are correlative. If we say that God could do better—
or worse—than He does, we deny His goodness. But, if we deny His
capacity to do whatever He wills, we deny His omnipotence. In the
effort to resolve this dilemma and also to remove the question from
the logical context of possibility and necessity, Abelard now
appeals to a Platonic argument which he had not used before.129
Plato, he notes, defended the idea that God could not have made a
better world because God is perfect. Hence, He acts perfectly. The
perfection of the deity thus entails the perfection of His will and His
exercise of that will, which subsumes both God's power and His
goodness. These attributes, Abelard continues, along with God's
rationality and justice, are hence reflected in everything He does,
and in everything He refrains from doing.
In this version of the argument, while Abelard still frames his
account in the language of antecedent and consequent proposi-

127
Summa sent. 1.14, PL 176: 68A-70B.
128
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 3.2/'-64, CCCM 13: 511-27.
129
Moonan, "Abelard's Use of the Timaeus" pp. 30-33, 72-74, gives a good
analysis of this point.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 295

tions, he has shifted his emphasis from logic to metaphysics. He

also shifts his focus from the world order, as it displays a divine
providence that cannot be improved on, to the justice with which
God operates in the order of redemption. This latter tactic is
designed, presumably, to make it more difficult for critics to object
to his conclusions, an ad hominem response to contemporaries who
concerned themselves only with the theological and not also with
the philosophical aspects of the problem. In the event, this strategy
leads Abelard to tackle the question in the Theologia "scholarium" in
a more theological manner than he had in the Theologia Christiana.
The effect of this reformulation of the issue is that Abelard now
accents God's control over all things and the absolute justice, as
well as the omnipotence, with which He operates. As Abelard poses
the question in the Theologia "scholarium", while God can act dif-
ferently than He does, He does not do so, not because He is
logically constrained to act as He acts but because His ordinance
stands above any such necessity, flowing as it does from the perfec-
tion of His nature. Such, at least, is Abelard's conclusion in this
second version of his argument. He rings one final change on it in
his Romans gloss, where he shifts the emphasis to yet another
divine attribute, while preserving the rest of his account in the
Theologia "scholarium". Here, he defends the best of all possible
worlds position on the grounds that it is a corollary of God's
wisdom.130
Despite the fact that several of Abelard's disciples rushed to his
support,131 Abelard's reformulation of his argument in the Theologia
"scholarium" and the Romans gloss still left some problematic fea-
tures of it open to criticism. There is the difficulty of claiming that
one divine attribute should be given pride of place over the others.
And, although Abelard moves to a metaphysical argument based
on God's perfection, it is no clearer, in the Theologia "scholarium",
that God has been freed from acting under the necessity of His own
nature than it is, in the Theologia Christiana, that He is free from the
necessities of propositional logic. Further, the best of all possible
worlds position fails to take account of the imperfections in the
created order, a reality of which his mentor, Plato, was all too well
aware. These problems, and others in Abelard's handling of the
question in the Theologia "scholarium", were noticed by one by his

130
Peter Abelard, Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 1:20, ed. Eligius M.
Buytaert, CCCM 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), p. 69.
Thus, Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 25, 49-61; Sententiae Parisiensis I, ed.
Artur Michael Landgraf in Ecrits théologiques de l'école d'Abélard (Louvain: Spi-
cilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), pp. 20-26.
296 CHAPTER FIVE

most trenchant mid-century critics, Robert of Melun.

Robert takes Abelard's Platonic argument and turns it on its
head. As he points out, Plato taught that there was an ontological
gap between the perfect deity, and also between the perfect exem-
plary forms which the deity used in the creation, on the one hand,
and the created world of time, matter, and multiplicity, on the
other. The split-level universe proposed by Plato means that the
phenomenal world can never measure up to its ideal form. This
analysis neatly disposes of the claim that we are living in the best of
all possible worlds. Robert next directs attention to Abelard's
argument from God's perfection to the consummate justice of His
ordinances in the moral order. He appeals here to the doctrine of
progressive revelation. The moral arrangements which God
ordains for His people may be as good as possible, in the sense of
being responsive to their needs and capacities at a particular point
in time, in the estimation of the deity. But that situation may only
hold for the time being. As with the Mosaic law, which provided a
new and fuller ordinance in comparison with the rules governing
the Jews beforehand, it is capable of being superseded, by a subse-
quent divine ordinance.132
Adept as is Robert's critique of the most recent of Abelard's
arguments, so far as it goes, it is also the case that, while capitaliz-
ing on it and on the contributions of a number of other recent and
current theologians, Peter Lombard provides the period's most
elaborate, refined, and knowledgeable defense of the claim that
God can do better than He does. Peter clarifies arguments that had
been garbled in the work of Abelard's defenders and critics alike.
He brings a wider range of authorities to bear on the issues, and
discusses a larger number of their implications. He makes a num-
ber of helpful new distinctions. He places the question firmly under
the heading of divine omnipotence, while making it possible to give
other divine attributes their due without collapsing one into
another or establishing hierarchies among them inappropriate to a
deity Who is simple and Who possesses all His essential determina-
tions in exactly the same way. Above all, Peter finds a way of
releasing God from the axiological necessitarianism with which
Abelard had encumbered Him, whether logically or metaphysical-
ly. His solution to this problem, with which he concludes his
consideration of the divine nature in Book 1 of the Sentences, is also

132
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.7.1-29. This text comes from the unedited portion
of Robert's Sentences and our account is dependent on the manuscript evidence as
reported by Horst, Die Trinitäts- und Gotteslehre, pp. 207-28, 245-^6.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 297

one that calls upon and reinforces the liberation of the doctrine of
God from an economic theology, a goal that is one of his chief
objectives throughout that book.
In launching his discussion of God's omnipotence, Peter refers to
the Augustinian distinction between God's power and will as a
means both of correcting the treatment given to it by some of his
contemporaries and of expanding on it considerably in his own
theology.133 He agrees that God's omnipotence means not that He
can do everything, but rather that He can do whatever He wills,
except for actions that reflect weakness, imperfection, change, or
limitation of any kind. God's omnipotence also means, for Peter,
that there is no passive potency in God; God is a fully realized
being.134 In Peter's view, this does not suggest that God can do
whatever He wills Himself to be able to do, for that would also be
true of men. Nor does it suggest that He makes whatever He wills to
make. For He has not made anything outside of the things He did
make, so that the gap between power and will implied in posing the
issue in these terms does not apply in this case. What this doctrine
does mean, according to Peter, is that God can accomplish what-
ever He wants to accomplish, whether He wills it to occur directly
or indirectly. These distinctions which the Lombard has drawn
between what the phrase "whatever He wills" means in these differ-
ent statements make the point that not every kind of willing serves
as a correct interpretation of the divine nature. As Ivan Boh has
well said, the Lombard here is offering "a further refinement on
that notion of omnipotence which is based on the connection be-
tween the possibility of action and acts of will."135
With this foundation laid, Peter moves next to the refutation of
the most recent version of Abelard's argument that God cannot do
better than He does. As he describes the position to be attacked, it
runs like this: God always acts justly and for the good. If He did
anything differently, He would be acting in opposition to these
values. With respect to this claim, Peter observes that it is true that
what God does do is good and just. But, this fact imposes no
constraints on the other things that He might do. Nor does it limit
His capacity to have done other things which He has not chosen to
do. Nor does God's justice constrain Him. True, He only does do
things that are compatible with justice. But He remains free not to

133
The best treatment of this subject is Boh, "Divine Omnipotence," pp.
193-200. See also Schneider, Die Lehre, pp. 39-41.
134
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 42, 1: 294-98.
135
Boh, "Divine Omnipotence," p. 196.
298 CHAPTER FIVE

behave in this way. A similar line of reasoning applies to what God

ought to do, although here, too, Peter observes that "ought" is a
tricky word to apply to the deity because, strictly speaking, He does
not "owe" anybody anything. Throughout this discussion, it is
God's freedom to act as He chooses that Peter emphasizes as the
proper understanding of divine omnipotence, in opposing the idea
that God cannot act differently than the way He does act because
His reasons are excellent and because He decided to act in these
ways from all eternity. Peter agrees that God's reasons for doing
whatever He does are eminently right and reasonable. None the
less, God is under no constraint to act in this way.
Peter next takes up the objection that, if God could do no
differently than he does, He would be acting against His own
foreknowledge. Here he brings to bear on the objection his earlier
analysis of foreknowledge, in which he had argued that God's
omniscience includes the range of options out of which He selects
the actions that He decides to perform. At this juncture, he charges
other thinkers with twisting the sense of the Augustinian definition
of divine omnipotence. As he shows, what Augustine had in mind
was not the reduction of God's power to the scope of whatever it is
that He actually wills to do, but rather a distinction between will
and power. Peter himself expands on the sense of that distinction.
It means, he says, not only that God is capable of doing whatever it
is that He wills, but also that whatever He can do always remains
more, in principle, than what He actually does do. In short, and
this is his most creative accomplishment in entering the lists
against Abelard on this whole subject, Peter shows that the thrust
of Augustine's definition is not to ground a theodicy argument.
Rather, it is to ground, more fundamentally than even Augustine
himself recognized, the implied distinction between God's ordained
and absolute power. God's radical freedom is to be located under
the latter of these two headings. 136 While the Lombard does not
actually use the terms potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta, this is the
manifest sense of his text. He has staked a clear claim on this
terrain and it is one he proceeds to exploit systematically in the
argument that God always remains free to act differently than the
way in which He has chosen to act. The point is a special applica-
tion of the principle, in Peter's doctrine of God, that the transcend-

136
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 43, 1: 298-303. This point has been noted by
Courtenay, Capacity and Volition, p. 55; Beonio-Brocchieri [Fumagalli] and Parodi,
Storia dellafilos. médiévale, pp. 254—55.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 299

ent divine essence is never exhausted by the the ways in which the
deity has chosen to display Himself in His interactions with His
creation.
With this equipment in hand, Peter proceeds to clear away the
problems that remain. One Abelardian quidam here, whose identity
we have not been able to ascertain, had cited a passage from
Augustine's Eighty-Three Different (Questions to defend the claim that
God cannot do better than He does, a passage which, as Peter
shows, is inapposite. In the citation at issue, Augustine is referring
to the Father's generation of the Son, His own equal, as an action
incapable of being improved on. This point, Peter notes, is
irrelevant to the question of whether God could have improved on
created beings that do not share His substance.137 Now, the beings
God created are creatures, with created limits. Peter shows an
appreciation of this point, which has its parallel in the argument of
Robert of Melun, but he presents it as an amplification of the line
taken by the anonymous Porretan and the author of the Summa
sententiarum, so as not to give backhanded support to the Platonic
world view. If the universe were as good as it might be, it would be
perfect, he observes. But only God is perfect. If creatures were also
perfect, this would infringe on the uniqueness of the attribute of
perfection as a divine property, making the creation equal to the
creator. Since it does not partake of the divine nature, the created
universe cannot enjoy this type of equality with it. Now, among
those creatures with created limits, he continues, some are capable
of improvement, whether through their own efforts, the assistance
of God, or both. Quite apart from that, had God chosen to do so,
He could have created beings incapable of sinning. He could have
provided arrangements in the natural law that might have afforded
better conditions of existence for creatures, just as He could have
decreed a mode of redemption different from the one He did select.
All these examples refer to the quality of life for creatures, not the
wisdom and power of. the creator, or His capacity to have con-
structed alternative arrangements.138
There is one more objection Peter wants to deal with before
going on to another dimension of the relations between God's
power and His will. Some people say that God cannot now do what
He once did, citing as their clinching argument the idea that, since
Christ was born, crucified, and resurrected once and for all, He
cannot be reincarnated, recrucified, and resurrected again. Against

137
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 44. c. 1.2, 1: 304.
138
Ibid., c. 1.3-4, 1: 304-05.
300 CHAPTER FIVE

this claim, Peter points out that God is eternal and immutable. The
fact that God chose to do all these things once only does not mean
that He could not do them again. In the defense of this extreme
example of his general point about the omnipotence of God, Peter
brings forward the nominalist argument concerning the verb,
which parallels the nominalist argument concerning the noun to
which he appeals in considering God's foreknowledge and contin-
gency. Just as the nominalists held that the noun has a unitary
signification, although it can consignify when it is used in proposi-
tions in conjunction with verbs in different tenses, voices, or moods,
so they held that the verb signifies two things, an action and a time
when the action takes place. Irrespective of the time, the verb
signifies a single action. The time of the action is a consignification
which does not alter the proper signification of the verb. Hence, for
the nominalists, with respect to the understanding of nouns and
verbs alike, one can say that whatever was true once is true always
(semel est verum, semper est verum). Peter concurs in this analysis. On
the analogy of the action signified by the verb, he points out, God's
power is always the same. What He was able to do in the past, He
is able to do in the present or the future (Deus semper posse et quidquid
semel potuit id est habere omnem Ulam potentiam quam semel habuit).139 This
conclusion, connected as it is to the nominalist understanding of
verbs, is used by the Lombard not to advance the claims of logic
but rather to undergird the fundamentally metaphysical address he
takes to the question of God's power. It is perhaps Peter's most
pointed and rigorous application of the principle that God's
omnipotence always transcends His actual use of it.
Peter now moves to the consideration of other issues in the
relation between God's power and God's will. He has a substantial
number of points to make about the divine will in this connection.
He begins by observing that God's will is spoken of with respect to
the divine essence. For God, to be and to will are one and the same;
just as to be and to be good are identical in God. At the same time,
God is not exhausted by whatever He wills, just as the fact that He
knows everything does not mean that He is everything He knows.

139
Ibid., c. 2, 1: 305-06. The quotation is at c. 2.4, 1:306. His comparison of
God's power with the signification of the verb is at c. 2.3, 1:106: "Verba enim
diversorum temporum, diversi prolata temporibus et diversis enim adiuncta
adverbiis, eundum faciunt sensum, ut modo loquentes dicimus: Iste potest legere
hodie; eras autem dicimus: Iste potest legisse, vel potuit legere hieri; ubi unius rei
monstratur potentia." For modern scholars who have also noted Peter's use of the
nominalist understanding of the verb on this context, see the citations in n. 114
above, p. 287.
 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 301

Rather, we should understand this point about God's will as saying

that, like His knowledge, which is of His essence, His will can be
directed to this or that subject, subjects which are distinct from
Himself, created, and changeable, and of which His will can be
regarded as the first cause.140
As with most theologians of his time, Peter also understands the
divine will under the headings of precept, prohibition, permission,
operation, and counsel. The particular change he rings on this
standard teaching, and it is a function of his desire to avoid collaps-
ing the divine will as the divine essence into the divine will as God's
chosen exercise of the options He selects vis-à-vis His creation, is to
view these distinctions as signs of the divine will, signs that are not
to be confused with their significatum. These signs are ways in which
the simple and unchanging God manifests Himself externally.141
Here, Peter has called upon the Augustinian distinction between
signs and things, from the De doctrina Christiana, transferring it from
a verbal to a theological level. With this semantic support for his
theology of divine transcendence in place, Peter states the contem-
porary consensus position in arguing that God's ability to tolerate
the breaking of His moral law and the rejection of His grace by
sinners does not conflict with or limit His will. Since this is the
arrangement He decided to put in place, the exercise of their free
will by intelligent beings cannot be seen as frustrating God's de-
sires. Peter also agrees with the consensus in stating that God's
permission of sin does not make Him morally responsible for it.142
Once more, Peter firmly guides this topic back to the principle that
God does everything that He wills, and that this fact places no
limits on divine omnipotence. And, while God's will as eternal
cannot be resisted, the signs of that will in prohibition, precept,
permission, and counsel can be rejected by the free moral agents
He has chosen to create.143
Peter brings in one final example of this same general point,
which has the effect of ending his treatment of God's nature on a
moral note, and one that attacks one of Abelard's most notorious
teachings in the field of ethics as well. Human free will may be good
will, he notes, and it may yet seek something that is against God's
plan, as is the case when filial piety urges a child to will the health

140
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 45. c. 1-c. 4, 1: 306-09.
141
Ibid., c. 5-c. 7, 1: 309-12. On this point, see Schneider, Die Uhre, pp. 44-49.
142
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 46. c. 1-c. 7, 1: 312-21. For other contemporary
treatments of this topic, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 2: 204-81.
143
Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d. 47, 1: 321-24.
302 CHAPTER FIVE

of a parent who is seriously ill and whom God wills to die. Thus,
the good will of men may or may not be congruent with the will of
God. At the same time, God's will may be served by human bad
will. This was so in the case of the people responsible for the
crucifixion of Christ, who did, pace Abelard, act out of bad inten-
tions. As with his general analysis of permission above, Peter
reminds the reader that this does not mean that God caused their
bad will. Likewise, men of good will are not gratified by the
contemplation of the sufferings of Christ on the cross or the suffer-
ings of the martyrs, although they are able to appreciate the fact
that these sufferings are permitted by God for man's redemption
and edification.144 As this final series of questions reflects so clearly,
the thoroughgoing aim of restoring the transcendent dimension to
the deity which informs so consistently Peter's doctrine of the
Trinity and doctrine of God alike also has the effect, as he moves to
the doctrine of creation and of man in Book 2 of the Sentences, of
providing a zone of independence for God's creatures that is fully
compatible with God's omnipotence, omniscience, and perfectly
realized being.

Ibid., d. 48. c. 1-c. 4, 1: 327-38.

 CHAPTER SIX

THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL

The topics covered by Book 2 of the Lombard's Sentences were all

controversial in his day, sometimes massively so. At the same time,
the contestants ranged on the different sides of the debates were not
always the same ones, for each of these subjects. In the case of
angels, man, and the fall, the latter topic including the effects and
transmission of original sin, the problems arose from the dis-
agreements found within the traditional authorities and their
twelfth-century adherents, and, in some cases, from deep internal
inconsistencies within individual authorities, which contemporary
theologians sought to reconcile with greater or lesser success.
Although Augustine is a weighty presence throughout Book 2, the
rest of the cast of characters, both ancient and modern, fluctuates
considerably from one part of this book to another. So do the
problems Peter Lombard wants to target and the particular think-
ers, in each area, whom he wants to criticize, support, or improve
on. In this respect, there is no one set of central imperatives, no one
overarching theme tying together his treatment of the topics in this
book, as there is in the case of his doctrine of God in Book 1. Also,
he displays different degrees of conservatism and originality as he
moves from one of these topics to another, and different degrees of
profundity in his exploitation of his sources. For these reasons, and
despite the evident thematic connections that tie them together,
these subjects in the Lombard's theology are grasped most compre-
hensibly when treated one by one.

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION

With respect to the doctrine of creation, the agenda was set, not
only for Peter but also for his mid-century confrères, by the chal-
lenge raised to the traditional exegetical account of creation in
Genesis commentary and to the more speculative treatment of the
subject found in the patristic tradition by the theories of creation
presented by thinkers associated with the school of Chartres. De-
spite their individual variations in handling it, their project was to
develop a Platonic or Neoplatonic understanding of the creation, a
task no one had essayed since John Scottus Eriugena in the ninth
304 CHAPTER SIX

century, and at the same time to see whether, and how far, it could
be integrated with the hexaemeral account in Genesis. While the
members of this school thus drew upon biblical materials and while
more than one of them framed his speculation in the form of
Genesis exegesis, they were united with each other, and opposed to
other thinkers of the time, in approaching this entire subject from
the standpoint of natural philosophy, not of theology.1 The contem-
porary response to the Chartrains was a varied one. Some theolo-
gians, like Honorius Augustodunensis, Rupert of Deutz, and the
members of the school of Laon, worked too early in the century to
have been aware of the writings of the Chartrains. Others, like
Robert Pullen, were chronologically positioned to have been able to
take them into account but failed to do so. Still others, like William
of St. Thierry, reacted with rhetorical denunciation but with a
highly imperfect grasp of the Chartrain project. Still others, like the
Porretans, were well aware of what that project was. Had not their
master, Gilbert of Poitiers, taught and studied at Chartres for many
years and served as chancellor of its school? But they contented
themselves with laconic objections to the Platonizing of creation
without proposing a cogent refutation or alternative to that
approach. There were also a number of theologians, including
Peter Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum, and Robert of Melun, who took serious account of the
Chartrain doctrine of creation and serious exception to it, at some
points. They sought to delineate the areas in which they found it
wanting, and the areas in which they found it useful, while trying to
yoke it to a more traditional exegetical or patristric treatment of the
subject. Peter Lombard can be placed in this last group. For his

1
This common orientation has been rightly stressed, for the school as a whole,
and for its individual members, by A. Clerval, L·s Ecoles de Chartres au moyen-âge du
e
V au XVF siècle, Mémoires de la Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir, 11 (Paris:
R. Selleret, 1895), pp. 267-68; Nikolaus M. Häring, "The Creation and Creator of
the World according to Thierry of Chartres and Clarenbaldus of Arras,"
AHDLMA 22 (1958): 146; Häring, ed., The Life and Work of Clarenbald of Anas, a
Twelfth-Century Master of the School of Chartres (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1965), p. 50; Helen Rodnite [Lemay], "Platonism in the
Twelfth-Century School of Chartres," Acta 2 (1975): 42-52; "The Doctrine of the
Trinity in Guillaume de Conches' Glosses on Macrobius: Text and Studies,"
Columbia University Ph.D. diss., 1972, pp. 50-51; Enzo Maccagnolo, Rerum
universitatis: Saggio sullafilosofia di Teodorico di Chartres (Florence: Le Monnier, 1976),
pp. 227-50; Ludwig Ott, "Die platonische Weltseele in der Theologie der Früh-
scholastik," in Parusia: Studien zur Philosophie Piatons und zur Problemgeschichte des
Piatonismus. Festgabe fur Johannes Hirschberger, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva
GMBH, 1965), pp. 308-26; Anneliese Stollenwerk, "Der Genesiskommentar
Thierrys von Chartres und die Thierrys von Chartres zugeschreibenen Kommen-
tar zu Boethius 'De trinitate'," University of Cologne Ph.D. diss., 1971, pp. 34-36.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 305

part, he is less interested in mediating between the traditional and

the Chartrain approaches to creation than are some members of
that group. But, at the same time, he offers a more coherent and
surefooted treatment of creation than any of them do, even when he
is drawing heavily and constructively upon them.2

The Chartrain Challenge

Since it was the Chartrains who threw down the gauntlet, it

makes sense to begin with the series of creation accounts which
they provided, mostly between the 1130s and the mid-1150s. A
consideration of their teachings here will remind us of the fact that
there was not only a range of Platonisms abroad in the land in this
period but also of the variety of approaches taken to the Platonic
tradition within this single movement.3 The master in this school
who appears to have been the first to have supported a Platonic
view of creation was its celebrated head in the early twelfth century,
Bernard of Chartres. In a previously unpublished gloss on Plato's
Timaeus, in the Latin translation of Chalcidius in which it was read
in this century, convincingly attributed to Bernard by its discover-
er, Paul Edward Dutton, he is quoted as stating that the three
principles of creation are God, matter, and the forms (deus, hile et
ideas)* exactly the view that John of Salisbury ascribes to him in the
Metalogicon.5 As for the nature of the forms, Bernard holds that they
are eternal, once created, but that they are not coeternal with God.
They exist in His mind before the creation of the phenomenal world
but are His products, posterior to Him. Thus far, Bernard's forms
sound much like the exemplary causes of John Scottus Eriugena.
But, unlike them, they do not participate in creating phenomenal
beings directly. Rather, for Bernard, this role is assigned to the
formae nativae, forms which are images or reflections of these
archetypes and which do the actual work of informing matter.6 As

2
This position of Peter in the contemporary debates on creation is brought out
well by Ermenegildo Bertola, "La dottrina della creazione nel Liber Sententiarum di
Pier Lombardo," Pier Lombardo 1:1 (1957): 27-44.
3
This point is articulated clearly by Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the
Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), and is stated with
particular crispness on p. 8.
4
Paul Edward Dutton, "The Uncovering of the Glosae super Platonem of Bernard
of Chartres," MS 46 (1984): 213.
5
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 4.35, ed. Clement C. J. Webb (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1909), p. 205. John makes the same point in Met. 2.20, p. 107,
although he erroneously states that the idea goes back to the Stoics.
6
Dutton, "The Uncovering," pp. 213-19.
306 CHAPTER SIX

for matter itself, Bernard does not appear to have treated the
question of whether it is eternal or created.
On all these matters later Chartrains held definite, and often
incompatible, opinions. No doubt the most problematic account of
creation produced by anyone in this tradition is that of Bernard
Silvestris, in that he offers the most thoroughly Platonic, or Neopla-
tonic, treatment of creation, not to mention one that includes ideas
idiosyncratic to him, combining his ingredients in a rich and syn-
cretic broth. For some kinds of readers, he complicates matters by
presenting his ideas not in a treatise or commentary but in an
allegorical poetic narrative-cum-dialogue, the Cosmographie. In this
work, Bernard Silvestris by no means rules out the doctrine of
préexistent matter and proposes a God who does not act directly in
the work of creation, subcontracting it instead to an assortment of
subordinate created emanations or theophanies.7 In addition to his
dependence on Neoplatonism for the notion of creation by sub-
divine intermediaries and his adherance to the Platonic notion of
the préexistence of matter, Bernard Silvestris draws as well on the
Stoic idea of a cyclical cosmos undergoing endless cycles of crea-
tion, destruction, and recreation. This cyclical idea of the cosmos is
an essential foundation for his creation scenario. For, at the point
when his story begins, we are not about to witness the first or the
only creation that ever will be, but rather the present round of the
cycle, now, as it were, at ground zero, or at ground zero plus one,
since there are already a few theophanies on the stage of the action
when Bernard sweeps open the curtains.8
In particular, the two characters who supply the matter and
form out of which most creatures are made, Silva and Noys, are
present from the very beginning. So are several other theophanies,
while yet other theophanies emerge during the course of the story to
lend a helping hand. Silva represents matter which, at this stage, is
unformed or primordial. In some respects she is the heroine of the
7
Scholars have reached consensus pn these traits, for the most part. On this
work, see in particular Clerval, Les Ecoles, pp. 259-61; Heinrich flatten, "Die
'materia primordialis' in der Schule von Chartres," Archiv für Geschichte der Philo-
sophie 40 (1931): 58-65; Etienne Gilson, "La Cosmogonie de Bernard Silvestris,"
AHDLMA 3 (1928): 5-24, although Gilson sees the character Noys as coessential
with the deity and, at the same time, as identical with the subordinate Neoplato-
nic Nous, p. 12; Theodore Silverstein, "The Fabulous Cosmogony of Bernardus
Silvestris," Modern Philology 46 (1948): 92-116; Brian Stock, Myth and Sdence in the
Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1972), pp. 15-16.
8
Bernard Silvestris, Cosmographia, ed. Peter Dronke (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978);
trans. Winthrop Wetherbee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).
Dronke offers a good summary of the story in his preface, pp. 29-48.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 307

Cosmographia, for it is her desires, her longing to receive the impress

of form, that get the action started, triggering the arrival of Noys.
She does this through the mediation of Natura, the daughter of
Noys, who makes Suva's complaint known to her mother. When
Noys arrives she brings with her the exemplary forms of all, or
most, created beings. The task of joining them to matter is accom-
plished by a number of other theophanies, under the guidance of
Noys. Just as Natura mediates the complaint of Silva, so she acts as
the mediator of the forms to matter. She also orders the four
elements to dispose themselves for the reception of form and
arranges the elements in their allotted stations with respect to each
other. It is a still more indirect level of theophany which is re-
sponsible for the actual union of matter and form. Noys gives birth
to Endelichia or Anima. She marries Mundus, who is born of Silva.
It is this marriage of Anima and Mundus that engenders all created
beings except man, although, when they do appear, they issue from
the womb of Silva.
This obstetrical anomaly aside, Bernard Silvestris next proceeds
to the creation of man, the most interesting of the creatures for him.
Man has a mode of genesis unique to him, and in two respects.
While the immediate progenitors of other beings are Anima and
Mundus, the theophanies that serve the analogous functions in
man's case are Urania and Physis. Urania, or heavenly wisdom,
supplies the human soul, and Physis, or the laws of physical nature,
supplies the human body. This part of the scenario suggests that
man's body is special, with respect to other corporeal beings, just as
his soul is. Also special is the fact that, in this case alone, the
permission of the deity must be obtained for the emergence of this
particular creature on the part of the theophanies responsible for
engendering him. The deity consents; but neither here nor else-
where does he play a direct role in creation. The job is done by
Physis and Urania in collaboration with Natura.
It is easy to see why a twelfth-century Christian reader might
find this account of creation unsettling. The creator God has been
all but banished from the action. Creation, according to Bernard
Silvestris, is accomplished, rather, by a series of secondary
theophanies or by the tertiary theophanies which they engender.
Moreover, since the cosmos is eternal and the creation just de-
scribed is not unique but only one of an endless series of creations
which recycle both the matter and the forms used in the preceding
creations, the notion of a God Who alone is eternal is impossible to
sustain. There was no point, in Bernard Silvestris's account, when
God was the only being in existence. In all these respects, it can be
308 CHAPTER SIX

seen that Bernard has made no effort at all to accommodate his

treatment of creation to the account in Genesis. Nor does he raise
the question of whether purely spiritual creatures, such as angels,
exist, what their status is if they do, and when and how they were
brought into being. Nor does he speculate on whether any of the
creative theophanies in the Cosmographia are comparable to or
coordinate with the persons of the Trinity. The role he assigns to
Anima makes her rather less prominent a figure than the anima
mundi is in Plato's Timaeus or in the work of other Chartrains, since
she is only one of several forces which collaborate in the union of
matter and form. Also, Anima here plays no role at all in man's
creation. His soul or mind is derived, rather, from Urania. While
Bernard Silvestris devotes extended attention to man and makes
him a special case among creatures, and while Bernard's accent
throughout his discussion of man is on the pure naturalism of his
origin and constitution, the uniqueness of his genesis makes it as
impossible for man to be viewed as a microcosm of nature in
general as it is for him to be viewed as having a soul created by God
in the divine image and likeness.
Bernard Silvestris has some additional reflections on the World
Soul, the human soul, and the biblical God in his commentary on
Martianus Capella, which both fail to cohere with each other and
with his philosophy in the Cosmographia. In glossing the first book of
Martianus, he says that the ancients held that, just as the world is a
vast body from which all corporeal beings derive, so the world has a
soul which animates that body. From it all created souls derive,
and to it they return. Plato, he adds, called this spirit the anima
mundi. Vergil agreed with Plato's view. For both Plato and Vergil,
the anima mundi is subordinate to God. At the same time, Bernard
states that this same spirit is referred to in both the Old and New
Testaments as the spirit of God. This is the spirit said to have
hovered over the deep in Genesis and this spirit is the one in Whom
St. Paul says we live and move and have our being.9 Bernard
Silvestris does not spell out whether he thinks that the biblical God,
or the Holy Spirit, can or should be assimilated to the subordinate
Platonic anima mundi. He just leaves matters at that. On the other
hand, his account of the functions of the World Soul here would
give it a special responsibility for the souls of men, of a sort that
Anima lacks in the Cosmographia.

9
Bernard Silvestris, Commentanus in Martiani Capellae, De Nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii 1.18, trans. Enzo Maccagnolo in // Divino e il mcgacosmo: Testi ßosofiä e
scientifici délia scuola di Chartres (Milan: Rusconi, 1980), pp. 564-67.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 309

Not all the Chartrains were willing to go as far in the direction of

Platonism, or of originality, as Bernard Silvestris. His confrères
in the school were much more interested in trying to coordinate
their findings as readers of philosophical texts with their beliefs as
Christians and with the creation account in Genesis. This is cer-
tainly the case with Thierry of Chartres. He wants to integrate the
Trinity, understood economically and with each person performing
distinct cosmic functions, into the work of creation. He takes a
more creationist than emanationist line. He believes in a single
creation, but one occurring in two stages, with God engendering
everything at once but then developing it, according to the hex-
aemeral plan of Genesis, by means of seminal reasons. God, for
Thierry, remains the remote cause, the ground of the being and
capacities of created beings. He holds the anima mundi to be a purely
naturalistic force and he does not equate it with the Holy Spirit.10
Thierry elaborates some of these points in his successive commen-
taries on the De trinitate of Boethius, and also in his treatise on the
hexaemeron. The latter work, as might be expected, offers a fuller
description of creation, although in it he changes his opinion on one
important issue, the eternity of exemplary forms, and his adherance
to the Genesis format means that he does not discuss the creation
and nature of angels.
In all his commentaries on Boethius, Thierry makes the point,
also reiterated in his hexaemeron, that God is the forma essendi,
meaning by that term not form in the Aristotelian sense of the
particular form of any created substance and not in the sense of a
divine immanentalism but just the reverse. He means that God is
the ground of being of creatures, of both their matter and their form
and of the coinherence of that matter and form in each creature.
This notion is accompanied by a clear distinction, derived by
Thierry from Boethius, between the mode of being possessed by the
creator and that possessed by creatures.11 While, in this respect,

10
Good orientations to Thierry are provided by Clerval, L·s Ecoles, pp. 254-59;
Charlotte Gross, "Twelfth-Century Concepts of Time: Three Reinterpretations of
Augustine's Doctrine of Creation Simul" Journal of the History of Philosophy 23
(1985): 328-31; Häring, "The Creation and Creator," pp. 146-53; Edouard
Jeauneau, "Un Représentant du platonisme au XII e siècle: Maître Thierry de
Chartres," in '^ctio philosophorum": Recherches sur l'Ecole de Chartres (Amsterdam:
Adolf M. Hakkert, 1973), pp. 77-86; Maccagnolo, Rerum universitatis, pp. 26-28,
30-37, 42-49, 227-50; J. M. Parent, La doctrine de la creation dans l'école de Chartres
(Paris/Ottawa: J. Vrin/Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1938), pp. 54-58; Stollen-
werk, "Der Genesiskommentar," pp. 34-36, 38-46, 4&-67.
11
Thierry of Chartres, Commentum super Boethii librum De Trinitate 2.16; Lectiones
in Boethii librum De Trinitate 2.35-37; Glosa super Boethii librum De Trinitate 2.18;
310 CHAPTER SIX

creation is the work of "one God alone" (uno solo deo) and while the
entire Trinity creates unformed matter, forms it, and governs it,
each Trinitarian person is assigned a particular role to play in
Thierry's account. In this respect, he argues, one can speak of four
causes of earthly substances, God's power as the efficient cause,
God's wisdom as the formal cause, God's goodness as the final
cause, and the four elements as the material cause.12 The unformed
matter, according to Thierry, is created all at once, at the first
moment of creation.13 As for the forms, he wavers. In his commen-
tary on Boethius, he insists that God creates both primordial
matter and the forms, and that those who think "that neither form
nor matter is created depart from the truth" {quod nee formant nee
materiam creatam esse a veritate devians).14 On the other hand, in his
hexaemeron, he states that the forms of all things are engendered
from all eternity.15 This eternity would be compatible with his
understanding of God's wisdom as the formal cause. But Thierry
does not clarify whether these forms, so understood, are an inde-
pendent category of being which, like God, is eternal but distinct
from Him or whether they are ideas in His mind, identical with
Him. Nor does he explain whether this eternal engendering of the
forms is to be understood along the lines of the Father's eternal
engendering of the Son in the unmanifested Trinity, or in some
economic sense of the term vis-à-vis creation. In any event, and
leaving aside how or if this next point squares with his view of
God's goodness as the final cause, Thierry presents the anima mundi
as the force that brings matter and form together and endows
creatures with the natural capacities they have.16 He understands
this force in a thoroughly naturalistic sense, and in this respect
scholars who exempt Thierry from Platonic subordinationism here
are on the mark. He does observe, however, and unhelpfully, that
Christians call this force the Holy Spirit.17
The creation account of William of Conches has much in com-

Tractatus de sex dierum openbus 32, ed. Nikolaus M. Haring in Commentanes on Boethius
by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1971), pp. 73, 166-67, 272, 569. This point is noted by Maccagnolo, Rerum
universilatis, pp. 26-28; Gangolf Schrimpf, Die Axiomenschrift des Boethius (De hebdo-
madibus) als philosophischesL·hrbuchdes Mittelalters (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), pp.
57-62; Stollenwerk, "Der Genesiskommentar," pp. 73-79.
12
Thierry of Chartres, Tractatus 1, 3, pp. 555, 556-57. The quotation is on
p. 555.
* I3 Ibid., 5, p. 557.
14
Thierry of Chartres, Commentum 2.28, p. 77.
15
Thierry of Chartres, Tractatus 5, p. 557.
16
Ibid., 26, p. 566.
17
Ibid., 27, 29, pp. 566, 567.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 311

mon with that of Thierry of Chartres. His model is even more

creationist than emanationist and he draws an even sharper dis-
tinction between the creator and the created capacities with which
He endows other beings. William finds a clearer and less problemat-
ic way of dealing with the forms than Thierry does. While his use of
Trinitarian language is even less theological than that of Thierry,
since he is interested in the deity only in His role in getting the
universe in motion and providing it with its built-in natural apti-
tudes, his use of the terminology of power, wisdom, and goodness to
describe the activities of the Trinitarian persons in this connection
made William the brunt of the charge of Abelardianism on the
Trinity at the hands of William of St. Thierry, even though he took
pains to indicate his differences from Abelard on the question of
whether these terms are proper names of the Trinitarian persons.18
William develops his ideas across a series of works, growing more
nuanced after the attack on his Philosophia mundi and very cautious
indeed in his final work, the Dragmaticon. He first broaches the
subject of the creation in his Glosae super Platonem. There, along the
same lines as Thierry, he announces that there are four causes of
creation, the divine essence as the efficient cause, the divine wisdom
as the formal cause, the divine goodness as the final cause, and
unformed matter as the material cause.19 With respect to the formal
cause, he makes two important distinctions that differentiate his
handling of this topic from Thierry's. As God's wisdom, this cause
is an archetype of the entire creation, he argues. It is eternal and
immutable and has always resided in God's mind. When God

18
Good orientations on William of Conches are provided by Clerval, Les Ecoles,
pp. 264-65; Dronke, Fabula, pp. 100-03; Heinrich Flatten, Die Philosophie des
Wilhelm von Conches (Koblenz: Görres-Druckerei, 1929), esp. pp. 90-96, 126-34,
180-84; Tullio Gregory, Anima mundi: Laßosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e la scuola di
Chartres (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1955), pp. 49-58, 72-97; "L'Idea délia natura
nella scuola di Chartres," Giornale critico délia ßosofia italiana 31 (1952): 433-42;
Gross, "Twelfth-Century Concepts," pp. 334—37; "William of Conches: A Curious
Grammatical Argument against the Eternity of the World," Proceedings of the PMR
Conference, 11, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (Villanova: Augustinian Historical Institute,
1986), pp. 127-33; Jeauneau, "Integumentum," in "hctiophilosophorum", pp. 151-61,
171-72; Maccagnolo, intro, to // Divino, pp. 66-68; Gregor Maurach, comm. on
his ed. of William of Conches, Philosophia mundi, Bk. 1 (Pretoria: University of
South Africa, 1974), pp. 55, 58; Joseph Moreau, "'Opifex, id est Creator*: Remarques
sur le platonisme de Chartres," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 56 (1974): 35-49;
Ott, "Die platonische Weltseele," pp. 318-26; Parent, La doctrine de la creation, pp.
37-43, 70-76; Rodnite [Lemay], "The Doctrine of the Trinity," pp. 38, 40-42,
49-54, 56-60, 64—72. William's treatment of power, wisdom, and goodness as
Trinitarian names has been erroneously equated with Abelard's by John Newell,
"Rationalism at the School of Chartres," Vivarium 21 (1983): 21.
19
William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem 1.32, ed. Edouard Jeauneau (Paris:
J. Vrin, 1965), p. 98.
312 CHAPTER SIX

decides to engender the creation, two other formal principles arrive

on the scene. The divine archetype serves as the exemplar of the
formae nativae which, in turn, are the informing principles of indi-
vidual substances. Also, in a similar way, God produces seminal
reasons. William sees these seminal reasons not so much as a
means of accounting for the arrival of new kinds of creatures after
the sixth day of creation but as a means of describing a continuous
creation in which creatures are given the capacity to function as
secondary causes. His distinctions here, with respect to the idea of
form, enable him to retain the notion of an archetypal cause iden-
tical with and coeternal with the deity without sacrificing the
notion of created forms that do not partake of the divine essence.20
With respect to the material cause, William rejects Plato and
agrees with Thierry that primordial matter is not eternal or
préexistent but created, and created simul at the first moment of the
creation.21 With respect to the final cause, William calls it the anima
mundi and treats it exclusively as a force of nature that gives
creatures life and motion and the ability to carry out their natural
physical functions. As to whether it can be called the Holy Spirit,
he observes that some people think so. He himself remains non-
committal, saying that he neither denies nor affirms this claim.22
But, in the sequel, he makes it very clear that the anima mundi as he
envisions it has to be distinguished sharply from any of the Trinitar-
ian persons and from created beings as well. Unlike the Son or the
Holy Spirit, the anima mundi is neither engendered, nor does it
proceed. Unlike the phenomenal world, it is not created. The verb
he uses to describe the presence of the anima mundi in the world is
excogitare, meaning produced by thought. 23 While William thus
avoids a confusion between the anima mundi and the deity, either as
creator or as the Holy Spirit, it is still not entirely clear what
relationship it bears to the deity. It is not created. But does it share
coeternity with God? Or, is it to be understood as an effect of God
that is given its assignment only when the phenomenal world
comes into being, as the providential law of nature He ordains? On
these matters William remains silent.
Further clarifications are provided by William in his Philosophia
mundi. Here, he reiterates the position on unformed matter and on
forms that he had already articulated.24 But he begins by observing

0
Ibid., 1.32, 1.37, 1.45, pp. 99, 104-05, 113.
1
Ibid., 1.60, 2.94, pp. 130-31, 260.
2
Ibid., 1.71, pp. 144—47. The quotation is on p. 147.
3
Ibid., 1.74, pp. 148-50.
4
William of Conches, Philosophia mundi 1.22, ed. Maurach, pp. 27-33.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 313

that, while we should learn what we can about the creator by

investigating the creation, the knowledge we can gain thereby
remains- imperfect.25 He holds out analogous limits for theological
language. While the Trinitarian persons can be called power, wis-
dom, and will, these terms, especially the third one, must be
understood metaphorically (translative), not literally. Moreover,
these are not proper names exclusive to each of the persons, since
They share equally in the qualities involved and work cooperative-
ly in all Their actions.26 William of St. Thierry clearly did not take
account of these disclaimers in charging that William of Conches
was teaching the same Trinitarian doctrine as Abelard. Nor did he
read far enough into the Philosophia mundi; for he completely misses
William's next point.27 William returns to the question of the anima
mundi and whether it can be equated with the Holy Spirit. He notes
that there are two answers that have been given to this question.
Some say that the anima mundi is the Holy Spirit, which vivifies
everything in the world. Others say that the anima mundi is purely
natural, and not a supernatural force, implanted in creatures and
giving them their natural vigor and aptitudes. He refers readers to
his gloss on Plato where, as we have just seen, he refrains from
deciding between these two positions and in which his own han-
dling of this force suggests that he has a purely naturalistic under-
standing of it. In the Philosophia mundi, William offers a clarification
of that last point. Since God wills to create a world in which
creatures can operate as secondary causes and since will, with the
caveats and limits noted above, can be ascribed to the Holy Spirit,
one can associate the anima mundi with the mission of the Holy
Spirit. But, he insists, this is not to say that the transcendent Holy
Spirit immanentalizes Himself in the work of the anima mundi.
Rather, William concludes, we have to see the anima mundi as an
effect of the Holy Spirit.28
In the first book of his Elementorum philosophiae William repeats
and nuances still farther his discussion of the Trinity and the anima
mundi in his earlier works. He states that God is the sole creator, an
activity in which all the Trinitarian persons collaborate equally,
and that all the qualities of the Trinity inhere equally in all the
persons. He adds that nothing precedes or is coeternal with the
deity.29 This last point sweeps away the possibility that the anima

25
Ibid., 1.4, pp. 10-11.
26
Ibid., 1.10-11, pp. 13-15.
27
William of St. Thierry, De enoribus Guillelmi de Conchis, PL 180: 333A-D.
28
William of Conches, Philos, mundi 1.15, pp. 15-16.
29
William of Conches, Elementorum philosophiae 1, PL 90: 1129A-1130B.
314 CHAPTER SIX

mundi is eternal. In rounding up opinions on the anima mundi,

William notes once more that some seek to equate it with the Holy
Spirit and that others treat it as a purely natural force {naturalem
vigorem) infused in things by God as part of their natural endow-
ment, enabling them to carry out their functions. Adding a third
opinion, he notes that still others see the anima mundi as an incor-
poreal substance which gives animate beings their souls individual-
ly. This third opinion, which we have found in Bernard Silvestris's
Martianus gloss, he rejects. Once more, he takes no official stand
on the other two positions, although what he has said in the
Philosophia mundi as well as in the present work would appear to
favor the second view.30
In William's final work, the Dragmaticon, abandoning the effort to
develop the potentially fruitful distinction between the deity and
His effects, whether seen as the natural law He ordains or as the
beings He creates, he fights a rear-guard action. He rejects his
earlier description of the Trinity as power, wisdom, and will. Using
the tactic of many of Abelard's critics prior to the Lombard, he
cites biblical passages in which these names are applied to Trinitar-
ian persons other than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, res-
pectively.31 William also abandons all reference to the anima mundi.
In this sense, his final response to criticism is not to try to refute it
definitively but to back off from the project which had inspired it.
There were two other mid-century Chartrains, writing after
Bernard Silvestris, Thierry of Chartres, and William of Conches
who sought to take account of, and to rectify, the overstatements,
misstatements, or unclarities which they found in the writings of
these masters. They did so with only partial success. One is an
anonymous Chartrain whose commentary on Martianus Capella
has been ascribed, by some scholars, to Bernard Silvestris. The
internal evidence in this text, however, has enabled its editor to
make a convincing refutation of that claim, since, while the author
glosses some of the same points as Bernard does in his own com-
mentary on the same work, he does so at different lemmata; and, he
certainly moves away from some of the positions taken by Bernard.
The author has clearly profited from the controversy provoked,
willy-nilly, by William of Conches, for he takes pains to agree with
him that power, wisdom, and goodness are not proper names of the

30
Ibid., 1, PL 90: 1130B-1131D. The quotation is at 1130C.
31
William of Conches, Dragmaticon prologus, trans. Maccagnolo in // Divino, pp.
244-45.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 315

Trinitarian persons but refer to attributes which they all share.32

He glosses the name Endelichia, which, as we have noted, Bernard
Silvestris equates with Anima as the female half of the theophanic
couple who combine form and matter in all creatures except man,
in his Cosmographia. Our author allows that Endelichia is the
mother of Psyche, meaning that incorporeals, like the soul, cannot
have material causes. Endelichia, he adds, is not a theophany, not
God, and not a person of the Trinity.33 After raising and rejecting
the Platonic theory that souls preexist their union with bodies,
proposing instead that souls, like everything else, are created, and
created simul,34 he turns to the problem of the World Soul. The
anima mündig he argues, is not to be identified with the deity. Nor is
it the substance of created souls. Rather, it is a natural power that
animates the whole world.35 The author then, confusingly enough,
caps this position, which is largely a reprise of William of Conches',
with a gloss on the World Soul supportive of what Bernard Silves-
tris says in his Martianus commentary, and one which contradicts
what he himself has already stated. In language very close to
Bernard's, he compares the World Soul to the spirit animating the
world, understood as a vast body, the spirit which is the source of
all souls and to which they return. He equates this spirit with the
divine spirit that governs the creation. As both prophets and phi-
losophers have said, he adds, it endows creatures with the capacity
to perform their natural functions. The author does not raise here
the issue of the Trinity, or the charisms of the Holy Spirit. But,
while he stresses above that the anima mundi is neither the deity nor
a theophany of the deity, he now identifies the World Soul with
God. The term anima mundi, he concludes, confusingly enough,
"plainly signifies the deity" (Deum esse aperte significat) .36 It cannot
be said that this eflTort to square Bernard Silvestris with William of
Conches is a success.
The last Chartrain writer within our time period, Clarenbald of
Arras, makes a valiant attempt to seize the initiative once again, to
treat the range of issues addressed by other masters in the school
who proposed accounts of creation, and to set his own stamp on
this enterprise by de-Platonizing it somewhat and by adding some

32
Haijo Jan Westra, ed., The Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii Attributed to Bernard Silvestris 5.424-54, 11.30-62 (Toronto:
Pontifical Institue of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), pp. 107-08, 246-47.
33
Ibid., 6.420-30, p. 143.
34
Ibid., 6.508-48, pp. 146-47.
35
Ibid., 8.311-17, p. 183.
36
Ibid., 8.991-1025, pp. 205-06. The quotation is at 8.1025, p. 206.
316 CHAPTER SIX

original ideas of his own.37 Framing his discussion as a commentary

on Genesis, he begins by comparing Genesis with other books of the
Old Testament and analogizes their arrangement with the books of
the Roman law. After discussing prophesy and inspiration as
means of access to the biblical text, Clarenbald oflfers a proof of
God's existence, as the first cause, and one that might be seen as a
criticism of the Cosmographia. Since the universe exists, with its
multiple phenomena, elements, and humors, and since it cannot
have been created by nature itself, or by chance, it requires an
artificer (artifex). Since this artificer must be supremely intelligent
and omnipotent, as well as being prior to all else, he cannot have
been a man, or an angel, and must be God.38 Before going on, it is
worth pointing out that Clarenbald's use of the term artifex in no
sense means that he sees creation as the imposition of forms,
whether created or not, on préexistent matter. He is a real creation-
ist and an opponent of theophanic intermediaries. This point will
emerge more clearly below. Second, it is worth noting Clarenbald's
acknowledgement of the existence of angels, and of their status as
intelligent and incorporeal beings. But, having referred to them
here, he proceeds to ignore them in the rest of his commentary.
This is not just because the commentary takes the form of a
hexaemeron and angels are not mentioned in the creation account
in Genesis. It is also a consequence of the fact that none of the
thinkers engaged in the Chartrain project felt a need to discuss
angels or to indicate where beings of this type fit into their under-
standings of creation. This being the case, Clarenbald's mention of
angels is a teaser for an analysis which he does not provide.
In turning to the creation, after establishing that it derives from
God and from no other power, Clarenbald follows the line of
assigning different parts of the work to different persons of the
Trinity. His argument here resembles Thierry's more than that of
William of Conches, for he omits both William's disclaimers con-
cerning the full collaboration of the persons of the Trinity in
everything They do as well as the power, wisdom and will model
that brought William so much grief. Clarenbald rings two impor-
tant changes on this theme, in comparison with both of these
masters. He omits reference entirely to the Holy Spirit, confining
himself to the creative activities of the Father and the Son only. As

37
A good introduction is provided by Haring, "The Creation and Creator," pp.
169-81; Life and Works of Clarenbaldus, pp. 50-53.
38
Clarenbald of Arras, Tractatus super librum Genesis 9-10, ed. Haring in Life and
Works, pp. 229-30.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 317

for the natural functions ascribed by Thierry and William to the

anima mundi, a force also notable by its absence from Clarenbald's
commentary, he retains these functions but reassigns them to the
Son and to the seminal reasons. He also re-Augustinizes the semi-
nal reasons, in terms of the scope he grants them. At the same time,
he collapses the seminal reasons into the exemplary forms, or vice
versa, ignoring the useful distinctions between these two types of
formal principles that had been drawn by William of Conches.
In Clarenbald's creation scenario, God the Father retains His
role as the creator of primordial matter, which, he agrees, is not
coeternal with God, but is created all at once, and which comes into
being in a state of pure potentiality (possibilitas absoluta).39 God the
Son, for His part, combines in His creative office two functions,
both those associated by other members of the school of Chartres
with the divine wisdom and those they assign as well to the anima
mundi. The Son, according to Clarenbald, acts by absolute necessity
(nécessitas absoluta). By this he means that He acts completely alone.
The Son is the force that providentially imposes forms on matter,
moving it from the state of pure potentiality to the state of fulfill-
ment, in which it can be known by the human mind. In addition,
the Son supplies the created substances thereby brought into being
with seminal forms. These seminal forms have been present in the
mind of God from all eternity.40 At this point, it would appear that
Clarenbald is confusing two ideas which it might be more helpful to
consider separately. On the one hand, he regards primordial mat-
ter as an entity incapable of being grasped by the human mind
because it is lacking in form of any kind. This notion appears to
depend on the epistemological assumption that the mind comes to
a knowledge of material beings by abstracting their formal compo-
nents from them. From this point of view, it could be argued that
there is a first level of formal determination of matter, when incho-
ate matter is resolved into the four elements and when these
elements are placed in relation to each other, prior to their com-
bination and union with substantial forms, in the creation of indi-
vidual beings. There is a step in Bernard Silvestris's Cosmograpkia
account that addresses this concern. For his part, Clarenbald seems
to need such a step in his own scenario, but he does not include one.
He moves immediately to the seminal reasons, which are deter-
minations not of primordial matter but of actual creatures.
In identifying the seminal reasons with ideas in the mind of God,

Ibid., 17, 38, pp. 233, 242. The quotation is at 17, p. 233.
Ibid., 18-23, pp. 233-36.
318 CHAPTER SIX

Clarenbald follows an Augustinian argument designed to refute the

idea that exemplary causes, not seminal causes, are coeternal with
God but independent of Him. The same argument is a useful
weapon to be wielded against the Eriugenian understanding of
exemplary causes as created and creative, posterior to the deity but
eternal once brought into being. It is certainly possible to defend
the idea that both exemplary causes and seminal reasons are pre-
sent in the mind of God from all eternity, and that neither of them
is put into play until He decides to create the universe. But, if one
wants to make this point, it is desirable to do so without ignoring
the fact that these two sets of formal principles have two kinds of
functions, in Augustine's account. What Clarenbald does, even as
he assigns to the Son the task of informing matter, is to impose
three duties on the seminal reasons. They take over the anima
mundVs task of endowing creatures with their natural aptitudes,
enabling them to operate as secondary causes in their own sphere of
activity without further recourse to the creator. And, with Augus-
tine, he also sees the seminal reasons as explanations of new kinds
of creatures that may arise after the sixth day of creation. Even
more so, he agrees with Augustine that the seminal reasons can also
explain the capacity of creatures to sustain divine miracles without
annulling their natural limits under normal circumstances, and as
providing for the supernatural aptitudes of animate beings, in the
order of grace.41 In all these connections, while the Son acts with
nécessitas absoluta, the seminal forms act with a nécessitas complexionis,
that is, they act not completely alone but in conjunction with other
beings, natural or supernatural as the case may be.
To sum up, Clarenbald's treatment of creation is, on one level,
an effort to avoid snares in which some of his Chartrain brethren
became entangled, particularly with reference to the createdness or
uncreatedness of the forms, the World Soul, and the Holy Spirit.
On another level, it is an effort to go beyond Genesis by showing
that the deity, at least in the persons of the Father and the Son,
relates Himself to the world in four ways. Prior to and independent
of time, He operates formally, in conceiving of the forms of all
things, and informally, in the creation of unformed matter. In time,
He operates formally, and in two ways, actualizing matter as a
state of pure potentiality by informing it, and by endowing the
beings so produced, through the seminal reasons, with their capac-
ity to carry out their natural functions. And, also in time, and again
through the power of the seminal reasons, He operates so as to
41
Ibid., 28, pp. 338-39.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 319

redeem it, by endowing it with the capacity to function in the super-

natural order, as a vehicle of or as a collaborator with divine grace.
Clarenbald's importation of a richer Augustinian understanding of
seminal reasons into his account enables him to provide a more
broadly gauged treatment of God in relation to the creation than is
true of the other Chartrains, even though his elimination of the Holy
Spirit truncates his doctrine of God. He takes a clear stand against
emanationism and created intermediaries as playing any role in the
process of creation. His treatment of the forms accents their uncreated
status and identity with the divine mind, but he is less precise and
helpful than is William of Conches, with his distinction between
archetypal form, on the one hand, and created formae nativae, on the
other. Perhaps a larger problem lies in Clarenbald's terminology.
While his distinction between the Son's nécessitas absoluta and the
neccentas complexionis of the seminal reasons as causes offers a nice, and
an original, way of differentiating causation at two distinct meta-
physical levels, his use of the term nécessitas in each case bears with it
the disturbing implication that, whichever of these types of causation
is at issue, the causal agent in question acts in response to a
necessity of its own being. This would be to deny to the deity
freedom, and to the creation contingency and free will.

The Response of the Scholastic Theologians

As the theologians of the day confronted the assorted doctrines of

creation issuing from these Chartrain authors, they had good
reason to feel inspired to seek alternatives to them. True, there were
those, such as the Porretans and Roland of Bologna, who may have
been impressed by the intemperate and misinformed outburst of
William of St. Thierry against William of Conches, or who had no
temperamental inclination to explore the alleged compatibilities
between Plato's Timaeus and Genesis, or who had no real interest in
creation as a subject or in the debates it had occasioned in the
exegetical and patristic traditions. For the Porretans, it was suf-
ficient to denounce "the philosophers" who say that the three
principles of creation are matter, form, and the demiurge and to
substitute the assertion that the principles of creation are the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that God creates everything ex
nihilo, without offering any explanation or elaboration on that
statement.42 Roland is not hostile, but merely unenthusiastic.

42
Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "Die Sententie magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi I"
13.2, AHDLMA 45 (1978): 162.
320 CHAPTER SIX

Although he draws on Augustine's Genesis commentaries, he uses

them to raise more cosmological question than he has any interest
in trying to answer. The only remotely physical issue he addresses
is what the term "day" means in the Genesis account. Since it was
impossible to have "days" in the literal sense of the word before the
heavenly bodies were created, he suggests that it should be read
metaphorically.43 This mild flicker of intellectual curiosity is the
exception that proves the rule in a description of creation that is as
abbreviated as it is jejune.
But there were other theologians left unsatisfied by the Chartrain
project, for other reasons. Some of them were sensitive to the
internal contradictions within the Chartrain accounts, both indi-
vidually and collectively. Some could see the philosophical and
theological problems which the Chartrain positions bore in their
train. There is also the undeniable fact that there were issues which
the theologians regarded as important, or controversial, or neces-
sary to discuss, which did not figure in the Chartrains' writings, or
which did so in a deeply problematic way. Angels, for instance, are
mentioned in the school of Chartres only by Clarenbald of Arras,
and by him only in passing. Angels, however, were a subject which
the theologians felt a pressing need to debate. True, their meta-
physical status and the question of when they had been created
were of interest. But the prime concerns of the theologians here
were the fall of the angels and the confirmation in evil and good of
those who had rebelled and remained loyal to God, as well as the
functions and missions of angels in the economy of salvation. But,
before one could proceed to discuss these matters, it was necessary
to stake out a terrain in the scheme of creation where the angels
could be positioned. The hexaemeral tradition offered no guidance
here. Neither did the Chartrains. Even more alarming was the
comparative disinterest of the Chartrains in man, the crown of
creation, and the hinge on which everything else in a systematic
theology would have to turn. The only Chartrain to have devoted
extended attention to the creation and nature of man was Bernard
Silvestris. To be sure, the allegorical trappings attached to his
account might not be pleasing to every taste. But more disquieting
and unacceptable still was his relentlessly naturalistic understand-
ing of this subject. Moreover, even among those Chartrains who
wrote commentaries on Genesis as a vehicle for their teaching,

43
Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius M. Gietl (Amster-
dam: Editions Rodopi, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1891 ed.]),
pp. 104-10.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 321

creation was the whole story. Those Chartrains who took the
trouble to usher man onto the stage were not interested in his fall
and its consequences, topics which any responsible theologian felt
impelled to treat. So, not only did the Chartrains' own works suffer
from internal difficulties, their coverage of subjects which the
theologians felt a need to address was woefully inadequate. And,
the theological tradition, which the Chartrains largely ignored,
itself supplied a wealth of debated issues related to the creation
which required sorting out as well, a point quite evident from the
consideration of those twelfth-century theologians who tackled the
creation well before it became necessary to respond, in one way or
another, to the Chartrain challenge.
Even in as lapidary, as unspeculative, and as unscholastic an
early twelfth-century theologian as Honorius Augustodunensis one
catches a sense of the questions which the patristic and more recent
theological tradition had posed concerning creation, which mid-
century theologians would find a continuing need to consider, and
then some. It is not Honorius's technique to display the conflicts of
authorities openly, or even to name the authorities he uses to
anchor his own opinions. But the questions he takes up, however
abruptly he treats them, are the tips of massive theological icebergs
in one form or another. He raises seven major points. First, he notes
that God had the plan of creation in mind before He reified it
phenomenally.44 Honorius follows Augustine here, although with-
out framing the issue in terms of exemplary forms, which, as we
have seen, could be done and had been done by Augustine and
others. Next, Honorius notes that God "speaks" to create, an
observation derived from the rhetoric of the creation account in
Genesis and one that leads Honorius to state that this is the sense in
which the Father creates everything in the Word.45 Here, too, the
point suggests a range of amplifications on the Son as the Logos of
the creation that invites theological no less than philosophical
reflection. Honorius agrees with the idea of creation simul although,
following Hilary of Poitiers here, he maintains that God organized
and assigned creatures to their places during the next six days.46
Hilary was by no means the only authority to offer an opinion here,
and the views of Augustine, Gregory, Isidore of Seville, and Bede

44
Honorius Augustodunensis, Eluädarium 1.15, ed. Yves Lefèvre in UElucida-
rium et les lucidaires: Contnbutionpar l'histoire d'une texte à Vhistoire des croyances religieuses
en France au moyen âge (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1954), p. 363.
45
Ibid., 1.16, p. 364.
46
Ibid., 1.20, p. 364.
322 CHAPTER SIX

received considerable attention from the theologians as well.

Another question Honorius raises is why God created animals,
both as such and also disgusting or pestiferous animals such as
insects and worms. In addressing the first part of the question he
opines that, foreknowing that man would fall and that fallen man
would needs be carnivorous, God created animals, although He
intended men to be vegetarian in their prelapsarian state. While
perhaps intriguing to those moderns who see eating lower on the
food chain as morally virtuous and ecologically responsible, this
question bears in its train a host of other reflections in which
Honorius does not indulge, but which interested the church fathers,
on the physical differences in human nature brought about by the
fall. The problem of the insects and worms, on which, as both
questioner and respondent, he draws on Ambrose's Hexaemeron and
Augustine's Genesis commentaries, affords an opportunity for him
to indulge in a mini-theodicy and an assertion of the intrinsic
goodness of the entire creation, 47 themes orchestrated more fully
elsewhere by the ancients and moderns. Honorius is also interested
in Eden. He feels quite certain of its location, in Hebron, and also of
the propriety of describing it under the classical literary topos of the
locus amoenissimus.™ On both counts, the subject was controversial.
Winding up with man, Honorius's last two questions raise matters
of considerable speculative interest. Why was man created? In
Honorius's view, and here he supports Anselm of Canterbury
against the authority of Augustine, God did not create human
beings to make up the number of the fallen angels.49 Not all
theologians agreed. As his final point, about man, and this is one
which, thanks to Isidore of Seville, he develops more elaborately
than anyone else in his generation in an argument that fell on
attentive ears later in the century, Honorius states that man is the
microcosm. He is a combination of matter and spirit. Moreover,
his body is made up of the four elements and can be analogized
with the physical universe with respect to his organs, senses, and
humors. Not only that, man is the microcosm because ADAM is an
acronym of the cardinal points on the compass.50 This, too, is a

47
Ibid., 1.66-67, pp. 372-73.
48
Ibid., 1.68-69, p. 373.
49
Ibid., 1.57, p. 371. For the debate on this subject in the twelfth century, see
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957), pp.
52-61.
50
Honorius, Elue. 1.58-64, pp. 371-72. The richness of Honorius's exposition of
the microcosm theme, by early twelfth-century standards, has been signaled by
Lefèvre, p. 115 n. 1.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 323

subject rich in speculative possibilities on which the theological

tradition had much to offer, a tradition which the successors of
Honorius in Peter Lombard's generation could legitimately feel
had been marginalized or ignored by the Chartrains, however
accommodating they might be toward those Chartrain doctrines
that they might feel were worth trying to salvage.
A good example of a theologian who was well aware of the
Chartrain project and responsive to some of its concerns, while at
the same time interested in speaking to a number of the theological
issues which the Chartrains failed to address, is Peter Abelard. He
is also responsive to some of the debates on creation inherited from
the patristic tradition, and from the exegetical tradition as well.
While there is passing mention of one or two points relative to
creation in his Theologia "scholarium", Abelard addresses this subject
most fully not in connection with systematic theology but in his
Hexaemeron, a work written fairly late in his career and in response
to a request from Heloise and her nuns, who sought his help in their
understanding of the creation account in Genesis. The audience for
which this work was written may perhaps account for the way
Abelard approaches his task here. As commentators have noted, he
adopts a rather conservative mainstream hermeneutical method,
closely modeled on that of Augustine's De genest ad litteram, being, if
anything, rather more literal in his reading of the text than Augus-
tine is. And, in considering issues raised by both Augustine and the
Chartrains, he tends to follow the former rather than the latter.51
Abelard composed the Hexaemeron during the same period in
which he was making the final or semi-final revisions of the Theolo-
gia "scholarium". Yet, on a couple of key points, his doctrine of
creation in the exegetical work has to be seen as more fully and
circumspectly developed, even though he does not import it into
the most mature version of his theology. Abelard holds that there is
a two-stage process in the creation. First, God creates the four
elements out of nothing. There is no preexisting matter. Then, God
imposes order on this matter. In the account given in the Theologia
"scholarium", Abelard comes as close as he gets to the Chartrains by
51
Good orientations are provided by Eileen Kearney, "Peter Abelard as Bib-
lical Commentator: A Study of the Expositio in Hexaemeron," in Petrus Abaelardus
(1079-1142): Person, Werk und Wirkung, ed. Rudolph Thomas (Trier: Paulinus-
Verlag, 1980), pp. 199-210; Mary Foster Romig, intro, to her ed., "A Critical
Edition of Peter Abelard's 'Expositio in Hexameron'," University of Southern
California Ph.D. diss., 1981, pp. xvii-xlvii; J. G. Sikes, Peter Abailard (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 132-44; Richard E. Weingart, The Logic of
Divine Love: A Critical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abailard (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1970), pp. 30-35.
324 CHAPTER SIX

assigning to the Son and the Holy Spirit different functions in this
ordering process. In that work, he describes the Son as equivalent
to the exemplary causes in the mind of God, with which matter is
informed in the creation; he gives to the Holy Spirit the role of
providing the natural laws that endow creatures with their natural
capacities.52 In the Theologia "scholarium", as in Abelard's earlier
theologies, this account is muddied by his lack of clarity concerning
the equatability of these two persons of the Trinity with the Platon-
ic Nous and World Soul as emanations, and by the question,
which his economic approach to the Trinity raises, of whether these
persons participate in the substance of created beings. In his
Hexaemeron, on the other hand, when Abelard addresses this second
stage of creation in which matter is formed and disposed, he speaks
only of the forms as divine ideas. He backs off from the definition of
them as the Logos, as second person of the Trinity, or as archetypes
whose relationship to the deity's eternity and exclusive creativity
needs to be explained. At the same time, he distinguishes between
the primordial forms in the mind of God and the forms which are
actually united with matter to produce created substances. These
latter forms, as well as matter, are created, he states.53 In this way,
he preserves the deity's transcendence, but without clarifying the
relationship between the one level of forms and the other. In the
Hexaemeron, as well, Abelard takes another prudent step. The Holy
Spirit and World Soul alike vanish from the scene as the force of
nature endowing created beings with their natural capacities. Nor
does Abelard call upon seminal reasons, in either the Chartrain or
the purely Augustinian sense, to perform this function. Instead, he
assigns it to a power which he simply calls the force of nature (vis
naturae), which avoids the problems of possible misunderstanding
evoked by these other two terms. This language appears to have
been original to Abelard. 54
If Abelard shows a selective use of Augustine thus far, this trait is
also visible in his handling of other features of his creation account.
He is not interested in the question of creation simul, either in the
form in which it was taught by Augustine or any of the other
patristic or later authorities, or in the form which it was given by
some of his contemporaries. It is not that Abelard disagrees with
any of these theories overtly. He simply does not take the question
52
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 1.37, 2.172-73, ed. Constant J. Mews,
CCCM 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), pp. 333, 491-92.
53
Peter Abelard, Hexaemeron, ed. Romig, pp. 10-11, 24-25.
54
Ibid., pp. 14-15, 51-54. For Abelard's originality here, see Romig, intro., pp.
xxiv, xlvii-xlviii.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 325

up at all, proceeding to the organization of creatures according to

the hexaemeral plan. Nor is he interested in the question of whether
the "days" in Genesis should be understood in anything but the
literal sense.35 At the same time, he is content to let man remain in
his traditional biblical location in the creation on the sixth day.
Abelard emerges as a strong supporter of Augustine as an opponent
of astral determinism in his treatment of the creation of the heaven-
ly bodies, drawing on the City of God here as well as on Augustine's
Genesis commentaries. With Augustine, he argues that the move-
ments of the heavenly bodies are indeed determined themselves, by
the laws of nature that govern them, but that they do not control
the fortunes of men or limit the contingencies that occur elsewhere
in the universe.56 The other physical issue of a speculative nature
that Abelard raises is whether plants have souls. Here, he intro-
duces a range of opinions on all sides, reviews them carefully, and
eventually declares that it is impossible to make a positive deter-
mination of the question. While leaving it an open one, he points
out that his doctrine of vis naturae makes it possible to explain the
behavior of plants whether they have souls or not.57
While Abelard indicates the theologian's strong interest in devot-
ing a major section of the Hexaemeron to the subject of man, most of
what he has to say on it is devoted to the fall, and we will take it up
under that heading later in the present chapter. He has remarkably
little to say on the question of why man was created and what
human nature was like before the fall. He contents himself with
noting that man was given an immortal soul made in God's image,
and that he possessed goodness in the sense that all created things
are good.58 But, and this reflects his major departure from his
Augustinian model, his chief goal in explaining the creation in
general, and the creation of man in particular, is not to defend the
goodness of the physical world or to propose a theodicy. As Abelard
sees it, God creates man and makes him the crown of creation out
of love for man and in order to manifest His own glory.59 The entire
account of creation that he has provided in the Hexaemeron is
designed to move the reader to penance for the sin that led to the
loss of paradise. Abelard's inquiry here, and this may well refer
back to the monastic readers for whom he writes, is ultimately a
moral and not a scientific or speculative one.

55
Peter Abelard, Hex., p. 11.
56
Ibid., pp. 55-60.
57
Ibid., pp. 51-55.
58
Ibid., pp. 71, 85.
59
Ibid., p F 69.
326 CHAPTER SIX

This fact, in addition to the scanting or omitting of topics which

theologians wanted to investigate more fully in connection with the
creation, and the fact that Abelard's doctrine of creation is dealt
with in a separate treatise and not coordinated with the enterprise
of systematic theology, may well account for the lack of resonance
which Abelard's Hexaemeron had among the scholastics of his time.
With the exception of Roland of Bologna, none of Abelard's disci-
ples took up the subject of the creation. So, the Abelardian trail
ends here. Much more important, as efforts to address both the
issues raised by the Chartrains and by the patristic tradition in this
period were the works of Hugh of St. Victor, the author of the
Summa sententiarum, and Robert of Melun. These efforts are massive,
if not entirely successful, and they constitute the major models
which Peter Lombard used, approved, or weighed in the balance
and found wanting.
It has been generally acknowledged that Hugh of St. Victor was
familiar with the Platonic doctrine of creation in the Timaeus as well
as the interpretations being given to it by the Chartrains active up
through his time, and that he was basically unsympathetic to this
entire proposal. Instead, he posits God alone, not the demiurge,
matter, and form as the principle of creation. To the extent that he
invokes any Platonic terminology here it is used as a rhetorical
embellishment. Decorating the idea that man's soul is spread even-
ly through his body, Hugh may invoke the notion of the World Soul
as ubiquitous in the world. Or, describing Christ as the perfect
moral exemplar and chief instigator of man's redemption, he may
refer to Him as an archetype. But this does not mean that Hugh is
associating himself with the Chartrain project. Quite the reverse is
the case. His directionality is a different one. Man's redemption,
not cosmology, is his focus.60 And, while he certainly displays a
keen interest in trying to find alternatives to some of the speculation
of the Chartrains, reviving, for example, the Augustinian version
of the doctrine of creation simul, he treats the Genesis account from
a narratological perspective in the light of what man can learn
about God from it and not as a literal statement of how the world

o0
Noted by Gregory, Anima mundi, pp. 47-48; Christian Schütz, Deus absconditus,
Deus manifestus: Die Lehre Hugos von St. Viktor über die Offenbarung Gottes (Rome:
Herder, 1967), pp. 130-62; Jerome Taylor, intro, to his trans, of Hugh of St.
Victor, Didascalicon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 22-29;
Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence
of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 32,
49-62.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 327

was created.61 His emphasis throughout is not scientific but sac-

ramental, in the broad Hugonian sense of that term.
In obtaining the objectives he seeks, Hugh is hampered here by
two main problems, terminological and organizational. He uses
certain terms necessary for the discussion of creation, attaching
several meanings to them, without indicating which sense is to be
understood in a particular context. A good example of such a key
term is natura*2 Sometimes Hugh means by "nature" the arche-
type, or the exemplar of all things residing in the mind of God and
serving as the model He uses when each created being is informed.
There are difficulties in his handling of just this definition itself.
Hugh opens his De sacramentis with what reads as a reprise of the
Periphyseon of John Scottus Eriugena, locating the exemplars or
primordial causes at John's second level of nature, the created and
creative. Hugh makes this point, however, in the same breath in
which he states that God alone is the creator.63 And, in the Didasca-
licon, Hugh calls this primordial pattern the divine idea that creates
rational beings without intermediaries, identifying it with Christ as
the Logos.64 Further, shortly after Hugh's first assertion in the De
sacramentis, he observes that the primordial causes are uncreated.65
This effort to come to grips with the exemplars fails miserably. The
reader is left in the dark as to whether Hugh thinks they are created
or uncreated, sharers of God's creative power or not, identical with
the divine mind, above it, below it, or equal to it as the second
person of the Trinity. "Nature" understood as archetypal causa-
tion alone thus spreads confusion in its wake. But Hugh also uses
this term in the generic Boethian sense of the characteristics proper
to a being of whatever sort, which differentiate it from other beings.
He also uses "nature" to mean the creative fire (ignis artifex) which,
in turn, is the power imparted to created beings enabling them to

61
Gross, "Twelfth-Century Concepts," pp. 325-28; A. Mignon, Les origines de la
scolastique et Hugues de Saint-Victor, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1895), 1: 321-28.
62
Noted by Erich Barkholt, Die Ontologie Hugos von St. Viktor, Inaugural-
Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1930, pp. 19-20; Roger Baron, "LTdée de la
nature chez Hugues de Saint-Victor," in Laßosofia délia natura nel medioevo (Milan:
Vita e Pensiero, 1966), pp. 260-63; Philippe Delhaye, "La nature dans l'oeuvre de
Hugues de Saint-Victor" in ibid., pp. 272-78.
6
* Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentisfideichristianae 1.2.2-3, 1.5.4-5, PL 176:
206C-207D, 248C-249B.
64
Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon: De studio legendi 1.1, 1.4, 1.5, appendix C, ed.
Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1939), pp.
4, 11, 12, 134-35.
65
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.4.26, PL 176: 246B-C. Barkholt, Die Ontologie,
p. 11 sees uncreated primordial causes as the only type of primordial causes to
which Hugh refers.
328 CHAPTER SIX

accomplish the generation of other created beings, with a sense

more restricted than, but analogous to, the vis naturae of Abelard.
Organizational problems also plague Hugh's account of crea-
tion, as we saw above in chapter 2, where the schematic confusion
in the first part of Book 1 of the De sacramentis was noted.66 This
confusion stems from Hugh's uncertainty as to whether to follow
the creation account in Genesis in his own table of contents. He
advocates this idea because he claims that it reflects the way man
comes to a knowledge of the creator through the creation. But, at
the same time, the Genesis account says nothing about exemplary
causes, which he feels a need to treat even if he does so unsuccess-
fully, and spiritual beings such as angels. Hugh does not choose
between hierarchy and hexaemeron as his organizational principle;
he tries to combine them. And so, he starts with the exemplary
causes. Whether they are uncreated or created, they come first. As
for angels, Hugh states that they were created before the emergence of
the visible world.67 At the same time, he says that primordial matter
was the first thing to be created,68 which would put it ahead of angels
and created causes, if any. Hugh devotes a great deal of space to the
repetition of these conflicting claims, more space, indeed, than he
assigns to the phenomenal order next on his agenda. One has the
sense that he has recourse to the doctrine of creation simul more as an
effort to vaporize this problem of priority than as a means of resolving
the physical discrepancies in the account of the visible creation in
Genesis, as was the case with Augustine.69
If, on the one side, the Chartrain approach to creation serves as
an agenda with which Hugh wants to disagree and for which he
wants to find substitutes, Anselm of Laon and his disciples serve as
the main contemporary theologians with whom he wants to take
issue, on the other. The one and only point on which Hugh agrees
with the Laon masters is the idea that matter is not eternal.70 In
other respects the Laon masters take a rather different tack in
treating the sequence in which the creation occurred. Rather than
trying to coordinate the idea of creation simul with the literal
hexaemeral account in Genesis, they reject both of these principles

66
See above, pp. 57-62.
67
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.1.2, 1.1.4-11, 1.1.13-30, PL 176: 187C-188B,
189C-195C, 197R-206A.
68
Ibid., 1.5.2-3, 1.5.6, PL 176: 247A-248C, 249C.
69
Ibid., 1.5.4-5, PL 176: 249B.
70
Anselm of Laon, Sententie divine pagine 4, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in Anselms
von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919),
p. 11.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 329

in favor of a hierarchical account of creation. While he and his

disciples ignore the issue of exemplary causes, Anselm follows Bede
in urging that the Genesis account should be read not literally but
figuratively {propter jiguram)?x Dispensing specifically with the con­
cept of creation simul in whatever form it had been advocated,
Anselm and his followers think it is logical to hold that spiritual
beings were created first, with the hierarchy of creation descending
from the more rarefied of them on down to material beings. Hence,
angels were created first, emerging in accordance with the Grego­
rian hierarchy of nine orders, with the seraphim on top. Next,
human souls were created by God, and then the lesser beings.72
Hugh's attempt to salvage both creation simul and the six-day
account does not fare very well as a critique of this logically and
ontologically coherent departure from the patristic exegetical tradi­
tion on the part of the Laon masters.
Hugh next moves to the creation of man, more interesting to him
in any case than the perplexities attending the physical world.
Here, too, he finds himself in opposition to the school of Laon. Just
as that school does not hesitate to reject tradition on the sequence
of the creation, so too Anselm feels free to jettison the Augustinian
opinion that man was created to make up the numbers of the fallen
angels. While agreeing here with Honorius and with Anselm of
Canterbury against Augustine, he does not cite any of the author­
ities on the opposite side of the debate and does not indicate his
reasons for the position he takes.73 Hugh stoutly rejects this view
and sides with Augustine.74 While making up the numbers of the
fallen angels would presumably be a sufficient reason for the crea­
tion of man, in Hugh's estimation it is not the only reason. He
agrees with Abelard in stating that God created man to display His
benevolence.75 But the most compelling reason is that, by knowing,
serving, and loving God man may attain beatitude.76 Hugh has two
71
Ibid., 4, p. 12.
72
Ibid., 4; Sententie Anselmi 2, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in Anselms von Laon
systematische Sentenzen, pp. 13-14, 49; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 308, ed. Odon
Lottin in Psychologie et morale aux ΧΙΓ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de
Mont-César, 1948-59), 5: 244; Deus de cuius prindpio et fine tacetur, ed. Heinrich
Weisweiler in "Le recueil des sentences 'Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur' et
son remaniement," RTAM 5 (1933): 260.
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, p. 15.
74
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.5.33-34, PL 176: 262A-264A. This view is also
followed by Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 270-71; Summa magistri Rolandi c. 27, ed.
Friedrich Thaner (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1962 [repr. of Innsbruck, 1874 ed.]),
pp. 113-14.
75
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac 1.6.1, PL 176: 263B.
76
Ibid., 1.2.1, PL 176: 205B-206C.
330 CHAPTER SIX

other major points to make about the creation of man. Man was
given a body as well as a soul in order to show that, in and through
man, both aspects of the created universe would be elevated to
share God's glory.77 And, finally, he argues that we cannot know
exactly when the human soul was created. All we can know is that
it was created after the angels had come into being and after the
formation of the human body into which it is infused. The soul is
not préexistent and is created ex nihilo. At the very moment of its
creation, Adam's soul was joined to his body.78 In claiming that we
cannot know when this event takes place, Hugh here seems to be
refusing the help which the hexaemeral account, which he is trying
to salvage as much as he can, might plainly offer. This last point is
an index of the difficulties he gets into by trying to do everything at
once.
For his part, the author of the Summa sententiarum leads off with a
ringing denunciation of Platonism: "As Plato said, there are three
principles [of creation], matter, form, and the demiurge. But the
Catholic faith believes that there was one principle, one cause of all
things, namely God" {Cum Plato dixerit tria esse principia: materiam,
formam, opificem;fidesCatholica unum principium credit esse omnium rerum
causa fuit, Deus scilicet).19 Unlike the Porretans, who hold the same
position and decline to expatiate on creation, he follows Hugh's
effort to do so. He also recapitulates Hugh's notion that the ani-
mate creation was brought into being so that man could know,
love, and serve the creator and hence be glorified, and that man's
combination of body and soul draws the whole universe into this
process.80 At the same time, he offers a more effective way of
combining the hierarchical and hexaemeral principles. Perhaps
seeing in Hugh's handling of primordial causes in the De sacramentis
a cautionary tale, he omits them at this juncture. As his initial topic
he takes up primordial matter, yoking it with the creation of angels.
The angels and the four elements, he states, were created ex nihilo
and at the same time.81 This constitutes the only simultaneity he is
willing to concede in the creation. Without arguing the point pro
and con, he simply drops the question of creation simul after this
point. Something he adds, however, and to which he gives sus-
tained and cogent treatment is the question of how angels are
different in their nature from the deity, although he takes it up not

77
Ibid., 1.6.2, PL 176: 264C-D.
78
Ibid., 1.6.3, PL 176: 264D-265B.
79
Summa sententiarum 2.1, PL 176: 79C.
80
Ibid., PL 176: 79C-80C.
81
Ibid., PL 176: 81A-B.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 331

in his treatise on angels in Book 2 of his Summa but in Book 1, under

the heading of God. The deity, he notes there, is immutable and
unconditioned by time and space. Like God, angels are spiritual
beings and, like God, they are incorporeal and hence share His
inability to be conditioned by space. But, once brought into being,
they are conditioned by time, and they are changeable, capable of
being moved by affections, such as joy or sadness, and capable of
learning what they did not know. Also, while they are able to
inhabit bodies in connection with their duties, they lack the divine
attribute of ubiquity.82 Helpful as these remarks are, they would
have been even more serviceable had the author included them in
his treatise on angels.
Between angels and men, the author presents a very swift sum-
mary of the creation, reverting here to the hexaemeral model and
displaying little interest in coming to grips with the physical dis-
crepancies presented in the Genesis account. With respect to var-
ious creatures he offers a range of opinions, without choosing
among them. Or, he urges one opinion as more probable, but
without explaining why. He is clearly not inspired by this part of
the assignment and disposes of it in two brief chapters, getting it
out of the way so that he can concentrate on his real subject, the
creation, fall, and restoration of man.83
Considering his interest in man, the author has remarkably little
to say about man's nature as such, except duly to report that the
human soul is made in God's image, as can be seen in the Trinitar-
ian analogies it bears.84 The main topic that exercises him before
he proceeds to the fall is the creation of Eve. Here is where he
raises, somewhat belatedly, the subject of primordial causes and
seminal reasons, although he does not give the latter this name
expressly. After noting that Eve's creation from Adam's rib pro-
vides a type of the church born of the blood and water issuing from
the side of the crucified Christ, a point he shares with Roland of
Bologna85 which goes beyond the standard Augustinian reason
other theologians give concerning the marital companionship sym-
bolized by this mode of engendering Eve, he agrees with Augus-
tine's theory of primordial causes as ideas in the mind of God, not
separate from Him or prior or posterior to Him. These causes are
not created agencies. They are to be distinguished from the causes

Ibid., 1.5, PL 176: 50C-51A.

Ibid., 3.1-2, PL 176: 89A-91A.
Ibid., 3.2, PL 176: 91A-92B.
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 110-16.
332 CHAPTER SIX

inserted by God into individual creatures, enabling them to repro-

duce naturally and also to be the vehicles of miracles. It is this
latter point, the capacity of created beings to function as the
vehicles of miracles, which serves as the link between this topic and
the creation of Eve and which explains why the author brings up
these causes in that context. Adam's body was endowed with the
capacity to function as the instrument of a miracle, the creation of
Eve's body from his rib. Eve's soul, like all human souls, was
created by God.86 Now, this understanding of seminal reasons is, to
be sure, helpful here. The project of the author of the Summa
sententiarum in handling the creation account would have been
better served, in general, had he introduced this discussion of
primordial and seminal causes earlier on, perhaps just prior to the
creation of the angels in the hierarchical portion of his second book.
Had he done so, he would have laid the foundation for the explana-
tion of Eve's creation, which he provides in Book 3, and which
requires him to backpedal in his exposition of it. If his handling of
the creation of Eve is unusual in that respect, it is also sut generis in
that this is the only question concerning Eve that he raises at all.
He omits, for instance, the more basic issue of why Eve was created
in the first place.
A third mid-century theologian who, like the author of the Summa
sententiarum, is strongly influenced by Hugh of St. Victor and who,
like both of those masters, seeks to offer a cogent alternative to the
Chartrain approach to creation, which he clearly dislikes, is Robert
of Melun. Robert takes a much more systematically hexaemeral
line than either of these two authors. He is a strong proponent of
the Augustinian theory of creation simul, both before the event and
in the event. At the same time, he seeks to connect this doctrine to
the theme of causation that bulks so large in his treatment of the
deity. Rejecting both the idea of exemplary causes, the idea of
préexistent matter or form of any kind, and the notion that there
are any creative intermediaries between God and the world, he
stresses that God is the first cause and the only cause of creation,
against both Plato and Aristotle.87 The forms as well as the matter
are created, according to Robert. Instead of a threefold principle of
creation, he puts forward a single creator who creates everything all

86
Summa sent. 3.3, PL 176: 93A-94B.
87
Robert of Melun, Sententie 1.1.19, 1.1.20, 1.2.1, ed. Raymond-M. Martin in
Robert of Melun, Oeuvres, 4 vols. (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense,
1932-52), 3 part 1: 210-12, 223, 263. On this point, cf. Ulrich Horst, Die Trinitäts-
und Gotteslehre des Robert von Melun (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1964), pp.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 333

at once by a threefold operation, "in the creation of the unformed

material substratum of material things, in the formation of crea-
tures, and in the disposition of what has been formed" (in omnium
informi creatione, in creatorumformatione, informatorum disposition) ,68 As
with Augustine, Robert emphasizes the point that God brought
time itself into existence at the same moment in which He created
everything else. This notion makes it impossible to hold that there
is a sequence of any kind in creation. But it does not mean that
God's manifestation of His simultaneous creation in time, or His
own subsequent action in time or with time, refers to a creation that
was initally imperfect and that was perfected later on. Here, Robert
draws a useful distinction among things that are perfect according
to their nature, such as a baby born with all his fingers and toes;
things that are perfect according to time, such as the same baby
grown to adulthood, having realized all his capacities as an adult;
and things that are perfect universally. Only God, Who is not
subject to development, is perfect in the third sense. But this does
not detract from the perfection, in the first two senses, of creatures
that can and do change.89 This analysis deftly resolves the dilem-
mas in which Hugh embroils himself in the handling of exemplary
causes and simultaneous creation.
On the other hand, Robert is less adept in dealing with the
cosmological and physical problems in which the Genesis account
of creation abounds. He expressly repudiates the natural philos-
ophers (physici) but does not make effective use of the help avail-
able in the patristic tradition in sorting out these inconsistencies. In
some cases where he has a clear preference for one opinion over
another, as in the composition of the stars as fiery in makeup and as
similar, in this respect, to the sun, where he follows Plato, he offers
no reasons for preferring this view over its alternatives.90 Most of
the time, as with the question of why the waters above the firma-
ment stay up there and do not fall down, he cites a range of
opinions without indicating a need to choose among them.91
Robert's disinterest in answering most of the cosmological ques-
tions which he raises makes the reader wonder why he raises them
in the first place. Like Hugh, his main concern is to extract moral
and spiritual significance from these natural phenomena; regard-
less of why the waters above the firmament stay there, they stand

88
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.1.19, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 210. On God's creation of
form as well as matter, see also 1.1.21-23, 3 part 1: 224-30.
89
Ibid., 1.1.19-20, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 213-21, 223.
90
Ibid., 1.1.28, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 245.
91
Ibid., 1.1.25, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 235-37.
334 CHAPTER SIX

for the higher forms of charity, he concludes.92 And, in the case of

his other example, he takes up the nature of the stars primarily to
join Abelard in a long Augustinian attack against astral
determinism. 93 The detailed chapter headings which Robert sup-
plies in his Sentences indicate that he planned to devote extensive
attention to the nature of man before the fall, concentrating on his
soul, and that he planned to offer a lengthy treatise on original sin,
and he does so. But his treatment of the creation of man is remark-
ably truncated. He reprises the position of the Summa sententiarum
and of Hugh in stating that man was created to know, serve, and
love God and hence to win beatitude. This point leads him into a
digression which in turn leads him to end his discussion of the
creation of man on a peculiar note. Having observed that man's
beatitude is God's objective in creating him, Robert acknowledges
that not all men attain beatitude. Does this mean that God's
intentions, with respect to those men who are not saved, are
fraudulent or frustrated? No, he answers, since beatitude can be
gained only with man's free will and cooperation.94 This may be the
case, but his answer is not responsive to the question he has posed
and it does not address the vexing issue of what purpose is served
by the creation of those human beings who will not be saved. If his
account of creation is problematic when it comes to most of the
natural phenomena he discusses and when it comes to man, the
most serious deficiency in Robert's presentation of this subject is
his omission of angels. This is a decision on his part that reflects his
desire to follow the hexaemeral model strictly. But it leaves a gap in
his analysis of the created universe which mid-century theology
found unacceptable.
The theologians discussed above are the only ones worth treating
in detail as a backdrop for Peter Lombard on the creation, since
they are the ones who set the agenda in this period. None of the
other masters at work in his time offers any fresh or additional
insights or announces any new problems. Other than giving the
same reason as Hugh, Robert, and the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum for the creation of man as an opportunity on his part to
know, love, and glorify God,95 the only contribution made to this
subject by the author of the Sententiae divinitatis is to lay out and

92
Ibid., 1.1.27-28, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 239-43.
93
Ibid., 1.1.28, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 246-56.
94
Ibid., 1.1.30, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 259-62.
95
Bernhard Geyer, ed., Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertischen
Schule prologus, Beiträge, 7:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1909), p. 6*.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 335

attribute clearly three of the four prevailing theories of creation

simul. There is Augustine's view that all creatures were made
simultaneously, Gregory's view that God made unformed matter
all at once but that He formed it sequentially, and Isidore's view,
which agrees with Gregory's, but which adds that the formation of
matter took six days. The author omits Bede here while siding with
Gregory, adding the Augustinian seminal reasons at the moment
when creatures are formed and agreeing with Hugh that the hex-
aemeral account was written that way for man's instruction.96 As
for Robert Pullen, he is both extremely sketchy and unusually
incoherent in handling the creation. He tries to combine the view of
creation simul with creation in a six-day sequence in which it would
make sense to ask when individual creatures came into being.97 He
is both vague and contradictory in treating man. Opposing the idea
that man was created to make up the numbers of the fallen angels,
he says that the reason was that the universe would have been less
perfect without man, but does not explain why he thinks this is the
case.98 In addressing the question of the préexistence of the human
soul he confuses it with the question of when the bodies of fetuses
become ensouled. Here, he argues that the human soul is added to
the body at the point when the body comes into existence. Presum-
ably he means by this the moment of conception. At the same time,
however, he supports the rule in Exodus on the penalty for causing
a miscarriage, which regards the act as homicide only if the fetus is
ensouled and has already moved in the womb, which would take
place about five months into the pregnancy.99 Robert Pullen is not
at the top of his form on any of these subjects. Perhaps his most
unusual contribution to contemporary discussions of creation is his
treatment of Eden. He joins Honorius and the school of Laon in
giving a description of it as a classical locus amoenüsimus, going into
far greater detail on this point than anyone else. Robert locates
Eden with precision on the banks of the river Nile, commenting in
depth on its climate and giving a full catalogue of its flora and
fauna. He takes this geographical situation of Eden literally, adding
a warning he is unique among his compeers for providing, while
suggesting, possibly, that the quest for Eden may have been a
motivation inspiring the pilgrims and crusaders now travelling to
the east in large numbers. It is impossible, Robert stresses, to

Ibid. 1.1.1-3, pp. 8*-12*.

Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo 2.1, PL 186: 717C-719A.
Ibid., 2.16, PL 186: 741D-743B.
Ibid., 2.7, 2.9, PL 186: 727B, 731A-733C.
336 CHAPTER SIX

recover Eden. However far and wide the traveller may search,
however many seas and deserts he may cross, and with whatever
labor improbtis he may reconnoiter the territories watered by the
Nile, he will never find it.100

The Lombard on Creation

We are now in a position to assess how Peter Lombard situates

himself in the contemporary debates on creation. He certainly can
be said to display no sympathy at all for the Chartrain project. He
uses the resources of both philosophy and theology to show how
and why he finds it misguided. In proposing an alternative
approach, he relies heavily on the exegetical and patristic tradi-
tions. He shows himself to be thoroughly conversant with the
recent treatments of the subject, with which he does not hesitate to
agree, or disagree, selectively. There is one feature of Peter's treat-
ment of creation that is, for him, unusual. As Ignatius Brady has
pointed out very clearly in his annotations to this part of the
Sentences, Peter reveals a dependence on intermediary sources, such
as patristic catenae, that is quite atypical of his methodology more
generally. This same fact can be detected from the form of his
patristic citations on the subject of creation. While his normal
standard is to name the author and the work and to quote or to
paraphrase the text cited, exploring the reasoning that has brought
the authority to his conclusion, here he merely mentions the au-
thority's name and gives the nub of his opinion. It is certainly true
that the authorities he presents in this fashion often have more to
say on the questions at issue than Peter indicates. It is not clear
why the Lombard departs from his usual working habits in treating
the creation. At the same time, and despite the limits in his deploy-
ment of his materials in this context, he presents a streamlined and
no-nonsense account of creation that is essentially hexaemeral in
plan. He takes a firm stand on vexed questions such as exemplary
causes and creation simul and does not hesitate to reject the Au-
gustinian tradition on these points. Also thoroughly un-
Augustinian is his position on why man was created, and his lack of
interest in theodicy. In many other areas he uses Augustine, along
with other patristic sources, constructively. His creation account
shares many of the ideas found in Hugh of St. Victor, the Summa

100
Ibid., 2.19, PL 186: 746B-747B. The allusion to Vergil's Georgics occurs at
747A. Cf. Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 58, whose author does not think that he can specify the
location of Eden.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 337

sententiarum, and Robert of Melun. But he manages to achieve

something that is more than any of these masters accomplishes, an
account of creation that fits angels coherently into the picture and
that finds a way of combining the hexaemeral plan with both a
modified version of creation simul and a sense that creatures should
be discussed in an order that speaks to the order of their meta­
physical constitution.
Peter begins by juxtaposing the idea, which he attributes to Bede
and which he intends to support, that there is a single cause of
creation, God, with the Platonic notion of three principles, "that is,
God, and the exemplar, and matter, and the latter uncreated and
without beginning, and God acting like an artisan, not as a
creator" (Deum scilicet, et exemplar, et materiam; et ipsa increata, sine
principio, et Deum quasi artificem, non creatorem) ,101 In attacking this
claim he plans to reject all three parts of it, starting with the notion
of God as artifex. A creator is to be distinguished from an artisan in
that a creator alone can make things out of nothing, while an
artisan makes things out of existing matter. God can do both; but
creatures can only do the latter. Aside from that, we can distinguish
between creating and making in that human and other created
makers must exercise motion, or heat, or some other change in the
maker himself in the process, while God creates while remaining
totally unchanged.102 Next, Peter attacks another version of the
Chartrain position, which he attributes to Aristotle, the idea that
there are three principles of creation, seen as material, formal, and
efficient causes, all eternal. It is this erroneous notion which has led
some people to accept the eternity of both form and matter, an idea
that Peter, along with Robert of Melun, rejects. This same idea, the
Lombard observes, has led some people to equate the Holy Spirit
with the efficient cause or with the cause that combines form and
matter.103 As the doctrine of God developed in Book 1 of the
Sentences makes plain, for Peter it is totally unacceptable to divide
up the work of creation among the Trinitarian persons since, in the
act of creation, it is the divine nature common to the persons that is
at work. It is also a divine nature that remains transcendent. It
cannot be equated with the forces of nature which it brings into

1 !
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IVlibris distinctae 2. d. 1. c. 1.2, 3rd ed. rev., ed.
Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 330.
102
Ibid., c. 2-c. 3.1-3, 1: 330-31. Noted by Newell, "Rationalism at the School
of Chartres," p. 121 η. 49.
103
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 1. c. 3.5, 1: 331. Noted by Bertola, "La dottrina
della creazione," pp. 32-33.
338 CHAPTER SIX

being. Peter takes pains to remind his readers of these points, citing
John Chrysostom and his own gloss on the Epistle to the Hebrews
to undergird it still further.104
As he moves to the next item on his agenda, the question of why
the creation was brought into being at all, Peter shows the influence
of Hugh of St. Victor, and, even more so, of the Summa sententiarum,
when it comes to the creation of spiritual beings and man, while at
the same time he puts his own stamp on the subject. He agrees that
God created rational beings so that they could come to a knowledge
of the supreme good. In knowing God, they would love Him; in
loving Him they would possess Him; and in possessing Him, they
would enjoy Him. Praising and serving God would also lead to
their enjoyment of Him. Everything else in the world, in turn, was
made for man's sake, for man to use and enjoy with the ultimate
enjoyment of God in view.105 Agreeing with the Victorine notion of
man's purpose, Peter adds to it a purpose for the other beings in the
creation, whether material or spiritual, and connects the whole
question to the Augustinian theme of use and enjoyment which he
gives to the entire Sentences. This analysis also gives him more solid
reasons than those supplied by the author of the Summa sententiarum
for rejecting Hugh and Augustine on men making up the numbers
of the fallen angels as the reason for their creation. Although he
does not refer to the passages in Augustine's Enchiridion and City of
God where this claim is defended, Peter indicates that he is aware of
the Scriptural foundation on which Augustine sought to base it. He
argues that Augustine has misconstrued the Bible in drawing this
conclusion from the passages in question. So, man was not created
to make up the numbers of the fallen angels both because the other
positive reasons Peter has cited are the principal ones (causae praeci-
puae) and because the alleged Scriptural basis of the Augustinian
claim never existed (nonnulla existit).106
There is also another point where Peter corrects or expands on
the Victorine legacy before moving on to the six days of creation,
his handling of the question of why the human soul was joined to a
body. He offers three reasons, the first and third stated straightfor-
wardly and the second given more elaborate treatment. The first is
that it is God's will, which we cannot question. The third is that,
with the body and the mind both serving God, we may more
greatly merit the crown of beatitude. The second is the man as

Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 13. c. 7.2-5, 1: 394-95.

Ibid., d. I.e. 4.1-7, 1: 322-33.
Ibid., c. 5, 1: 334.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 339

microcosm argument, although Peter does not use this term ex-
pressly. With Hugh and the Summa sententiarum, he agrees that, in
uniting matter and spirit in man, God enables the whole creation to
be glorified in the love of God which man displays. He adds another
note to this argument. The intimate communion between mind and
body in the human constitution helps man to see how he can
commune with a higher spiritual being, and illustrates by analogy
the future association of the human soul and God.107
Peter's assignment, following this discussion, moves from the
why of creation to the when and the how. His chief guides at the
outset are the authors of the Summa sententiarum and the Sententiae
divinitatis. With the former, he yokes the creation of the angels to the
creation of primordial matter at the beginning of the hexaemeral
account. And, with the latter, he rejects Augustine's version of
creation simul in favor of the principle that the angels and the
elements were the only things created all at once. After that, he
holds, God produced the other specific created beings in the course
of six days. As he develops the second phase of this creation
scenario, Peter shares with Robert of Melun the idea that the forms
God used were created, no less than the matter, and reimports
Augustine's seminal reasons into the story.108
In weaving the angels into the limited doctrine of creation simul
that he defends, Peter introduces two related considerations. One is
the felt need to refute the position of Origen, reported by Jerome,
Augustine, and John Cassian, that angels existed before the crea-
tion of time. Peter's analysis appears to stem from a strong, and
generic, desire to attack the more spiritualistic teachings of Origen,
an attitude common in this period in itself and as an anti-Catharist
tactic, for there was no contemporary quidam among the orthodox
theologians who took this position. Another view he wants to
repudiate is that the angels can be identified with the wisdom
created before all creatures, referred to in Ecclesiastes 1:4 as dis-
tinct from the Son as the uncreated wisdom of God. Peter's com-
bined strategy for disposing of these two positions at once is to use
Genesis 1:1 as a countercitation to the Ecclesiastes text. He argues
that the "heaven" in the heaven and earth created in the beginning
refers to the angels while "earth" refers to the confused and un-
formed matter that was the first physical entity which God brought
forth. He extends the principle of creation simul to the angels and to

107
Ibid., c. 6.1-5, 1: 334-35.
108
A good discussion is provided by Bertola, "La dottrina della creazione," pp.
35-40.
340 CHAPTER SIX

unformed matter and, after carefully considering the various ver-

sions ofthat doctrine, concludes that this is as far as it can be taken.
As with the author of the Sententiae divinitatis, his reason for rejecting
Augustine here is that the Gregorian or Isidorian accounts display
more conformity with the text of Genesis.109
Yet, Peter returns to Augustine's Genesis commentary for help
on how we can understand the unformed matter. He reflects his
awareness of an issue that Clarenbald of Arras had also found
problematic, the presumed difficulty of the human mind in grasp-
ing anything material that has no form. Here, he calls upon the
analysis of negative and privative terminology which Augustine
had developed to explain the meaning of darkness and the void
against the Manichees, who endowed them with real significance as
aspects of the evil material creation. With Augustine, he agrees that
these terms refer not to species but to the absence of species, the
absence of species of any kind, in the case of the void, or the
absence of the species of the reality to which it is correlative, that is,
light, in the case of darkness.110 This is a topic which none of the
other current masters who discuss creation had thought of com-
menting on. Peter also reimports Augustine's seminal reasons into
the account, as created forms or causes. Using Alcuin to anchor his
sequential view of creation, once the angels and primordial matter
have come into being, he proposes four modes of divine operation
in the creation. First, God creates all things eternally in the Word.
Peter understands this to mean that God possesses the plan of the
creation in His mind from all time. When He chooses to manifest
this plan, God does so in stages. First, He creates the angels and the
unformed matter simul and ex nihilo. Then, in the work of the six
days, He produces individual creatures out of the unformed matter
and the forms which He creates for this purpose. Finally, he inserts
the seminal reasons He has prepared into these creatures to takes
care of future developments after the sixth day, both in the produc-
tion of new kinds of beings and in the capacities of created beings to
carry out their natural functions.111 As to the days of creation
themselves, Peter disagrees sharply with the position expressed by
Roland of Bologna. The days referred to in Genesis are to be
understood literally as lasting twenty-four hours. As to why the
days begin in the evening and not in the morning, he follows Hugh
of St. Victor in his one departure from literalism here, in saying

109
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 2. c. 1-c. 3, d. 12. c. 1.2, 1: 336-39, 384-85.
110
Ibid., d. 12 c. 3-c. 4, 1: 387-88.
111
Ibid., c. 6, 1: 388-89.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 341

that this notion stands, as a mystery (pro mysteno) ^ for man's move-
ment from the darkness of sin to the light of redemption.112
The passage just cited is the one and only occasion in which
Peter treats the creation account in Genesis as a source of moral
and spiritual edification. It is atypical of the straightforwardness
with which he handles this subject in general. If he is not particu-
larly concerned with ethics under this heading, neither is he drawn
to cosmology or natural philosophy as such. He goes about his
business with conscientiousness and also with brevity. He is not
interested in whether the Genesis account has anything in common
with philosophical accounts of creation and is far less intrigued by
its physical problems and inconsistencies than Augustine is. There
are only two issues he raises in discussing the work of the six days
that could be described as remotely speculative. On the question of
the waters above the firmament, and why they stay there, he opts
for the explanation of Augustine, who says that these waters exist in
the form of tiny droplets which can remain suspended in the air, on
the grounds of common sense.113 And, on the question of the
creation of vermin and poisonous animals, he draws a distinction.
Pestiferous creatures, now harmful to man, were not harmful in the
original creation; the nuisance they now inflict is a punishment for
sin. As for vermin such as maggots, which, following classical
biology, Peter holds to be generated spontaneously out of carrion,
they were indeed created during the six days, before the death of
any animal whose carcass could engender them, but only potential-
ly (potentialiter) .114 Consistent with the wish to draw brisk and
down-to-earth conclusions and to curtail reflection on matters for
which no answers are available is Peter's handling of Eden. What
we can know about it, and all we need to know about it, is that
Eden is meant to be understood both spiritually and materially,
since man has both a spiritual and a physical nature, that it can be
seen as a type of the church, that it was located in the east, and that
it was a locus amoenissimus whose specific attributes we cannot de-
scribe. He pointedly refrains from further speculation on the
subject.115
If Peter manifests a disinclination to wear the hat of the natural
philosopher in his discussion of the work of the six days, he at least
operates in a manner consistent with that intention, refusing to

1,2
113
Ibid., d. 13. c. 4-c. 5, 1: 391-92.
114
Ibid., d. 14. c. 4, 1: 396.
115
Ibid., d. 15. c. 3-c. 4, 1:401.
Ibid., d. 17. c. 5.1-4. 5, 1: 413-14.
342 CHAPTER SIX

ventilate questions which he feels cannot be answered. He does

resolve the questions that he chooses to raise. On the other hand,
he is far more successful in handling the larger metaphysical issues
concerned with cosmogenesis, and this partly because of his eli-
mination of issues, such as exemplary causes, which he finds un-
necessary and fraught with confusion, and partly thanks to his
effective way of integrating angels into a creation account that
otherwise remains guided by Genesis and the exegetical tradition.
While in some respects Peter is less venturesome on creation than
on man and on many other topics that he takes up in Book 2 of the
Sentences, he none the less shows his ability to reflect independently
and selectively on that tradition. And, as a theologian, he is march-
ing to the beat of the contemporary drummer in being primarily
concerned, in this connection, not with the structure and function
of the physical universe but with angels and human beings.

ANGELS AMONG THE LOMBARD'S SCHOLASTIC PREDECESSORS

AND CONTEMPORARIES

Angels were a subject on which there was a good deal of contem-

porary consensus among early and mid-twelfth-century theolo-
gians. To a striking degree they were in accord not only on what the
important questions were concerning angels, but also on the correct
answers to those questions. They occasionally differed on the best
way to defend the conclusions they drew. One topic on which there
was some disagreement, which we have considered above, was
when the angels were created. Wherever they came down on that
issue, most of the theologians were in agreement on their meta-
physical constitution. Although Honorius compares their nature
with the element of fire, and one member of the school of Loan says
they have rarefied bodies, and while Roland of Bologna is inconclu-
sive on whether they have a material constitution or not,116 most
other theologians subscribe clearly to the idea that angels, created
ex nihilo, are purely spiritual beings, although Hugh of St. Victor
muddies the waters somewhat by calling them spiritual substances,
without indicating what he means by "substance" in this
context.117 The only contemporary master to raise and to answer

116
Honorius, Elue. 1.27-31, p. 366, although he also asserts that they are
spiritual at 1.24, 1.26, p. 366; Sentences of the School o/Laon, no. 305, 5: 243; Roland
of Bologna, Sent., pp. 85-86.
117
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 50; Peter Abelard, Hexaemeron, p. 10; Ysagoge in theologiam,
ed. Artur Michael Landgraf in Ecrits théologiques de Vécole d'Abélard (Louvain:
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 343

the question of how these completely spiritual beings are different

from God is the author of the Summa sententiarum, who, as we have
seen, does a good job of it, locating the differences in the capacity of
angels to change and to be conditioned by time, and to be subject to
affections.118 There is agreement on the idea that the angels are
disposed in nine ranks, with the seraphim on top, following the
angelic hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, although Gregory
the Great is sometimes brought in as well to support this point.119
The author of the Summa sententiarum believes that only the good
angels are graded but that there is no hierarchy among the fallen
angels.120 His view is atypical. One of the early Porretans notes that
these spiritual beings can assume the bodies of men in carrying out
their duties, and that, when they do so, they are capable of en-
gendering children, acting as incubi. He rehearses the patristic
debates on the metaphysical status of such children and whether
they can be saved, declining to give an answer despite Augustine's
assurances on this point.121 But he appears to be alone among the
mid-century masters in worrying about this issue.
Of greater interest in this period are the angels' possession of
intelligence and free will and their moral exercise of these faculties
in their fall, or in their decision not to fall, as the case may be.
There is no dispute concerning the rationality and freedom of the
angels as such. Nor is there dissent from the Augustinian opinion
that they do not exercise these faculties in choosing the good
without the assistance of divine grace.122 Hugh of St. Victor distin-
guishes between the spirituality and immortality which all angels
possess equally and their reason and will, which he thinks they
possess to different degrees.123 All these ideas set the stage for the
theme of the fall of the angels and its effects. Those masters who
raise the question of when that fall took place agree that it occurred

Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), p. 222; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.15-16, p.

164; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.5.9, PL 176: 250D; Summa sent. 2.2-3, PL 176:
81D-83A; Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.2, PL 186: 719A.
118
Summa sent. 1.5, 2.2-3, PL 176: 50C-51A, 81D-83A.
119
Honorius, Elue. 1.24, 1.26, p. 366; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 103-04,
Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 230; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.29, 13.37-47, pp. 166, 167-69;
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.5.33, PL 176: 262B-D.
120
Summa sent. 2.5, PL 176: 85C-87B.
121
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.31, p. 166.
122
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 50; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 85-104; Ysagoge in
theologiam, p. 222; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.15, 13.36, pp. 164, 167; Hugh of St.
Victor, De sac. 1.5.9-14, 1.5.24-28, PL 176: 250D-252A, 257A-259B; Summa sent.
2.3.4, PL 176:83A-85C.
123
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.5.9-14, PL 176: 250D-252A.
344 CHAPTER SIX

immediately after the creation of the angels.124 The concerns, and

the debates of the theologians, fall rather on three other matters:
What happened to the fallen angels? Are the good angels incapable
of sin? And, why is it that the fallen angels can never be saved?
Looming large on their agenda is the desire to refute Origen's
teaching that conversion and backsliding remain continuing possi-
bilities for all spiritual beings, angels included.125 While the theolo-
gians, to a man, oppose Origen, they differ as to the best argument
to bring to bear aginst his position. At the same time, they seek to
add to the dossier of patristic refutations from the work of more
recent masters.
Early in the century, Honorius gives a rather thorough review of
these problems. As he sees it, the fallen angels are confirmed in evil.
They have lost the capacity to will the good. Some of them are cast
into Hell, where they torment the damned; others inhabit the dark
air above it and are active on earth, seducing the weak and testing
the elect. After the last judgment, all the fallen angels will be
assigned to Hell. They are powerful, powerful enough to carry out
these nefarious roles, but not so powerful as the good angels. Their
major limitation after the fall lies in their will. Their inability to will
the good is one reason why they cannot be saved, in Honorius's
view. But another reason, and one he derives from Anselm of
Canterbury's Cur deus homo, is that, granted God's chosen method of
saving mankind, it could not have been extended to angels. Christ
could not have taken on an angelic nature, since each angel is the
object of a particular creation on God's part, a genus unto himself,
in effect. There is no generic angelic nature as such. Had Christ
taken on some one angel's nature, that angel would have been the
only one He could have redeemed. Further, Honorius adds, salva-
tion means salvation from death and angels, whether fallen or not,
are immortal once created. The salvation of angels is thus a contra-
diction in terms. Likewise, for Honorius, the good angels are con-
firmed in good. They are free from evil desires.126
On the other hand, the members of the school of Laon, recogniz-
ing that, if God had willed to save the fallen angels, He would not
have been constrained to do so on the analogy of His chosen mode

124
Honorius, Elue. 1.32-37, p. 367; Summa sent. 2.3.4, PL 176: 83A-85C. The
author of the Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 53, does not think that the exact timing of the
angels' fall can be known.
125
For the patristic background on this issue, see Jeffrey Burton Russell,
Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 110.
126
Honorius, Elue. 1.38-41, 1.42-44, 1.48-49, 1.50-56, pp. 367-68, 368, 369-
70, 370.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 345

of redemption for man, find this argument problematic and do not

see the Anselmian and Honorian Cur deus non angelus position as
convincing. Agreeing that the angels are confirmed in evil or good,
as the case may be, they argue that the sin of the fallen angels is
irrémissible because their dignity was higher than that of man and
they experienced no external temptation, as man did, and which
can be seen as a mitigating factor, in man's case.127 Given the
general subscription of these masters to the principle that the
essence of the moral act lies in inner intention, which they develop
elsewhere, they make heavy weather of trying to explain why the
lack of external temptation on the part of the angels should make
such a critical difference in their case.
Both Honorius and the school of Laon received some support in
the sequel. The author of the Abelardian Ysagoge in theologiam agrees
with Honorius, arguing that the sacrifice of a God-angel would
have been required for the salvation of the fallen angels, along the
lines of the passion of Christ. This action would have been
irrelevant since the angels are already immortal. Perhaps the most
interesting feature of his argument is that, in order to make it, he
departs from the Abelardian doctrine of man's redemption in stat-
ing his case.128 Two of the early Porretans, on the other hand,
follow the Laon masters, being equally unable to explain why the
lack of external temptation should make any difference, for the
angels.129
While picking up on the destination of the fallen angels as a fiery
inferno or as a zone of dark and murky air, locations which he sees
as alternatives between which he cannot choose, the author of the
Summa sententiarum raises another problem flowing from the fate of
angels after their fall or, alternatively, their decision not to fall. He
asserts, against Origen, that the angels are confirmed in malice, or
virtue, respectively. This being the case, he notes that both groups
would appear to have undergone a serious limitation on their free
will, because, in each case, an entire category of ethical action has
now been closed to them. The author is sensitive to this problem.
Following Hugh of St. Victor, however, he sees this as a real

127
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 15-18, 50-54; Deus de
cuius principio etfinetacetur, pp. 256-57.
128
Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 227-28.
129
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.74, p. 174; Nikolaus M. Häring, ed., "Die Sententie
magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi II. Die Version der florentiner Handschrift"
13.74, AHDLMA 46 (1979): 105. This dependence on the school of Laon at this
point should be noted as a correction of Marcia L. Colish, "Early Porretan
Theology," RTAM 56 (1989): 69.
346 CHAPTER SIX

limitation only on the free will of the fallen angels. He also reprises
the Laon masters' critique of the Cur deus non angelus argument and
gets hopelessly tangled up in it.130 For his part, Robert Pullen,
while he agrees that the angels are confirmed in evil or good, goes
on to raise a question with respect to the good angels and their
capacities. Should we think, following Augustine, that the good
angels were given the incapacity to sin, the non posse peccare, of the
saints in Heaven or, following Jerome, should we confine the state
of non posse peccare to God alone? Robert sides with Jerome. He
maintains that the good angels do retain some vestige of the capac-
ity to sin although sinning is almost impossible for them, because
they have become too habituated to virtue actually to do so. With
regard to the parallel question of whether the fallen angels retain
any vestige of the capacity to will the good, and why they cannot be
saved, Robert airs it but does not answer it.131
A few other topics, of a lesser order of interest, arise under the
heading of angels. Hugh of St. Victor, declining to speculate on
how many angels there were and how many fell, does, however,
suggest that there are the same number of good and bad angels at
any given moment as there are human beings, since each man has
his own personal guardian angel and tempter. Hugh asks, further,
whether all the good angels act as messengers to and protectors of
men, or only those in certain angelic ranks. He gives a thorough
outline of the debate on this subject, although he does not take a
stand on it.132 This latter topic is also addressed by the author of the
Summa sententiarum, who disagrees with those authorities who main-
tain that God uses only the lesser orders of angels as messengers. In
his view, all the ranks of angels are sent. He agrees with Hugh, and
ultimately with Gregory the Great, on the idea of personal guard-
ian angels and demons but does not take up the matter of their
number. Nor does he wish to return to the problem of incubi and
their offspring.133 He does, however, raise a question not tackled by
many of his contemporaries, that of where the angels were created.
Ignoring the fact that in his own teaching that angels and unformed
matter were created simul, before the rest of the universe was given
phenomenal form, he has a means of answering this question by

130
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.5.31-32, PL 176: 261A-262B; Summa sent. 2.3 A,
PL 176: 83A-85C.
131
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.2-6, PL 186: 719A-726A.
132
Hugh of St. Victor, Be sac. 1.5.31-33, PL 176: 261A-262D. This willingness
at least to raise controversial questions on angels is ignored in the account of
Hugh's angelology in Mignon, Les origines, 1: 339—73.
133
Summa sent. 2.6, PL 176: 87C-88C.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 347

noting that no "place" of any kind as yet existed, he wrestles with

the question and then abandons it, unanswered.134

The Lombard on Angels

This was the contemporary state of play on angels when Peter

Lombard composed the section of Book 2 of his Sentences dealing
with this subject. With respect to his coevals and immediate prede-
cessors, his angelology is richer and more ample, even as he cor-
roborates the points on which consensus existed at this time. He
draws together insights from a wider range of treatments of this
topic than is true of any other mid-century master. He also shows a
theoretical interest in the subject which reflects his use of the
author of the Summa sententiarum as his major guide, while at the
same time he goes more deeply into it than does this master or any
of his other compeers. In terms of what he omits, Peter also
indicates which questions concerning angels he regards as frivolous
or unanswerable. Even when he is drawing the most closely on the
work of other theologians, he frames his ideas in his own language
and sometimes introduces distinctions of his own that enable him
to pose and to resolve problems more clearly.135
Peter prefaces his account of angels with a crisp indication of
what subjects he plans to take up and in what order. He proposes to
treat when angels were created, where, their original nature, the
effects on the angels of their fall or the lack of it, their ranks, gifts,
duties, and names. The first two questions are correlatives. Taking
a leaf from the book of the Summa sententiarum, and doing its author
one better, he reviews his doctrine of the creation simul of angels
and the elements, prior to the creation of the rest of the universe,
and adds that the locus of the angels was the heaven or empyrean,
which was the third and last item created simul along with the
angels and primordial matter.136 As for the created nature of angels,
Peter supports while expanding on the consensus view, stating that
they have a simple essence that is indivisible and immaterial, a
status as persons, rationality including memory, intellect, and will,
and free will, which he defines here as the freedom of the will
to choose either good or evil on its own "without violence or

134
Ibid., 2.\,PL 176:81C-D.
135
The best treatment of Peter Lombard on angels to date is Ermenegildo
Bertola, "II problema delle creature angeliche in Pier Lombardo," Pier Lombardo
1:2 (1957): 33-54.
13è
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 2. c. 1-c. 6, 1: 336-41.
348 CHAPTER SIX

constraint" (sine violentia et coactione) .137 But, going back to the issue
of whether there are respects in which all angels are the same and
respects in which they are different, aired by Hugh of St. Victor,
Peter puts the question in his own terms. Are angels all the same in
their essence, wisdom, and free will, that is, their substance, form,
and power? He answers that, with regard to their essence as ration-
al beings, as persons, as immaterial, as simple, and as immortal,
they are all the same. Nevertheless, they exist in different grades of
tenuousness and different degrees of wisdom and will.138 Peter has
added here the notion of gradations within the substance of the
angelic nature, as well as within their exercise of that nature, a
move that grounds the principle of angelic hierarchy metaphysical-
ly as well as psychologically. He indicates his view that the hierar-
chical principle is universal in creation, since it applies to spiritual
beings in both of these ways as well as to material beings.
While the ability to exercise free will in any direction, without
constraint, is a native endowment of the angels, some angels used it
to fall, which they could do on their own, and others used it
meritoriously, which they could not do unless grace were added.
The point that Peter wants to make here, agreeing with Augustine
on Genesis, is that nothing in the creation, including the angels
who fell, is intrinsically evil. In support of this principle he does not
hesitate to yoke Origen's On Ezechiel with Augustine as an authority
however much he may share in the contemporary antipathy to
Origen in other respects.139 As for the natural rational capacity of
the angels before the fall, it was, according to Peter, threefold. The
angels knew that they were created, and by Whom, and for what
purpose. They also naturally shared a love of God and of each
other, although this was not yet a love that earned merit. They
were blessed in their innocence, rather than in the sense of the
blessedness enjoyed as a future state by those spiritual beings who
persevere in virtue. In this respect, and here Peter makes a distinc-
tion applied more generally to the creation by Robert of Melun, the
angels were perfect before the fall in that they had everything they
needed and that was appropriate to them at the time. But they were
not perfect in the sense that they had not yet actualized the poten-
tial capacity for glorification which they possessed. Nor were they
perfect in the absolute sense in which only God is perfect.140

137
Ibid., d. 3. c. 1.2, 1: 342; repeated at d. 4. c. 2, 1: 252.
138
Ibid., d. 3. c. 2.1-2, 1:342.
139
Ibid., c. 4.1-11, 1:343-47.
140
Ibid., c. 5-d. 4. c. 4, 1: 348-51.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 349

Next comes the fall of the angels. Peter confirms the consensus
position on its effects, but finds his own way of explaining why the
good angels persevere in virtue and why the fallen angels cannot be
saved, a position which avoids the problems of both the Cur deus non
angelus argument of Anselm of Canterbury and the absence of
external temptation argument of Anselm of Laon. The fall of the
angels involves either conversion (conversio) or aversion (aversio).
The converted angels, Peter argues, are confirmed in the love of
God and are illuminated by Him so as to be granted a fuller
wisdom, and are given the grace which now enables them to be just
and to acquire merit. The averted, who fell through envy, are
confirmed in that vice and also in hatred. Their minds are blinded,
not just by their own malice but by the removal of grace. They are
corrupted by guilt and made unjust. Now, both kinds of angels
retain free will. But, Peter draws a distinction here that addresses
some of the difficulties raised but not answered by both the author
of the Summa sententiarum and Robert Pullen in this connection. The
reason why the fallen angels cannot be saved is that, in order to
exercise their will toward the good, they would need to have the gift
of divine grace. And, grace has been removed from them as a
consequence of their fall. So, since God does not choose to alter this
state of affairs, they are incapable of improving. The good angels,
on the other hand, are capable of improving, growing perfected in
the love of God and in their obedience to Him; and this is possible
because God grants them the cooperating grace without which no
rational creature can improve and attain merit {gratia cooperans, sine
qua non potest proficere rationalis vel meritum vitae). They also do so by
using their free will to collaborate with God's grace. Grace is the
key, in this analysis, for without it the angelic will cannot make
those choices that contribute to merit. Peter agrees with those who
say that the prize the converted angels win is itself the grace
enabling them to enjoy the good.141 But his real achievement here is
to take the consensus view that merit-bearing choices, even for the
angels, require the support of grace and to expand it into an
argument that can refute the Origentist theory of openended con-
version or aversion without undermining the free.will of the angels.
In the final accounting, it is the divine decision to extend grace, or
to withhold it, that is the critical factor in an equation that leaves
the fallen angels in a condition of permanent moral stasis while it
extends to the good angels the capacity for glorification. Peter's
earlier definition of angelic free will also enables him to resolve a

141
Ibid., d. 5. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 351-53. The quotation is at c. 3. 1: 352.
350 CHAPTER SIX

problem raised by Robert Pullen under the heading of whether the

good angels have the non posse peccare. He sides with Robert and
Jerome in assigning this condition to God alone. He agrees that the
angels after the fall have the capacity to will only good, or evil, and
not their opposites. But, insofar as they now experience no con-
flicting desires, the angels' capacity to will good, or evil, as the case
may be, with no violence or constraint, has been intensified, not
limited; although, as he has argued, for the good angels the ability
to translate good intentions into good, and meritorious, actions
requires the collaboration of grace.142
The good angels continue to do just that, and to carry out the
missions God assigns them. As for the fallen angels, who, Peter
notes, are graded even as the good ones are, pace the author of the
Summa sententiarum, they are thrown into the dark and murky air to
consort with their depraved associates, or are sent to Hell to
torment the damned. Peter does not specify where the dark and
gloomy air is located, keeping an open mind on this question, but
allowing that the demons dwelling there can return to earth to
tempt mankind and to play the roles assigned to them in the time of
Antichrist. The main point he wants to make about the work of the
fallen angels is that, as devils, their powers as tempters will increase
in the last days, in some cases, while in other cases, their powers
will be diminished, the demons in the second group having been
bested by the saints.143 He adds that, if some demons will grow or
diminish in their malicious powers, they will not lose their intelli-
gence, just as they will not be deprived of free will.144 Peter closes
this section of his account by noting that the good angels can take
on visible corporeal form in the conduct of their missions, and that
the authorities do not resolve the question of what the metaphysical
status of those bodies may be or what happens to them after the
angels no longer need to use them.145 He also observes that demons
may enter into the bodies and minds of men in performing their
nefarious work. When they do so, he maintains, they are present in
human beings not substantially (substantialiter) but in their
effects.146 On the subject of incubi, Peter, along with most of his
contemporaries, declines to comment.
Citing Dionysius, and bringing in Gregory as well, he also re-

142
Ibid., d. 7. c. 1-c. 4, 1:359-61.
143
Ibid., d. 6. c. 1-c. 7, 1: 354-58.
144
Ibid., d. 7. c. 5-c. 9, 1: 361-65.
145
Ibid., d. 8. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 365-68.
146
Ibid., c. 4. 1: 36£-70.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 351

ports the consensus position on the nine orders of angels, headed by

the seraphim. But he expands on this common doctrine. The nine
ranks of angels are led by the seraphim burning with love, outrank-
ing the cherubim, in order to point the lesson, for man's instruc-
tion, that love is greater than knowledge. Also, the angels are
divided into three subsets of three, to reflect the Trinity. The
virtues expressed by the angels in each rank are gifts common to all
the angels, although they are manifested preeminently by the
angels in each particular rank. The rank order itself, according to
Peter, was established after the fall, although the metaphysical
gradations of angelic substance for which he had argued earlier
provide a philosophical rationale for this development. Sharply
disagreeing with Honorius, who claims that each angel is sui generis,
Peter thinks that there is more than one angel in each rank and that
the angels in each order are graded, just as the ranks are.147
Returning to a point that he had made under the heading of why
man was created, he repeats the idea that men were not intended to
form a tenth order of angels, or that they were created originally with
such a status. Man would have been created and redeemed, he
reiterates, even if the fallen angels had not fallen. The redeemed who
win beatitude, further, receive it as human beings, not as angels.148
Turning from this critique of Augustine and of Hugh of St.
Victor to another issue which Hugh had discussed inconclusively,
the question of whether all ranks of angels or only some angels are
sent on divine missions, Peter joins the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum in supporting those authorities who state that all ranks of
angels are sent. He offers his own amplification of this point. While
all ranks are sent, the angels highest on the angelic hierarchy,
especially archangels such as Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, who
are specifically named, receive the choicest assignments.149 Aside
from functioning as messengers, Peter agrees, angels are sent to
guard individual human beings, just as demons are allowed to test
and torment them. In addressing the claim made by Hugh that the
number of angels and devils must therefore be the same as the
number of human beings in existence at any given moment, he
registers disagreement. We do not need to posit that hypothesis, he
states, since individual angels and devils can perform their respec-
tive assignments for more than one person at the same time.150

147
148
Ibid., d. 9. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 370-75.
149
Ibid., c. &-c. 7, 1: 375-76.
150
Ibid., d. 10. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 377-79.
Ibid., d. 11. c. 1, 1: 379-81.
352 CHAPTER SIX

Peter concludes his treatise on angels by considering the gifts of

the good angels. The principal issue he takes up under this heading
is whether the good angels continue to grow in love and knowledge,
in merit and reward, from the time of their confirmation in the good
up to the time of the last judgment. Or, are they perfected, with no
subsequent change, at the moment of their confirmation? To be
sure, he had already laid the foundation earlier on for the answer he
provides here, in his contrast between the effects of their confirma-
tion on the good and the fallen angels, respectively. But now Peter
introduces a useful distinction, and one not found in any of his
authorities, which permits him to support both af these alternatives
at the same time. The same distinction also enables him to empha-
size the point that angels can be differentiated from God despite
their purely spiritual constitution. Since angels live in time, he
observes, and since they do not have foreknowledge, they do grow
in knowledge. They become informed of events that occur in time,
as these events come to pass. In this kind of knowledge of external
events, then, they can and do grow. On the other hand, in their
contemplation of God they are confirmed, once and for all, and this
knowledge does not change. With respect to their love and merit,
the good angels are not enlarged as to its quality. But they can grow
in their opportunities to exercise these virtues. In handling objec-
tions to this last point, Peter shows that it is fully compatible with
the combination of the temporal development of angelic knowledge
and the changeless state of divine contemplation that characterizes
the epistemic modes of angelic activity.151 While Peter has clearly
profited from the distinction drawn between angels and God by the
author of the Summa sententiarum, he puts his own stamp on this final
topic concerning angels by differentiating among modes of angelic
activity and by resting his case on the chief metaphysical attribute
which created beings lack in comparison with the creator, a theme
which he had earlier developed in his doctrine of God in Book 1 of
the Sentences and had anchored there with an appeal to John
Damascene: everything in the creation is changeable, in one way or
another. Only God is immutable. This, more than the issue of
substantial composition, is the basis on which he draws his final
conclusions on what is specific and unique to the angels.
In sum, while raising a wider range of questions on angels than
his contemporaries do and while providing more of the questions
which he raises with lucid and defensible answers, Peter does far

151
Ibid., c. 2, 1: 381-83.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 353

more than to summarize the consensus view of angelology in his

time. He takes a clear stand on disputed issues and finds fresh ways
of posing and resolving many of them. His most important and
characteristic contribution in this subdivision of his theology can be
seen in his treatment of the gifts of the good angels and whether
they change or not, and in his explanation of the irremissibility of
the guilt of the fallen angels. In each case, he associates his solution
with a more basic theme in his theology as such, in addition to
developing a mode of attack different both from that of contempo-
raries and from the authorities on whom he and they rely. In the
first mentioned case, the principle he invokes is the immutability of
the divine nature and the mutability of created beings, as fun-
damental definitions of these two kinds of being. In the case of the
fallen angels, and their differences from the good angels, the princi-
ple he invokes is the idea that all good actions require the assistance
of grace, and that God grants, and subtracts, His grace according
to His own will. This idea is also one that Peter will develop
systematically in his handling of God's relationship with man, both
before and after Adam's fall, and it is a signature of Peter's in the
field of ethics more generally. In these ways, and in contrast to
contemporaries who ignored angels, or who treated them in a
sketchy, a hit-or-miss, a fanciful, an illogical, or an inconclusive
manner, Peter presents a well organized, inclusive, and coherent
angelology, which targets effectively the aspects of this subject most
of interest to theologians in the middle of the twelfth century and
which, at the same time, integrates angelology comprehensibly into
the rest of his theology.

H U M A N NATURE BEFORE THE FALL: T H E CONTEMPORARY

DEBATES

In turning from angels to man before the fall, we move from an

area in which there was a considerable degree of consensus among
theologians in the first half of the twelfth century to one in which
there was a good deal of disagreement. Not all scholastics regarded
human nature as such as an issue of particular interest. Indeed,
despite their renown, or notoriety, as speculative thinkers in other
areas, the Abelardians and Porretans tend to give this subject
extremely short shrift. Among those theologians who do devote
extended attention to the subject, there is agreement that the main
issues requiring investigation are the nature of man's physical and
intellectual activities before the fall, the structure of the human
soul, man's rationality, free will, and virtue, and, to a somewhat
354 CHAPTER SIX

lesser degree, the question of whether female nature is equal to

male nature or is its inferior. Within these areas, however, they
disagree quite sharply, both in their substantive conclusions, the
relative importance they grant to these topics, and the authorities
and rational arguments on which they rely. In this connection,
Peter Lombard offers a defense of the principle that human nature
as such is an important issue, a defense stronger than that found in
any other contemporary theologian. At the same time, his under-
standing of human nature offers a striking de-Platonizing of that
subject, in comparison with some of the period's leading thinkers.152
In this respect, while he draws heavily on Hugh of St. Victor for the
formulation of the issues he wants to discuss and for a sense of
where in the theological tradition to look for his sources, Hugh is
also the contemporary theologian of whom he is the most critical.
Of all the topics pertinent to human nature before the fall, the
one on which there is the most consensus, and the one that attracts
the least speculative attention from the masters of his time up to
Peter, is man's physical nature and life in Eden. The main point
which, they agree, is the single most important one is man's sexual-
ity before the fall. They also agree that the single most important
authority on this subject is Augustine, Augustine, that is, in his
anti-Manichean and pastoral incarnation and not Augustine the
anti-Pelagian. In the works written to refute the Manichean con-
ception of the human body, and procreative sexuality, as evil, and
in works of his mid-career aimed at counseling married people or
those preparing for marriage, Augustine stressed that marriage,
and sexual reproduction, were an original part of God's plan. In
these works, as well, Augustine had in mind the aim of refuting the
position of Origen, who had taught that the body, and hence sexual
differentiation itself no less than the sexual procreation of offspring,
were consequences of original sin, ideas which, in one form or
another, were finding a resonance in some of Augustine's more

152
The best introduction to this object, at least for the Lombard's psychology,
is Ermenegildo Bertola, "La dottrina lombardiana deiranima nella storia delle
dottrine psicologiche del XII secolo," Pier Lombardo 3:1 (1959): 3-18. See also
Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle, p. 295; Joseph de Ghellinck, "Pierre Lom-
bard," in DTC (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1935), 12 part 2: 1194-96; Richard
Heinzemann, Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele und die Auferstehung des Leibes: Eine prob-
lemgeschichtliche Untersuchung der frühscholastischen Sentenzen- und Summenliteratur von
Anselm von Laon bis Wilhelm von Auxerre, Beiträge, 40:3 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1965), pp. 63-68; Giuseppi Lorenzi, "La filosofia di Pier Lombardo nei Quattro
libri delle Sentenze" Pier Lombardo 4 (1960): 32-34, who follows Bertola closely:
Johann Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Her-
der, 1932), pp. 15-23.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 355

ascetic contemporaries. Twelfth-century scholastics follow Augus-

tine's lead here, and on two related points. First, they agree that,
before the fall, human sexuality would have lacked the attributes of
desire and pleasure. It would have been exercised subject to the
rational will of the partners, as devoid of lustful feeling or sensual
gratification as a handshake. Secondly, they agree, before the fall,
children would have been born to Eve without labor pains.153 The
only twelfth-century theologians to depart from this Augustinian
position are Robert of Melun, who ignores the topic of sex
altogether at the relevant location in his Sentences, and one of the
early Porretans, who treats the question of whether sex would have
been free of lust and childbirth free of pain, absent the fall, as an
open one.154
There is a corollary of the Augustinian position on marriage in
Eden which attracts less general interest and agreement, the nature
of the children who would have been born to Adam and Eve.
Would they, like their parents, have been engendered as adults, or
as able to walk and talk already? Augustine himself airs the matter
as a possibility but takes no definite stand. Undeterred, Honorius
Augustodunensis treats the walking and talking as a certainty;
Hugh of St. Victor thinks the children would have inherited all the
perfections of their parents but would not have been born as adults;
and the author of the Summa sententiarum more prudently retreats to
the issue of walking and talking, and, less definite than Honorius
and more definite than Augustine himself, thinks that these capaci-
ties in the newborn children of Adam and Eve would have been
possible, and likely.155
Far less sustained attention was devoted to the other aspects of
the physical life of man in Eden before the fall. It was agreed that
Adam and Eve had the capacity not to die and that, before the fall,

153
For the Augustinian background and a fine survey of twelfth-century opin-
ions, the standard work is Michael Müller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der
Paradiesesehe und ihre Auswirkung in der Sexualethik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas
von Aquin (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1954), pp. 19-101. His analysis and
conclusions are amply supported by our own investigations. See Anselm of Laon,
Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 22-23, 57; Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 24,
38-39; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 246, 254; Sentences of the School of Laon,
no. 252, 5: 26, 36-37, 203, 207, 252; Honorius, Elue. 1.74-76, pp. 374-75; Roland
of Bologna, Sent., pp. 121-22; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.18-27, PL 176:
275A-281A; Summa sent. 3.4, PL 176: 94D; Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.18, PL 186:
745D-746B.
154
Robert of Melun, Sent, 1.1.8, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 208; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I
13.61-62, p. 171.
155
Honorius, Elue. 1.74-76, pp. 374-75; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.18-27,
PL 176: 275A-281A; Summa sent. 3.4, PL 176: 95A-B.
356 CHAPTER SIX

they were not afflicted with illness or physical suffering. But, what
about their need to eat and their need to work? A number of
theologians acknowledge the fact that the need to eat is a natural
need. Before the fall, it would have been morally neutral and
unproblematic, simply an indicator of the body's nutritional needs.
Adam and Eve would have eaten out of natural need and with
natural pleasure, but without experiencing the pain of hunger
pangs.156 But there was an alternative approach to this question,
offered by two members of the school of Laon. They argue that
Adam and Eve possessed the physical need for food and drink,
before the fall, but only potentially, and not in actu, a view which
presupposes that the fall occurred almost immediately after the
creation of Adam and Eve.157 There was also the opinion of Hon-
orius, noted above under the heading of why animals were created,
that vegetarianism alone was natural in Eden, and that the need to
consume flesh was a consequence of the fall.158 As for work, and
whether it existed in Eden, or whether it was an affliction laid on
Adam as a punishment for sin, this issue evokes interest only from
Roland of Bologna and Robert of Melun, who have much the same
thing to say although Roland is more specific. Adam, they both
think, would have exercised his natural aptitude to work in Eden,
plowing, sowing, and harvesting, raising his family and building a
house for it, but out of pleasure in these activities in their own right,
and without fatigue or heavy effort.159 This view, if it failed to
receive support from other masters in the mainstream, is interest-
ing for its understanding that meaningful work is a natural need of
humankind, and that performing it brings satisfaction.
In surveying man's natural endowments and functions before the
fall, these physical attributes cede pride of place to man's soul.
Indeed, it is primarily, and sometimes exclusively, the soul to
which most mid-century theologians turn in discussing prelapsar-
ian man. The fact that they devote so much space to this topic,
treating it in much more detail than man's body, is indicative of
their strongly hierarchical assumptions about the human constitu-

156
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 66-67; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.18-29, PL 176:
275A-282D; Summa sent. 3.4, PL 176: 94D.
157
Potest queri, quid sit peccatum, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in Das Schrifttum der
Schule Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen Bibliotheken, Beiträge,
33:1-2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1936), p. 263; Deus de cuius prinäpio etfinetacetur,
p. 263.
158
Honorius, Elue. 1.66-67, pp. 272-73.
159
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 121-22; Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.1.8, Oeuvres, 3
part 1: 208.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 357

tion. Here, they could and did draw on the philosophical tradition
as well as on patristic writers who held, with the Platonists, that a
human being was a soul using a body, or even a soul trapped in a
body as its prison, or, with the Stoics, that the mind was the ruling
principle of the entire human constitution. At the same time, the
treatises on the human soul found in systematic theologies in this
period vary quite widely in the ways their authors conceive of this
subject. Sometimes they include the theme of the five senses, and
sometimes not. Some of them look at the question from a primarily
ethical, and others from a primarily epistemological, standpoint,
while still others seek to combine these perspectives. And, the
mental faculties that different masters accent are not always the
same ones, although they sometimes use the same terms to describe
mental faculties that they define differently.
The school of Laon, early in the century, is a good index of both
the eclecticism and the lack of consensus on man's psychology
visible in this period. William of Champeaux combines a more or
less Aristotelian psychology with a conception of mental faculties
more Neoplatonic in appearance and geared to sustain man's su-
pernatural activities. His account of sense perception takes the
Peripatetic line that the sense data impress themselves on the sense
organs, which remain passive in the process. The sense organs then
convey these data to the mind, which fabricates concepts, both
individual and abstract, out of them. William is aware of the fact
that this account makes problematic the senses of sight and hear-
ing, since the eye and ear perceive their objects at a distance. He
mentions the problem but offers no resolution of it.160 As for man's
mental faculties, he holds that they are threefold. There is soul
(anima), which animates the body and supervises the physical
senses, and spirit (spiritus), the rational faculty which frames con-
cepts and grasps supra-sensible realities. It is in the sense of his
spiritus, William thinks, that man was made in God's image. There
is also a third faculty, intuition (intuitus), man's suprarational fac-
ulty, which enables him to contemplate God's essence directly.
William is not clear on why this suprarational faculty, which would
appear to resemble God's own mode of intellection more closely
than the ratiocination performed by spiritus, would not provide a
better locus for the image of God in man.161 Other Laon masters
take a different tack, locating the image of God, in a traditional

Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 242-43, 5: 200-01.

Ibid., no. 244, 5: 201.
358 CHAPTER SIX

Augustinian manner, in man's memory, intellect, and will.162 The

author of the Sententie Anselmi offers his own faculty psychology,
dividing the soul into two faculties, the rational soul focused on the
knowledge of incorporeal truths, which he confusingly calls anima,
and the sensual soul, in charge of the body and sensory knowledge.163
A much more elaborate and important account of human
psychology, if one not entirely free from inconsistencies, is the one
developed by Hugh of St. Victor. He presents man as a microcosm.
Since he possesses both a body and a soul, man displays God's
desire to glorify both the material and the spiritual creation
through the redemption of man.164 This being so, one might expect
to find that Hugh gives equal time to the body and soul of man
before the fall. But such is not the case. Hugh is equally supportive
of the view that man's soul alone is the microcosm, in that it can
grasp invisible causes and also gain a knowledge of the visible
world with the aid of the senses.165 The soul itself is seen by Hugh
as a substance, capable of being modified by accidents, without
taking the body into account. The soul is where the human person-
ality resides. The body can be called a person only indirectly,
thanks to its union with the soul. While Hugh agrees with Augus-
tine that the soul is spread evenly throughout the body, a point also
reprised by the early Porretans,166 it is not the combination of body
and soul that is the definition of the human person for him but the
individual substance of a rational nature, à la Boethius, whose
union with the body to which it is joined is by no means perfect.
The soul, or human person, can, for Hugh, live without a body. As
a number of scholars have aptly noted, Hugh's understanding of
human nature is strongly tinctured by Neoplatonism.167
Hugh distinguishes three forms of agency in man, mental, that is,
voluntary; physical; and sensory or pertaining to pleasure. He

162
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 312-13, 315, 5: 246-49, 251.
163
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 55-57. Heinzemann, Die Unsterblichkeit, pp. 6-15 does not
note these differences of opinion within the school.
164
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.1, PL 176: 263A.
165
Hugh of St. Victor, Didascal. 1.1, pp. 4-5.
166
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.56, p. 170.
167
Barkholt, Die Ontologie, pp. 17-19, 20-21; Roger Baron, "La situation de
Phomme d'après Hugues de Saint-Victor," in UHomme et son destin d'après les
penseurs du moyen âge (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1960), pp. 431-36; Heinze-
mann, Die Unsterblichkeit, pp. 75-82; Heinrich Ostler, Die Psychologie des Hugo von St.
Viktor, Beiträge, 6:1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1906), pp. 26-30, 39-43, 81, 86-87;
Heinz Robert Schlette, "Das unterscheidliche Personenverständnis im theologi-
schen Denken Hugos und Richards von St. Viktor," in Miscellanea Martin Grab-
mann: Gedenkenblatt zum 10. Todestag (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1959), pp.
57-61; Schütz, Deus absconditus, pp. 99-102.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 359

makes it clear that he views their operations as much from a moral

as from an epistemological perspective, and that the sub-rational
impulses are far from neutral, in his estimation. The will is free, he
observes; and it moves the body as well as the mind. But the
sensory faculty can take over the mind, when the mind issues its
bodily directives. If this happens, incorrect moral judgments will
be made. It is only when the mind masters the sensory faculty that
correct moral decisions will ensue.168 Despite the hazards which the
sensory faculty presents, it is noteworthy that Hugh sees this fac-
ulty, and not physical activity itself, as the seat of the problem.
Man requires both the mental and the sensory faculties in order to
come to a knowledge of both the visible and invisible worlds. This
knowledge is desirable and valuable not, for Hugh, because it is a
natural function of man as such, but because it provides him with
the knowledge of God required for his spiritual well-being and for
his acquisition of merit. Hugh is insistent, and consistent, in view-
ing man's natural faculties of soul in this kind of moral and reli-
gious perspective, adding that, while man can know the visible
universe by nature, his knowledge of those invisible things that
have not left their traces in the visible world depends on grace,
collaborating with man's natural mental faculties. Further, these
same mental faculties enable man to grasp the precepts of nature
and of discipline. By this, Hugh means moral principles, as
rationally ascertainable and as revealed, not the natural law in the
physical sense.169 For Hugh, the natural knowledge possessed by
man before the fall was not derived purely from man's mental,
physical, and sensory faculties working without impediment.
According to Hugh, Adam had a perfect knowledge of the truth, all
at once, which was reflected in his self-knowledge, his intimacy
with the creator, and his knowledge of how to name the animals.
This perfect knowledge, which lacked only foreknowledge, was his
by divine illumination.170
The most notable heir to Hugh's legacy in the area of man's
psychological endowment before the fall is Robert Pullen. The
subject of the human soul is one he discusses at considerable
length. To the Hugonian legacy, and some of its complications, he
adds a number of observations on his own. Man was greater before
the fall than he is now, Robert begins, but his nature will be still
greater in the future resurrection.171 This condition applies in
168
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.4, PL 176: 265C-266A.
169
Ibid., 1.6.5-6, 1.6.8, PL 176: 266B-268B, 268D-269B.
170
Ibid., 1.6.12-15, PL 176: 270C-272C.
171
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.16, PL 186: 741A-B.
360 CHAPTER SIX

particular to man's soul. With Hugh, Robert calls the soul a sub-
stance, and an indivisible one, spread evenly throughout the
human body. He emphasizes that the soul is not localized in any
one organ, that it is not reduced or divided if a person suffers the
loss of a part of his body, and that the soul is the same "size" in
people of all ages and statures. 172 Robert has a good deal to say
about what this indivisible substance is not, but he is far from clear
on what it is, and what its relationship to the body is. The soul is
not of the same substance as the anima mundi, he notes, in a jab at
some versions of contemporary Platonism. Nor is it of the same
substance as the spirit of life which God breathed into Adam's
body. Robert explains neither of these points. He also leaves dan-
gling the question of whether the souls of other people are created by
God, or issue from God, in the same way as Adam's soul and whether
Adam's soul is consubstantial with the souls of other human beings.173
Robert is treading on very marshy ground at this point. He appears to
be drawing a distinction between spiritus and anima, but it is impossible
to tell whether he means this in the same sense as William of Cham-
peaux, since he does not define either of these terms. He does,
however, argue that the parents supply the spiritus as well as the body
to their children, which makes him a traducianist in some sense ofthat
word.174 Also, having stated that the soul is a substance, he also says
that the soul and body are not two substances that blend when they
are united to produce a third and compound substance. Rather, they
are two aspects that cohere to make a man who remains a composite
being so long as he is not dead and unresurrected.175 But, then again,
in the next breath, Robert calls both man's soul, and man as a
composite of body and soul, substances.176
These confusions in the meaning of substance with respect to
anthropology and Robert's waverings on whether man is an inte-
gral unit of body and soul or a person defined as a spiritual sub-
stance, which he derives from Hugh, are left unresolved. Ignoring the
debris he has left in his wake, Robert plunges on to address another
topic, faculty psychology. Noting that he is focusing on the particu-
lar version of the doctrine that he gives because it frames the
subject in terms of moral discretion and judgment, and that it is in
this connection that God's image is found in man's soul, he gives a

172
Ibid., 1.10, PL 186: 690A-693A. The quotation is at 692A.
173
Ibid., 2.9, PL 186: 733A.
174
Ibid., 2.7, PL 186: 726A-D.
175
Ibid., 2.10, P I 186: 724D.
176
Ibid., 2.12, PL 186: 736D-738A. Robert's inconsistency here has been noted
by Heinzemann, Die Unsterblichkeit, pp. 84—117.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 361

reprise of the Aristotelian distinction among the concupiscible, the

irascible,"and the rational faculties, or, as he puts it, ratio, ira, and
concupiscentia. Now, there is a potential difficulty here. It was a
standard consensus position, to which we have adverted above and
which we will consider more fully below, that concupiscence was a
consequence of the fall. Robert turns a blind eye to this fact. He
does not see any need to explain the difference between concupis-
cence as a punishment for sin and the concupiscible faculty, in
Aristotle's psychology, as a natural attribute of human beings.
Moving right along, he notes that the rational faculty distinguishes
good from evil. The irascible faculty distinguishes what caution
should endure and what excessive zeal should reject. The concu-
piscible faculty tells us what to desire and what pertains to the
needs of the body and to duty. While these definitions are not
entirely Aristotelian, Robert joins the Stagirite in affirming that the
functions of the irascible and concupiscible faculties can be condu-
cive to virtue when they are guided by reason, and that the ability
of reason to govern the infrarational faculties is what separates man
from the animals.177
Robert adds that men have five senses and, like Hugh, he
observes that they can draw men away from virtue, if they are
inordinate in their attachments and are not used under reason's
guidance.178 But he at once launches into an analysis of the physiol-
ogy of sight that is interesting in its own right. Plato, he observes,
using the sense of sight as a paradigm case for sensation in general,
saw vision as a flow of light issuing from the eye, going out to the
sense object, and bringing sense data back with it to the eye. On the
other hand, Aristotle saw the process as occurring in reverse, with
the sense object sending out data across some sort of material
bridge, the data impressing themselves on an eye that receives
them passively. Robert thinks that the active and passive theories
of sensation, as presented by these two traditions, each tell only half
of the story. Without being aware of the fact that it is the Stoic
theory of sensation which tells the whole story to which he is advert-
ing, and without referring to Augustine, who is its likeliest source for
him, he argues for a combined theory of sensation in which both the
sense organ and the sense object play an active role.179

177
Robert Pullen Sent. 2.11, 2.12, PL 186: 734D-735A, 736D, 738D. Heinze-
mann, Die Unsterblichkeit, pp. 82-84, in stressing Robert's dependence on Hugh of
St. Victor, ignores this point and the other non-Victorine elements in Robert's
psychology.
178
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.11, PL 186: 736B-D.
179
Ibid., 2.12, PL 186: 738C-739A.
362 CHAPTER SIX

Interesting as is his discussion of sensation, and informative as it

is in conveying the three ancient philosophical accounts of that
process to his readers, the passage just noted is, strictly speaking, a
digression in Robert's treatise on the soul, which is geared to the
faculties of the soul viewed from a moral perspective. He returns to
this agenda by emphasizing that intellectual assent is of the essence
in moral acts. Not only must the mind consent to a sin, for example,
before the body can carry it out, but there are sins that are purely
mental, like pride and envy.180 Less intimately connected to
Robert's theme, and problematic in its own right, is his discussion
of another mental faculty, imagination. He defines imagination as
the representation in the mind of some sensible thing that is cur-
rently absent. Ignoring the fact that this same definition would
apply equally well to a concept, from which he does not differenti-
ate imagination, Robert adds that man shares this faculty with
animals, anchoring the claim with the point that both men and
animals dream. He does not indicate how we can know that ani-
mals dream, but concludes his treatment of mental faculties by
noting that men can bring their rational judgment to bear on the
content of their dreams while animals cannot.
There was one other essay in faculty psychology in our period,
that of Robert of Melun, who calls upon another Aristotelian
distinction, the distinction among the vegetative, animate, and
rational souls, each in charge of a particular subdivision of human
activity. His main reason for appealing to this principle is not the
desire to criticize Robert Pullen's model of the concupiscible, irasci-
ble, and rational faculties but to support Abelard's Trinitarian
theology and to attack the Augustinian analogy of memory, intel-
lect, and will. His chosen substitute does not involve faculties that
work in and through each other.181 Robert of Melun gives most of
the attention he devotes to the human soul to the effort to prove its
immortality, an unusual activity since this was not a debated
question at the time. His dialogue is principally with Augustine
and Gassiodorus here and not with any contemporary quidam.1*2 He
begins with moral arguments which suggest that the nature of
creatures possessing moral ends must be compatible with those
ends. Since the human soul was given an innate desire for the good,

180
Ibid., 2.15, PL 186: 740C-741A.
181
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.6.44, Oeuvres, 3 part 2: 334-40.
182
The text is printed in Raymond-M. Martin, "L'immortalité de l'âme
d'après Robert de Melun (d. 1167)," Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie 36 (1934):
139-45.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 363

a capacity to recognize it, the ability to attain virtue and to be

rewarded for it, the soul must be able to enjoy these ends eternally.
Robert then offers proofs based on the metaphysical structure of the
soul which align him with those contemporaries who profess a
Platonizing psychology. The soul is capable of living without the
body, he urges, and is the principle of being of the person to whom
it belongs, the essence ofthat person. It lacks the kinds of mutabil-
ity that affect the essences of things that are mortal. He concludes
that only the deity, Who created it, can annihilate the soul. Against
the claim that, as the form of the body, the soul dies with the body,
he offers not a refutation but the counterclaim that this is only one
of the soul's functions. When the body dies, the soul is free to do
other things. To those who say that the soul is mortal because, like
the body, it can be afflicted by illness, he answers that spiritual
sickness is not terminal or irreversible. This may well be the case,
but it does not demonstrate that the soul is immortal. In any event,
these concerns delimit, for the most part, the issues that Robert
wants to discuss about the nature of the human soul.
A related issue on which we also find a range of opinions and
which serves as a point of transition for the theologians from man's
created nature before the fall to the fall itself is free will. Everyone
agrees that man was endowed with free will in paradise. But there
is some disagreement over how to define it and also over its scope
and capacity to win virtue for prelapsarian man. The school of
Laon offers a range of opinions in defining free will. Anselm of Laon
and one of his followers align themselves with Anselm of Canter-
bury and state that free will is the power to serve rectitude for its
own sake.183 Anselm adds that free will has two parts, approving
(approbans) and desiring (appetens). The first is rational and always
good (semper bona); it reflects man's natural desire for the good. The
second draws man into sensual pleasures which may be bad as well
as good.184 Another view of free will found in the school of Laon and
also in Bernard of Clairvaux, and one that recurs in Hugh of St.
Victor, the Summa sententiarum, the Sententiae divinitas, and also Peter
Lombard, is the idea that free will is threefold. It involves freedom
from necessity, freedom from sin, and freedom from misery (a
necessitate, a peccato, a miseria).185 Freedom from necessity is the
183
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, pp. 27-28; Sentences of the School of Laon,
no. 322, 5: 253.
184
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, pp. 27-28.
185
Sentences of Probable Authenticity, no. 108, 5: 87. Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, De
gratia et libero arbitrio 3.6-7, ed. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais in Bernard of
Clairvaux, Opera, 8 vols. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1955-77), 3: 170-71. The
best analyses of Bernard's doctrine are Bernard McGinn, intro, to Bernard of
364 CHAPTER SIX

natural capacity of the will to choose, to be the cause of its own

actions, without any external constraint or impediment. Freedom
from sin is the effective choice of the good according to the counsel
of right reason. Freedom from misery adds to this choice its fruition
in good action. The first of these, freedom from necessity, is sub-
stantive of the will and is indestructible; it is a gift of nature. The
second and third freedoms are accidental; they are gifts of grace.
Twelfth-century scholastics who follow this last definition of free
will tend to bring it to bear on the question of whether man had
virtue before the fall. A good case in point is Hugh of St. Victor.
Repeating the threefold definition just noted, he adds that Adam
needed grace in order to exercise free will for the good. Defining
virtue as "nothing other than an affection of the mind ordered
according to reason" (virtus namque nihil aliud est quam affectus mentis
secundum rationem ordinatus), he observes that virtue may be by
nature or grace. Grace is both the grace of creation and the grace of
restoration. The first operates in man; the second cooperates with
man. All virtue, Hugh continues, must involve grace in order to be
meritorious. Thus, for Hugh, Adam possessed created grace before
the fall, although after the fall, man needs both kinds. And so,

Clairvaux, On Grace and Free Will, trans. Daniel O'Donovan (Kalamazoo: Cister-
cian Publications, 1977), pp. 15-42 and Luigi Sartori, "Natura e grazia nella
dottrina di S. Bernardo," Studiapatavina 1 (1954): 41-64. See also Gillian R. Evans,
The Mind of Bernard of Clairvaux (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 51, 159-62;
Emmanuel Kern, Das Tugendsystem des heiligen Bernhard von Clairvaux (Freiburg im
Breisgau: Herder, 1934), pp. 5-9; Bernard Maréchaux, "LOeuvre doctrinale de
Saint Bernard," La Vie spirituelle 17 (1927): 196-200; Armando Rigobello, Lineeper
una antropologia prescolastica (Padua: Antenore, 1972), pp. 48-61. Scholars who have
seen Bernard as the source of this idea in Hugh of St. Victor, the Summa senten-
tiarum, the Sententiae divinitatis, and Peter Lombard while discounting or ignoring
the possible influence of the school of Laon include Jean Châtillon, "L'influence de
S. Bernard sur la pensée scolastique au XII e et au XIII e siècle," in D'Isidore de
Seville à Saint Thomas d'Aquin: Etudes d'histoire et de théologie (London: Variorum,
1985), pp. 268-88; Ulrich Faust, "Bernhards 'Liber de gratia et libero arbitrio,:
Bedeutung, Quellen und Einfluss," in Analecta monastica: Textes et études sur la vie des
moines, 6th ser. (Rome: Herder, 1962), pp. 35-51; Erich Kleineidam, "De triplici
übertäte: Anselm von Laon oder Bernhard von Clairvaux?" Cîteaux 11 (1960):
55-62; "Wissen, Wissenschaft, Theologie bei Bernard von Clairvaux," in Bernhard
von Clairvaux. Mönch und Mystiker (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1955),
pp. 131-32; Artur Michael Landgraf, "Der heilige Bernhard in seinem Verhältnis
zur Theologie des zwölften Jahrhunderts," in ibid., pp. 44—62; Dogmengeschichte, 1
part 1: 88-168; Jean Leclercq, "S. Bernard et la théologie monastique du XII e
siècle," in Saint Bernard théologien (Rome: Tipografia Pio X, 1953), pp. 7-23;
McGinn, intro, to O'Donovan trans, of On Grace and Free Will, pp. 39-42; John R.
Sommerfeldt, "Bernard of Clairvaux and Scholasticism," Papers of the Michigan
Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 48 (1963): 265-77; Sofia Vanni Rovighi, "S.
Bernardo e la filosofia," in S. Bernardo: Pubblicazione commemorativa nelVVlll cente-
nario delta sua morte (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1954), pp. 143-45.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 365

Adam had meritorious virtue. 186 This analysis, while it begins by

opening the possibility that there could be natural virtue through
man's exercise of reason and free will, ends by closing the door
firmly on that possibility. The author of the Summa sententiarum and
Robert Pullen follow Hugh's line of reasoning and reach the same
conclusion.187 This was not, however, the only position taken in the
period by masters who accepted the threefold definition of free will.
Robert of Melun, for instance, emphasizes the point that man
enjoyed full integrity of both body and soul before the fall and
argues that he could know the truth without error and that he could
do the good without difficulty {sine dijficultate); he does not raise the
question of whether Adam needed grace in order to do good.
Rather, what Robert wants to stress is the point that free will
enables man to resist grace.188 And, Roland of Bologna, who does
take up the question, asserts that Adam possessed the virtue of
charity before the fall and that he could seek the good "without the
assistance of grace" (absque gratia adiutrice). He does confuse mat-
ters, however, by stating in the same passage that Adam did enjoy
prevenient grace before the fall, although it did not prevent him
from sinning.189
A final issue, directly pertinent to the fall, on which we find a
range of opinions in the first half of the twelfth century, is the
nature of woman, and whether it is equal to the nature of man.
Here, we encounter a striking lack of logic. Many theologians,
following Augustine, emphasize the point that Eve was taken from
Adam's side, and not from his head or his feet, to show that, as a
wife and loving companion, she was his equal, not his superior or
inferior. As with Hugh of St. Victor and Abelard, they tend to gloss
the point with an eye to the sacrament of marriage.190 Despite the
consubstantiality of Adam and Eve, the theologians reflect an
unexcogitated sexism in viewing Eve as a weaker vessel. Anselm of
Laon holds that she is Adam's physical inferior, although his
spiritual equal; other members of the school of Laon see Eve as less
rational than Adam.191 Abelard also regards Eve's inferiority as

186
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.16-17, PL 176: 272C-275A. The quotation is
at 1.6.17, 273C.
187
Summa sent. 3.7, PL 176: 98D-100B; Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.20, PL 186: 747C.
188
Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.1.8, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 207-08. The quotation is on
p. 208.
189
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 119-20.
190
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.6.35, PL 176: 284C; Peter Abelard, Hex., pp. 78,
133-35.
191
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, p. 25; Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 60; Deus du cuius
prindpio etfinetacetur, p. 262.
366 CHAPTER SIX

intellectual, not physical; he represents the tradition that Eve was

made only in God's likeness, but not His image as well.192 And,
several members of the school of Laon as well as Roland of Bologna
think that Eve was Adam's inferior both in body and soul, and that
she would rightly have been subordinated to him even if there had
been no fall.193 Hugh as well as Robert Pullen think that Eve was
weaker than Adam although without specifying where the weak-
ness lies.194 None of these masters sees this inconsistency as a
problematic feature of his treatment of human nature before the fall
or of human nature as such.

The Lombard on Prelapsarian Human Nature

As Peter Lombard tackles the subject of human nature before the

fall, he makes it plain that he is going to propose a less subordina-
tionist model, both with respect to man and woman and with
respect to the relations between body and soul. Launching the topic
with his own version of the theme that man is made in God's image
and likeness, he orchestrates it in such a way as to make both
attributes applicable to all human beings as such. This argument
can be read as a critique of Abelard and the tradition of antifemin-
ism in which he stands here,195 although, as noted, Abelard was
scarcely the only proponent of female inferiority in this period.
First, and characteristically, Peter defines his terms. In using the
word "image" we are speaking of a created similarity that is
understood in a relative sense {relative) with respect to its prototype,
as with an image of Caesar on one of his coins and Caesar himself.
The human soul resembles God in five respects: its rationality; its
possession of the Trinitarian analogy of memory, intellect, and will;
its natural capacity to be innocent and just; its immortality; and its
indivisibility. The image of God can be seen in the human soul's
formal, essential, or structural resemblance to God, while its like-
ness to God can be seen in its functional similarities to Him.196
192
Peter Abelard, Hex., pp. 70-72, 77. On this point, see Mary M. McLaughlin,
"Abelard and the Dignity of Women," in Pierre Abelard, Pierre le Vénérable: Les
courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en occident au milieu du ΧΙΓ siècle, éd. René
Louis, Jean Jolivet, and Jean Châtillon (Paris: CNRS, 1975), pp. 306-08.
193
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 57, 60; Voluntas Dei, relata ad ipsum Deum, in Sentences of the
School of Laon, no. 523, 5: 346; Deus de cuius principio etfinetacetur, p. 262; Roland of
Bologna, Sent., pp. 125-29.
194
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.3, PL 176: 287D-288B; Robert Pullen, Sent.
2.21. PL 186: 248B.
19
Stephan Otto, Die Funktion des Bildbegriffes in der Theologie des 12. Jahrhunderts,
Beiträge, 40:1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1963), pp. 200-06.
196
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 16. c. 1-c. 4.1, 1: 406-09.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 367

We may note here that this argument accomplishes two things at

once. It makes it impossible to ascribe either image only or likeness
only to any human soul, since the structure and function of the soul
are interdependent. Peter also provides another foundation, in
man's psychology, for the utility of the memory, intellect, and will
analogy, which he also defends persuasively, on other grounds, in
his Trinitarian theology. For it is in this attribute of the soul that
structure and function coincide the most clearly. Admitting that he
cannot resolve the question of whether there was a time lag be-
tween the creation of Adam's body and the creation of his soul,
which should not be seen as consubstantial with God despite the
language of Genesis, and noting that the creation of Adam and Eve
as adults was a unique event, Peter holds that, for the rest of the
human race, the parents make the body as inferior causes, and then
God creates the soul, and that He creates it in the body after the
body is formed.197
Like the creation of Adam, the creation of Eve was an exception
to this rule. This being the case, it is of interest to see which aspects
ofthat topic Peter accents and which he omits. Eve is created from
Adam, he notes, so that all human beings will appreciate his
common paternity of the whole human race and will love each
other as blood relatives. Eve was taken from Adam's side, and here
Peter follows Augustine, Hugh, and others, to indicate the particu-
lar bond of love (consortium dilectionis) uniting husband and wife.
The relationship is one of affection and not one of superiority or
inferiority as would be suggested had she been created from
Adam's head or feet.198 He poses another question, as to why God
created Eve when Adam was asleep, answering it with the observa-
tion that this was done to avoid causing Adam any pain, before
continuing with the widely held opinion that this mode of Eve's
creation also signifies the birth of the church from the side of the
crucified Christ. Peter concludes by rejecting the theory put forth
by the author of the Summa sententiarum on the creation of Eve's body
by the action of seminal causes, asserting that her creation was
purely miraculous.199 He does not describe Eve as weaker in mind
or body than Adam. The subordination of wife to husband is not a
theme he takes up here. It occurs primarily in his Pauline commen-
taries, as a pendant of the consequences of original sin, but does not
appear in Peter's discussion of the original creation in the Sentences.

Ibid., d. 17. c. 2-c. 3, d. 18. c. 7.1-4, 1: 410-13, 420-21.

Ibid., d. 18. c. l.-c. 2, 1: 416-17. The quotation is at c. 2, p. 416.
Ibid., c. 5, 1: 418-19.
368 CHAPTER SIX

Rather, the creation of Eve prompts him to make a brief excursus

on the subject of causation, in which he distinguishes among God's
direct causation in making things out of nothing, as is the case with
God's creation of Eve's soul; God's direct causation in turning one
thing into another thing miraculously, as is the case with the
formation of Eve's body out of Adam's rib; and the action of
inferior or secondary causes in created nature, such as the parents'
conception of the bodies of their children, into which the souls
created by God are infused.200 In short, the topic of Eve's created
nature inspires in Peter reflections that are largely physical and
metaphysical, and to a lesser extent matrimonial and ecclesiologi-
cal. They are not reflections designed to justify a vision of female
inferiority as a condition of the creation. In the rest of what he has
to say, then, he means both male and female nature when he speaks
of the nature of man before the fall.
In turning to that subject, Peter acknowledges freely that it
contains many points of interest in themselves "which it is not
useless to know, even if they are sometimes investigated merely out
of curiosity" {quae non inutiliter sciuntur, licet aliquando curiositate
quaeruntur) ,201 He divides the topic into what we can know about
man's body and soul, beginning with mortality, because it applies
to both aspects of man's constitution. He agrees with the consensus
here, that Adam and Eve had the capacity to die and not to die; in
the fallen condition, man has the capacity to die and lacks the
capacity not to die, while in the next life he will have the non posse
mori, the incapacity to die, since death will no longer have dominion
over him.202 Moving to man's natural physical aptitudes and condi-
tions before the fall, Peter agrees with the standard Augustinian
view of human sexuality in Eden. Armed with this authority, he
raises, and rejects, Origen's claim that the procreation of offspring
would have been asexual had the fall not occurred, and agrees that,
according to God's plan, the use of sex would have been free from
lust and fully under the control of man's rational will. As for the
children born of a sinless Adam and Eve, he finds it hard to take
seriously the claim that they would have been born as adults or that
they would have been born with faculties not possessed by newborn
infants. Taking a less credulous line here than Honorius, Hugh,
and the Summa sententiarum, he argues on the basis of naturalism and

200
Ibid., c. 5.4-c. 7.4, 1: 418-21.
201
Ibid., d. 19, c. 1.1, 1: 421.
202
Ibid., c. 1.3-d. 20. c. 3, 1: 422, with more on this subject at d. 20. c. 2-c. 6, 1:
422-27.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 369

common sense. The frame of the womb, he observes, is too small to

permit the delivery of adult-size people. If offspring of this sort were
to be born, they would constitute a physical anomaly, having the
size of infants and the configuration of adults. The authority who
had raised this question, Augustine, had raised it as a mere possi-
bility, by no means as a certainty, or even as a likelihood. Peter
thinks it far more reasonable to suppose that the children of Adam
and Eve, like other children, would have undergone gestation in the
womb, and normal development from infancy to childhood to
adulthood over the course of time. For, as he points out, it was
mortality, not the exercise of man's natural physical functions, that
was the consequence of sin. Here, he annexes gestation and growth,
as natural processes, to eating, drinking, sexuality, and other natu-
ral functions that he sees as basic to human nature as such and as
hence forming a normal part of life in paradise.203 In his handling of
this entire topic, Peter makes it clear that natural physical func-
tions and processes are not a defect, just as the body itself is not a
defect or a consequence of sin. He makes a more solidly naturalistic
application of the anti-Origen agenda here than any theologian of
his time, despite the fact that he may have derived his sense of how
to pose these questions from authorities from masters with a more
Platonic anthropology, such as Hugh of St. Victor.
Peter also shows a willingness to speculate on contrary-to-fact
conditions that cannot be verified either by reason or authority.
After having borne children, he asks, would the original parents
have continued to enjoy their immortality in Eden, along with their
children, and their other descendants, or would they have been
transferred to a celestial life, transformed not by death but by some
other means, and likewise their children? The inquiry arises from
the presumption that the garden of Eden was of finite size. Peter
notes that Augustine, the source of this question, gives an ambig-
uous answer to it. He himself is willing to entertain the possibility
of the celestial transfer, although he thinks that we cannot establish
with certitude when and how it might have taken place.204 This
passage is a nice index of Peter's combination of curiosity, caution,
and common sense in addressing life in Eden.
Given the fact that the life of the body, in its sinless state, was
"neither silly or inappropriate" (non sit absurdum vel inconveniens),
Peter asks, by way of making a crisp transition to man's spiritual
faculties before the fall, whether it would have been possible for

Ibid., d. 20. c. 1-c. 2, c. 4, 1: 427-28, 429-31.

Ibid., c. 3, l:42&-29.
370 CHAPTER SIX

prelapsarian man, through his senses and intellect, to have known

the truth and to have come to a perfect knowledge, perfect, that is,
in the light of what a created intelligence can know. He raises an
objection to this formulation of the possibilities. If sinless man
underwent a learning process, this would mean that he started out
ignorant, and ignorance is a consequence of sin. So, the objection
continues, and it is the position of Hugh of St. Victor which Peter
presents in this way, before the fall Adam possessed perfect knowl-
edge all at once. Peter rejects this argument, and draws a distinc-
tion in so doing. The ignorance that is a consequence of sin is
ignorance caused by the clouding of man's intellect so that he does
not know what he ought to know. The beginning point for sinless
man, on the other hand, is not a weakened intellect but one that is
not yet as fully knowledgeable as it later could have become. For, it
was the divine plan to translate man subsequently to an even
better and worthier state, where his knowledge could be fuller and
where he could enjoy a celestial and eternal good. Two levels of
wisdom and goodness were prepared for man by the creator, a
temporal and visible one in Eden and an eternal and invisible one
in Heaven. The fact that mental and moral development are part of
sinless man's natural capacities is not a defect, just as the physical
development of the children he would have engendered is not a
defect. As for the specific types of knowledge possessed by man
before the fall, he had, according to Peter, the rational capacity to
distinguish good from evil. With regard to creatures, he knew that
they were created, that they were created for man to rule and enjoy,
and that they yield a knowledge of the providence of God. These
forms of knowledge, he adds, man retained after the fall. But Adam
also had a more direct mode of knowing God, through an inner
aspiration which enabled him to perceive the presence of God. This
knowledge, Peter holds, is not as great as the face to face vision of
God enjoyed by the saints in the life to come, but it was a knowl-
edge that was direct and immediate, not through a glass darkly, as
men currently know God in this life. Further, Adam had self-
knowledge. He knew who he was, his place in the scheme of things,
what his duties were, what to do and what to avoid, which, as Peter
observes, made him responsible for what he did in the fall. Adam,
however, did not have foreknowledge of the fall or of anything
else.205
If Peter departs from Hugh of St. Victor's analysis of man's
knowledge before the fall, he also departs from the tripartite analy-

Ibid., c. 5-d. 23. c. 4, 1: 131-50.

 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 371

sis of his faculties given by Hugh and, indeed, from the Platonized
or Aristotelianized faculty psychology found in other scholastics of
this period. According to Peter, the soul of man has two faculties.
There is an inferior power in his soul (vis animae inferior), which man
shares with the animals and which he uses to regulate the body and
sensible matters and the disposition of temporal things. There is
also reason (ratio), the superior mental faculty, which is the intelli-
gence that enables us to grasp higher things, whether rational
or contemplative. The first or sensual soul he calls anima and
the intellectual soul he calls ratio.206 Thus far, the twelfth-century
thinker to whom he comes the closest is William of Champeaux,
although William calls the latter faculty spiritus. But Peter does not
add on a special suprarational faculty as William does. His han-
dling of the structure of the soul appears to be all his own, in this
period.
If critical of Hugh and of other contemporaries in this regard,
Peter agrees substantially with Hugh and the author of the Summa
sententiarum in handling the free will and moral capacities of pre-
lapsarian man, and uses much the same language as they do. He
maintains, as they do, that free will is the natural rational capacity
to choose either good or evil without restraint, and that the choice
of good is assisted by grace, in Adam before the fall, just as it is in
the case of the angels. With these Victorine masters, he argues for a
grace of creation, which enables Adam to resist evil but not to
perfect himself in good. In order to win merit and to attain the
fullest virtue of which he was capable, Adam needed cooperating
grace as well. Peter draws a distinction in his discussion of Adam's
need for both created and cooperating grace which amplifies on the
Victorine account. The former mode of grace is not the same as the
operating grace that liberates fallen man from slavery to sin.
Rather, it prepares Adam to receive the cooperating grace which
man needs, both before and after the fall, to develop virtue and
merit. Thus, while Peter calls the virtues Adam possessed before
the fall cardinal virtues, these are not understood as the cardinal
virtues available to the virtuous pagans, an ethical category which
neither Peter nor his Victorine sources here acknowledges to exist.
For Peter, as for Hugh, the Summa sententiarum, and, ultimately,
Augustine, man before the fall faced no impediment to the doing of
the good, and nothing impelled him to do evil. The divine aid he
needed in order to do good efficaciously and meritoriously was
available to him. But, the only efficacious moral choice which man

Ibid., d. 24. c. 4-c. 5, 1: 453-54.

372 CHAPTER SIX

could make purely on the basis of his natural rational endowment

of free will was the choice of evil.207

T H E FALL: CONTEMPORARY DEBATES

This brings us to the last major topic dealt with the Lombard in
Book 2 of the Sentences which we plan to treat in this chapter and
which we need to understand in the light of contemporary analyses,
the fall itself and the effects and transmission of original sin. These
issues elicited wide interest in the first half of the twelfth century
and inspired a notable variety of answers.208 In outlining the sce-
nario of the fall, in describing the motivation of Adam and Eve, and
in considering whether one of these offenders was a worse sinner
than the other, there is, indeed, considerable disagreement. Some
theologians, like the author of the Sententie Anselmi, Honorius, Hugh
of St. Victor, and Roland of Bologna, begin the story with the
motivation of the devil as an exterior source of temptation, seeing
him as inspired by envy of man and malice toward man.209 Roland
observes that the devil assumes the form of a serpent because
serpents inspire fear. He raises but fails to answer the question of
why Eve was not afraid of the serpent or surprised to hear it
speak.210 Other masters begin with the internal temptations experi-
enced by the first parents or by man generically, or treat them as
simultaneous with the devil's external temptation. The authors of
the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum opt for disobedience
here,211 Honorius adding vainglory and Roland adding pride, and
both treating the interior and exterior temptation as simultaneous.212
Robert of Melun is unique in seeing original sin as inspired by
concupiscence, although he, like everyone else in this period, holds
that this failing is a consequence of original sin more generally.213

207
Ibid., c. 1-c. 2, d. 25. c. 1-d. 29. c. 2, 1: 450-52, 461-93.
208
Excellent surveys are provided by Robert Blomme, La doctnne du péché dans les
écoles théologiques de la première moitié du ΧΙΓ siècle (Louvain: Publications Universi-
taires de Louvain, 1958); Odon Lottin, "Les théories du péché originel au XII e
siècle: I. L'école d'Anselme de Laon et de Guillaume de Champeaux," RTAM 11
(1939): 17-32; "Les théories du péché originel au XII e siècle: IL La réaction
abélardienne et porrétaine," RTAM 12 (1940): 78-103; "Les théories du péché
originel au XIP siècle: III. Tradition augustinienne," RTAM 12 (1940): 236-74.
These three papers of Lottin are reworked in his Psych, et morale, 4 part 1: 13-170.
209
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 60; Honorius, Elue. 1.83-84, p. 376; Hugh of St. Victor, De
sac. 1.7.1-2, PL 176: 287B-D; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 116-18.
210
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 118.
211
Sent. div. 3.1, p. 39*; Summa sent. 3.14, PL 176: 111A.
212
Honorius, Elue. 1.94, p. 377; Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 116.
213
This position is found in a portion of Robert's treatise that remains un-
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 373

Most contemporary masters break down the internal motiva-

tions to sin, assigning different ones to Adam and to Eve. Anselm of
Laon and William of Champeaux find Eve guilty of avarice, in the
sense of the desire to know, and idolatry, in the sense of her seeking
to be God's equal, the author of the Sententie Anselmi adding that she
is culpable as well of gluttony and of tempting Adam.214 Hugh of St.
Victor sees her basic temptation as that of doubt. It is Eve's
intellectual curiosity that leads in turn to her pride, avarice, and
gluttony.215 Robert Pullen has no comment on Eve's motivations,
but has a clear if narrow and politically conceived theory of how
Adam went wrong. Adam, according to Robert, was the ruler in
Eden. As head of the household he was responsible for keeping his
wife, as his subject, in line. His sin, then, was not preventing Eve from
sinning and failing to use his authority appropriately.216 To the sin
of a ruler giving in to his subject the author of the Sententie Anselmi
adds to the bill of attainder against Adam both love and the desire
for knowledge. To this he attaches six other sins of which he holds
Adam guilty, pride, sacrilege, homicide in the sense that his fall
brought death to mankind, fornication in the sense of spiritual
infidelity to God, theft, and avarice. He thereby blurs the distinc-
tion between the causes and consequences of original sin.217 But
love alone, and the placing of his love for Eve over his duty to God,
is the most popular description of Adam's motivation, attracting
the support of William of Champeaux, Honorius, and Hugh of St.
Victor.218
Despite the detail into which they go in assigning these motiva-
tions, and despite their possession of a theory of the psychogenesis
of moral decision-making, it is noteworthy how few of these theolo-
gians integrate their general psychology of sin with their analysis of
the fall in any way. The school of Laon sets the tone for what would
become a widely held view, derived from Jerome and Augustine,
that distinguishes temptation (suggestio), whether inner or outer,
from contemplation of the sin toward which the temptation points

edited. We are indebted to the information supplied from the study of the manu-
scripts by Raymond-M. Martin, "Les idées de Robert de Melun sur le péché
originel," RSPT7 (1913): 700-25; 8 (1914): 439-66; 9 (1920): 103-20; 11 (1922):
390-415.
214
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, pp. 25-26; Sentences of William of
Champeaux, no. 246, 5: 203; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 60-66.
215
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.10, PL 176: 290C-291B.
216
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.21-22, PL 186: 748B-750A.
217
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 60-66.
218
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 246, 5: 203; Honorius, Elue. 1.91, p. 377;
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.10, PL 176: 290C-291B.
374 CHAPTER SIX

(delectatio), and from the voluntary capitulation to the temptation

(consensus), in which sin is seen to reside, whether or not the inten-
tion is expressed in external action. 219 But the masters ofthat school
do not bring this doctrine to bear on their analysis of original sin.
The only two contemporary theologians who do so, prior to Peter
Lombard, are the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa
sententiarum. The former master observes that sin can be viewed as
consisting in will or consent, or in operation. He does not clarify
which of these modes constitutes the essence of the moral act.220
The author of the Summa sententiarum gives a clearer and more
elaborate analysis. Sin, he observes, involves a failure to participate
in good as well as a participation in evil. The evil involved can be of
the body or of the soul, or both. In either case, both a bad intention
and its translation into an evil action are required. Following
Isidore of Seville, he holds that the bad will inspiring these inten-
tions and actions can spring from either desire or fear. Sins, he
continues, can be committed against oneself, one's neighbor, or
God. He attaches to this point, by way of conclusion, the seven
deadly sins or seven vicious intentionalities, following Gregory the
Great's classification, and agrees with Gregory that pride is the
worst of the lot.221 This account, indeed, may even tell the reader
more than he needs to know in order to understand the psychology
of Adam and Eve in the fall.
Especially for those theologians who assign different motives to
Adam and Eve, a related topic on which there was a wealth of
patristic disagreement that is reflected in twelfth-century discus-
sions was the question of which of the primal pair was the worse
sinner. After ventilating both sides of the controversy, the author of
the Sententie Anselmi names Adam as the greater sinner. Since Eve
was less intelligent and more credulous than Adam, he holds that
she was deceived, while Adam sinned deliberately, with his eyes
wide open. This solution appeals, for the same reasons, to other
masters such as Roland of Bologna, who also thinks that Eve is
intellectually inferior to Adam.222 Whether or not they see Eve's
inferiority as mental, physical, or both, a larger number of masters
subscribe to the view that she bore a heavier weight of responsibil-
ity in the fall. Neither Anselm of Laon, his followers, Abelard, nor
Robert Pullen sees Eve's alleged credulity as an extenuating cir-
219
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 85-86; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no.
278; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 454, 523, 5: 73-74, 222, 304-05, 346.
220
Sent. div. 3.1, p. 39*.
221
Summa sent. 3.14-16, PL 176: 111A-114C.
222
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 60-66; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 125-29.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 375

cumstance. Instead, they give her the full blame for seeking equal-
ity with God, which, in their view, was more serious than anything
Adam did in the fall.223 Some of those who emphasize Eve's guilt
feel a need to address the question of why original sin is neverthe-
less called the sin of Adam. Robert Pullen invokes his political
understanding of the relationship of Adam and Eve here. Since
Adam is the authority in charge, he has to assume responsibility for
the crimes of his underlings; Eve, from Robert's perspective, has to
be seen as a minor or as a legal incompetent incapable of assuming
responsibility for her own actions.224 William of Champeaux, for his
part, offers an explanation that draws on biology as well as law.
The male sex is superior (dignior) not only because filiation and
inheritance are determined by association with the male line, but
also because the male seed is the active principle in the conception
of offspring.225
There are three other position that seek to mediate between these
extremes. The Porre tan view is that both sides of the debate have
merit. Eve can be seen as bearing a greater guilt in that she sinned
against both God and Adam, while Adam sinned only against God.
Adam can be seen as being more guilty because he sinned more
knowingly. Our author finds it possible to support both of these
analyses without choosing between them.226 The author of the
Summa sententiarum is more decisive. After reviewing the two posi-
tions, framed in the same way as the Porretan master presents
them, he provides a solution based on an analogy. If a cleric and a
layman commit the same kind of crime, he notes, the cleric is
regarded as incurring a greater degree of guilt. In the case of Adam
and Eve, he thinks that their guilt in the fall was equal, but that we
can impute guilt to Adam more heavily. He argues for this conclu-
sion not on the basis of sexism but on the basis of Isidore of Seville's
point that sins of deliberation are worse than sins of ignorance.227
This is an ingenious answer, and one not without influence. It is
also one that departs from Hugh of St. Victor's handling of the
problem. Harking back to the point that Eve's temptation was the
desire for knowledge and Adam's temptation was the love of his

223
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4, pp. 25-26; Dens de cuius principio et fine
tacetur, p. 262; Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.21-22, PL 186: 748A-750B; Peter Abelard,
Hex., pp. 70-72, 77. For Abelard's position, see McLaughlin, "Abelard and the
Dignity of Women," pp. 306-08; Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 42-44.
224
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.21-22, PL 186: 748A-750B.
225
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 252, 5: 205-06.
226
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.64-66, p. 172.
227
Summa sent. 3.6, PL 176: 98B-C.
376 CHAPTER SIX

wife, Hugh states that it is impossible to say that either sin was
worse than the other. Since we all possess both the intellectual and
the affective faculties, we should view the fall of Adam and Eve not
as two separate falls but as two facets of the same delict that occurs
whenever any moral subject makes sinful use of free will.228
The nature of the forbidden fruit is also a subject exercising some
early twelfth-century masters. Did God forbid the fruit because the
fruit was itself noxious? And, why would He have wanted to bar
Adam and Eve from the knowledge of good and evil? Both Anselm
of Laon, the author of the Sententie Anselmi and Robert of Melun
agree that the fruit was not intrinsically harmful. In their estima-
tion, God forbade it to Adam and Eve not because the fruit, or the
knowledge it stands for, would have been bad for them but rather
as a test of obedience.229 Honorius concurs with the idea that the
fruit was not harmful but worries more about the knowledge of
good and evil connected with it in the text of Genesis. Following
Augustine, he argues that this knowledge lay not in the tree or its
fruit but, in part, in the transgression of God's orders. Adam and
Eve did have a knowledge of good before they sinned; but, in their
fall, they acquired the knowledge of evil as well.230
Honorius also raises two other questions concerning the fall as an
event, to which he gives elaborate answers. When, he asks, did the
fall take place? In response, he offers a detailed timetable of events
during the sixth day of creation. Adam was created in the third
hour of that day, Eve in the sixth hour. She was tempted within
sixty minutes of her creation and had accomplished the temptation
of Adam by the end of the seventh hour. For reasons best known to
Honorius, God waited until the ninth hour of the sixth day to eject
them from Eden. As for the flaming sword wielded by the angel left
on guard after that time, Honorius follows Augustine on Genesis in
reading this passage allegorically. The angel's sword stands for the
wall of fire with which God surrounded Eden, as well as for two
ranks of angels, one deputed to block man's body and the other
deputed to block man's soul from returning to paradise.231 Judging
from the lack of resonance of these two points later in the century,
we can conclude that other theologians in this period found Ho-
norius's specificity on the timing of the fall fanciful and unnecessary

228
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.10, PL 176: 290C-291B.
229
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 25, 58; Robert
Pullen, Sent. 2.19, PL 186: 746C-D.
230
Honorius, Elue. 1.87, p. 376.
231
Ibid., 1.90-91, p. 377.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 377

and his. sources insufficiently trustworthy, and also that they prefer-
red a literal reading of the angelic guardian despite the Augustinian
foundation for Honorius's account.

The Lombard on the Fall

Peter Lombard's handling of the fall shows him at his most

eclectic. He does not regard any theologian or group of theologians
either as his chief inspiration or as presenting the doctrine most in
need of refutation. His own answers to the questions he poses can
be found in a range of current and recent masters, from whom he
borrows freely and selectively. He is less likely to rephrase their
ideas in his own vocabulary here than is true of the teachings he
presents elsewhere in Book 2 of the Sentences. To this mix of opinions
Peter adds some reflections of his own. He also adds, it must be
said, two self-contradictions, to which we will call special attention
since this is a phenomenon quite unusual in his work. Agreeing
with Honorius, the author of the Sententie Anselmi, Roland of Bolo-
gna, and Hugh of St. Victor, Peter sees the events leading up to the
fall as having been triggered by external temptation, in the form of
the devil's envy. In explaining why the devil tempted Eve first,
Peter introduces his first major inconsistency. Notwithstanding his
account of the creation of all human beings in the image as well as
the likeness of God, and despite his assertion, later in his discussion
of the fall, that Adam and Eve are equal in nature, he states that
Eve was approached first because she was less rational than
Adam.232 He does not appear to be aware of this discrepancy or of
the need to justify this departure from what he says elsewhere on
the same subject. In dealing with the devil's assumption of the
body of a serpent, Peter is less interested in why this particular
animal was chosen than in the observation that, since the devil is a
spiritual being, he needed to take on physical form of some sort in
order to make his appearance to Eve and that God permitted him
to do so, although he concedes that the nature of serpents makes
this decision appropriate.233 Accenting the devil's duplicitous rhet-
oric, the Lombard notes that the devil appealed to the internal
temptations of vainglory, gluttony, and avarice in Eve's case,
agreeing here with the school of Laon. As with its earlier advocates
in that school, he sees avarice as the greed for knowledge, beyond
what was appropriate {supra modum). It is here, in the very context

Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 21. c. 1, 1: 433.

Ibid., c. 2-c. 4, 1: 433-35.
378 CHAPTER SIX

of describing the capitulation of Eve to these temptations, that he

joins the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum in
offering a brief account of the psychogenesis of moral acts, agreeing
with the Laon masters that the suggestio may be internal or external
and that it is not temptation itself or contemplation of the tempta-
tion that constitutes the sin but consensus, a position which he
himself had developed earlier in his commentary on the Psalms.234
Before moving to the consideration of the mode of temptation
experienced by Adam, and of whether Adam or Eve sinned more
grievously, he reprises an issue which he had already addressed,
and in a far more persuasive way, under the heading of the fall of
the angels earlier in Book 2, thereby committing his second act of
inconsistency. The fact that the devil experienced no external
temptation in his own fall, unlike Adam and Eve, is why he cannot
be saved, Peter says here.235 It is not at all clear why he feels a need
to reintroduce the fall of the angels at this point, and even less clear
why he contradicts the far better answer to the question of why the
fallen angels are unredeemable which he had given above.
Moving on to the different temptations of Adam and Eve and
whether their guilt in the fall is also differential, he begins by
agreeing with Hugh of St. Victor that the source of Eve's inner
temptation was pride manifesting itself in the lust for knowledge
that would make her the equal of God, and with Hugh, Honorius,
and William of Champeaux that Adam's temptation was love for
his wife, which caused him to depart from his obedience from God
in order to please her. On the question of whose guilt was weight-
ier, Peter feels that there is something to be said on both sides of the
issue. He agrees with the author of the Summa sententiarum that
responsibility for the fall can be imputed more strongly to Adam.
But he does not think Adam and Eve were equally guilty. Rather,
he sides with the theologians who place heavier blame on Eve,
seeing the sin of presumption as more serious than anything Adam
did. But, Peter now states, Eve cannot be excused on grounds of
ignorance. She had the same nature as Adam and the same under-
standing of the rules which God had laid down. It would be correct
to say that sin was brought into the world by a single person, Eve,
even if Adam had not fallen.236 How, then, can we combine this
belief that Eve was more blameworthy with the weightier imputa-
tion of sin to Adam? Peter's argument is grounded on the under-

Ibid., c. 5-c. 6.3, 1: 436-37. See above, chapter 3, p. 214.

Ibid., d. 22. c. 1, 1:439-40.
Ibid., c. 3-c. 4, 1:441-45.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 379

standing of ignorance, and of the faculties of the soul, which he next

provides, arguments which are also unique to him, among contem-
poraries who take up this topic, and who also tend to bring it up in
other contexts. First, Peter notes that we can distinguish between
invincible ignorance, in a case where a person does not know the
rules, and which excuses him from blame, and vincible ignorance,
for which we are morally responsible. Vincible ignorance can be
divided, in turn, into the failure to learn what we need to know
when we are able to learn it, and the desire to know what we need
to know when we are unable to do so. The latter is a punishment for
sin. Now, neither Adam nor Eve displays invincible ignorance. Nor
does either of them act in a state of vincible ignorance, of either of
the two types just noted. Their sin was activated, rather, by their
conscious consent, deriving from their created nature as beings
possessing free will. Agreeing with the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum that moral choices involve both consent and its expression in
action, he departs from that master in giving both moral and
psychological priority to intentionality: "It was the act of will itself
that constituted the sin" (et ipsa voluntas iniquitas fuit) P1 As to why
God created human beings capable of willing evil, this is ultimately
a mystery, for Peter. He declines to speculate, stating that only God
Himself knows His own reasons (Ipse novit), and that we cannot
know them.238
Having eliminated any extenuating conditions in Eve's culpabil-
ity for sin by this analysis of ignorance, Peter now goes on to
explain that the imputation of greater guilt to Adam can be jus-
tified by a consideration of the faculties of the human soul. Earlier,
as we have seen, he had stated that there are two faculties of the
human soul, anima or the sensual faculty and ratio or the rational
faculty. He now subdivides ratio into two functions, scientia, which
seeks knowledge for its own sake, and sapientia, which seeks wisdom
by placing knowledge in the perspective of man's ultimate destiny.
We now have three terms; and the three characters in the story of
the fall, Adam, Eve, and the serpent, each represent one of the
terms. The serpent stands for the movement of the sensual soul,
Eve for scientia, and Adam for sapientia. Further, the marriage of
Adam and Eve signifies the principle that the higher form of reason
should govern the lower. The severity of a sin, Peter explains,
depends on which mental faculty is involved. If one consents to the
promptings of the sensual soul, the sin is quite venial (levissimum). If

Ibid., c. 5-c. 6, 1: 446-47. The quotation is at c. 6, p. 447.

Ibid., d. 23. c. 1, 1: 447-48.
380 CHAPTER SIX

one consents with scientia, then the sin is more serious. If one
consents with sapientia, one capitulates completely to an evil which
one fully recognizes to be evil. This is a mortal and damnable sin.
From this standpoint, Eve's sin is less serious than Adam's since it
springs from scientia and reflects the desire to enjoy knowledge for
its own sake. In failing to govern that desire with the faculty of
sapientia on Eve's part, and on his own, Adam commits a sin that is
mortal for both of them. Closing with a reprise of the psychogenesis
of sin in suggestio, cogitatio, and consensus, Peter suggests, by means of
this analysis of faculty psychology, that consent, while equally
voluntary in each case, may occur at both the scientia or sapientia
levels of man's reason, with differing ethical consequences. 239 And,
he can argue that it is possible to combine the doctrine of Eve's
greater culpability on account of her greater presumption with the
doctrine that Adam bears the greater guilt, on the grounds that his
consent was of a quality that took more things into account than
Eve's did. Peter imputes greater guilt to Adam not because of Eve's
ignorance, as does the author of the Summa sententiarum, for he
denies that she possessed ignorance, whether vincible or invincible.
Nor does Peter impute greater guilt to Adam because of his extrin-
sic status vis-à-vis Eve, as is the case with Robert Pullen, but
because of what Adam actually did do. And, unlike Hugh of St.
Victor, his citation of two mental faculties from which the sins of
Adam and Eve derive is not designed to equalize their culpability
but rather to find a basis for grading them hierarchically.240
If it is the Victorines who help Peter to frame the agenda which
he then addresses in his own way in the foregoing part of his
analysis, Honorius is the theologian who triggers his handling of
the forbidden fruit and the knowledge of good and evil. Peter offers
an explanation of this subject which goes beyond the biblical
account in Genesis. There were really two trees at issue, he argues.
One is the tree bearing the forbidden fruit, which, he agrees, was
forbidden not because it was harmful but as a test of obedience. He
cites the same Augustinian text as Honorius uses in arguing that
the knowledge of evil lay in and flowed from original sin, while the
knowledge of good was available to Adam and Eve before the fall,
irrespective of what they ate.241 In Peter's opinion, the tree of life

239
Ibid., d. 24. c. 6-c. 12, 1: 455-^60.
240
Mignon, Les origines, 2: 33 takes up the relationship of the Lombard on
original sin to both Hugh and the Summa sententiarum without noticing these
differences.
241
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 17. c. 7.1-2, d. 29. c. 4, 1: 415-16, 494.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 381

was another tree in the garden of Eden. This tree was not forbid-
den. There is no reason to suppose that Adam and Eve could not
have eaten of its fruit before the fall. If they did so, the reason why
it did no render them immortal that Peter gives here is that they did
not have the time to eat of it frequently enough for this effect to
have taken hold.242 Another answer which he could have given
here, and which he does not give, is that the decision to eat the
forbidden fruit which brought on the fall also brought on mortality
as one of its consequences, a doctrine that serves to point us toward
the last constellation of topics to be considered in relation to
original sin, its effects and transmission.

T H E EFFECTS OF ORIGINAL SIN: T H E CONTEMPORARY

DEBATES

In the first half of the twelfth century there were three main ways
of viewing the effects of original sin. One, represented most strongly
by Robert Pullen, emphasized the physical consequences of sin. It
is true that Robert holds that the soul is affected as well, in that it
knows that it has rejected the good and thereby suffers; this self-
consciousness of its own fall constitutes its punishment. But the
main way in which the soul suffers is that it is united to a body that
is now much more limited than it was before the fall. Despite the
lengthy analysis of sensation which he provides, Robert does not
comment on if, or how, man's ability to obtain true knowledge by
means of the senses is included in this limitation. Rather, he
accents the physical ills and sufferings to which the flesh is now
heir. Mortality, sickness, pain, sensitivity to cold and heat, and a
host of bodily afflictions are catalogued. Robert includes sexual
concupiscence on thé list. Man is now subject to sexual desire and
sexual pleasure. Also, and here Robert follows the extremely late
and anti-Pelagian Augustine on sex, man's sexuality now involves
physical corruption in that it works with vitiated seeds; the very
genetic materials have been tainted.243 Another theologian who
accents the physical consequences of original sin, in this case so

242
Ibid., d. 29. c. 6, 1: 495.
243
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.7-8, 2.25, 2.27-31, PL 186: 727D-731A, 752B-753C,
754A-764C. For the Augustinian background and its parallels with Manicheism,
a charge that Augustine's Pelagian antagonists were all too ready to hurl against
him in this connection, see Elizabeth A. (Clark, "Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels:
Augustine's Manichean Past," in Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late
Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen Press, 1986), pp. 291-349.
382 CHAPTER SIX

strongly that he all but ignores the intellectual ones, is the author of
the Sententiae divinitatis.2**
A second view, taught by the Porretans but more influentially by
Hugh of St. Victor and modified by Robert of Melun, emphasized
the idea that original sin afflicts the soul and body equally.245 In
Hugh's formulation of this doctrine, the chief spiritual weakness
borne by fallen man is ignorance, while his body is afflicted by
concupiscence. Robert agrees, and nuances this position. Instead of
knowledge, there is ignorance. Instead of love of the good, there is
concupiscence, which, he explains, means inordinate and mis-
directed love of any kind. Instead of trouble-free physical activity,
there is illness, pain, and death, and the need for labor and effort.
Man also suffers from the weakening of his will. Robert sees con-
cupiscence here as the inclination to sin, in general, not so much as
a result of the physical limitations under which fallen man labors
but because of the spiritual disorder he has now contracted, an
inclination of the will toward evil.
The members of the school of Laon also see man as afflicted
intellectually by the fall and as suffering the standard physical
sufferings; but they emphasize the depression of free will as the
primary consequence of original sin. Agreeing with the late Augus-
tine here, they hold that free will has now been so diminished that
fallen man cannot will anything but evil without the help of divine
grace.246 The author of the Summa sententiarum endorses this em-
phasis of the school of Laon on the depression of the will in fallen
man and its consequent inability to will the good without grace.
Following the definition of free will a necessitate, a peccato, and a
miseria found in the Laon masters and Bernard of Clairvaux, he
explains that the freedom from sin and from misery have now been
withdrawn. At the same time, he emphasizes the point that the
freedom of will a necessitate remains in fallen man, leaving him free
to reject God's grace. He stresses the depression of the will so
heavily that it becomes, for him, the single most important con-
sequence of the fall, far outstripping the effects that original sin may
have on the body or on man's ability to know.247 It is with this third
244
Sent.div. 3.1, p. 42*.
243
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.55, p. 170; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.27, PL 176:
291A; Robert of Melun, Sent. 1.1.18, Oeuvres, 3 part 1: 208-09.
246
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 27-28, 66-67;
Sentences of Probable Authenticity, no. 114; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 245;
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 322, 324, 335, 5: 93, 201-02, 253, 254, 260; Deus
hominem feat perfectum, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in Das Schrifttum der Schule Anselms
von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen Bibliotheken, Beiträge, 33:1-2
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1936), p. 294.
247
Summa sent. 3.7-9, PL 176: 99C-105A.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 383

view, the virtually preclusive understanding of the effects of original

sin as directed to man's soul and, a fortiori, to his free will, that
Peter Lombard most closely aligns himself.

The Lombard's Position

So strongly does Peter accent the depression of free will that it is

actually the only effect of original sin which he discusses in any
detail. He places it above and beyond all other punishments fallen
man may incur. Although fallen man retains a conscience {scintilla
rationis) urging him to seek the good and avoid evil, free will is
partly lost, in the fall, and what remains is weakened. Peter's
treatment of this topic sharpens the late Augustinianism of its
terms, in comparison with contemporaries, although, with the au-
thor of the Summa sententiarum, he staunchly resists the idea that the
will cannot reject grace. Augustine's doctrine of irresistible grace
finds no hearing in his theology.248 Peter begins by reprising the
distinction among libertas a necessitate, a peccato, and a miseria and
indicates how much he thinks free will in any of these respects
remains in fallen man. Freedom from any necessity at all was a
feature of the human will before the fall. This mode of free will,
Peter states, going farther on this point than is conceded by the
author of the Summa sententiarum or the Laon masters, now applies to
no one but God, Who has perfect freedom. Man no longer enjoys
the capacity to exercise free will without any constraints or condi-
tions. We retain only enough free will to be able to earn punish-
ment or reward, for "where there is no liberty, or will, there is no
merit" (ubi non est libertas, nee voluntas, et ideo nee meritum). Freedom
from sin has been obliterated by the fall. This freedom from sin,
Peter notes, is what is restored in the redemption of man by grace,

248
Scholars who have noted both the influence and the criticism of Augustine
here include Peter Iver Kaufman, "Charitas non est nisi a Spiritui Sancto':
Augustine and Peter Lombard on Grace and Personal Righteousness," Augustin-
iana 30 (1980): 209-20; Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre, passim and esp. pp. 287-302;
Pietro Vaccari," Rapporti della concezione teologica di Pier Lombardo col diritto
canonico del XII secolo," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 258-59; A. Vanneste, "Nature et
grâce dans la théologie du douzième siècle," ETL 50 (1974): 184-214. Chenu, La
théologie au douzième siècle, p. 225, has not noticed Peter's rejection of irresistible
grace here. Other studies surveying the treatment of grace and free will in the
twelfth century include Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 1: 51-140, 152-54,
189-96, 220-37; Lottin, Psych, et morale, 1: 12-31; Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia dei: A
History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 1: 43-76. On conscience, see Peter Lombard, Sent. 2, d. 39, c. 3.3,
1:556; Odon Lottin, "Les premiers linéaments du traité de la syndérèse au moyen
âge," Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie 28 (1926): 422-59.
384 CHAPTER SIX

collaborating with the will. In the redeemed, this state coincides

with the freedom to will evil as well. Peter gives careful considera-
tion to the point made by Augustine in his Enchiridion, that, when
man is redeemed, his free will is his will freed by grace to do the
good. He contradicts it, citing Augustine's De gratia et libero arbitrio,
where he finds a preferable solution: In redeemed man, he con-
cludes, the will is always free but not always good. As for freedom
from misery, this freedom is also lost in the fall. Man possessed it
before the fall and he will possess it even more fully in the state of
future beatitude. But, in the present life, no one has it. In sum,
Peter argues that man retains free will only in part after the fall. It
is a will that is not equally free in willing good and evil. It is freer in
willing good when it has been aided by grace than it is in willing
evil when it has not been redeemed, and freer in willing evil on its
own account than in willing good, since it cannot will the good
unless grace assists it. The grace involved is both prevenient, or
operating grace, which empowers the will and prepares man to will
the good, and cooperating grace, which collaborates with the will in
so doing. Peter makes a full stop short of the late Augustinian
doctrine that prevenient grace cannot be refused and, despite the
wealth of Augustinian references with which he documents the
position he expounds, he never cites any of the Augustinian texts in
which irresistible grace is mentioned.249
As Peter continues to expand on this doctrine, he fleshes out the
position which he had first stated in his Romans commentary.
Another way to understand the subject, he observes, is to view
operating grace as the faith that works in love, without which no
one earns merit. Faith, from this perspective, is not merely intellec-
tual assent to theological propositions or to the authority of the
person proposing them. It also involves both the gift of grace
enabling a person to commit himself and the desire to believe
stemming from his own good will. This good will, Peter empha-
sizes, is prevenient to faith not by time, but by nature, as its cause.
So, one has desire and good will, which are necessary components
of the positive reception of the operating grace that in turn enables
one to have the faith that justifies, that is, the faith working in love
with the continuing assistance of cooperating grace. Although no-
thing done before the reception of grace is meritorious with respect
to man's salvation, moral acts done with the assistance of grace do
add to man's merit. The only things that fallen man can do by free
249
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 25. c. 7-c. 8.11, 1: 465-69. The quotation is at c.
8.2, p. 466. See also Sermo 4, PL 171: 357C-D. Good treatments of this doctrine are
found in Schupp, Die Gnadenlehre, pp. 37-40, 68-69, 90-105.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 385

will alone are actions that, while they may be constructive, are
ethically neutral, such as building a house or cultivating a field. In
response to the theory that two different graces are at work in
operating and cooperating grace, Peter argues that it is a single
grace which has two different effects. This understanding of grace
as an effect of God, or as an effect of the Holy Spirit in the
distribution of His charisms, and not as an immanental participa­
tion of God in man or as a divinization of man, undergirds the
analysis of grace and merit with which Peter concludes his discus­
sion of free will in man as fallen and as justified. On the one hand,
he sees grace as the initiation of any goodness and merit that man
can acquire; and it comes from God alone. Grace is the principal
cause of merit in that it excites the free will, healing and aiding it so
that it becomes a good will. On the other hand, this generic grace
as well as the specific gifts of the Holy Spirit are activated in us by
our free will, which grace does not exclude but rather empowers.
The virtues and merits which this collaboration makes possible
thus become the personal moral attributes of the human being
whose free will is their agency.250 What the Lombard has done here,
and this can be seen by a careful examination of the Augustinian
texts which he cites so profusely on free will and grace, is to draw
on the anti-Manichean Augustine on free will as well as the anti-
Pelagian Augustine on grace. Peter adds to Augustine the testi­
mony of the Pseudo-Chrysostom. He thus arrives at a more bal­
anced position than Augustine had developed in either of these two
subdivisions of his oeuvre. The tonality Peter gives to this topic,
despite his heavy dependence on Augustine is, finally, less typical
of Augustine than it is of the theandric, synergistic relationship of
grace and free will found in the Greek patristic tradition.

T H E TRANSMISSION OF ORIGINAL SIN: T H E CONTEMPORARY

DEBATES

Peter does a better job of resolving contradictions between the

positions taken on grace and free will by Augustine at different
points in his career than he, or anyone else in his day, could do in
the case of the controverted question of the transmission of original
sin. The form in which this topic was first put on the agenda of
twelfth-century theology owes much to the school of Laon. The

250
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 26. c. 3-c. 8, d. 27. c. 3-κ1. 28. c. 4, 1: 472-78,
482-91. Peter's use of the Pseudo-Chrysostom is noted by Brady, Sent. 1: 482 n. 2.
The presence of this tonality in his treatment of grace is missed by Landgraf,
Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 2: 44—51.
386 CHAPTER SIX

Laon masters take it up initially not in the context of original sin

itself but in the effort to exclude the idea that actual sins are passed
on from parent to child, in glossing Ezechiel. None the less, in so
doing, they articulate the range of problems attached to this ques-
tion with which subsequent theologians wrestled manfully. They
also expose the contradictions between Augustine's very late anti-
Pelagian view of sexuality, his more moderate, pastoral line on this
subject dating to the middle of his career, and the intentionalist
understanding of ethical acts which he supports, as they do. Aside
from Abelard, who rejected the Augustinian understanding of the
transmission of original sin in any of its forms, the other theologians
of the first half of the twelfth century struggled to sort out the
difficulties in the Augustinian legacy from within the Augustinian
tradition. However problematic they found it, none of them, in-
cluding the Lombard, was able to find a satisfactory substitute for
it.251 In this respect, and while agreeing that it was necessary to
refute Abelard, the major motivation in Peter's handling of the
transmission of original sin was to try to make the best of an
argument that had its acknowledged weaknesses but which he did
not feel able to dismiss. Instead, he aims at clarifying it and shoring
it up as best he can.
As the Laon masters lay out the problem, parents convey to their
offspring the guilt (reatus) of original sin, the penalty (poena) of
mortality and affliction which sin brings upon mankind, and the
spark of future sin (fomes peccati) or inclination to sin that leads to
actual sin. Some members of the school adhere to the anti-Pelagian
argument of Augustine that the fall produced physical corruption
and that man now engenders progeny with vitiated seeds, on the
model of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This corrup-
tion of the genetic materials is confined to the male seed by William
of Champeaux, who follows Aristotle in viewing the male seed as
the active principle in conception; other Laon masters regard the
female body as just as corrupted.252 Still other members of the
school do not see the problem as lying in vitiated seeds, but rather
in the sexual desire and pleasure that accompany the conception of
offspring. But, this theory entails two problems. Augustine says, in
his later works, that the sexual relations between spouses are
always at least venially sinful; and some Laon masters agree with
this view. But others note that believing parents, whose own origi-

251
A good overview is provided by Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 4 part 1: 155-85.
252
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 251; Antequam quicquamfieretDeus erat 5,
in Sentences of the School of Laon, 5: 205, 336; Deus hominem fecit perfectum, pp. 295-96.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 387

nal sin has been washed away by baptism, and who have been
united in the sacrament of marriage, for the sake of whose goods,
one of which is offspring, they are having sexual relations, do not
sin thereby, even though these relations may, unavoidably, involve
lust. Now, in the case of the first position, how can the lust experi-
enced by the parents in the act of conception inhere in the body of
the fetus conceived thereby, given that the fetus, at its current stage
of development, is physically incapable of feeling lust? How can
that fetus be taxed for the feelings that other people experience?
The masters who argue that original sin is transmitted by the
concupiscence of the parents offer no real answers to these
questions.253 As for those who think that the parents' sex life is not
sinful, they, too, grapple with the question of how their upright
moral activity in this respect can convey sin to their children. The
response to this question is that the fetus is not married and
therefore lacks the exemption with respect to sexual feelings that
applies to its parents, an answer which still fails to acknowledge the
fact that the fetus, in any case, is incapable of experiencing these
sexual feelings and, a fortiori, is incapable of contracting a
marriage.234
As a refinement on this last argument, some Laon masters add
the Augustinian point that parents, even if purified by baptism and
cleansed of their own original sin, none the less pass on corrupted
flesh to their children, using such examples as the circumcised
father who sires a son born with a foreskin, or a hulled grain of
wheat engendering wheat that has a hull,255 examples that have the
effect of undercutting the vitiated seeds idea because in these cases
an altered state of being is not passed on to the offspring. Despite all
these problems, the Laon masters agree with Augustine that it is
the bodies of children that are engendered with sinful characteris-
tics because their parents necessarily engender those bodies sexu-
ally. But this brings another difficulty in its train. Rejecting
253
Potest queri, quid sit peccatum; Deus hominem fecit perfectum, pp. 265-68, 295-96;
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 32-35, 71-78; Sentences of
Anselm of Laon, no. 28; Sentences of Anselm of Laon from the Liber Pancrisis, no. 43-46, 5:
29-30, 38-43.
254
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, p p . 3 2 - 3 5 , 71-78;
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 29-30; Sentences of Anselm of Laon from the Liber
Pancrisis, no. 43-46; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 246-50; Sentences of the
School of Laon, no. 521, 5: 29-30, 38, 43, 202-05, 336-37; Deus de cuius pnncipio et fine
tacetur, p. 259; Dubitatur quibusdam, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in Schrifttum der Schule
Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen Bibliotheken, Beiträge, 33:1-2
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1936), pp. 323-24.
255
Deus cuius pnncipio et fine tacetur, pp. 263-64; Sentences of Probable Authenticity,
no. 117; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 335, 5: 95, 260.
388 CHAPTER SIX

traducianism, a conviction which implicitly reflects their belief that

sin lies not in the body as such but in the voluntary consent of the
will,256 they now have to explain how the pure and divinely created
souls of infants, souls that are infused into the bodies engendered
by their parents, contract original sin. Augustine's answer, which
they find themselves perforce repeating, is that the corrupted body
taints the soul joined to it, just as vinegar ruins the good wine with
which it may be mixed.257 How this serves as an analogy of a union
of two entities that are not both material substances and that retain
their own characteristics in that union is by no means entirely
clear.
It is no doubt the problems intrinsic to the Augustinian heritage,
which the school of Laon reports so faithfully, as well as his desire
to push the principle of intentionalism in ethics as far as he could,
that inspire Abelard to offer a counter-argument. He dispenses with
the need to explain the transmission of original sin by dropping the
idea of original sin itself, in effect reducing original sin to actual sin.
Infants, he argues, do not have the powers of judgment and delib-
eration needed to exercise free will in an informed manner, any
more than insane persons do. Only mentally competent persons
above the age of discretion are capable of sinning. Augustine was in
error here, Abelard asserts. Augustine also erred on the corrolary of
this point, the damnation of unbaptized infants. Despite this dis-
missal of original sin, and confusingly so, Abelard thinks that we
bear the punishment {poena) for Adam's fall, even though we do not
bear his guilt (culpa), and that children are prone to sin because
their parents conceive them in carnal lust. He also agrees that a
purified stock can bear tainted fruit.258 Abelard's rejection of origi-
nal sin proved to be too extreme a solution for all but his most
intransigent disciples to accept. He also turns out to be no better
than the school of Laon in explaining those vestiges of the Augustin-

256
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 309-10, 5: 244-45; Deus de cuius pnnäpio et fine
tacetur, p. 259.
257
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine 4; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 32-35, 71-78;
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 29-30; Sentences of Anselm of Laon from the Liber
Pancrisis, no. 43-46; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 246-50; Sentences of the
School of Laon, no. 521, 5: 29-30, 38-43, 202-05, 336-37; Deus de cuius pnnäpio et fine
tacetur, p. 259; Dubitatur quibusdam, pp. 323-24.
258
Peter Abelard, Ethics, ed. and trans. David E. Luscombe (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 20-22, 58-64; In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 5:19, ed.
Eligius M. Buytaert, CCCM 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 164, 166, 170-72.
Good discussions of Abelard on original sin are found in Julius Gross, "Abälards
Umdeutung des Erbsündendogmas," Zeitschrift fur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 15
(1963): 14-33; Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 43-65, 200-02.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 389

ian doctrine of the transmission of original sin that he retains.

A tendency to back away from Abelard and to try to resolve the
problem in more Augustinian terms is found even in masters in-
fluenced by him in other respects. Roland of Bologna, for instance,
does a fairly thorough job of listing the positions that have been
taken on the transmission of original sin, and the objections that
can be leveled against some of them, before giving his own opinion.
He cites Abelard's position and offers no objection to it; but this is
not the view to which Roland subscribes himself. Apart from the
rejected notion that people cannot sin before the age of discretion
and that, therefore, children do not inherit original sin, Roland
mentions four other arguments. One is that the sin is transmitted
because Adam committed it in Eden. To this, Roland says, no
objection is needed because it is just plain silly. One may agree, but
one may also observe that a more telling reason for dismissing this
argument is that it offers no explanation on how the sin is transmit-
ted. Nor does Roland cite an objection to the analysis by which the
guilt (reatus) and punishment (poena) which Adam's sin incurred for
him are extended, by imputation, to other people who have not
committed any sin themselves. In the remaining two options Ro-
land offers before presenting his own solution, he does give objec-
tions. To the claim that Adam transmitted his fallen nature to his
descendants materially, he responds that sin pertains to the soul,
and that the parents do not engender the souls of their children. To
the claim that original sin is transmitted by the libidinous ardor of
the parents, one may object again that the parents do not engender
their children's souls and also that the fetus cannot experience
carnal concupiscence in the womb. He adds that this theory also
does not work because the fetus has no say in the mode by which it
is engendered. Roland now moves to articulate his own position.
Some say, he notes, that the Jomes peccati is carnal concupiscence.
He supports this idea. He then, however, goes on to define this
f ornes as located in the will and not in man's physical inclinations.
Concupiscence, so understood, is the will's tendency to seek the
wrong ends in matters pertaining to mind and body alike. This
analysis locates original sin in the mind, although it sees original
sin as having a different effect on mind and body. In the body, it
leads to physical corruption and death. In the mind, it works by the
consent it renders to the wrong moral use of both mind and body,
and also in the fact that the soul is stained by the corrupt body with
which it is now associated.259 In the effort to stress the will as the

Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 128-36.

390 CHAPTER SIX

seat of sin, Roland has forgotten a point which he had raised earlier
in his account, the idea that the parents engender only the bodies,
and not the souls, of their children. Since he now argues that these
pure souls are tainted by their union with corrupt bodies, it is not
clear why he rejects the idea that men are all material descendants
of Adam, or how that theory really differs from the solution that he
adopts.
A similar modification of the Augustinian position in defense of
the idea that virtue and vice are located in the mind, not the body,
is found in Robert of Melun. He agrees that original sin is transmit-
ted through the sexual concupiscence of the parents, and that its
effects include the inclination toward concupiscence in their
offspring. But this effect, he argues, derives not from physical
corruption or weakness but from the nature of original sin as a
spiritual disorder, a spiritual penchant toward evil in all areas.
Here, Robert wants to criticize the vitiated seeds theory. He
observes that the members of the human race are not contained
seminally in Adam, although they are similar to him in soul. But,
he cannot explain how the concupiscent spirit gets passed to in-
fants, as a consequence of the sexual feelings which their parents
experience physically. Robert's terminology is also a bit out of the
ordinary. Most theologians of the day see concupiscence, whether
in the narrow sexual sense or in the wider sense of the inclination
toward wrong or immoderate desires which Robert gives to the
term, as the jomes peccati. He, instead, sees it as the punishment for
sin. He also raises a new complication, suggesting a greater sensi-
tivity to the nature of human sexuality than most theologians of the
time exhibit. Not all sexual acts leading to conception, he notes, are
undertaken with the same degree of sexual desire; nor are they all
accompanied by the same degree of sexual pleasure. Since he holds
that parental ardor is the vehicle for the transmission of original
sin, he finds that, if one applies the principle of differential ardor
here, one has to conclude that people are afflicted with original sin
to different degrees.260 This is an alarming idea, and Robert does
nothing to deal with its ethical or sacramental implications, at least
not in the part of his Sentences which he completed.
If Robert of Melun wants to eliminate the vitiated seeds from the
account, as too crypto-Manichean, Robert Pullen rests his case
entirely on that very theory, although he grounds it rather narrow-
ly. His argument is integrally related to the virtually preclusive
260
Martin, "Les idées de Robert de Melun," RSPT 7: 700-25, 8: 439-66, 9:
103-20, 11: 390-415.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 391

emphasis he places on the corruption of the physical seed as the

major bodily consequence of original sin. So, for Robert as well, it is
not so much the parents' experience of lust as their vitiated genetic
materials which give the fetus a corrupt body, which in turn
corrupts the soul attached to it. Thus, children bear the guilt
(reatus), the punishment (poena), and the Jomes peccati of concupis-
cence transmitted by the corruption of the flesh.261 Here, Robert
ignores the objections made in the light of the baptismal and
marital grace of the parents and adheres to the hardest of hard line
late Augustinianism. In Robert's psychology, it will be remem-
bered, he argues that the parents create the spiritus of their
offspring. But he does not integrate this traducianist belief into his
understanding of the transmission of original sin.
Another mid-century theologian who defends the anti-Pelagian
Augustine here is the author of the Summa sententiarum. He agrees
that the bodies of children are derived substantially from the cor-
rupted flesh of their parents. But he is more circumspect in his
handling of this idea than is Robert Pullen. He acknowledges that,
in believing parents, baptism has remitted their own guilt. This
fact, however, does not alter the changes in their genetic materials
that remain, as a consequence of sin. Nor does it alter the fact that
their sexual relations are perforce accompanied by lust. The author
does not deal with the inability of the fetus to experience sexual
desire or sexual pleasure, but moves on to how the corrupt fetal
body infects the child's soul. It does so, he says, thanks to its
intimate union with the soul. Having raised the question of the
baptism of the parents, he pertinently adds the Augustinian argu-
ment concerning the hulled wheat and the circumcised father to
explain why their redeemed state makes no difference.262
A much softer line is taken by the author of the Sententiae divinita-
tis, drawing heavily on the more moderate position articulated by
Augustine in pastoral works such as De nuptiis et concupiscentia. He
argues that, for parents, their baptism remits any guilt they would
otherwise bear for the carnal concupiscence involved in their sexual
relations. It is not that the ardor accompanying sex is not a con-
sequence of sin and it is not that they can avoid experiencing it. But
it is not imputed to them as sinful (non ut non sit, sed ut inpeccatum non
imputetur). He also argues that the reatus of sin is transmitted from
parent to child, here combining in this term the guilt and the

261
Robert Pullen, Sent. 2.7-8, 2.25, 2.27-31, PL 186: 727D-731A, 752B-753C,
754A—764C
262
Summa sent. 3.10-12, PL 176: 105A-110A.
392 CHAPTER SIX

punishment, along with the poena, by which latter term he means

what other masters mean by the jomes peccati. But, having defended
the principle that the parents' sexual feelings are not counted as
sinful, for them, the author offers no explanation of how that reatus
and poena descend to the children. The closest he comes is to
analogize it to a physical defect that can be inherited.263
Apart from treating the question of traducianism as an open
one,264 which Robert's Pullen's teaching has also suggested was
actually the case in some quarters, the other Porre tan witnesses in
our period make no contribution to the debate on the transmission
of original sin. But Hugh of St. Victor, who gives the same report
on traducianism, provides an analysis which adds a genuinely fresh
point to his largely mid-Augustinian handling of that question.
Further, his argument connects his position on this subject to his
account of the effects of the fall and to the epistemological concerns
that inform his treatment of human nature more widely. Hugh is
clear in his own mind on where the human soul comes from. It is
spiritual not material and it is created by God ex nihilo. Hugh's
main point here is to stress that God infixes the soul into the body
of the fetus after the body has started to develop, anchoring this
point with the Exodus rule on causing a miscarriage and when it is
accounted homicide. This being the case, he asks, how does the
flesh contract and transmit sin and how does the body transfer sin
to the soul? Now concupiscence, he reminds the reader, is the chief
effect of original sin upon the body just as ignorance it its chief effect
upon the soul. For the body, this means a weakened existence, an
inability to engage in sexual activity without lust, even as the body
now is mortal. Hugh sees the parents as creating the same kind of
body in their children as they now have. He avoids the vitiated
seeds idea but suggests, rather, that it is the limited fleshly endow-
ment they have to pass on, and not the fact that they have experi-
enced sexual desire or pleasure in engendering children, that
defines the parental role here. This analysis obviates, for Hugh, the
need to cope with the problem of how fetuses, incapable of ex-
periencing lust, should be taxed with other people's feelings. As for
how this weakened flesh, weakened in the sense that it disallows
sexuality without lust when that sexuality becomes operational in
the children, transmits sin to the soul, the link, for Hugh, is in

263
Sent. div. 3.2, 3.4-5, pp. 43*-45*, 47*-51*. The quotation is at 3.4, p. 47*.
On this question, see Raymond-M. Martin, "La péché originel d'après Gilbert de
la Porrée (d. 1154) et son école," RHE 13 (1912): 674-91.
264
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.55, p. 170.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 393

man's epistemology. Our knowledge, as he has already explained,

depends on sense data, in the external rational mode of knowledge.
The physical senses have been corrupted by concupiscence. Thus,
they do not function as well as they did before the fall; and this
situation contributes to the ignorance which is the chief limit under
which the mind labors after the fall. Hugh has produced the most
intelligent solution invented in this period to the problem of how
the sinful body could corrupt the mind that is its ruling principle
and the seat of the intentionality that controls man's ethical life.
Finally, in addressing the question of how the redeemed parents
can engender children who are themselves in need of redemption,
Hugh avoids the issues embedded in Augustine's examples of the
hulled wheat or circumcised father. He settles for something sim-
pler. While the grace of baptism removes the parents' guilt for their
original sin, they still have to bear the punishment for sin, Hugh
points out, and that punishment is concupiscence and ignorance,
which they pass on to their children.265

The Lombard on the Transmission of Original Sin

The originality displayed by Hugh of St. Victor on the transmis-

sion of original sin did not find support in Peter Lombard. He is far
more resolutely Augustinian on this subject. Indeed, he draws on
some features of Augustine's early teachings in order to defend
Augustine's anti-Pelagian position in this area. Peter also recog-
nizes the need to attack Abelard and to find a way to combine the
doctrine of the key role of intentionality in ethics, which he certain-
ly supports, with the principle of the universality of original sin. He
also wants to lay to rest the possibility of espousing traducianism in
any form. And, he wants to coordinate his position on the transmis-
sion of original sin with the doctrine of human nature he has
developed. He brings some additional authorities to bear on the
large, and largely Augustinian, dossier of sources that he uses. If
Peter does not succeed in ironing out all the problems in Augus-
tine's treatment of the problem of the transmission of original sin,
he makes a valiant effort to do so and he is less troubled by the im-
plications of this topic than is true of many of his contemporaries.
There is no single recent or current theologian from whom Peter

265
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.7.31-38, PL 176: 301B-306B. Julius Gross,
"Ur- und Erbsünde bei Hugo von St. Viktor," Zeitschrift fir Kirchengeschichte 73
(1962): 42-61 emphasizes Hugh's dependence on Augustine but not his origi-
nality.
394 CHAPTER SIX

takes all his cues on the transmission of original sin, but it is clear to
him that Abelard needs to be shown conclusively to be wrong. His
opening salvo makes this plain. Adam's sin was actual, Peter
observes, because is was something he willed to do, as well as
original, as the first sin and the origin of sin in mankind. In the rest
of mankind, however, original sin cannot be reduced to actual sin.
Under this heading, Peter attacks the "Pelagians" but the Abelar-
dian reference is unmistakeable. One can, none the less, say that
original sin springs from the will, even if this statement is true only
in Adam's case. Here, Peter draws on the anti-Manichean Augus-
tine in arguing that there is nothing evil in nature, since the whole
creation is good. Everything in creation, however, can be used
badly. This was the case with human free will, a created good,
which was used badly in the fall.266 This argument locates original
sin in the will. But Adam is not a model for the rest of the human
race in this respect. While it comes to afflict the soul in fallen man,
original sin finds its way into the soul and imposes its limitations on
the soul, in the form of a weakened will, and inclines the soul to
commit actual sin by way of the body. Peter is a staunch defender
of Augustine here, and on two counts. First, he maintains that
original sin is transmitted physically because it has resulted in the
vitiation of the flesh. And second, this vitiated flesh involves the
reproduction of itself accompanied by carnal lust.267
Before going on to explain how, and why, this is the case, Peter
crisply defines his terms. Does the essence of original sin lie in the
guilt, the punishment, or the inclination to sin; and what is in-
cluded in each of these terms? In Peter's view, original sin is
defined as the guilt (culpa), the burden of responsibility for the fall.
The punishment (poena), which is largely the depression of the will
and the corruption of the body, is the consequence of that guilt.
The f omes peccati is concupiscence, which Peter views broadly, as the
inclination to sin in all areas. He agrees with Hugh of St. Victor
that the concupiscence which is passed on to the offspring as a
function of the punishment is not the lust attending the particular
sexual act in which the offspring is engendered, but the general
weakness of the body, and, through the body, the mind. This
weakness will incline the offspring to commit actual sins when the
circumstances make this possible. Thus, in Peter's view, it is un-
necessary to address the objection that the fetus cannot experience

266
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 30. c. 3-c. 4, c. 13, d. 34. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 496-97, 503,
525-29.
267
Ibid., d. 30. c. 5, 1: 497.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 395

sexual desire or pleasure.268 This Victorine understanding of con-

cupiscence also settles in advance the question of the degrees of
parental ardor and hence of inherited culpability raised by Robert
of Melun. Parents, Peter points out, replicate in their children the
same kind of bodies as they have themselves. Addressing a question
which Robert of Melun takes up and answers differently, Peter asks
in what sense we are all children of Adam. It is absurd, he agrees,
to think that everyone contains an actual atom of Adam's body. It
was a finite body; and this would be a physical impossibility. But,
we all share Adam's physical nature, in both body and mind. We
can think of the passing on of physical nature from parent to child
under the rubric of the seminal reasons, implanted in Adam as the
first parent, and understood as Peter has treated them above, as the
created causes that enable natural phenomena to perform their
natural functions, such as reproduction, in this case.269
Peter makes crystal clear that he sees no grounds for supporting
traducianism. The soul of each person, he maintains, is created,
innocent, by God. The parents produce the body of their children
and they do so by sexual reproduction, which is inevitably attended
by sexual desire and pleasure. On this point Peter takes a softer line
than the anti-Pelagian Augustine and than some of his contempo-
raries, and one that he associates with the sacrament of marriage as
much as with the sacrament of baptism. Peter agrees that it is not
possible, now, to engender children without lust, and that this lust
"is always a vice and also culpable, unless it is excused by the
goods of marriage" (semper Vitium est, et etiam culpa, nisi excusetur per
bona coniugii). This exemption, in his eyes, is a real one. But, while
the goods of marriage exculpate the parents, the only flesh they
have to pass on is the corrupted flesh which they now possess as a
consequence of the fall. They pass it on to their children, perforce,
and this corrupted flesh then contaminates the innocent soul which
God infuses into the bodies of their children. Peter draws on
Ambrose to help explain that this physical corruption is like the
defects or privations which are inflicted on a person's body, chang-
ing it for the worse, which he then bequeathes to his children willy
nilly. It is true, he allows, that baptized parents are released from
their own original sin, but they still retain the poena and the fomes
peccati, which they physically transmit to their children.
In elaborating this doctrine, Peter takes a middle position be-
tween those theologians who see the concupiscence imparted by

Ibid., c. 6-c. 13, 1: 500-03.

Ibid., c. 14, 1: 503-04.
396 CHAPTER SIX

original sin as completely washed away by the parents' baptism

and those who do not see their baptism as having any effect on it at
all. In his view, the parents' concupiscence is mitigated, but
enough of it remains to inspire the sexual union that will transmit a
corrupted body to their children.270 The soul, however, comes from
God. Citing both the physici as well as Exodus 21:22-23 to make the
point that the soul is infused into the body after the body has been
growing in the womb, and ignoring the discrepancies among these
authorities as to when, during the gestation process, the fetus is
ensouled, he notes that, since the baptized parents do not create the
souls of their children, they cannot transmit the spiritual cleansing
which they have received themselves. It is in this light that Peter
presents the Augustinian examples of the circumcised father and
the hulled wheat. At the same time, the corrupt body into which
the soul is infused contaminates it as well, and here Peter cites the
Augustinian analogy of the vinegar and wine, without noticing the
respects in which it may be a disanalogy for the union of body and
soul in man, and without referring to Hugh of St. Victor's episte-
mological account of that contamination.271
Original sin is thus universal, and necessary, after the fall, in that
no one can avoid it. It is also voluntary, Peter claims, in that it
arose from the voluntary choice of Adam.272 Pausing to note that
Adam's sin was the worst sin ever committed, even though it can be
remitted by baptism, worse even than the sin against the Holy
Spirit, which is irrémissible, because of its permanent and negative
effect on the entire human race and not just on Adam himself,273 he
distinguishes once more between the original sin which parents
transmit and the actual sin which they do not transmit.274 Peter
then raises one final substantive question concerning original sin
before concluding his discussion of this subject. Why, he asks,
would God join the innocent souls that He creates to bodies vitiated
by sin, knowing full well that this will corrupt the souls as well? His
answer to this question ties Peter's understanding of original sin to
the hylemorphic constitution of man as he had presented that
doctrine in his account of creation at the beginning of Book 2 of the
Sentences. Although the body is now weakened by sin, it was neces-
sary to join it with the soul, he argues, even though the soul will

270
Ibid., d. 31. c. 2-c. 6, d. 32. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 505-08, 511-15. The quotation is at
d. 31. c. 4, p. 506.
271
Ibid., d. 31. c. 6-c. 7, 1: 508-10.
272
Ibid., d. 32. c. 5, 1:515-16.
273
Ibid., d. 33. c. 3, 1:521-22.
274
Ibid., c. 1-c. 2, c. 5, 1: 517-20, 522-23.
 THE CREATION, ANGELS, MAN, AND THE FALL 397

thereby be weakened in turn, in order to retain the integral union of

body and soul that is intrinsic to human nature. It is as a unit of
body and soul that man was created. It is as a unit of body and soul
that man fell. And, it is as a unit of body and soul that man will be
redeemed and glorified; and, through him, the universe as a whole
will be perfected.275 And so, Peter finds something providential
even in the grimmest reality in the Christian doctrine of man.
Peter's most signal achievement in treating the transmission of
original sin is a twofold one. First of all, while he retains both the
vitiated seeds doctrine of Augustine and the idea that it is the
sexual feelings of the parents that are responsible for transmitting
original sin to the bodies of their children, he makes this a two-step
process. Sexual desire and pleasure, vicious under other circum-
stances but excused for spouses in the context of their marriage,
are what impel the parents to the sexual relations that lead to the
conception of corrupt bodies in their offspring. The parents have no
choice here, since they can only reproduce the same kind of body
that they now possess. Part of the burden which they place on their
children in so doing is to give them bodies which will themselves be
liable to concupiscence in their sexual functioning, when the time
comes. This second point, inherited from Hugh of St. Victor,
enables Peter, like Hugh, to view concupiscence as a generic
physical weakness brought about by the fall, and to unhinge the
issue of the sensory capacities of a fetus, as a fetus, from the feelings
experienced by the parents in the particular sexual union that led
to its conception. It is far more debatable whether Peter succeeds in
addressing Abelard's objections to Augustine. His argument that
original sin is voluntary because Adam willed it in his own case is
not particularly responsive to Abelard. His yoking of the Augustin-
ian examples of the circumcised father and the hulled wheat to the
anti-traducianist position is an effective argument. Despite Peter's
assertion that everything in creation is good and is evil only in the
way men choose to use it, his strong appeal to the anti-Pelagian
theory of the corruption of man's genetic materials does leave him
open to the same charge of inconsistency here as is the case with
Augustine himself. While he frequently cites Augustine against
Augustine in this part of his theology and while he combines
Augustine's milder with his harsher position, it cannot truly be said
that the Lombard has either discovered a way of resolving Augus-
tine's inconsistencies or that, in this subdivision of his theology, he
has sought, or found, a viable alternative to them.

Ibid., d. 32. c. 6, 1: 516.

 CHAPTER SEVEN

CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK

The nature of Christ and His saving work were topics inspiring
many debates in the first half of the twelfth century, debates
conducted at varying levels of intensity and sparked by the propos-
als of different theologians. The Christological controversies of the
day ranged from the intensely speculative, as was the case with the
hypostatic union, to the devotional, as was the case with whether
the human Christ should receive worship (latria) or veneration
(dulia). A keen interest in the humanity of Christ is typical of the
theology of this period, and the related issues of His moral capaci-
ties, His knowledge, and His psychology received extended atten-
tion. Aside from reflecting religious tastes that are a hallmark of
twelfth-century Christian thought, these concerns are also indica-
tive of the felt need to defend Christian orthodoxy against contem-
porary heretics who held that Christ's incarnation was an illusion.
If the Word had never taken on human flesh, then the redemptive
suffering and death of Christ on the cross was an illusion as well.
Hence, theologians had a mandate to explain the reality of the
incarnation and the principle that Christ was truly God and truly
man. This doctrine is central to Christianity at any time. But its
explication in our period was complicated by the confusion sur-
rounding the theological language in which it would have to be
done.
Peter Lombard makes a different kind of contribution to the
various aspects of Christology that attracted discussion during his
time. With respect to the human Christ, he is alarmed by what he
perceives to be a contemporary tendency to divinize Him. Peter
seeks to nuance this topic and to set limits to this inclination, in the
effort to stress Christ's full consubstantiality with the rest of the
human race. His efforts to do so, however, meet with only partial
success. Peter's achievement is more solid in reshaping the doctrine
of Christ's saving work. In a period marked by extremes of objec-
tivism and subjectivism in the treatment of soteriology, Peter
strikes a new balance. More than simply mediating between ex-
tremes, he also adds his own personal stamp to this doctrine, and
makes possible the dropping of purely externalist ways of viewing
the redemption, in which man is seen as the passive object of the
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 399

actions of powers outside of himself, from the agenda of mainstream

theology. With respect to the hypostatic union and related issues,
Peter's contribution is threefold. The clear definitions and consist-
ent uses that he gives to the theological language needed in this
area enable him to expose and dismiss what is problematic or
inconsistent in the Christological lexicons of other theologians,
ancient and modern. By the same token, he effectively salvages
ideas of which he approves in this subdivision of theology by
separating them from the confusing terminology in whose company
they sometimes traveled. His third service is to lay out plainly the
options existing in current theology for understanding the coinher-
ence of the divine and human natures in the incarnate Christ. He
indicates their strengths, and the support in the Christian tradition
on which they can draw, and also their weaknesses, in his estima-
tion. He does so without making a personal choice among them.
This last fact is one that a few contemporaries had difficulty grasp-
ing and, with them, some modern scholars as well. Yet, on this
critical doctrine of the Christian faith, Peter really does think that
the three opinions he outlines can truly be maintained within the
orthodox consensus. This attitude of his toward the hypostatic
union is the most powerful and extended expression, in Peter's
thought, of the principle, distinctive of twelfth-century theology,
that the unity of the faith does not preclude diversity in the ways in
which it may be explained or practiced: diver si sed non adver si}

The Hypostatic Union: Ancient and Current Understandings

The hypostatic union was second only to the doctrine of the

Trinity in this period in provoking debate under the heading of the
problem of theological language. It was likewise catalyzed by the
intense study which Boethius's opuscula sacra were receiving in the
schools, and by the fact that his own vocabulary was polyvalent.
Theologians in this period, consequently, lacked a common under-
standing of the meaning of key terms such as substance, person,
and nature, all of which had to be used in discussing the nature of
the incarnate Christ. Complicating matters still further was the fact
that Gilbert of Poitiers had used his commentary on Boethius's
theological treatises as a vehicle for framing his own personal

1
Good discussions of this theme in the twelfth century include Henri DeLubac,
"A propos de la formule: diversi sed non adversi" in Mélanges Jules Lebreton =
Recherches de science religieuse 40 (1952): 2: 27-40; Hubert Silvestre, "'Diversi sed
nonadversiV' RTAM 3\ (1964): 124-32.
400 CHAPTER SEVEN

semantic theory and his own idiosyncratic lexicon, which coined

neologisms and which also used the standard terms in unique
Gilbertian ways. The thorough study of John Damascene, as well
as Boethius and the Latin fathers, which the Lombard puts to such
effective use in his Trinitarian theology and in his doctrine of God
more generally, also proved to be equally helpful in addressing
Ghristology. While in the field of Trinitarian theology he regarded
Peter Abelard as the thinker most in need of refutation, with
Gilbert second on the list, in the field of Ghristology Abelard offered
no more, or less, of a challenge than did other theologians to whose
teachings Peter took exception. On the other hand, here Gilbert
was the master who set the agenda. And, Gilbert and the early
Porretans set that agenda for the Lombard in two ways. First, they
offered some trenchant criticisms of positions which Peter joined
them in opposing. And, second, they offered some positive ideas
which he was ready to accept, subject to the purgation from them of
the rébarbative language in which Gilbert had originally framed
them. Armed with the weapons derived from his Greek and Latin
patristic sources, from the discussions surrounding the ideas of
Gilbert, and from some insights of his own, Peter was able to set
forth, with great terminological precision, for the day, the three
major explanations of the hypostatic union, the assumptus homo
theory, the subsistence theory, and the habitus theory. He was also
able to equip himself with a vocabulary helpful in handling the
other topics pertaining to the incarnation on which he took a
personal stand.
The assumptus homo theory had a long history, going back to the
patristic period and also undergoing change with respect to the
positions it was formulated in order to refute. Many of the church
fathers, east and west, supported the idea that the Word had
assumed a human nature, that He had become man, a man fully
united with the Word from the first moment of His conception, and
not a man already in existence, the latter view being the heresy of
Adoptionism. Later, in order to counter the threat of Nestorianism,
proponents of this doctrine emphasized the intimacy of the union
between the two natures in the incarnate Christ and their insepa-
rability once united in a single person.2

2
The patristic background and history of this doctrine up through the time of
the Lombard are given by Auguste Gaudel, "La théologie de L"Assumptus
Homo': Histoire et valeur doctrinale," RSR 17 (1937): 64-90; 18 (1938): 45-71,
201-17. For a good description of the three opinions as taught in the mid-twelfth
century, see Jean Bresch, Essai sur les Sentences de Pierre Lombard considérées sous le point
de vue historico-dogmatique (Strasbourg: Imprimerie de Veuve Berger-Levrault,
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 401

The subsistence theory accented, against what its proponents

saw as an interpénétration of the divine and human natures of
Christ in the assumptus homo theory so as to divinize His human
nature, the idea that, in the union of the Word with a human body
and soul, none of the constituents had lost its intrinsic nature
substantially. The ingredients, they argued, had not merged to form
a new semi-divine, semi-human tertium quid. Rather, in the incar-
nation, the Word, Who had been a simple person, now became
a composite individual, with three substances joined together,
divinity, body, and soul. Another version of this notion of a compos-
ite person, seen as a twin substance, found support in Augustine.
The partisans of the habitus theory, so called because they viewed
the humanity of the incarnate Christ as a habit or garment which
He puts on, could trace this theory back to biblical, patristic, and
more recent authorities. The language itself occurs in the Vulgate
account of Christ's emptying of Himself and taking on the form
of a man, et habitus inventus ut homo, in Philippians 2:7. The fullest
patristic discussion of this phrase is Augustine's analysis in his
Eighty-Three Diverse (Questions. There, he notes that habitus can be under-
stood in several senses. There is a habit of mind, such as the mind's
grasp of intellectual subject matter, which is strengthened by use.
There is a habit of body, such as the strength acquired through
physical exercise. Habitus also refers to things attached to people
externally, such as clothing, weapons, or shoes. In each of these
cases, the habitus is applied accidentally to the person in question,
who might just as well not possess it. Moving on, he adds that in
some cases a habitus changes the person who has it, as is the case
with wisdom or physical strength. In other cases, what the person
takes on is itself changed, while simultaneously changing him, as is
true of food which, when eaten and assimilated into someone's
body, becomes his bodily tissue as well as giving him energy. There
is also the habitus which is changed while not changing the person to
whom it is attached. Such is the case with a garment that assumes
the shape of the person wearing it. There is a fourth case, in which
neither the person nor the habitus is changed when the habitus is

1857), pp. 39-43; Walter H. Principe, William ofAuxene's Theology of the Hypostatic
Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 1: 9-12, 68-70;
Horacio Santiago-Otero, "El 'nihilianismo cristológico' y las tres opiniones,"
Burgense 10 (1969): 431-43. This last cited essay also gives a thorough review of the
scholarship on this question and on the attribution of the three positions to
contemporary theologians. See also Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 71-104,
which is weak on the Porretans; Ludwig Ott, Untersuchung zur theologischen Brieflitera-
tura der Frühscholastik, Beiträge, 34 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1937), pp. 164-87.
402 CHAPTER SEVEN

taken on. The placing of a ring on a person's finger is an example.

With all this in mind, Augustine asks, in what sense is habitus
involved in Christ's incarnation? In the sense of the garment that
takes on the shape of the person wearing it, he answers. With this,
Augustine also argues that the human nature taken on by the Word
was affected, and for the better, by its association with the divine
nature. And so, in Philippians, the apostle means that, when Christ
clothed Himself with humanity He did not transform it, but He
conformed it to Himself, associating it with His own immortality,
without changing it into His own divinity. 3
As the editor of this Augustinian text and others have confirmed,
the Eighty-Three Questions was known and cited up through the
Carolingian period.4 Up until that time, the other major interpreta-
tion of the habitus theory was the one provided by Boethius, who
gives it a different sense than Augustine does, the sense in which it
was appropriated by John Scottus Eriugena and many of its
twelfth-century supporters and detractors. In his Contra Eutychen et
Nestorium, Boethius attacks the argument by which each of these
heretics would reduce Christ's humanity to nothing at all (omnino
nihil). The theology of Nestorius, he says, leads to this conclusion
by making the union of divinity with humanity so adventitious that
they exist side by side, and are not truly united. On the other hand,
Eutyches absorbs Christ's humanity into His divinity to such a
degree that there is no real human nature left in Him. Now,
Boethius adds that one can say that Christ's divinity became
humanity, that His humanity became divinity, or that each was
modified to such an extent that neither retained its original nature,
but a new tertium quid resulted. The first is impossible since the
divine nature is immutable. The second is impossible because
human nature involves a body. Just as one body cannot change into
another body, so, a fortiori, a body cannot change into an incor-
poreal entity. The third is impossible since it can take place only
in the merging of beings that possess a common nature, a
common material substratum that serves as a bridge between
them. Boethius's own solution is to compare the union of man and
God in the incarnate Christ with that of the gold and gems that

3
Augustine, De diversis quœstionibus octoginta tribus q. 73. ed. Almut Mutzen-
becher, CCSL 44A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), pp. 209-12. On this doctrine, see
Tarsicius J. van Bavel, Recherches sur la christologie de Saint Augustine: L'humain et le
divin dans le Christ d'après Saint Augustin (Fribourg, Suisse: Éditions Universitaires,
1954), pp. 34-37.
4
Mutzenbecher, intro, to his ed., pp. 1-lix, lxxv; John Marenbon, From the Circle
ofAlcuin to the School ofAuxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 37, 42-45, 53, 56.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 403

combine to form a crown, or the vesting of a man with a garment,

examples in which, is his view, neither element is changed.5 And,
although he cites Augustine's Eighty-Three Questions, John Scottus
clearly intends the same thing as Boethius on the incarnation in
describing Christ's human nature as a sandal which He puts on.
His choice of this particular article of clothing is made to reflect
Christ's retention of His humanity unchanged in the incarnation
as well as it allegorical significance in relation to John the Baptist
as His forerunner.6 The twelfth-century theologians who support
the habitus theory invoke it in order to stress the point made by
Boethius and Eriugena: neither the divinity nor the humanity of
Christ was changed in their union. Both they and their critics also
notice that another feature of the habitus doctrine in both its Au-
gustinian and Boethian forms is that the union is adventitious and
accidental; the two natures of Christ are partible.
As the Lombard reads these three position, they all have prob-
lems. The chief difficulty to be alleged against the assumptus homo
theory is that it falls into Boethius's second impossibility, and even
conceivably into the danger of Eutychianism, by assimilating
Christ's humanity into His divinity in the bestowing on that
humanity of the blessings and exemptions that elevate the human
Christ so far above other human beings that His consubstantiality
with them is put at risk, a consubstantiality necessary if His life and
death are to have their intended soteriological effects. Peter also
sees a real problem in calling the person of the incarnate Christ a
mixed one. In the Sentences, he regards the idea of three substances
as unacceptable, although he had entertained that idea earlier in
his career in one of his sermons. He had also, in his earlier Pauline
exegesis, made use of the Augustinian twin substance language,
although he viewed it in such as way as to avoid the confusion
between the two substances. With respect to the habitus theory, if
one follows the Augustinian explanation of it, which Peter cites in
full, there is a problem in it analogous to the problem affecting the
assumptus homo position, as he analyzes it, the change in Christ's
human nature. Even in his commentary on Philippians, where he
had indicated acceptance of the habitus theory earlier, he had never

5
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 4-7, ed. and trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K.
Rand, and S. J. Tester in Boethius, The Theological Tractates (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 92-94, 104-16, 120. The quotation is at 4,
p. 94.
6
John Scottus Eriugena, Commentaire sur l'Evangile de Jean 1.29, ed. Edouard
Jeauneau, Sources chrétiennes, 180 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1972), pp. 150,
152.
404 CHAPTER SEVEN

understood it in that sense himself. But the larger problem Peter

sees with the habitus position it that it makes Christ's manhood
accidental. Instead of a hypostatic union, there is the adventitious
human garb, which the Word can put on and take off, and which is
not really united to the person Who wears it. This being the case,
an adhérant of the habitus theory would not really be able to endorse
the scriptural principle that the Word became flesh, or that God
became man in the incarnation.7
In coming to the conclusion that all three positions, despite their
biblical and patristic warrants, were problematic, Peter had before
him the arguments of contemporaries who espoused one or another
of the positions and whose terminology was so unclear or inconsist-
ent that they did not, in his estimation, succeed in making their
case. He also had before him Gilbert and the Porretans, whose
language was not only indiosyncratic but was also an impediment
in conveying their ideas. While Peter certainly repudiates the Por-
retan lexicon, taking a leaf from the book of some of Gilbert's
earliest followers in this respect, he shares many of Gilbert's Christo-
logical positions. Indeed, he comes closer to Gilbert, substantively,
than to any other contemporary theologian on the hypostatic
union. And, it is both the agenda he shares with Gilbert and his
criticism of Gilbert that enable him to pinpoint what he finds
unacceptable in the views of other masters, whichever of the three
opinions they held.
This being the case, it will be useful to reprise briefly the account
of Gilbert's treatment of the hypostatic union and of the language
in which he expresses it given above in chapter 3. 8 To begin with, in
his use of the term "substance," Gilbert largely seeks to apply it to
the level of being on which beings are concrete and are subject to
modification by accidents, or subsistens, in his vocabulary. He also
wants to use the term "nature" to refer to beings at this level.
Sometimes, however, he refers to the deity as such as a substance,
using this term to refer to what would be equivalent, in the deity, to

7
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 3. d. 6-d. 7. c. 3.3, 3rd ed. rev.,
ed. Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 2: 49-66. For his earlier use of the gemina substantia language, see
the second redaction of Peter's In Epis to lam Pauli ad Romanos 1:3, PL 191: 1307C.
This same language occurs in Sermo 7, 9, 55, 99, PL 171: 371C, 382A, 396A,
605D-606B, 806B. He refers to Christ as having three substances in Sermo 43, PL
171: 559B-C. On this point, see above, chapter 4, p. 216 and n. 157. For Peter's
earlier alignment with a Boethian or Eriugenian version of the habitus theory, see
In Epistolam ad Philippenses 2:1-8, PL 192: 235A-D. See above, chapter 4, p. 223.
8
See above, pp. 132-48.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 405

the level of being he calls subsistentia in created beings, which refers

to their formal properties. Since Gilbert holds that everything that
is in God is God, that the perfectly simple deity is His own qualities
perfectly, there really is no distinction that can be made between
subsistentia and subsistens in God's case. Even for creatures, Gilbert
holds that the subsistentia inheres in the being in a radically indi-
vidual way and that it cannot be abstracted from that being. He
also rejects the Boethian definition of a person as the individual
substance of a rational nature. He does so because, in Trinitarian
theology, he recognizes that this definition of person would yield
three substances, that is, three Gods. In the case of human beings,
he rejects Boethius on persona because he is a strong proponent of
the view, against more Platonizing anthropologies, that the human
person is not the soul alone but the integral union of body and soul,
not a casual or separable combination or a new tertium quid but a
union whose constituent ingredients retain their own distinctive
characteristics. With respect to persona in the deity, Gilbert provides
only a numerical distinction among the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. He accents the unity of the deity so strongly that it is not at
all clear how, or if, these persons are really different from each other
and why one of them, and not the others or the whole Trinity, was
incarnated. Given Gilbert's view of human nature as the concrete
subsistens of each individual man, it is also hard to see how he can
distinguish between nature and person in the case of human beings.
It is likewise hard to see how individual human beings can be part
of a wider human community, since, even at the level of subsistentia,
each man's formal aspect inheres in him in a completely individual
way. In any event, whether a. persona is divine and simple, or human
and a composite of body and soul, a person is a res per se una, a single
individual being, for Gilbert.
While they may create problems in Gilbert's Trinitarian theolo-
gy, this assortment of principles engenders even greater difficulties
in his Christology. His chief target is the habitus theory and the
anthropology undergirding it. Gilbert disagrees with the idea that
the humanity and divinity of the incarnate Christ are partible and
that their relationship is accidental. He sees this claim as modeled
on a notion of the union of body and soul in man as divisible, which
he also rejects. Gilbert also wants to attack the view that the homo
assumed by the Word was a man already in existence, a position
that had gotten attached to the homo assumptus theory despite the
fact that it had originally been formulated with the express purpose
of excluding Adoptionism. He sees the Word, in the hypostatic
union, as both a divine person and as the divine substance. His
406 CHAPTER SEVEN

vocabulary does not make it possible for him to distinguish between

these aspects of a Trinitarian person. This divine component unites
with a concrete human subsistens. Gilbert insists on this latter point
in order to emphasize that it was the historical man Jesus Who was
involved. And so, Gilbert says that the Word united with homo, the
concrete noun standing for this concrete subsistens, in contrast with
the humanitas, the abstract noun standing for his subsistentia. There
is, to be sure, a problem here, in that Gilbert's language, and his
metaphysics, weaken the connection between the human Christ
and other human beings. This tends to circumscribe the impact of
Christ's saving work. In order to rule out Adoptionism, Gilbert
argues that the homo assumed by the Word was not a subsistent
man already in existence. Rather, He took on the body and soul of a
man, neither of which existed before their union with each other
and their simultaneous union with the Word. Once that union has
taken place, one can call the ingredients that make up the human
Christ a human substance composed of body and soul. While
Gilbert cannot distinguish person from substance in the deity, he
tries vigorously to do so in the case of the man Jesus. What Jesus
contributes to the incarnation are the components of a human
substance. But, while in other human beings, the combination of
body and soul produces a subsistens that is also a person, with Jesus
this is not the case. There is, to be sure, a person in the incarnate
Christ, but it is the divine person of the Word. This divine person
does not change when the incarnation takes place. It remains one
and simple. By definition, for Gilbert, no person can be duplex, so
there cannot be more than one person in the incarnate Christ.
Further, for Gilbert, in the hypostatic union, both the divine and
human natures remain unconfused. Neither assimilates the other,
and no new tertium quid is produced. Thus far, the contemporary
position to which Gilbert comes the closest is the subsistence
theory, but with two important qualifications. For Gilbert, the
person of the incarnate Christ does not become a composite persona
at the time of the incarnation. Rather, Christ retains the same fully
divine persona that He has always had. Secondly, Gilbert's lexicon
permits him to speak of the human contribution to the incarnation
as a substance. It also allows him, confusingly, to speak of the
divine contribution as a substance as well, although, as noted,
without being able to clarify the difference between nature and
person in God. He therefore does not use the language of three
substances in God, divinity, body, and soul. And, while he is firm in
ruling out the idea that there is a human person in the incarnate
Christ, his anthropology makes it difficult to see why the man Jesus
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 407

is not a human person after His body and soul have been united
with each other and with the Word.
As Gilbert summarizes his findings, they take the form of the
dictum non persona personam, nee natura personam, nee natura naturam, sed
persona naturam assumpsit. A person cannot assume a person, since no
person can be duplex. The divine nature does not assume a human
person, and this for two reasons. It was a single member of the
Trinity and not the divine nature as a whole Who was incarnated.
Also, if He assumed a human person, one would be teaching
Adoptionism. A nature does not take on a nature. Here, once again,
the first part of the statement is designed to rule out the idea that
the Godhead as such, and not the Word, was incarnated. The
second part of the statement is designed to reinforce the point that
the Word was joined to a particular human being and not to man-
kind in general. And so, in Gilbert's preferred formula, a divine
person takes on a human nature in the incarnation. This conclu-
sion raises as many problems as it resolves; for, given Gilbert's
terminology, the difference between a human nature and a human
person is all but invisible, or, at any rate, it is inexplicable. Also, it
is hard to see why, if human nature is ruled out in the nee natura
naturam part of the formula, as standing for the human race and not
one historic member of it, the term natura should suddenly acquire
the latter denotation in the persona naturam assumpsit part of the
formula which he supports. Further, in his effort to rule out Adop-
tionism, or any Adoptionist leanings as he may find in contempo-
rary proponents of the assumptus homo theory, Gilbert fails to see that
what he really needs to say is that what the Word assumed is
neither natura nor homo, but the infra-subsistent human body and
soul, as yet not joined.
The early Porretans, particularly the authors of the two sentence
collections written in Paris in the early 1140s, make some notable
modifications in Gilbert's language in the effort to disembarrass his
Christology of it. At the same time, they backpedal with respect to
some of Gilbert's most useful ideas. Avoiding the language of
subsistens and subsistentia, they observe the distinction drawn by the
Greeks and assign substantia in principle to the task of denoting the
divine essence common to the Trinitarian persons. While they
reimport into their discussion of the Trinity the idea that the
Trinitarian persons are one in essence and three in operation, they
proceed to confuse matters by applying substantia both to the divine
unity and to the divine plurality, thereby undermining their ability
to distinguish meaningfully between substance and person in the
deity. They do not have as clearly developed an anthropology as
408 CHAPTER SEVEN

Gilbert but agree with him that man is an integral unit of body and
soul. They also endorse his idea that what the Word took on was
not a man already in existence but the body and soul out of which
man is made, ex quibusfit homo, that once united with the Word, the
human component remained attached to Him, and that neither the
divinity nor the humanity of Christ was changed by their union or
merged to form a tertium quid. They follow as well Gilbert's sum-
mary formula and assent to the principle that a divine person
assumed a human nature in the incarnation.
There are, however, two signal respects in which the early Porre-
tan sentence collectors depart from Gilbert. As to why a person
cannot assume a person, they drop Gilbert's elegant and simple
answer based on the definition of a person as a res per se una and
substitute a less responsive one, the argument that, were it possible
for a person to take on a person, Christ's divinity would have been
diminished in the incarnation. What they seem to have in mind
here is the subsistence theory notion that the incarnate Christ has a
composite persona. They also disagree with themselves, and with
Gilbert, in endorsing the three-substance model of the subsistence
theory along with the gemina substantia of Augustine. Having made
this move, they find themselves hard pressed to explain in what
sense an unattached human body, or an unattached human soul,
can both be called substances, or why either of them can be called a
substance in its own right after they have been united. One of the
authors calls these substances, indifferently, natures, which is
equally difficult to explain. It is true that Boethius, and assorted
twelfth-century theologians with Platonizing anthropologies, could
define the soul as a substance or as a person. But the Porretans join
Gilbert in rejecting Boethius on this score. Still, in supporting the
idea that a person assumes a nature, they do not clarify whether
they mean by "nature" here these two aspects of the human
constitution viewed one by one, or human nature in its more
general acceptation. At the same time the early Porretans use two
other formulae, describing the hypostatic union as the conjunction
of divinity and humanity and also under the statement that, in the
incarnation, God became man. The first of these seems to support
Gilbert's idea that, in addition to being impartible after they were
joined, these natures were not confused when they were united. On
the other hand, the notion that God became man makes quite
different claims, whether in Gilbertian terms or in ordinary Latin, a
point which the authors ignore.
One did not have to be a supporter of the subsistence theory to
make use of the three-substance or two-substance language found
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 409

in the Porretans. This vocabulary can also be found in a number of

other theologians in the first half of the twelfth century who associ-
ate it with one or more of the other two positions on the hypostatic
union. And, while they do not use substantia, in Gilbert's sense of the
word, with respect either to God or to man, their own theological
terminology in this connection is capable of being equally inconsis-
tent or problematic. A good case in point is Abelard, Gilbert's
major target, who has been linked, and with excellent reason, to the
habitus theory, a theory firmly connected in his own mind with a
Platonizing view of human nature, which he analogizes to the
hypostatic union. Just as he sees the human soul as the essence of
human nature, so he accents the divine over the human natures in
the incarnate Christ.9 Abelard's earliest treatments of the hypostat-
ic union occur in sermons dating from his period as abbot of St.
Gildas in the 1130s. In them, he demonstrates a view of the union
of idioms in the incarnate Christ in which both the divinity and the
humanity of Christ preexist their amalgamation, and the notion
that the human component is accidental. He expresses both of
these ideas in formulating one of his most deplorable analogies.
The incarnate Christ, he states, can be compared with an electrum or
alloy of two metals, in this case gold and silver representing His
divinity and humanity respectively. They are fused in the incarna-
tion, and neither ingredient changes in the process. Nor is a new
tertium quid produced. And, they are partible. The humanity is
separated from the divinity when Christ dies on the cross, just as
the silver is rendered out of the alloy with the application of heat to
the electrum}0
Later in the same period Abelard wrote commentaries on the
Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed in which he compares
the union of idioms in the incarnate Christ with the union of body
and soul in man, a body and soul which are also separable. These

9
The best treatments of Abelard's Christology are Richard E. Weingart, The
Logic of Divine Love: A Cntical Analysis of the Soteriology of Peter Abailard (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 102-03, 119; J. G. Sikes, Peter Abailard (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 167-68; Paul L. Williams, The Moral
Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980),
pp. 105-10. Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A
Study of Gilbert Porreta's Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the
Incarnation during the Period 1130-1180, Acta theologica danica, 15 (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1982), pp. 214-23 accents Abelard's differences from Gilbert and gives a
truncated account. Edward Filene Little, "The Heresies of Peter Abelard," Uni-
versity of Montreal Ph.D. diss., 1969, pp. 231-33, 239-312 thinks that the charge
of Nestorianism made against Abelard was unfounded and merely reflects the
ignorance of his monastic critics.
10
Peter Abelard, Sermo 1,2, PL 178: 385D-386A, 396A.
410 CHAPTER SEVEN

two natures are united—and Abelard uses the same language in

both commentaries—in one person, "a person that is said to be
almost unitary" (persona quippe quasi per se una) and which can be
defined as the individual substance of a rational nature. This
rational substance, in the case of both the incarnate Christ and
human beings, is then joined to something else with which it makes
another substance.11 Abelard comes back to this point in the Theolo-
gia "scholarium", where he also raises, without answering, the ques-
tion of how Christ's substance is different from His person and
whether it is just the human soul, and not the body and soul as
united, that is a substance. Here, he observes that the ingredients
do not change in the union. Nor does the person of Christ, which is
a single, divine persona and now, presumably, entirely and not quasi
simple.12 The one other question Abelard raises and which he has
predictable difficulty in answering given his identification of the
Trinitarian persons with the attributes of power, wisdom, and
goodness, all of which he thinks were involved in the incarnation, is
why it was the Son Who was incarnated rather than the Father or
the Holy Spirit, or all three. 13 More than merely reflecting prob-
lems which opponents of the habitus theory might ascribe to it, as
involving a relationship between divinity and humanity where the
two natures are partible and the humanity is adventitious, Abelard's
account of the hypostatic union reveals difficulties stemming from
his own terminological imprecision, especially with respect to the
terms "substance" and "person," and from the connection between
Christology and other controversial areas of his theology. As for his
followers, they do no better. We find the same equivocal use of
substantia in Hermannus. And Roland of Bologna, agreeing with the
idea that the divine and human natures in the incarnate Christ are
partible and with the idea that the soul of man is the essence of
human nature, argues that, during Christ's three days in the tomb,
His divinity remained united with His soul only.14

11
Peter Abelard, Expositio in symbolum apostolorum; Expositio in symbolum Athanasii,
PL 178: 624A, 631 A.
12
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 3.74-82, ed. Constant J. Mews in Peter
Abelard, Opera theologica, CCCM 11-13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969-87), 13: 531-35.
13
Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana 4.68, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert, CCCM 12:
296.
14
Hermannus, Sententie magistri Petri Abaelardi (Sententie Hermanni), ed. Sandro
Buzzetti, Pubblicazioni délia Facoltà di lettere e filosofia delFUniversità di Mila-
no, 101, sezione a cura di storia di filosofia, 31 (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1983),
p. 109; Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius M. Gietl (Amster-
dam: Editions Rodopi, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1891 ed.]),
pp. 164-65. 172-74, 191. On these figures, see Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy,
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 411

One did not have to be a defender of either the habitus theory or

the subsistence theory to talk, with equally confusing results, about
the incarnate Christ as having three substances, or, for that matter,
to be able to insist, as both Abelard and the Porretans do, that the
humanity and divinity in Christ remained distinct substantially.
The three-substance position is found as well in the school of
Laon.15 And, while a number of masters in this group, espousing
the habitus theory, state that the Word assumed humanity like a
garment {ex vestimento) but without His divine nature increasing or
decreasing thereby,16 the school as a whole is more usually associ-
ated with the assumptus homo theory. This is the language which
William of Champeaux uses, while also insisting that the two
natures unite but without either nature changing or being involved
in a substantial participation in the other. He adds, here making
the point also made by Gilbert and his followers, that once the two
natures were united, they remained united; Christ's divinity stayed
with His body in the tomb as well as accompanying His soul in the
harrowing of Hell.17 Most of all, the school's handling of the in-
carnation is obscured by their insensitivity to the debates on theolog-
ical language that raged in this period and their disinclination
to define any of the key terms they use. They are basically less
interested in questions of this order than with other matters per-
taining to the incarnation. They want to discuss why it was the
second person of the Trinity Who was incarnated, and respond that
the Son is the appropriate person for the job because He is already
a manifestation of the Father.18 They also want to consider why the
incarnation took place at the particular moment in history when it
occurred. To this question they give a response that became stan-
dard in the period. God, they state, waited until men had the
chance to internalize the fact that they could not free themselves
from sin by themselves, whether through the moral law of the Old

pp. 222-28, 235-42, although he errs in thinking that Roland did not regard the
divinity and humanity of Christ as partible. This judgment may result from the
idea that Roland equated Christ's humanity entirely with His human soul. For a
survey of contemporary discussions of the partibility of Christ's divinity and
humanity in the tomb, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 274-88.
15
Sentences of Plausible Authenticity, no. 182, ed. Odon Lottin in Psychologie et morale
aux XIT et XIIIe siècle, vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1940-59), 5: 128.
16
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 343, 346, 349, ed. Lottin in Psych, et morale, 5:
263-64, 265, 266. The quotation is at no. 343, p. 264.
17
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 262-63, 265-66, 268, ed. Lottin in Psych.
et morale, 5: 213, 214-215, 216.
18
Anselm of Laon, Sententie divine pagine, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in Anselms
von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18: 2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1919),
pp. 39-40.
412 CHAPTER SEVEN

Testament or through the natural moral law.19 And, raising one

more question which they leave open and whose implications they
do not notice, they wonder whether the human soul of Christ was
infused into His body at the moment when the body was conceived
or, as the physici teach, at some point later, as is the case with
everyone else.20 Other theologians of the time who take up this
question are more definite, and agree that Christ's body and soul
were created and joined together simultaneously in a miraculous
event, pace the physici.21
Another theologian who adopts the three-substance position, in
the effort to oppose Adoptionism, is the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum. He is an exponent of the assumptus homo theory,22 much more
strictly than Hugh of St. Victor, the master whom he follows in
most other areas of his Christology and whose confusions and
inconsistencies on the hypostatic union he perpetuates. At the same
time, he joins Hugh in commenting on the Mariological dimensions
of the incarnation. Hugh's own handling of this subject is bedeviled
by a lack of clarity.23 In discussing the hypostatic union, Hugh uses
assumptus homo language in stating that Christ, Who was God from
the beginning, also became man, taking on a human body and soul
at the same time. Neither nature was altered in the process. Yet,
Hugh also uses habitus theory language that makes this human

19
Sentences of the School of Loon, no. 283, 5: 232.
20
Deus de cuius prinäpio etfinetacetur, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in "Le recueil des
sentences 'Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur' et son remaniement," RTAM 5
(1933): 267-68. Others who adopt the same argument are Honorius Augusto-
d un ens is, Eluädarium 1.121-24 in L'Eluädarium et les luädaires: Contribution, par
l'histoire d'un texte, à l'histoire des croyances religieuses en France au moyen âge, éd. Yves
Lefèvre (Paris: É. de Boccard, 1954), pp. 383-84; Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis
fidä christianae 1.8.2-3, PL 176: 306C-307D. For the range of views inherited from
ancient science on the ensoulment of embryos available in this period, see John T.
Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and
Canonists, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp.
86-90.
21
Sentences of Plausible Authentiäty, no. 184, 5: 129. See, on the other hand, the
solutions of Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.1.5, PL 176: 381C; Bernhard Geyer, ed.,
Die Sententiae divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertischen Schule 4.3.8, Beiträge,
7:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1909), pp. 90*-91*; Summa sententiarum 1.16, PL 176:
72B-D; F. Anders, Die Christologie des Robert von Melun (Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 1927), pp. xvi-xvii.
22
Summa sent. 1.15-16, PL 176: 70C-72D. The reference to the three-substance
idea is at 1.16, 72B.
23
Good accounts are found in Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp. 193-213;
Everhard Poppenberg, Die Christologie des Hugo von St. Viktor (Herz: Jesu-
Missionshaus Hiltrup, 1937), pp. 48-87; A. Mignon, Les origines de la scolastique et
Hugues de Saint-Victor, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1895), 2: 68-69, although the
latter fails to note that, for Hugh, the divinity of Christ remains attached only to
His human soul during the triduüm.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 413

nature look accidental in the incarnate Christ. He quotes Philip-

pians and Augustine's analysis of habitus and agrees with him that
Christ's humanity can be compared to a garment which a man may
put on (quam vestis ab homine cum induitur).24 Hugh is not clear on
whether he follows the Boethian interpretation of habitus, in which
neither what is taken on nor the person who takes it on is changed,
which he claims he is supporting, or the Augustinian view that the
manhood conforms to the divinity as the garment takes on the
shape of the wearer, which his own treatment of Christ's humanity
would suggest. Hugh is also unclear on whether these components,
once united, are impartable or not. It is not appropriate, he states,
and this against Abelard and other holders of the habitus theory, to
think of the incarnate Christ as a being Who had parts. Yet, in the
three days between His death and resurrection, Christ's divinity,
according to Hugh, remained united only with his human soul, not
his body. Hugh emphasizes the importance of Christ's retention of
a human soul at all times, for soteriological reasons, so that Christ
can be united with all men and extend his saving work to them.25
But here, he seems to forget the point he makes about man's
possession of a body as well as a soul, its necessity in man's
knowledge, and its function as a link between the physical creation
and man's redemption, which he offers in his analysis of human
nature. The single biggest contradiction in Hugh's account sur-
rounds his discussion of persona. He complains at length that there
is too much confusing debate on the definition of this term. Yet, he
offers no real understanding of his own use of it. On the one hand,
he sees persona as the union of body and soul in man, and argues
that there was no such human persona in the incarnate Christ
because His human body and soul were not already joined to each
other before they were united with the Word. He does not succeed
in explaining why they do not form a human person when they do
get joined together in the incarnate Christ, not only with each other
but also with the divine nature. Here, Hugh's inability to differenti-
ate adequately between person and nature in the deity, a problem
which also haunts his Trinitarian theology, takes its toll. On the
other hand, and here Hugh's Platonizing anthropology comes to
the fore, he sees the soul of man alone as his persona, meaning that
there would be a human person in the incarnate Christ from the

24
Hugh of St. Victor, MS. Douai 365, fol. 74v-75r; MS. Douai 366, fol.
102v-102r, ed. Roger Baron in "Textes spirituels inédits de Hugues de Saint-
Victor/' Mélanges de säence religieuse 13 (1956): 168; De sac. 2.1.5, PL 176: 381C.
25
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.1.1, 2.1.12, PL 176: 401B-404C, 412A-413A.
414 CHAPTER SEVEN

moment when He assumed the soul, irrespective of whether He

assumed, or retained His connection with, a body.26
Hugh adds a number of other points to this analysis of the
incarnation that are less confusing. On the question of why the Son
was incarnated and not the Father or the Holy Spirit, he follows the
tradition set forth by the Laon masters, but adds his own twist. It is
true, he observes, that power, wisdom, and goodness are all in-
volved in the incarnation. Further, we cannot say that the other
two persons of the Trinity lacked the ability to take on human flesh.
But, he adds, it was more fitting for the Son to take up this
assignment. If the Father or the Holy Spirit had done so, there
would have been two Sons. Now, the Son already was a Son, with
respect to the Father, from all eternity. He comes to men as a
brother, enabling them to become sons of God as well and co-heirs
of the kingdom of God.27 Another point Hugh develops in his own
way is the Mariology required by the incarnation. He shares the
consensus view, derived from Augustine, and particularly from
Augustine's doctrine of the transmission of original sin by means of
the lust accompanying sexual relations and/or the vitiated seeds
with which such relations must operate, which says that the Virgin
Mary was cleansed of her own original sin at the moment of
Christ's conception. She did not experience lust and she did not
possess vitiated genetic materials. Thus, she did not pass original
sin on to her child. Hugh adds to this a description of conception
itself which looks to be a corruption of the opinion of Galen.
Without citing his source, he states that, in normal human situa-
tions, conception occurs only when the sexual partners unite wil-
lingly, through love, and not just when sexual congress occurs
devoid of love. This account of conception does carry over to the
Virgin Mary, in his estimation. In her case, there was mutual love
between Mary and the Holy Spirit. Also, His work in her enabled
her miraculously to produce the male seed required as well as the
female contribution, out of her own body alone. There was no
original sin in the conception of Christ, therefore, because no
relations between a man and a woman took place.28 This analysis,
consistent with Hugh's treatment of the transmission of original
sin, puts the emphasis on Mary's lack of sexual feelings in the
event.
Despite the conceptual and terminological problems it leaves

26
27
Ibid., 2.1.9, 2.1.11, PL 176: 393D-399B, 401R-412A.
28
Ibid., 2.1.2-4, PL 176: 371D-381D.
Ibid., 2.1.5-7, PL 176: 381C-393B.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 415

unsolved, Hugh of St. Victor's treatment of the incarnation was

surprisingly influential. Aside from his jettisoning of the habitus
theory language and his insistance on three substances as well as
two natures in the incarnate Christ, a point that departs from his
tendency to equate substance and nature when speaking about the
deity, the author of the Summa Sententiarum follows Hugh's lead. He
adds to the confusion on persona by reimporting the Boethian defini-
tion of person as the individual substance of a rational nature into
his analysis of Christ's human nature, even though he had rede-
fined this phrase in his Trinitarian theology. He is aware of the fact
that, if this definition is accepted, one has to grant the incarnate
Christ a human person, whenever His human soul was assumed,
and whether with a body or not. The author sees the problem,
wrestles with it manfully, and fails to solve it. He agrees that
Christ's human body and soul were assumed simultaneously. But,
even if one sees the persona as lying in the union of body and soul,
the theory the author prefers, and even if one argues, against the
Adoptionists, that they were not united with each other before their
union with the Word, the human person still cannot effectively be
eliminated. The author comes no closer than Hugh does to solving
this problem. The root cause, for him as well as for Hugh, is a
vocabulary whose terms he does not clearly define.29 Omitting
Hugh's theory that mutual love is required for conception, the
author follows the rest of his analysis of the conception of Christ,
adding that He was truly sinless although truly consubstantial with
the rest of the human race.30 Yet, despite the reminder that Christ
came to redeem both the body and the soul of man, he endorses
Hugh's position on the union of Christ's human soul alone with His
divinity during the triduüm.31 He also follows Hugh on why it was
the Son Who was incarnated.32
Less full, but equally Victorine, is Robert of Melun.33 He returns
to a positive acceptance of the Boethian definition of person, for the
human Christ, despite his clear-eyed grasp of its inappositeness
when applied to the Trinity. He agrees that Christ's body and soul
29
Summa sent. 1.19, PL 176: 70D-71D.
30
Ibid., 1.16, PL 176: 73A-C.
31
Ibid., 1.19, PL 176: 78D-80B.
ζ Ibid., 1.15, PL 176: 70B.
Raymond-M. Martin, ed. of Robert of Melun, Oeuvres, 4 vols. (Louvain:
Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1932-52), 3 part 2: 55-58 n.; Martin, ed., "Un
texte intéressant de Robert de Melun (Sententiae, libr. II, part 2, cap. cxcvii-
ccxiii)." RHE 28 (1932): 316-17, 320-22; Anders, Die Christologie, pp. xxx-xxxvii,
xliv-lxxxv; A. L. Lilly, "A Christological Controversy of the Twelfth Century,"
Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1938): 225-35.
416 CHAPTER SEVEN

were joined to the Word at the same time, regardless of what the
physici say about human conception. His lack of a clear distinction
between person and substance in God leads him to state, confusing-
ly, that the divine substance is incarnated in the person of the Son.
He argues, also confusingly, that the humanity taken on by the Son
is not a substance or a person, despite the language of Boethius on
person, which he accepts. His effort to mediate between nihilianism
and Adoptionism, predictably, is a failure. He says that the incar-
nate Christ has no parts. Yet, he agrees with Hugh that Christ's
divinity remains united with His soul alone while His body is in the
tomb. Robert adds a question to this topic, whether that body
underwent decay in the tomb or, as with the bodies of some of the
saints, it was preserved from decay miraculously. He can find no
authoritative answer, but is sympathetic to the idea that Christ's
human body suffered no corruption, since it was a more glorious
body than that possessed by any saint.34 He takes the same position
as Hugh on the virgin birth and, like the author of the Summa
Sententiarum, locates the issue in the absence of concupiscence on the
part of the Virgin without speculating on the nature of normal
conception.
The author of the Sententiae divinitatis associates himself with Hugh
of St. Victor on the mode of Christ's conception and on the moment at
which Mary was exempted from concupiscence.35 He also agrees with
Hugh that there were no parts in the incarnate Christ but that He still
was partible, with His divinity remaining joined to His soul alone
while His body lay in the tomb.36 But, this author is distressingly
vague on the actual character of the hypostatic union itself. He
contents himself with quoting the line that is standard in the
accounts of twelfth-century theologians in their discussions of
Christ's human nature more generally, "whatever the Son of God
had by nature, the man had by grace" (Quicquid habuit Filius Dei per
naturam, habuit homo Me per gratiam) ,37 and lets it go at that.
To complete the survey of contemporary opinions which Peter
Lombard had before him, there was the treatment of the incarna-
tion by Robert Pullen. This is an area where he is at his most
self-contradictory, and where the total absence of any definitions of
his terms wreaks the most havoc. Robert omits certain issues which
his contemporaries avidly debated, such as whether Christ's body

34
Martin, "Un texte intéressant," pp. 317-19.
35
Sent. div. 4.5.5, pp. 103*-04*.
36
Ibid., 4.4.1-4. pp. 94*-99*.
37
Ibid., 4.1.5, p. 75*.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 417

and soul preexisted their union with the Word. On the hypostatic
union, he offers a smorgasbord of views without indicating a prefer-
ence. He states that the union is one in which the divinity and
humanity are not confused in substance with each other. There are
two substances, or essences, in the incarnate Christ, bound in a
unity of person. Robert inappositely cites Augustine's gemina sub-
stantia on this point. While he does not clarify the difference be-
tween substance and person in the Word, he asserts that, in the
incarnation, this persona was not composite. Christ had both a
human and a divine will. Consistent with the notion of an integral
union of Christ's two natures, Robert rejects the Victorine view and
agrees with William of Champeaux and the Porretans that Christ's
divinity remained united with both His body and His soul during
the triduüm.38 At the same time. Robert presents as equally viable
the idea that the incarnate Christ had three substances, divinity,
body, and soul. He adds that the Word took on this body and soul
essentially (essentialiter) and not in name only, attacking as heretical
those who disagree. None the less, he is vague on why it was the
Son Who was incarnated. He does not really notice the debate on
this question. All of the persons of the Trinity are ubiquitous, he
observes. As is the case with the creation more generally, They are
all present in the man Jesus as well. We recall, from Robert's
account of the divine ubiquity in his doctrine of God, that he holds
God to be present in the creation essentialiter, a view he maintains
without seeing that it leads down the garden path to pantheism.
With respect to the Word, He is present in the man Jesus personali-
ter. But, Robert never succeeds in explaining the difference between
essence and person, or between substance and person, in the Word.
At some points, he treats Christ's divine persona as identical with
the divine substance and essence. At other times, however, he
treats the persona as the mode by which Christ's human body and
soul were united with the Word, which would preclude its existence
prior to the moment of the incarnation.39 On this problematic note,
Robert not so much concludes as ends his report on the doctrine of
the incarnation.

The Lombard on the Hypostatic Union

In positioning himself in the contemporary debates on the in-

38
39
Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libri octo 3.16-18, 3.19, PL 186: 782D-788D, 789C.
Ibid., 2.10, 3.15, 3.16-18, 3.20, PL 186: 734B-C, 780D-782B, 782D-788D,
791C-D, 792C-793D.
418 CHAPTER SEVEN

carnation, Peter Lombard dissociates himself pointedly from

theologians who fail to clarify their terms, or who use their termi-
nology inconsistently, whether the language is of their own devising
or is traditional. His own crisp distinctions between substance,
essence, and nature, on the one hand, as denoting the divinity as
such, and person, on the other, as denoting the properties and
relations that distinguish one Trinitarian person from the other two
persons, vis-à-vis each other, provides him with a useful and econom-
ical means of explaining the divine contribution to the hypostatic
union. His stress on human nature as an integral union of body and
soul and his strong disagreement with the Platonizing accounts of
human nature professed in his day help him as well to deal effec-
tively with Christ's humanity, not just in the constitution of Christ,
as incarnated, but in His subsequent behavior. Peter is firm in
rejecting the Boethian definition of person as appropriate either for
divine or human persons. He is also unhesitating in his rejection of
the three-substance analysis of the hypostatic union, since it con-
flicts with his understanding of human beings as substances whose
ingredients have to be seen metaphysically as infrasubstantial.
Likewise, and even though he had earlier subscribed to this doc-
trine as well, he dismisses Augustine's gemina substantia doctrine
because he sees it as standing for a conflation or combination of two
kinds of person in Christ, which he sees as utterly unacceptable.
In arriving at a positive position on all of these matters, and at a
statement about what he thinks the incarnation is, as well as what
it is not, Peter was inspired by Gilbert of Poitiers and the Porretans,
both positively and negatively. Negatively, he finds Gilbert's lex-
icon obstructive; and he also finds some of the language which his
earliest disciples substitute for it unclear. Positively, he agrees with
many of Gilbert's specific Christological ideas, and disagrees with
the early Porretans when they depart from their master. On the
hypostatic union, Gilbert and the Porretans serve as his principal
stimulus. On other matters relating to the incarnation, he takes his
cue largely from Hugh of St. Victor, whether directly or indirectly.
Sometimes he agrees with the Victorine position, restating it while
adding his own elaborations on it. At other times, he takes sharp
exception to it. In relation to all the theologians of his time, Peter's
approach to Christology stands out for his frequent appeal to John
Damascene. This is as true in this area of his theology as it is true of
his treatment of the Trinity. From Damascene Peter draws three
principal doctrines. One has to do with Christ's characteristic
moral stance toward God the Father, and it will be taken up in the
second section of this chapter. A second has to do with the so-
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 419

teriological reasons for the incarnation, which certainly afiects the

way in which Peter views the hypostatic union. The third is
Damascene's doctrine of enhypostasis, which likewise is central to
Peter's understanding of that union, in combination with what he
derives from the Porretans.40
Peter begins his account with the question of why the Son was
incarnated and not the Father or the Holy Spirit. His treatment of
this issue is Victorine, most clearly resembling that of the Summa
sententiarum, although he adds his own touch. Since Christ is the
wisdom of God, he observes, thereby pointing ahead to an impor-
tant aspect of the doctrine of the atonement which he plans to
discuss later in Book 3 of the Sentences, it is appropriate that He be
sent to enlighten fallen man. From the very beginning, we see Peter
framing the doctrine of the incarnation in soteriological terms, as
Damascene had suggested to him. The Lombard then adds that it
was also more suitable to send the Trinitarian person Who is
Himself engendered than the Father, Who is a nullo. To be sure, the
Holy Spirit is sent as well, and, indeed, Peter has much to say
about His missions elsewhere in the Sentences. In explaining why the
Holy Spirit was not incarnated, he follows Hugh's argument that,
since the Word is already a Son, it is more suitable for Him to be
the Trinitarian person Who extends to mankind the capacity to
become children of God.41 He also endorses the point made by the
author of the Summa sententiarum that the Father and the Holy Spirit
are in no sense incapable of incarnation. Since God is omnipotent,
this would have been possible. Without invoking the power, wis-
dom, and goodness language of Hugh, which, we recall, Hugh had
applied inconsistently to the divine nature and to the Trinitarian
persons as persons, Peter contents himself with reminding the
reader that, since the work of the Trinity is one work, and since the
Son is the one sent, the divinity He joins with humanity is the single
divinity inhering equally in all the Trinitarian persons. This com-
mon divine action, however, can be delegated; redemption is dele-
gated to the Son just as the task of incarnating Him is delegated to
the Holy Spirit.42
Moving next to the issue of what Christ took on in the incarna-
tion, Peter reveals his sensitivity to the problems surrounding the
abstract and concrete nouns raised by Gilbert of Poitiers. We recall

40
Excellent background here is supplied by Keetje Rozemond, La christologie de
Saint Jean Damascene (Ettal: Buch-Kunstverlag, 1959), ch. 1-2.
41
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. I . e . 1,2: 24-26.
42
Ibid., c. 2-c. 3, d. 4, 2: 26-27, 37-41.
420 CHAPTER SEVEN

that Gilbert has insisted on the point that the Word took on homo, to
designate a human nature at the concrete level of subsistens where it
could be modified by accidents. Homo, in this context, also desig-
nates for Gilbert a specific, historical human being, the man Jesus.
Peter appreciates this point, and also its problems. His own claim is
that the Word took on both homo and humanitas vel humana natura.
The point he wants to establish by this formulation is a double one.
In the first place, the noun "man," as the grammarians point out,
and as the early Porretans had suggested, is itself capable of refer-
ring to an individual human being and to mankind in general. The
second of these acceptations is, of course, also indicated by the
terms humanity and human nature. Peter wants thereby to accent
both the historicity of Christ's incarnation in the man Jesus and
also the consubstantiality of that man with the rest of the human
race. And, just as substance and nature refer to the same aspect of
divinity, so human nature can be called a substance. Peter stresses
that all features of human nature, that is, body and soul, and the
capacity of both to be modified by accidents, are involved here.
And his reason, which he defends more consistently than the Vic-
torines, is anchored by a citation from Damascene: "For what is
not assumable is not curable" (Quod enim inassumptibile est, incurabile
est). Christ must have a fully human body and a fully human soul in
order to redeem both body and soul. And, agreeing with Gilbert,
the Porretans, William of Champeaux, and Robert Pullen here, he
holds that the union of Christ's human nature with His divine
nature was integral, and permanent, once it was achieved.43
Peter goes into more detail than do many masters of the day in
describing the manner in which this union occurred. Once again,
his reading of Damascene gives him a fuller range of options for
understanding this event. God the Son took on a body and a soul,
he states, "but the body through the mediation of the soul" (sed
carnem mediante anima). Damascene is the authority He cites for the
idea that a material entity, such as the human body of Christ, could
not with congruity unite with a purely spiritual entity, such as the
deity, without the mediation of an entity, such as the human soul of
Christ, which shares both a spiritual nature with the deity and the
capacity to unite intimately with the body. Here, Peter takes excep-
tion to the scenario that Augustine had developed for the incarna-
tion, in which Christ takes on a human soul, and then the body
through the soul, in supporting the contemporary anti-Adoptionist

43
Ibid., d. 2. c. 1.1-4, 2: 27-29. The quotation is at c. 1.4, p. 29.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 421

position that the body and soul were created and assumed by
Christ in the same instant, in a manner departing from the
embryology of the physici.**
In line with the anti-traducianist view that parents engender the
bodies of their children while God creates their souls, Peter next
turns to the virgin birth of Christ. Here, he goes beyond the views
of the school of Laon and of Hugh of St. Victor, as well as his own
earlier position as expressed in his sermons, where he states that
Mary was exempted from the capacity to feel carnal concupiscence,
as a special dispensation of the Holy Spirit, at the moment of
Christ's conception. It was not merely her virginity that was re-
tained ante partum, in partu, and post partum in this respect. In the
Sentences, Peter amplifies on this doctrine in two ways. First, he
maintains that Mary's exemption from the effects of original sin
occurred not at the moment of Christ's conception but before that
moment. In his view, the Holy Spirit prepared Mary for Christ's
conception by coming to her beforehand, cleansing her both of
original sin and its consequences, including the. inclination to sin
(Mariam quoque totam Spiritus Sanctus in earn praeveniens a peccato prorsus
purgavit, et afomite peccati etiam liberavit) ,45 Thus, for Peter, there was
a certain amount of time prior to the incarnation when Mary was
unique among human beings, in gaining, ahead of time, what
would later be available to mankind in baptism. But, in being freed
from the Jomes peccati as well, she enjoys a privilege that no one else
is granted except the human Christ. Peter does not state how far
ahead of time this dispensation was granted. But it is clear that, in
comparison with other contemporary masters, even the Victorines,
who thought deeply and wrote extensively on Mariology, he has
extended the range of possible speculation on Mary's moral condi-
tion prior to the annunciation. Peter's amplification of this topic
has another dimension as well, a rationale that accounts for his
development of it in the first place. As we have seen above, in his
treatment of the transmission of original sin, Peter takes a harder
line than some of his contemporaries, in combining the vitiated
seeds theory with the notion that the sexual feelings of the parents
are the vehicle of original sin. Now, if one views the vehicle as the
sexual feelings, it is clear why Mary would have to have been

44
Ibid., c. 2.1-3, d. 3. c. 3.2-3, 2: 29-31; 36-37. On this issue, see Landgraf,
Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 150-71.
ß
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 3. c. 1.2-c. 3, 2: 32-35. The quotation is at c. 1.2, p.
32. For Peter's earlier position, see Sermo 12, 55, PL 171: 395D, 608A, Sermo de
adventu Domini, ed. Damien Van den Eynde in "Deux sermons inédits de Pierre
Lombard," in Misc. Lomb., p. 76.
422 CHAPTER SEVEN

released from this consequence of original sin at the moment of

Christ's conception. But, if one adheres to the vitiated seeds theory,
then presumably some back-up time would be required to enable
Mary to produce genetic materials, under her new dispensation,
that would be as uncorrupted as those of the prelapsarian parents.
The line of argument developed by the Lombard on this issue
reminds us forcibly of the fact that Mariology in the twelfth century
was fueled not only by the new winds of devotion blowing through
western Christendom at this time but also by technical speculations
in dogmatic theology.
Stressing the importance of the Virgin Mary's exemptions, because
they are required in her engendering a human Christ free from
original sin and its effects, but otherwise the same, physically, as other
mortals, and rejecting Robert Pullen's idea that the presence of the
Word in the Virgin's womb was just another instance of the divine
ubiquity,46 Peter moves on to the far more controversial issue of the
coinherence of divinity and humanity in the incarnate Christ. Peter
formulates this whole issue in Porretan terms, and agrees with much
of the substance of Porretan teaching. The Word having assumed a
human body and soul at the same time, in union with His divine
person, Peter observes, it remains to ask whether persona personam, vel
natura naturam, vel persona naturam, vel natura naturam assumpserit. He
agrees with Gilbert of Poitiers that a nature cannot take on a person in
the incarnation since there is no human person in Christ. To admit
that He had a human person would be to teach Adoptionism. For the
same reason, a person cannot take on a person in the incarnation.
In addition to sharing Gilbert's anti-Adoptionist agenda, Peter
agrees with him that no person can be mixed or duplex, although
he does not advert to the specific Porretan definition of a person as
a res per se una. It is also clear to Peter that Gilbert is correct in
arguing that a person takes on a nature in the incarnation. As we
will see shortly, what he accomplishes here is to unhinge these
terms from their association with subsistens and subsistentia, which
had made it so hard for Gilbert to show that a person is different
from a nature both in God and in man. This step will simplify
Peter's handling of this Porretan argument considerably.
Where Peter disagrees with Gilbert is on the question of whether a
nature takes on a nature in the incarnation. Gilbert's objections to the
affirmative on that point had been twofold. If a nature takes on a
nature, he held, then it would not be possible to explain why it was the

46
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 3. c. 3.1, c. 3.5, 2: 35-36, 37.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 423

Son, and not the deity in general, Who was incarnated. At the same
time, it would deny the individuality and historicity of the incarnation
of the Word in the man Jesus. In addition to citing a number of early
church councils on this subject, which Gilbert had ignored, Peter
tackles the first objection by recalling his own analysis of how terms
denoting the perfections of the deity as such can be applied with
propriety to the Trinitarian persons, an analysis which he develops in
Book 1 of the Sentences, There, he had observed that this language is
acceptable when one is referring to the divine essence which the
Trinitarian persons share equally. It is in this sense that Christ's
divinitas or divine nature was brought by Him into the incarnation,
just as the humanitas which He brought into it was not different from
that of His mother. At the same time, as in making the point above
that the Word was united both with homo and with humanitas or humana
natura, Peter wishes to stress here the consubstantiality of Christ with
other human beings, in that they all possess a human nature that is a
combination of body and soul. Once again yoking nature to the
hylemorphic unit that man is, Peter concludes that we must say both
that the person of the Son assumed human nature, and that the divine
and human natures were united in the Son (dicentes et personam Filii
assumpsisse naturam humanam, et naturam divinam humanae naturae in Filii
unitam). When we say that the incarnation took place in the person
of the Son, we are also saying that the divine nature He shares with
the Father and the Holy Spirit was acting in the hypostasis of the
Son. Peter cites Damascene here to support this analysis. As for the
biblical statement that the Word became flesh, Peter does not think
it can be read literally, as if to signify the convertibility of one
nature into another. Rather, what it means is that the Word
assumed human nature, that is, a human body and a human soul,
but not a human persona (hominis naturam, scilicet carnem et animam
assumpsit, sed non personam hominis).*1
This brings Peter to the task of explaining how an individual who
is fully man can lack a human persona, a reef on which so many
contemporary theologians foundered, especially if they held the
Boethian definition of a human person as the individual substance
of a rational nature. It is here that Peter's debt to Gilbert's Chris-
tology is perhaps the heaviest. He endorses the point that there was
no preexisting human person in the incarnate Christ because His
body and soul had not yet been joined to each other prior to the
incarnation. What the Word took on, thus, was not a human
47
Ibid., d. 5. c. 1.1-c. 2.1, 2: 41-46. The the quotations are at c. 1.10, p. 45, and
c. 2.1, p. 46, respectively.
424 CHAPTER SEVEN

person but the human components, body and soul, out of which a
human nature would arise when they were joined to each other
and, simultaneously, to the Word. Adding to this Gilbert's idea
that no person can be duplex, and that no divine person can be
composite, he observes that there was only one person in the
incarnate Christ, His simple, eternal, divine person, which was not
altered in its constitution when it accepted a human body and soul.
Here, he notes, the Boethian definition of person must simply be
jettisoned. It reduces the human being to his soul; and it would be
descriptive only of beings like angels, who have a spiritual nature
only. It also confuses substance and person. For Peter, the incar-
nate Christ can have a fully human nature without having a human
persona. The lack of a human persona does not compromise the full
"humanity of Christ, since, in His humanity, He is a single, unique
individual and, in possessing a human body and soul, He possesses
all the faculties of a man. Once again warning that, if you look for a
human person as what Christ assumed, you are succumbing to
Adoptionism, he concludes by saying that, if you ask whether the
manhood of Christ is a human person, the answer is "no." But if
you ask whether the manhood of Christ is a human nature, the
answer is "yes."48 Thus, in responding to the question which was to
engender such debate in the sequel, "whether Christ, insofar as He
was a man, was a person, or, likewise, if He was anything" (utrum
Christus secundum quod homo sit persona vel etiam sit aliquid), Peter points
out that it is only the proponents of the Boethian definition of
persona, who conflate person and substance in the human Christ,
who are constrained to answer that one has denied to Christ a
human substance if one denies to Him a human person. It is they
who are forced to make of His humanity a non-aliquid. According to
his own solution, on the other hand, this answer is not required. We
distinguish between person and substance in the human Christ, he
observes. Thus, in stating that He did not have a human person, we
are in no sense asserting that, as a man, He was not aliquid. For He
was aliquid: aliquid natura, an individual made up of body and soul.49

48
Ibid., c. 3.1-4, 2: 47-48.
49
Ibid., d. 10. c. 1, 2: 72-74: This point is confirmed literally by the Lombard's
students Peter Comestor and Odo of Ourscamp. Comestor is cited from an
unpublished manuscript reporting his views by Ignatius C. Brady, "Peter Man-
ducator and the Oral Teachings of Peter Lombard," Antonianum 41 (1966): 473.
Odo is cited, from two unpublished manuscripts of his Quaestiones, by Artur
Michael Landgraf, "Der Magister Petrus episcopus," RTAM 8 (1936): 201 n. 14;
"Der Einfluss des mündlichen Unterrichts auf theologische Werke der Frühscho-
lastik," Collectanea Franciscana 23 (1953): 286.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 425

Among other things, it is precisely to obviate the possibility of

Christological nihilianism no less than Adoptionism that Peter
joins Gilbert of Poitiers in rejecting Boethius. But he is able to
show, much more convincingly than Gilbert, why adherents of
Boethius's definition of persona are the theologians most vulnerable
to the charge of Christological nihilianism.
It is with these clarification of terminology in place and it is with
the Ghristology he largely shares with Gilbert in hand that Peter
turns to the analysis of the three opinions on the hypostatic union.
We have introduced them briefly above. It will now become clear
that, underlying the objections that the Lombard has to all of them
is the view that they either obscure the distinction between the
divine and human natures of Christ, as is true for him of the
assumptus homo and subsistence theories, or that they deemphasize
the humanity of Christ, as is the case for him of both the assumptus
homo and the habitus theories. As Peter sees it, the assumptus homo
theory and the subsistence theory both involve a blurring of the two
natures. Proponents of the first theory, in analogizing the union of
the two natures in Christ with the union of the body and soul in
man, produce thereby an human individual who has, as well, the
divine knowledge and power. Hence, they divinize the humanity of
Christ even while claiming that the two natures remain distinct in
Him. In effect, however, a new tertium quid has been produced,
according to the assumptus homo theory, that draws upon both the
divine and human natures of Christ.
The problem that Peter sees with the subsistence theory is simi-
lar, although it lies in the composite persona given to the incarnate
Christ by defenders of this position. This kind of persona cannot
truly be equated with the divine person which the Word has
possessed from all eternity. It must, now, contain some human
aspects, meaning that the divinity of Christ's persona has been
diluted in the incarnation. How an immutable being, such as a
divine person, can be altered in any way is itself deeply problemat-
ic. Equally so is the fact that, as a composite person, the Word
incarnate introduces a fourth member into the Trinity. This is why
the Augustinian language on the person of Christ as a gemina
substantia must be rejected. At the same time, the three-substance
language used by proponents of this position gives a false, and
incomprehensible, understanding of substantia as it applies to
Christ's human nature. True, a human being is a composite of
body and soul. But, once they have been joined, they make a single
substance. The infrasubstantial components that go to make up a
human being cannot be called substances individually, either be-
426 CHAPTER SEVEN

fore or after they have been joined together. Nor can the union of
divine and human natures in the incarnation be understood as the
union of parts that together make up a whole. No person is made
up of parts. A fortiori, this is true of the Word, Who was "whole"
from all eternity and did not require the incarnation for His com-
pletion. Altogether, Peter finds the subsistence theory more rife
with difficulties, both conceptual and terminological, than he finds
the other two theories.
The habitus theory, in his estimation, emphasizes the divinity of
Christ at the expense of His humanity, but in a manner different
from the assumptus homo theory. Where the assumptus homo theory
threatens to absorb Christ's humanity into His divinity, the habitus
theory threatens to treat Christ's humanity as accidental, and as
not integral to the hypostatic union. The two natures are regarded
as partible once joined, by defenders of this theory. At the same
time, if one accepts the Augustinian interpretation of habitus, which
Peter presents in full, the human nature of Christ does not retain its
integrity. While, in the case of the assumptus homo theory, the div-
inization of the humanity of Christ is seen as more substantial,
and in the habitus theory, it is seen as more spatial and adventitious,
in both cases the human Christ becomes more than human. Both of
these theories, in Peter's eyes, are hence vulnerable to the charge of
Christological nihilianism, the assumptus homo theory by absorbing
the humanity of Christ and changing it into something else, and the
habitus theory by making it hard to see how the Word truly became
man, or truly took on human nature, in such a way that the two
natures were, and remained, truly united while at the same time
each nature retained its own characteristics.50
What Peter thinks he can say positively here is that the incarnate
Word, as a divine person, is not made lower than the Father by the
fact that a human nature was predestined to be joined to Him at a
particular point in time. Likewise, we cannot say that, in the
incarnation, Christ's human nature was deified, a problem which,
in one form or another, he sees in all three opinions. Both natures,
he insists, retain their own character in the incarnation. 51 And so,
notwithstanding the detailed support of the authorities which, as
Peter shows, can be brought forward to bolster each of these
positions, he recommends none of them. As he puts it at the
conclusion of this segment of Book 3 of the Sentences: "What has
been said above is not sufficient for the determination of this
50
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 6. c. 2.1-d. 7. c. 3.3, 2: 50-66.
51
Ibid, d. 7. c. 2, 2: 65.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 427

question" (Quod predicta non suffidunt ad cognoscendam hanc quaes-

tionem). Advising that the matter should not be foreclosed pre-
maturely, or with prejudice, he urges further research and
reflection.52

The Debates over the Lombard's Christology

The vast majority of modern commentators have been able to

take Peter at his word here, accepting the fact that he was not a
Ghristological nihilianist and that he was not a proponent of the
habitus theory or, indeed, of any of the three opinions which he
outlines and criticizes.53 There are, however, a few who make the
mistake of believing the twelfth-century opponents of the Lombard
who erroneously imputed these views to him.54 The most typical
claim of contemporaries who misconstrued the Lombard's Chris-
tology was to associate him with the habitus theory, seen, in turn, as
the theory of the hypostatic union that leads most easily to nihilian-
ism. The earliest of these critics, Gerhoch of Reichersberg, on the
other hand, sometimes treats him as an adherent of the habitus
theory55 and sometimes as an Adoptionist.56 Gerhoch's criticism

52
Ibid, c. 3, 2: 66.
53
An excellent survey of these debates is provided by Joseph de Ghellinck, Le
mouvement théologique du XII' siècle, 2nd ed. (Bruges: De Tempel, 1948), pp. 250-76;
L'Essor de la littérature latine au XIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Brussels: L'Édition Universelle,
1946), 1: 73-76; Ludwig Hödl, "Logische Übungen zum christologischen Satz in
der frühscholastischen Theologie des 12. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift für Kirchenge-
schichte 89 (1978): 291-94, 296-300, 302; Jean Longère, Oeuvres oratoires des maîtres
parisiens au ΧΙΓ siècle: Etude historique et doctrinale, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustini-
ennes, 1975), 1: 83-85; Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 116-37; P. Glorieux,
"L'orthodoxie de III Sent. d. 6, 7 et 10," in Mise. Lomh., pp. 137-47; Mignon, Les
origines, 2: 53-56; Horacio Santiago-Otero, El conocimiento de Cristo en cuanto nombre
en la teologia de la primera mitad del siglo XII (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra,
S.A., 1970), pp. 125-26 n. 1; "El 'nihilianismo cristoiogico' y las tres opiniones,"
Burgense 10 (1969): 431-43; Robert F. Studeny, John of Cornwall, an Opponent of
Nihilianism: À Study in the Christological Controversies of the Twelfth Century (Vienna: St.
Gabriel's Mission Press, 1939), pp. 104—16, 145.
54
Jean Châtillon, "Achard de Saint-Victor et les controverses christologiques
du XII e siècle," in Mélanges offerts au R. P. Ferdinand Cavallera (Toulouse: Biblio-
thèque de l'Institut Catholique, 1948), pp. 117-37; "Latran III et l'enseignement
christologique de Pierre Lombard," in Le troisième concile de Latran (1179): Sa place
dans l'histoire, éd. Jean Longère (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1982), pp. 79-81;
Philip S. Moore and Marthe Dulong, intro, to their ed. of Peter of Poitiers,
Sententiae, Bk. 1 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), pp. xlii, xliv;
Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp. 243-64, 279-361.
55
Gerhoch of Reichers berg, De gloria et honore Filii hominis 7.3, PL 194: 1097B.
56
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, Libellus de ordine donorum Sancti Spiritus in Opera
inedita, ed. Damien and Odulph Van den Eynde, Angelinus Rijmensdael, and
Peter Classen, 2 vols, in 3 (Rome: Antonianum, 1955-56), 1:71.
428 CHAPTER SEVEN

began in the 1140s, and reflects a familiarity with the earlier works
of the Lombard and not the most recent version of the Sentences, in
which Peter was able to profit from the ideas of John Damascene.
Gerhoch's concern is less to enter into the debates on dogmatic
theology than to defend the assumptus homo theory, complete with a
divinized human Christ, in a battle with the Greek church in which
he yokes that theory to the argument that the human Christ de-
serves latria and not just dulia. This was a point on which the
Lombard changed the position he had articulated early in his
career in his Psalms commentary, under the influence of Damas-
cene. In the Sentences he actually endorses the latria position. This
change was unknown to Gerhoch, who had failed to keep up with
the Lombard's more recent teachings. Gerhoch thus keeps belabor-
ing the point, well on into the mid-1160s, that Peter is wrong on
dulia and latria here, in treatises and letters addressed to his bishop
and to the pope.57 The bishop in question, Eberhard of Bamberg,
was clearly better informed than Gerhoch and points out to him
that,he has mistaken what Peter actually says in the Sentences.5*
Following this well-documented reproof, Gerhoch's attacks on the
Lombard subsided.
Gerhoch's letters were written in 1164, well after the final edition
of the Sentences had become available in Germany. Conceivably, it
was Gerhoch's preoccupation with the impact of the Gregorian
reform movement in Germany and his own east-west polemics that
account for his failure to inform himself about what was up-to-date
in Parisian scholasticism. But no such extenuating circumstances
excuse the garbling of the Lombard's Christology on the part of
John of Cornwall and Walter of St. Victor, thinkers whose work
and study in Paris put them in a position to have understood what
Peter had actually taught.
John of Cornwall had himself been a student of the Lombard's in
the 1150s, before Peter became bishop of Paris and gave up

57
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, De gloria 7.2-3, 19.2, PL 194: 1097A-1111A,
1143C-1144A; Utrum Christus homo sitfilius dei naturalis et deus, ed. Van den Eynde et
al., 1: 284-87; Epistola 15, to Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, PL 194: 547A-548C;
Epistola 17, to Pope Alexander III, PL 194: 565B-566A. Good treatments can be
found in Damien Van den Eynde, "De nouveau sur deux maîtres lombards
contemporains du Maître des Sentences," Pier Lombardo 1 (1955): 6-7; L'Oeuvre
littéraire de Géroch de Reichersberg (Rome: Antonianum, 1957), pp. 6, 49-66, 78-85,
107, 157-63, 265, 274; Peter Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg: Eine Biographie
(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1960), pp. 89-97, 162-73, 248-72,
318-19.
58
Eberhard of Bamberg, Epistola 16, to Gerhoch of Reichersberg, PL 193;
555B-556C, 561D-564A. On Eberhard, see Van den Eynde, L'Oeuvre, pp. 279-80.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 429

teaching. The early 1170s find John back in his native England,
where he taught theology, perhaps at Oxford. He composed his
Eulogium, in which he accuses Peter of Christological nihilianism, in
two redactions between 1177 and 1179. The first of these was
written with an eye to the Third Lateran council, convened by Pope
Alexander III in the latter year.59 In this work, John associates
nihilianism with the habitus theory. He was aware of the fact that
Alexander was interested in repressing nihilianism, as the matter
had come up at a synod convened by the pope at Tours in 1163,
although no particular theologians were named in this connection.
It was no secret that the pope planned to put the matter on the
agenda of Lateran III. He had suggested as much in a letter
written to William of the White Hands, archbishop of Sens, in
1170. At the Lateran council itself, however, no formal determina-
tion concerning the views, or alleged views, of Peter Lombard was
made. John then drafted the second version of the Eulogium, after
Lateran III had risen, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Alexander
not to let the matter drop.
Despite the fact that he had frequented the Lombard's lecture-
room in the 1150s and was thus in a position to know that he had
abandoned the support which he had given to the habitus theory in
his Philippians gloss, John gives an account of the habitus doctrine
and of Peter's own position that leave much to be desired from the
standpoint of accuracy. John has been characterized by his editor,
Nikolaus M. Häring, as conscientious but as a thinker who did not
understand the problems surrounding Boethius's polyvalent use of
the terms substantia, natura, and persona, on which, as we have seen,
so much of the debate centered. Consequently, John's description
and critique of the positions he presents "frequently results in a fog
of 'double talk'."60 As John outlines the three opinions, the sub-
sistence theory, which he attributes to Gilbert of Poitiers, and the
habitus theory, which he attributes to Abelard, are the sources for
the Christological nihilianism which he attributes to Peter. In

59
For John of Cornwall's biography and the dating on the work, see Nikolaus
M. Häring, ed., "The Eulogium ad Alexandrum Papam tertium of John of Cornwall,"
MS 13 (1951): 254; Eleanor Rathbone, 'John of Cornwall: A Brief Biography,"
RTAM 17 (1950): 46-60; Studeny, John of Cornwall, pp. 1-4. The evidence is
reprised by Châtillon, "Latran III," pp. 79-65. I. S. Robinson, TL· Papacy,
1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), pp. 142-44, offers the shaky opinion that John was commissioned by Pope
Alexander III to prepare a dossier on Peter's Chris tology in preparation for
Lateran III.
60
Häring, "The Eulogium," p. 255.
430 CHAPTER SEVEN

support of this charge, he refers to Maurice of Sully, Peter's succes-

sor as bishop of Paris, and Robert of Melun, who had taught at
Paris two decades earlier, and who had opposed the Lombard.
Robert's works were not available to John; and there is no evidence
to show that Maurice wrote anything except the sermons that made
him a favored preacher at the French royal court.61 The oddest
feature of John's attack is that, although he depends on the Lom-
bard for his reprise of the three opinions, the formula for Christolog-
ical nihilianism which he uses to frame the charge against Peter,
Christus secundum quod homo non est aliquid, does not appear in the
Sentences. This technique of interpolating lines into Peter's work, or
of misreading the lines that are there and that say something
different, along with his appeal to the views of masters whose
writings he had not and could not have read, scarcely inspires
confidence in John's reliability.62
John gets off on the wrong foot at once in his prologue, by conflating
the claim that Christ is not any man (Christus non est aliquis homo) with
the claim that, insofar as He is a man, Christ is not anything (Christus
secundum quod homo non est aliquid).,63 In his summary of the three
positions that follows, he puts an extremely Porretan construction on
the subsistence theory, complete with three substances and a per-
mixed persona, precisely the features of this position which Peter
criticizes, making it extremely difficult to see how John thinks he can
assimilate Peter's teaching to this one. In his account of the habitus
theory, John presents it as saying that Christ's human nature was
apparent, not real, which is not what its proponents taught, according
to the Lombard. John also states that this position excludes the idea
that the Word took on a human body and soul which then, as
combined, had reality as a substance. This latter doctrine was one
that Peter taught, although he took pains to describe the combination
of body and soul in the human Christ as a human nature and not as a
substance. Still, this again makes it difficult to see how the habitus
theory as John gives it can be ascribed to Peter.64 It must be said that
John's attribution of the subsistence theory to Gilbert, as he reports it,
is just as incorrect. For, unlike some of the early Porretans, Gilbert
himself did not adhere to the three-substance view and he stressed the
principle that a persona is a res per se una. But, no doubt strangest of all,

61
C. A. Robson, Mawrice of Sully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1952).
62
Haring, "The Eulogium" pp. 255-56.
63
Ibid., p. 257.
64
John of Cornwall, Eulogium 1, pp. 259-61.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 431

considering the great lengths to which the Lombard went to refute

Abelard as a dogmatic theologian, John states that he inherited the
habitus theory, and with it, nihilianism, from his master, Peter
Abelard (a magistro Petro Abailardo hanc opinionem suam magister Petrus
Lumbardus accepit). John also claims that he had heard the Lombard
expound this view before he became bishop, although he admits,
ingenuously, that Peter advised his hearers that "this was not his
own position but only an opinion" {non esset assertio sua sed opinione
sola). And, he wraps up this decidedly weak case by observing that
he has heard, through heresay evidence, that other masters con-
tinue to endorse Christological nihilianism. He supplies no in-
formation on who these masters may be.65 This is a spectacularly
poor performance for a person who had actually studied with Peter
Lombard, reminding us that even the best of instruction sometimes
falls on stony ground.
The second and final contemporary who sought to tar the Lom-
bard with the brush of Christological nihilianism and to bring the
charge expressly to the attention of Alexander III is a rather
different kettle offish. He is Walter, prior of St. Victor, whose Four
Labyrinths of France, like the first redaction of John's Eulogium, was
written in 1177 or 1178, before the Lateran council, in the effort to
influence its doctrinal outcome. Where John was a scholastic, if not
a very alert one, Walter was an arch-conservative, representing a
St. Victor that had decidedly fallen away from the academic dis-
tinction which it had enjoyed under Hugh and Richard of St.
Victor. The abbey itself was in a parlous state in the 1160s.66 The
abbot, Ernis, had become a tyrant by 1163, setting aside the rule of
the abbey in that year. By 1169 he had stopped consulting the
brethren. He neglected their and his own religious life and did not
even maintain a regular residence at St. Victor. Things had come
to such a pass that in September of 1169, Alexander III ordered a
reform of St. Victor, charging William, archbishop of Sens, and
Odo, abbot of Ourscamp, with carrying it out. The desired results
did not eventuate. The pope again ordered William to spearhead a
reform of the abbey in February of 1172, writing as well to King

65
Ibid., 3, p. 265.
66
This account is based on the excellent contributions of Jean Châtillon, "De
Guillaume de Champeaux à Thomas Gallus: Chronique d'histoire littéraire et
doctrinale de l'école de Saint-Victor," Revue du moyen âge latin 8 (1952): 139-62,
245-72; Saralyn R. Daly, "Peter Comestor: Master of Histories," Speculum 32
(1957): 69-70; Dietrich Lohrmann, "Ernis, abbé de Saint-Victor (1161-1172):
Rapports avec Rome, affaires financières," in L'Abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au
moyen âge, éd. Jean Longère (Paris: Brepols, 1991), pp. 186-93.
432 CHAPTER SEVEN

Louis VII to inform him of the problem. The result was the
resignation of Emis and the election of a new abbot, Guérin, in
1172. Discord, however, continued. Although he had been
banished to a country priory, Ernis returned to Paris and created
both a disturbance and a scandal by robbing the treasury of St.
Victor, seizing funds that had been left there in trust by Eskyl,
archbishop of Lund. Eskyl complained to Maurice, bishop of Paris,
who, with the assistance of William of Sens, managed to get the
property restored to St. Victor. By May of 1173 peace had
apparently returned to the abbey, because when the pope wrote to
St. Victor at that point, he referred to its religious calm.
While this series of conflicts did not force anyone to leave St.
Victor except Ernis, and he appears to have been no loss, it was not
calculated to attract scholars to join the community. After his
installation, Guérin wrote to the pope complaining about the
wretched state of intellectual life at the abbey, compared with the
glory days of the earlier twelfth century. He suggests that Ernis was
to blame for a policy of discouraging the admission of learned men
who could add luster to the school. While this complaint may well
have been a canard aimed at his predecessor, it is certainly true
that, with the death of Richard of St. Victor in 1173, we find the
school of St. Victor increasingly in a state of eclipse. It remained a
center known for its preaching. But it did not produce or draw to it
great works or great thinkers. Under the pretext of remaining loyal
to its past, St. Victor sank into a narrow traditionalism, unrespon-
sive to the intellectual currents of its time. The one Victorine in this
period who tried to keep alive the optimism about human reason,
the intellectual breadth, and the vision of Hugh of St. Victor was
Godfrey, author of the Microcosmus and the Fons philosophiae. He was
the exception who proved the rule. More typical of St. Victor in the
last quarter of the twelfth century was its prior, Walter, known for
his sermons and his pessimistic and hostile outlook on innovation of
any kind. He was the author of the garbled, intemperate, misin-
formed, and largely plagiarized work in which he attacked Peter
Lombard, along with Peter of Poitiers, Gilbert of Poitiers, and
Peter Abelard, as profane innovators who had brought ruination
upon theology in his time. Even Walter's editor cannot repress his
distaste for the man and his work, describing is as a "mauvaise
action et mauvais travail," as ineptly written, inspired by igno-
rance and prejudice, in a style that is "brutale, grossière."67

P. Glorieux, "Mauvaise action et mauvias travail: Le 'Contra quatuor laby-

 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 433

Walter is such a confused writer that, in his introduction, he tells

a tale, meant to criticize the cardinals helping Alexander III to
prepare for the Third Lateran council at a consistory in Rome prior
to that council, which instead redounds to his own discredit.
Alexander, he observes, was considering whether to put Peter
Lombard's alleged Christological nihilianism on the agenda of the
council. But, some of the cardinals, who, in Walter's estimation,
were "not responding rightly" (non recte respondentes), dissuaded him
from doing so. A key figure in shaping their opinion was bishop
Adam of Wales, by whom Walter means Adam of St. Asaph.
According to Walter, Adam spoke up in opposition to the idea that
Peter had taught nihilianism. As Walter reports the event, Adam
said, "Lord pope, I, as a clerk and as a former moniter over his
pupils, will defend the opinions of the master" (Domine papa, ego et
clericus et prepositus olim scholarum eins defendam sententias magistri). He
proceeded to do so, and carried the day, much to Walter's disgust.68
Now, this Adam of St. Asaph has traditionally been identified
as Adam of Balsham, better known as Adam du Petit-Pont, the
distinguished logician who taught in that location for many years
and who would certainly have been well acquainted with the
Lombard.69 But Lorenzo Minio-Paluello has offered a persuasive
corrective to that view. Noting that Adam of Balsham wrote his
major work, the Ars disserendi, in 1132, that he taught John of
Salisbury before 1148, that he became a canon of Notre Dame, and
that in this capacity, he testified against Gilbert of Poitiers at the
consistory of Paris in 1147 and the council of Rheims in 1148, and
that the fragments of some theological quaestiones which he left
indicate his qualifications as a peritus in that connection, Minio-
Paluello also points out that he died before 1159. In any event,
given the fact that the regnal years of Adam of St. Asaph were 1175
to 1181, it is difficult to imagine that the king of England would
have viewed as a likely candidate for the bishopric a man of the age
Adam of Balsham would have been had he still been alive at the
time. In the opinion of Minio-Paluello, the Adam who did actually

rinthos Franciae'," RTAM2X (1954): 179-93. The quotation is at p. 180. Glorieux

repeats this judgment in the intro, to his ed. of the text, "Contra quatuor labynnthos
Franciaer AHDLMA 19 (1952): 192-94.
68
Walter of St. Victor, Contra quatuor labyrinthos, p. 201.
69
See, for example, Glorieux, intro, to his ed., p. 194; Daniel D. McGarry,
intro, to his trans, of John of Salisbury, Metalogicon (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1955), p. 98 n. 181. This opinion is repeated by Robinson, The
Papacy, p. 143.
434 CHAPTER SEVEN

occupy the see of St. Asaph during these years was a Welshman
who had, indeed, studied with Peter Lombard in Paris and who
had become a canon of Notre Dame. This is the Adam to whom
Walter refers in the Four Labyrinth. This same Adam of St. Asaph is
also known to have attended the Third Lateran council.70
While it would no doubt add piquancy to the story if Walter's
Adam of Wales had, in fact, been the famous master with whom
Adam of St. Asaph has been confused, the key point, which Walter
evidently has not grasped, is that the Adam who spoke at the
consistory in Rome was a man fully qualified to give an accurate
and well-informed report of the Lombard's teaching, one better
informed than Walter's own. Adam did so; and the members of the
papal court were intelligent enough to recognize the fact that he
knew whereof he spoke. As for Alexander, he contented himself
with writing to William of the White Hands, now archbishop of
Rheims, adjuring him to be on the lookout for Christological nihi-
lianism within his jurisdiction, but naming no names. At the Later-
an council itself, the detractors of the Lombard behaved in so
obnoxious and so underhanded a manner, not scrupling even to
charge that he had obtained the bishopric of Paris through simony,
that his supporters could ride the wave of revulsion they inspired to
persuade the council fathers to drop the whole matter. It was the
later objections to another aspect of the Lombard's Christology on
the part ofJoachim of Fiore and others at the turn of the thirteenth
century that prompted the reinvestigation of the matter and that
led the fathers of the Fourth Lateran council to open the third book
of Peter's Sentences, which no one in authority had apparently
thought of doing before this time, there to discover that he had
taught Christological nihilianism no more than he had taught that
there was a quaternity in the Trinity. As a result, they dismissed
Joachim's charge, affirmed Peter's orthodoxy by name and de-
clared the case closed.71 And, in 1215, the same year in which the
fathers of Lateran IV arrived at this judgment, the Lombard's
Sentences were mandated as required reading for doctoral candidates
in theology in the statutes legislated by the University of Paris.
But we have anticipated ourselves, and must return to Walter of
St. Victor's argument, if such it may be called. To begin with, he
plagiarizes John of Cornwall almost verbatim in the section of the

70
Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, "The 'Ars disserendi' of Adam of Balsham 'Parvi-
pontanus'," Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954): 116-69.
71
Châtillon, "Latran III," pp. 85-90.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 435

Four Labyrinth where he reprises the three opinions about the

hypostatic union,72 in itself no recommendation. To this he adds his
own lucubrations. Walter treats both the assumpties homo and the
habitus theories as heretical and claims that Peter had espoused
both of them, although he thinks that Peter supported the habitus
theory more strongly.73 He objects to the fact that Peter aired the
problems connected with Boethius's definition of persona as the
individual substance of a rational nature, without noting the fact
that, among other things, Peter's reason for doing so was to avoid
an incarnate Christ with two persons. As Walter sees it, the only
way in which the human Christ can be an aliquid is if He has a
human person. Here, he treats a position to which the Lombard
had objected as one to which he adhered, even though he acknowl-
edges Peter's point that the Word took on a human body and a
human soul, and, therefore, a human nature.74 But, why go on?
Having reviewed and criticized Peter's Christology, to his own
satisfaction at least, Walter moves on to the real source of the
problem as he sees it. Peter, like the other three labyrinths of
France, has gone astray because he is too addicted to the artes. He
has tried to understand transcendent theological mysteries as if
they could be reduced to grammatical and logical rules. He is
sophist, a partisan of frivolous dialectical arguments.75 That
onslaught delivered, Walter adds, as a throwaway line before going
on to the next labyrinth, that Peter also espoused many other
heretical opinions about the Eucharist, which he declines to
relate.76
It would seem that Christological nihilianism, as a teaching of
the Lombard, was, to some extent, a product of the overheated
imaginations of men such as John of Cornwall and Walter of St.
Victor, and a product of the tendency, even on the part of such
members of the literate elite as these men, to rely on word-of-mouth
reports rather than textual evidence. Yet, before leaving this topic,
it is worth noting that it does have some basis, or at least possible
basis, in the teachings of some of the Lombard's followers, notably
Gandulph of Bologna and, even more importantly, Peter of
Poitiers, since the latter held the chair of theology at Notre Dame
from 1167 to 1193, when he became chancellor of the school. While
72
Robert Studeny, "Walter of St. Victor and the 'Apologia de Verbo Incarna-
toV' Gregorianum 18 (1937): 579-85.
73
Walter of St. Victor, Contra quatuor labyrinthos 3.1-2, pp. 246-49.
74
Ibid., 3.3-6, 4, pp. 250-56, 328-30.
75
Ibid., 3.7-8, pp. 256-57.
76
Ibid., 3.11, p. 260.
436 CHAPTER SEVEN

one can no more find the claim that Christ, insofar as He was a
man, was not anything, in the writings of either of these masters
than one can in the Lombard's, it is the case that they accent more
strongly than he does the habitus theory, seen at the time as the
likeliest connecting link with nihilianism, especially if one stresses,
as they do, the accidental character of the manhood of the incar-
nate Christ.77 In this sense there was a real theological basis for the
debate in the 1170s. But it is one that post-dates the Lombard's
teaching and writing by two decades. And, it was a debate that
could scarcely be entered into effectively by thinkers like Walter
and John, who were insensitive to the problems in Boethius's
lexicon that had bedeviled the mid-century discussions, just as they
were unfamiliar with the more integrally Aristotelian language that
informed the treatments of Christology of the mainstream theolo-
gians later in the century. In the sequel, it would be by the ap-
propriation and use of the newly received Aristotle, and not through
the tactics of a John or a Walter, that a consensus could emerge, in the
early thirteenth century. This newly developed consensus was to
make a reformulated version of the subsistence theory, and one
embodying many of the features of the doctrine of the hypostatic
union that the Lombard did endorse, the theory of choice.78
The position held by a mid-twelfth-century theologian on the
hypostatic union was important not only in and of itself but also for
its influence on his other Christological teachings. There are two
major indices of this fact. The first can be found in contemporary
treatments of the question of whether Christ's human and divine
natures, once joined, were partible and, as a corollary of that
question, whether Christ's divinity remained attached to His
humanity during the three days when His body lay in the tomb,
separated from His soul, between His death and His resurrection.
As we have seen above, it was not only proponents of the habitus
theory but also thinkers associated with the assumptus homo theory
who felt perfectly comfortable with the idea that Christ's divinity
could not remain attached to His human body in the tomb. They
accented, instead, the idea that His divinity remained attached to
His soul alone during the triduüm.79 This position reflects, as well,

77
Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae 4.10, PL 211: 1176R-C. On this point, see Moore
and Dulong, intro, to their ed. of Peter's Sentences, Bk. 1, pp. xliii-xliv; Nielsen,
Theology and Philosophy, pp. 279-361.
78
This development has been traced magisterially by Principe, William of
Auxerre's Theology of the Hypostatic Union.
79
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 273-318, although his survey omits the
Porretans.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 437

the Platonizing anthropologies found in the Abelardian and Victor-

ine traditions alike. Among theologians prior to Peter Lombard,
the only ones to insist forcibly on the point that, once Christ's
divinity and humanity were united, they remained united, were
William of Champeaux, Gilbert of Poitiers and the early Porretans,
and Robert Pullen. Peter certainly draws on their arguments in
making his own case against what he calls the "desertion of divin-
ity" in the incarnate Christ during the triduüm. At the same time,
since he himself endorses the idea that Christ's divinity is united to
His body through the mediation of His soul, he needs to develop a
more finely nuanced defense of the claim that this desertion did not
occur either in His soul or in His body.
Acknowledging that the soul of Christ, which mediates the
hypostatic union, was indeed separated from His body in the tomb,
Peter argues that, with respect to His body, Christ's divinity sub-
tracted its protection, but did not dissolve their union, so that His
dead body did not exhibit the effects of Christ's divine power
during the triduüm {separavit se divinitas quia subtraxit protectionem, sed
non solvit unionem . . . Mortuus est Christus divinitate recedente, id est
ejffectum potentiae defendendo non exhibente) .80 Peter then turns to attack
those who say that Christ's divinity was not united to His body in
the tomb, although without the manifestation of His divine power
in it, as being forced to accept the conclusion that Christ thus
underwent incarnation twice, once when He took on human nature
from the Virgin Mary, and then when He took on a glorified human
nature in the resurrection. This conclusion is not only pernicious
but perfidious, since it casts doubt on the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion. Peter himself concludes that, although Christ truly died as a
man, His divinity was never divided from His humanity either in
body or soul.81 And, introducing a distinction derived from Damas-
cene, he concludes further that Christ's ubiquity, during the tri-
duüm, depends on whether He is seen as being where He is totus or
totum. Totus refers to Christ's divinity as a member of the Trinity, in
which sense He is fully God and shares the divine ubiquity in the
same way as the Father or the Holy Spirit. But, God is not all
Christ is; He is also fully man. We cannot ascribe ubiquity to
Christ's human nature, although He possesses fully both the divine
and the human natures that He has.82

Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 21. c. 1.4, 2: 131.

Ibid., c. 1.5-c. 2, 2: 132-35.
Ibid., d. 22. c. 2-c. 4, 2: 137-40.
438 CHAPTER SEVEN

The Lombard is quite consistent in defending this consequence

of the doctrine that Christ's divinity and humanity were integrally
united, that the union was not accidental, or one leading either to
the lowering of His divinity or the divinization of His humanity. At
the same time, in turning to the range of issues associated with
Christ's human nature, the second test case for a theologian's
application of his position on the hypostatic union, it must be said
that he does not carry this principle to its ultimate logical conclu-
sions. To be sure, Peter offers a vigorous and forthright defense of
the idea that, as a human being, the man Jesus was a created being
and no more. While Jesus was unique in His manner of birth and in
His sharing, by grace, in a union with the Word, He also shares, by
nature, the fact of being human, being born at a particular time,
being capable of being predestined, and of having free will with
other human beings. This individual human being, Peter stresses,
had no claim on the fact that God chose to assume His body and
soul; God could have chosen to assume a different human body and
soul, making that other individual exactly the same kind of being as
the incarnate Christ was and giving that individual the same sort of
redemptive role. Further, and this point is argued against Abelard,
God could have assumed the body and soul of a woman instead of a
man, although, Peter notes, God's actual choice made sense since,
given the mores of His time and place, Christ's mission was facili-
tated by His incarnation in masculine form.83 All these assertions
are made by Peter against theologians, whether on the Abelardian
or the Victorine side of the debate, who see Christ's human nature
as assimilated by or conformed to His divinity, in such a way that it
stops being purely human. Yet, in treating Christ's human apti-
tudes, especially His human knowledge and His capacity to sin,
Peter does not succeed entirely in pressing the logic of this position.
Rather, he tends to align himself, to a greater of lesser degree, with
a quasidivinized view of Christ's human nature that is more com-
patible with views of the hypostatic union that he does not support
than with those which he defends.

CHRIST'S H U M A N KNOWLEGE: ANCIENT AND CURRENT

DEBATES

Such is particularly the case with Christ's human knowledge, a

topic receiving considerable attention in the first half of the twelfth

Ibid., d. 10. c. 2-d. 12. c. 4, 2: 74-83.

 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 439

century.84 The debate itself goes back to the time of Augustine and
Bede. Augustine had argued that the human Christ possessed
perfect knowledge, from the earliest moment of His life. Confronted
by the statement in the Gospel of Luke, that, as a boy, Jesus grew in
grace and wisdom, he states that this means that the omniscient
Jesus merely manifested His perfect knowledge gradually, in
accordance with the stages of human development through which
He passed as a child and a youth. Bede rejects Augustine's argu-
ment and sees the text of Luke as one that should be read literally.
For his part, there is no problem in accepting the idea that Jesus
underwent the intellectual development normal to childhood, just
as He underwent a standard physiological development. The par-
ticular theologian who sparked the debate in the early twelfth
century was Walter of Mortagne. While there were some monastic
defenders of Bede, particularly in the Cistercian tradition, who
endorsed this position for devotional reasons,85 Walter was the first
scholastic to support Bede against Augustine, and on dogmatic
grounds. If the human Christ were omniscient, he argues, then His
humanity would be placed in jeopardy and a creature would be
made the equal of the creator.86 This claim provoked an outburst of
opposition from other scholastic theologians, an outburst that also
inspired them to make some distinctions not drawn by Walter. The
members of the school of Laon, following the Glossa ordinaria, side
forcefully with Augustine, adding, in a formula destined to be
repeated widely, that, while the human Christ knew as much as the
Word knew, His mode of knowing was different; the human Christ
knew by an infusion of grace, not by nature. The Laon masters are
followed on this point by the Sententiae divinitatis, Roland of Bologna,
and Robert of Melun.87 In essence, this position denies to the

84
The most important survey of this subject is Santiago-Otero, El conoämiento de
Cristo, which has superseded earlier studies such as William J. Forster, The Beatific
Knowledge of Christ in the Theology of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Rome: Pontificium
Athenaeum Internationale "Angelicum," 1958), pp. 1-25; Landgraf, Dogmenge-
schichte, 2 part 2: 47-78; John C. Murray, The Infused Knowledge of Christ in the
Theology of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Windsor, Ontario, 1963), pp. 7-19; Ott, Die
Briefliteratur, pp. 32-47, 354-76, 379-80; Laurence S. Vaughan, The Acquired Knowl-
edge of Christ according to the Theologians of the 12th and 13th Centuries (Rome: Ponti-
ficium Athenaeum Internationale "Angelicum," 1957), pp. 5-16.
85
Santiago-Otero, El conoämiento, pp. 229-43.
86
Walter of Mortagne, Epis tola ad Hugonem prioris Sancti Victoris, PL 186: 1052B-
1054B. On Walter, see Horacio Santiago-Otero, "Gualterio de Mortagne (d.
1174) y las controversias cristológicas del siglo XII," Revista espanola de teologia 27
(1967): 271-83; El condmiento, pp. 18-19, 58-70.
87
Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 3: In Isaiam 7:5, editio princeps (Strassburg:
Adoph Rusch?, c. 1481); repr. with intro, by Karlfried Froelich and Margaret T.
440 CHAPTER SEVEN

human Christ a truly human psychology. It is in reaction to this

idea, as well as to Walter of Mortagne's position, that the Abelar-
dians come up with another distinction. On the one hand, they
cede to the human Christ even more, the vision of God during His
lifetime. But, on the other, they argue, He did not possess the full
understanding of God, which cannot be communicated perfectly to
any created intelligence. Thus, the Abelardians conclude, while the
human Christ could contemplate the divine essence, He could not
do so, during His lifetime, in an exhaustive manner; and God thus
retains, for the human Christ, a measure of His unknowability.88
A still stronger effort to refute Walter, and by extension Bede,
and to amplify on the teaching of the school of Laon, can be found
in the position of Hugh of St. Victor. In its extremity it can be
called the "maximalist" view in this debate, in the words of Horacio
Santiago-Otero, who also finds not a little Apollinarianism in
Hugh's doctrine. Hugh agrees with the school of Laon and Augus-
tine that Christ's human knowledge was exhaustive, and that He
possessed it from the moment when the human Christ came into
being. Hugh also agrees that the human Christ has a mode of
knowing different from that of the Word. The Word is wisdom; the
human Christ possesses wisdom. And, the human Christ obtains
this wisdom by a participation of the divine wisdom in His mind.
From Hugh's point of view, this participated knowledge is not
identical with the knowledge enjoyed eternally by the Word, in that
a process must occur in order for the human Christ to acquire it,
even if that process is an instantaneous one. Equally, however, this
theory, much as it may seek to preserve the distinction between
creature and creator, goes even farther than the school of Laon in
obliterating a human psychology in Christ and in overtaking His
humanity by His divinity. The author of the Summa sententiarum
follows Hugh in this teaching, although he is somewhat less partici-
pationist than Hugh.89
Judging from the position they take on the gemina substantia in the

Gibson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992); also PL 113: 1246A; Anselm of Laon, Sent.
divine pagine, p. 40; Sentences of Probable Authenticity, no. 150, 5: 114-16; Sent. div.
4.3.3-4, pp. 82*-86*; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 166-70; Anders, Die Christolo-
gie, pp. xxxviii-xliv; Horacio Santiago-Otero, "El conocimiento del alma de Cristo
segun las ensenanzas de Anselmo de Laon y de su escuela," Salmanticenses 13
(1966): 61-79; El conocimiento, pp. 33-56. Jean Châtillon, "Quidquid convenit filio
dei per naturam convenit filio hominis per gratiam: A propos de Jean de Ripa,
Determinationes I, 4, 4," Divinitas 11 (1967): 715-28, has tracked the fortunes of this
formula in this period.
88
Santiago-Otero, El conocimiento, pp. 18-19, 138-77.
89
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.1.6, PL 176: 283C-284B; Summa sent. 1.16, PL
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 441

person of the incarnate Christ, departing thereby from Gilbert of

Poitiers, it may not be very much of a surprise to find that the early
Porretans, in their effort to moderate Hugh's position and to strike
a balance between it and that of Walter of Mortagne, do not prove
to be very successful. They accord to Christ's human intelligence a
knowledge of its own, distinguishable from the divine wisdom
possessed by the Word. At the same time, they argue that Christ's
human knowledge was infinite, perfect, and thus the equivalent of
what the Word knows. The way they try to frame this distinction is
to say that, although created, the mind of the human Christ posses-
ses a representative, adequate understanding corresponding to the
divine knowledge, which enables it to function as omniscient, even
though it is not divine. As an effort at compromise, this account
clearly cedes the ground to the maximalists.90
Equally unsurprising is the fact that the knowledge of the human
Christ is a subject on which Robert Pullen has a hard time making
up his mind. His handling of this topic is an acute example of his
tendency to lay out all the alternatives and to make heavy weather
out of taking a stand. The result is extreme inconsistency. To be
sure, he says, Christ took on humanity and He was like us in all but
sin. Yet, Robert finds it incredible (incredibile) that the human
Christ should have had to undergo a learning process, over the
course of time, the way that other human beings do. But, equally,
he sees it as incredibile that the human Christ should have had a
fullness of divine knowledge, beyond what other men have and
beyond what human beings need. Robert feels that the safest course
is to go back to the position of the school of Laon, thus, in effect,
cancelling out the last few decades of discussion. He agrees that the
human Christ knew everything, from the moment of the incarna-
tion, although He displayed that knowledge gradually. Robert
distinguishes here between His physical growth and development
over time and the instantaneous nature of His acquisition of knowl-
edge. Since Christ lacked original sin, He lacked ignorance, Robert
notes, while also failing to observe that this would have given the
human Christ the mental aptitudes of prelapsarian man, and no

176: 72C-75A; Horacio Santiago-Otero, "La actividad sapiencial de Cristo en

cuanto nombre en la 'Suma de las sentencias'," Revista espanola de teologîa 28
(1968): 77-91; "La sabiduria del alma de Cristo segun Hugo de San Victor,"
RTAM 34 (1967): 131-58; El conodmiento, pp. 81-99, 102-15, 118-21; "'Esse est
habere' en Hugo de San Victor," in L'Homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Chris-
tian Wenin (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1986), 1: 426-31.
90
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 3.31-35, pp. 129-30; this text is not cited by Santiago-
Otero, El conodmiento, pp. 19, 183-99, in his treatment of the Porretans.
442 CHAPTER SEVEN

more. Christ received a plenary infusion of divine knowledge,

which, for Robert, can be compared with the capacity to perform
miracles, which He also received. This knowledge does not make
the human Christ divine, he asserts, since it was received by grace,
not possessed by nature. Here, in making this comparison, Robert
does not indicate whether he thinks that Christ's miracles stem
from the exercise of His divine nature or from a special gift granted
to His human nature. None the less, while advancing this claim,
Robert also states that Christ did not know everything. He was, to
be sure, full of grace and truth, but in the sense that, what He
knew, He knew exhaustively, not in the sense of omniscience.91

The Lombard on Christ's Human Knowledge

In relation to these debates, and for all his insistence on the full
humanity and creaturely status of the human Christ, Peter Lom-
bard also ends by aligning himself with an only slightly modified
version of the Laon masters' treatment of Christ's human knowl-
edge. The participationist aspect of Hugh of St. Victor's position
clearly does not appeal to him. Peter agrees that the human Christ
enjoys a fullness of grace and wisdom from the moment of His
conception. This created wisdom never grows, just as the uncreated
wisdom of the Word never grows. Peter subscribes to the distinc-
tion between grace and nature as modes of knowledge in the human
and divine natures of Christ, respectively, and also to the idea that
the created wisdom possessed by the human Christ as a gift of grace
transcends what other human beings can know. The human Christ,
for him, did know everything that God knows. But, and here is
Peter's one concession to the minimalist position, not with the same
clarity and precision. The human Christ knows the same things,
but less exhaustively and with less penetration than God knows
them. And, He did not have all of God's power, so that He could
have not have translated all that He knew into fact. For example,
the human Christ knew how the world was created, but He could
not have created it Himself. As to why the human Christ received
more knowledge than power, Peter replies, somewhat unsatisfac-
torily, that He was naturally capable (naturaliter capax) of the knowl-
edge, but not of the power.92 In any event, and notwithstanding

91
Robert Pullen, Sent. 3.21-24, 3.27-30, 4.5, PL 186: 793A-797C, 800C-806A,
810C-811A; Santiago-Otero, El conodmiento, pp. 204-26.
92
Peter Lombard, Sent 3. d. 13. c. 2-d. 14. c. 2, 2: 84-91; the quotation is at d.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 443

other aspects of his Christology, Peter is thus willing to deny to the

human Christ a fully human psychology of knowledge.

O T H E R ATTRIBUTES O F CHRIST'S H U M A N I T Y

This unsymmetrical distinction between the human Christ's full-

ness of knowledge and the limits of His power, or His human
weaknesses, is one that Peter joins other theologians of the day in
following. There is general agreement, in this period, that Christ
took on some of the consequences of original sin, such as mortality,
the capacity to suffer hunger and thirst, to feel affection, and to feel
fear, especially the filial fear of God that is a virtue. Contempo-
raries likewise agreed that Christ underwent a normal gestation in
the womb and a normal physical development from infancy to
childhood to adulthood. In these areas, the Lombard shares the
current consensus and adds only a few touches of his own to it.93 He
supports the position that Christ suffered weaknesses of both body
and soul, voluntarily and not by nature or as a consequence of sin.
At the same time, in handling this topic, he makes the point,
inherited from Augustine, that sensation derives not from the body
but from the mind, and also that the mind uses the body as an
instrument (Omnis autem sensus animae est: non enim caro sentit, sed
anima utens corpore velut instrumento) ,94 This observation is not entirely
of a piece with Peter's treatment of human nature as an integral
unit of body and soul in Book 2 of the Sentences. Here, in the effort to
root the essence of moral choice in the mind, he imports a Stoic-
Platonic view of man's nature into the account, which is quite
atypical of his anthropology. In any event, Peter adds that, while
Christ took on some human weaknesses that were expedient for
Him to have and that did not derogate from His dignity or the
efficacy of His mission, He did not take on all the human weak-
nesses that fall to mankind as a consequence of sin. This is the reason
why Christ did not take on ignorance or concupiscence, both of
which, Peter argues, would have impeded His mission. In these two
respects, as well as with respect to His knowledge, Christ was not

14. c. 2.1, p. 91; Horacio Santiago-Otero, "Pedro Lombardo: Su tesis, acerca del
saber de Cristo hombre," in Miscelanea José Zunzunegui (1911-1974) (Vitoria: Editor-
ial Eset, 1975), 1: 115-25.
93
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 2: 266 ff.; Ott, Die theologische Briefliteratur,
pp. 218-34, 400-01.
94
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 15. c. 1.1-c. 2, d. 16. c. 1, 2: 93-100, 103-04. The
quotation is at c. 1.2, p. 93.
444 CHAPTER SEVEN

like us in all but sin. As for those weaknesses which Christ did
accept as critical to His mission, such as the capacity to suffer and
the capacity to experience temptation so that He would be able to
empathize with men, Peter thinks that He did not feel these things
in the same way that men do, in that He lacked the weakened will
and clouded knowledge with which men have to come to grips with
their afflictions and temptations. In this respect, while men under-
go temptation (passio) and contemplation of the temptation (pro-
passio) prior to the consent (consensus) which is of the essence in their
moral decisions, Christ only experienced the propassio and the con-
sensus. He was not subject to passio as a necessity of His nature, as
men are. In these respects, as well, Christ is not like us in all but
sin: His moral psychology no less than His psychology of knowl-
edge differs from that of other human beings.95 While, in this
section of his Christology, Peter feels impelled to reject flat out the
claim of Hilary of Poitiers that Christ was incapable of suffering,96
his own handling of Christ's human weaknesses does exempt Him
from full participation in the human condition. As Peter sums up
this point, because Christ came to save all mankind, He accepted
something from all phases of human experience, before sin and
after sin, before grace and under grace, as well as in glory. From
prelapsarian man he took the lack of human weakness that inclines
man more to evil than to good. From man in his fallen state, Christ
took on the punishment for sin and those other weaknesses of fallen
humanity not demeaning to Him or obstructive in His mission.
From man in the state of grace, He took on a fullness of grace. And,
from man in the state of glory, He took on, in His resurrection, the
non posse peccare and the perfect contemplation of God that character-
ize the saints in the life to come. Thus, the human Christ possesses
both the goods of the patria and the goods and evils of the via?1
This last point reflects another current debate, the question of
whether the human Christ during His earthly life had the non posse
peccare or, alternatively, the posse peccare et non peccare of prelapsarian
man, or some other range of moral possibilities.98 Some thinkers
during this period extended to the human Christ during His earthly
life the non posse peccare which, more typically, was granted by the
theologians only to the deity, or to the saints in Heaven. The

Ibid, c. 2.1-2, 2: 98-99.

Ibid, c. 3, 2: 100-02.
Ibid, d. 16. c. 2, 2: 105.
See Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 1: 320-53.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 445

masters taking the most extreme line on this question are the
Porretans and Robert Pullen, who agree that Christ had the in-
capacity to sin. He had, to be sure, free will. Yet, on the analogy of
the angels confirmed in the good by grace, He had the non posse
peccare." As we have seen above,100 not all theologians thought it
was appropriate to attribute the state of non posse peccare to the
angels, Peter Lombard included. That problem aside, it was more
usual, in this period, to grant, at least potentially, a greater capac-
ity to sin to the human Christ than that accorded by the Porretans
and Robert Pullen. William of Champeaux and other members of
the school of Laon offer a formula here that many found persuasive.
According to them, Christ in His human nature had the capacity to
sin. But, the presence of the divine nature in Him conformed the
human to the divine will, confirmed Him in virtue, and assured
that He would not sin, by grace, to be sure, not by nature.101 The
author of the Sententiae divinitatis agrees with this view, although he
nuances it. In his estimation, Christ accepted the possibility of sin
by will, not by nature. In practice, Christ's human and divine wills
were functionally joined "by habit and participation" {per habitum
et participationum), so that, in the event, He did not sin.102 These
formulations suggest how easily a support for the assumptus homo
and subsistence theories of the hypostatic union could inform a
view of Christ's free will in action that is functionally Monothelite.
On the other side of the debate stood Peter Abelard. Abelard
begins by arguing strongly for the principle of Christ's free will as a
man. He objects to the idea that Christ possessed this faculty but
never exercised it, out of a gift of grace. For, if such were the case, a
divine psychology would have replaced a human psychology in the
incarnate Christ. Abelard thinks that Christ did indeed have a fully
human psychology. He hopes to shed light on this point by recast-
ing it in terms of the distinction between possibility and necessity.
From this perspective, the human Christ had the capacity to sin
and not to sin. But this capacity was suspended after He was united
and while He remained united with the Word {non tarnen postquam
unitus vel unitum est). Just as when a natural necessity follows from a
contingent action which sets a chain of cause and effect in motion,
so, once the human Christ has been united with the Word, it is

99
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 3.22-23, p. 127.
100
See above, chapter 6, pp. 344-46.
101
Sentences of Plausible Authenticity, no. 185-87; Sentences of William of Champeaux,
no. 363-64, 5: 129-30, 213-14.
102
Sent. div. 4.3.9, pp. 91*-94*. The quotation is on p. 94*.
446 CHAPTER SEVEN

impossible for the divine-human Christ to sin in any way (modibus

omnibus impossibile peccans) .103 This pretended solution is actually no
solution at all. While ostensibly trying to defend the free will of the
human Christ, Abelard ends by denying it functionally in just as
strong a sense as William of Champeaux, the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis, the Porretans, and Robert Pullen. Further, by claiming
that this free will was an option prior to the incarnation but not
afterwards, he opens himself to the charge of Adoptionism.
Hugh of St. Victor takes another line of attack, and one equally
problematic. On the one hand, he urges that the human Christ had
the same capacity to sin, or not to sin, as Adam enjoyed before the
fall. On the other hand, Hugh says that Christ was morally unlike
prelapsarian man, in that He possessed no vices and experienced
no inordinate inclinations or temptations. As Hugh sees it, Christ's
possession of all the virtues, all at once, on the model of His
possession of all knowledge, precludes any moral decision-making
on His part. It is difficult to see how this conclusion squares with
Hugh's premise that He had the posse peccare et non peccare of Adam
before the fall.104
The master who comes the closest to the position which the
Lombard espouses, even though he follows Hugh with a good deal
of fidelity on Christ's human knowledge, is the author of the Summa
sententiarum. He accents, it must be said, even more thoroughly than
Peter does, the creaturely status of the human Christ, and, with
greater consistency, argues that He took on all our infirmities,
ignorance excepted, apart from sin. This author does not make the
distinction between expedient and demeaning infirmities. As he
sees it, the human Christ had the posse peccare. He was capable of
experiencing temptation. But, having the freedom to resist tempta-
tion, He did so. Thus, by His own act of will, assisted by grace, He
brought His human will into perfect alignment with the will of
God. This He could do without losing His status as a creature.105
Peter, in effect, seeks to split the difference between the Summa
sententiarum and Hugh of St. Victor. With the former, he agrees that
Christ had two wills, a human and a divine. Also, with the former
and against thinkers seeking to assimilate the human to the divine

103
Peter Abelard, Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 3:4, ed. Eligius M.
Buytaert, CCCM 11: 98-99; the quotations are on p. 99. Hermannus follows suit
and does not resolve the problem either; see Neilsen, Theology and Philosophy, pp.
223-28.
104
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.2.6, 2.1.7, PL 176: 383C, 389B-391C.
105
Summa sent. 1.17-18, PL 176: 75A-78D.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 447

will, he argues that the human will of Christ functions in the same
way as the wills of other human beings. At the same time, and here
he supports Hugh, he sees the human Christ as having been freed
from those consequences of original sin that impede or limit the free
exercise of the will in fallen man, adding, as we have seen, con-
cupiscence to ignorance as consequences of sin that He does not
take on, and which therefore do not limit His use of free will.
Further, as we have noted above, he grants to the human Christ a
fullness of knowledge that has the effect of exempting Him from the
false judgments that might otherwise incline Him to consent to
inappropriate or false goods; and he exempts the human Christ
from passio in the psychogenesis of His moral choices. In this sense,
for Peter the human Christ does not suffer the experience of the
divided self. His will is not weakened; His flesh does not lust
against His spirit; and the eye of His intellect is not clouded.
According to Peter, the human Christ had the full power to choose
evils or lesser goods. Indeed, He did not shrink from accepting the
evils of physical suffering and death, because He judged them to be
compatible with rational goods. Thus, Christ always exercised His
human free will in perfect conformity with His divine will. He could
be tempted to do otherwise, pace Hugh; if not, His temptation by
the devil would have been meaningless. And, if not, it is impossible
to take seriously His prayer that the chalice might pass from Him,
along with His submission to the will of the Father. Peter concludes
his discussion of this point by citing a barrage of witnesses against
the heresies of Monophysitism and Monothelitism, to which his
reading of Damascene has sensitized him106 and which he clearly
sees as a problem in the teaching of many of his own contempo-
raries on this subject. We can say here that, if Peter does not endow
the human Christ with a moral psychology that is entirely isometric
with that of other human beings, whether before or after the fall, he
comes a tiny bit closer to humanizing that psychology than is true
for most of the theologians of his time, even though he joins the
consensus, to a very great extent, in denying to the human Christ a
human epistemology. At the same time, it cannot be said that he
coordinates these two dimensions of his doctrine of Christ's human
nature very smoothly. For his human Christ has more than a lack of
ignorance induced by original sin; He has virtual omniscience.
How that latter state actually impinges on Christ's ethical decision-

106
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 17, 2: 105-11. See also the references cited above,
nn. 94, 97.
448 CHAPTER SEVEN

making in practice is a topic which Peter does not address.

It is this impulse to dignify the human Christ, to endow Him
with qualities not enjoyed by other men, to stress the exemptions
from the consequences of original sin which He chose not to take
on, so visible in mid-century treatments of Christ's human knowl-
edge, His free will, and His capacity to sin, that serves as the
backdrop for the change of mind Peter undergoes on the theme of
dulia and latria as applied to the human Christ. On this question,
early twelfth-century theologians were evenly divided, although,
curiously enough, their breakdown on this subject has little to do
with their position on omniscience or freedom from sin in the
human Christ.107 Peter gives a thorough review of the debate and
the authorities who can be cited on both sides of it. In the Sentences,
it is no longer just a question for him of whether the humanity of
Christ, as such, deserves veneration or worship. While he retains a
clear distinction between the creature and the creator here, he
observes, on the dulia side of the question, that there are physical
objects to which Christians rightly pay reverence, for their use in
divine worship. He comes down on the side of latria for the human
Christ, but not in an undifferentiated way. The contemporary
theologian to whom he comes the closest here is Gilbert of Poitiers,
in Gilbert's gloss on the Psalms. With Gilbert, he agrees that the
human Christ deserves worship, but not the human Christ under-
stood as separate from the Word or as assimilated by the Word. It
is, rather, the human Christ, as human, and as united with the
Word, Who should receive latria.108 This formula seeks to strike a
balance between the doctrine that the two natures of Christ are
inseparable yet not to be confused, which Peter maintains in his
treatment of the hypostatic union, on the one side, and his glorifica-
tion of the human Christ during His human lifetime, on the other.
This view he joins his contemporaries in supporting, although with
more circumspection and with somewhat less unmodified enthu-
siasm than is the case with many other masters.

T H E A T O N E M E N T : CONTEMPORARY DEBATES

If Peter's role in the discussion of the hypostatic union was to

provide clarification, which most scholastics were able to put to use

107
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 2: 132-46, although he does not note the
shift in the Lombard's position or his differences from the Porretans.
108
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 9, 2: 68-71. Brady has tracked the reference to
Gilbert's unpublished gloss in his note ad loc, 2: 69.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 449

as research on the subject continued, and if his role in the develop-

ment of the doctrine of the human Christ was to support, without a
great deal of resistance, a consensus more impressed by His func-
tional differences from than by His similarities with the rest of
mankind, his role in the debates surrounding the doctrine of the
atonement was to moderate the extreme positions taken on this
subject during his time and to offer an understanding of Christ's
saving work that is very much His own. The outlines of this
controversy, as they had been posed by other theologians when the
Lombard entered the field, had been laid down, initially, by propo-
nents of the traditional view that Christ's saving work was to
liberate man from the devil, who had gained power over man with
the fall. The first major reaction against the "rights of the devil"
theory had come from Anselm of Canterbury, who offered an
alternative in his Cur deus homo which left the devil entirely out of
the account, in explaining how Christ had paid the debt owed by
man to God and how Christ had communicated the redemptive
effects of His action to man. Another alternative to the "rights of
the devil" theory which placed much more emphasis on the role of
Christ in altering man's attitudes and moral capacities was offered
by Peter Abelard. Abelard's view has much in common with the
doctrine of the redemption taught by Bernard of Clairvaux,
although neither of these thinkers appears to have been aware of
that fact. The range of opinions provided by theologians in the first
half of the twelfth century extended from the frank espousal of one
or another of these positions to a selective combination of ideas
taken from a number of them.109 In this spectrum of views, Peter
can be classed as one of the eclectics, yet as one who adds a decisive
and original note to the mix of ideas on which he draws.
The "rights of the devil" position had the longest genealogy of
any of the views of the redemption taught in the twelfth century,
going back to the writings of Gregory the Great for its classic

109
Good surveys are provided by J. Patout Burns, "The Concept of Satisfaction
in Medieval Redemption Theory," Theological Studies 36 (1975): 285-304; D. E. de
Clerck, "Droits du démon et nécessité de la rédemption: Les écoles d'Abélard et
de Pierre Lombard," RTAM 14 (1947): 132-64; "Le dogme de la rédemption de
Robert de Melun à Guillaume d'Auxerre," RTAM 14 (1947): 253-86; "Questions
de sotériologie médiévale," RTAM 13 (1946): 150-84; Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte,
2 part 2: 170-253; Jean Rivière, "Le dogme de la rédemption au XII e siècle
d'après les dernières publications," Revue du moyen âge latin 2 (1946): 102-12,
219-30; "Le mérite du Christ d'après le magistère ordinaire de l'église, II: Époque
médiévale," RSR 22 (1948): 213-39; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lud/er: The Devil in the
Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 104-06, 161-72, 176-91;
Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 82-94.
450 CHAPTER SEVEN

formulation. It had received considerable support in the interven-

ing centuries. At the beginning of the twelfth century, it found
defenders in the school of Laon, whose members are also a good
source for the differences of opinion among its supporters. The
basic scenario as envisioned by proponents of the "rights of the
devil" theory was that man, in succumbing to the external tempta-
tion of the devil in the fall, had voluntarily placed himself under the
devil's sway, withdrawing allegiance from God and granting it
instead to the devil. Having done so, man was no longer free. He
lacked the ability to override the devil's power. Hence, Christ, a
Christ possessing divine power, had to be sent, since no other man,
nor even an angel, would be strong enough to overcome the devil.
The way in which the situation of man, and Christ's rectification of
it, was envisioned by supporters of the "rights of the devil" theory
was in an entirely external, objectivist sense. Christ is not seen as
changing either God's attitude or man's. What He changes is the
outward circumstances in which man has placed himself through
sin by defeating the devil, understood as an external power extrin-
sic to man. Christ battles against the devil, wins, and liberates man
from the devil's political control, restoring man to his proper alle-
giance to God. The language typically used in the "rights of the
devil" scenario is that of political jurisdiction and military force.
The main difference of opinion found among supporters of this
theory has to do with whether the devil's power over fallen man,
which God tolerates, is just. Some hold that the devil's sway is
exercised justly (recte). Not only does he hold dominion over man,
he also holds a right (ins), owing to the fact that man gave himself
over to the devil freely.110 Other members of the school of Laon who
adhere to the "rights of the devil" position, on the other hand,
maintain that the devil has no true rights. Vis-à-vis God, his rule
over man is not just because it is a usurpation of God's rights over
man. And, vis-à-vis man, the devil's rule is not just either because it
is grounded in fraud and deception. Thus, while the devil holds
power, he does so without rights.111 Some authors in the school
nuance this point still farther, in arguing that the devil's rule is just
with respect to man but unjust with respect to God,112 or that, while

110
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine, pp. 41-42; Sentences ofAnselm of Laon, no.
47-48,54, 5:44-47,50-51.
111
Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur, pp. 266-68.
112
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 253-58, Sentences of the School of Laon, no.
353-55, 5: 206-07, 209, 269-70.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 451

it has been seized in an unjust manner, it is wielded justly over man

because of man's consent to the devil's temptation in the fall.113
Although there are some Laon masters who give Anselm of
Canterbury's doctrine of the atonement a hearing,114 their basic
stance is to defend one variant or another of the "rights of the
devil" position against his vigorous criticism of it. Anselm begins
his Cur deus homo by clearing the deck of objections, before develop-
ing his own theory.115 He argues that God could not have sent an
angel or a newly created sinless man to do the job, although he
offers his own reasons for this claim. Man, he says, would naturally
be inclined to worship and serve whoever redeemed him; and it
would not be fitting for him to accord to a creature an honor
belonging to God alone. Another objection he presents is the claim
that, since God is omnipotent, He could have redeemed man purely
out of His mercy, without requiring Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
While acknowledging that God operates under no constraints,
Anselm rejects this position as well on grounds of theological
appropriateness. The argument from God's mercy, he says, is not
fitting. For, in his estimation, it is fitting that satisfaction be made
for man's sin. Some kind of quid pro quo for the offense to God's
honor which sin represents is only fair, just, and reasonable, as he
sees it. Anselm also offers a series of objections which he attacks as
reflecting the Nestorian belief that Christ was not fully man, and
that God would not lower Himself by taking on the weaknesses of
human nature. Against these objections, he insists that Christ was
fully human. The fall, he notes, occurred through an act of human
free will; so must the redemption. Thus, Christ must be a man
possessing free will. Further, redemption by a God-man does not
lower God's divinity since it was accomplished by the human
Christ. It is not unfitting for the Son of God to suffer, he adds, for
Christ accepted His sufferings voluntarily. In any event, His con-
sent to His sufferings is appropriate, given the fact that the mode of
redemption selected by God was the most congruous way to
achieve man's redemption. Anselm, finally, turns his fire against
the "rights of the devil" theory. After outlining it and indicating his
awareness of the fact that its proponents differ on the degree to

113
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 342, 5: 263.
114
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 343, 346, 349, 358, 5: 263-64, 265, 266, 271.
115
Anselm of Canterbury, Cur deus homo 1.3-10 in Opera, éd. Francisais Salesius
Schmitt, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: F. Fromann, 1968), 1: 50-67. On the Cur deus homo, see
Gillian R. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978),
pp. 126-71.
452 CHAPTER SEVEN

which the devil's sway can be seen as just, he observes that they all
concur in viewing the redemption in military and political terms:
Christ's role is to besiege and take the fort in which the devil keeps
man imprisoned, and to restore man to God's rightful authority.
Anselm's response to this theory is simply to reject it as irrelevant.
He agrees that God allows the devil to tempt man, a permission
that does not grant the devil any rights. For, in Anselm's view, to
assent that there can be any justice at all in the devil's actions
would be to imply that God has somehow entered into a compact
with the devil, which is an utterly unseemly idea to hold about the
deity.
Now, in turning to the exposition of his own positive substitute
for the positions he rejects, we should note that Anselm in no sense
plans to dispense with the idea of justice, or with a view of the
atonement that could be described as externalist or objective.
Rather, he changes the way in which he handles these principles.
Having shown that man needs redemption, since he cannot obtain
happiness, the end for which he was created, in the state of sin, and,
having shown that man cannot achieve this redemption on his own,
since nothing in his finite resources offers sufficient recompense to
God for the infinite offense of man's disobedience, infinite because
it was an offense against an infinite being, Anselm concludes that
the atonement requires a God-man, Who is the only kind of being
capable of supplying both a satisfaction acceptable to God and of
communicating the effects of that satisfaction to man. Sin, in itself,
consists in not rendering to God His due, a formula invoking the
legal maxim suum quique tribuere as the definition of justice.116 For
Anselm, justice must be served; and Christ can serve it in offering
to God His voluntary and unmerited death on the cross. God is
repaid in accepting this offering, not on the analogy with a mone-
tary composition, but in terms of His honor. Anselm is sensitive to
the point that nothing man does can actually increase or diminish
God's honor, God being infinite. But the rendering of proper honor
to Him expresses a proper attitude in creatures, which contributes
to the wholeness and order of the universe.117 This is the level on
which Anselm analyzes the objective side of the transaction, the
restoration of honor to God as the service ofjustice, which therefore
requires satisfaction as essential. Here, Christ mediates between

116
Anselm, Cur deus homo 1.11, 1: 68-69. For the whole argument, see ibid.,
1.11-2.20, 1:68-133.
117
Ibid., 1.15, 1: 72-74.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 453

man and God and rectifies man's position in God's eyes, now
making man acceptable to God again.
Anselm is equally an obj écrivist when it comes to the transmis-
sion of the effects of Christ's saving work to mankind. As with other
Christian theologians, he holds that Christ's passion was efficacious
in that it was a punishment He accepted although it was unmer-
ited, since Christ was exempted from original sin. In all other
respects, Christ is like other men, a point which Anselm had
emphasized against Nestorian-type accounts of the atonement.
But, in his own account, he describes what is an external transac-
tion, based on Christ's nature, both between Christ and God and
between Christ and mankind. When Christ offers His unmerited
sacrifice to God, He thereby earns a reward from God. But, being
perfectly sinless Himself, He does not need this reward. So, He
transfers it to mankind. The model Anselm invokes in describing
this transfer is the giving or bequeathing of a gift or an inheritance
to a kinsman. The beneficiary has done nothing to earn it. It is like
a windfall, which alters his credit with God by canceling a debt
which man hitherto had lacked the wherewithal to pay.118 The key
point to note here is that, for Anselm, the beneficiary has not
himself been changed by the gift, existentially. He receives a good
that is imputed to him as if he were better than he actually is. In
this respect, Christ's redemption changes man's standing with
God; it does not change man's inner life itself.
It is precisely this last point that provoked a reaction, which can
be seen as much as a critique of the Cur deus homo as it is of the
"rights of the devil" position, on the part of Abelard.119 Abelard
develops his doctrine of the atonement in his commentary on
Romans. He offers a forthright attack on the "rights of the devil"
theory. The devil, he asserts, has no rights. Further, and this

118
Ibid., 2.19, 1: 130-31.
119
Good accounts of Abelard's doctrine of the atonement, which correctly see it
as more than merely exemplaristic but as also efficacious, include A. Victor
Murray, Abelard and St. Bernard: A Study in Twelfth-Century "Modernism" (Manches-
ter: Manchester University Press, 1967), pp. 117-39, who also notes the parallels
between Abelard and Bernard here; Philip L. Quinn, "Abelard on Atonement:
'Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary, Illogical, or Immoral about It'," In Reasoned
Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 281-300;
Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 69-99; Weingart, The Logic of Divine Love, passim and esp.
pp. 121-40, 149-50, 164-65. Briefer but also useful accounts are found in Gillian
R. Evans, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp.
164-65; Robert S. Franks, The Work of Christ: A Historical Study of Christian Doctrine,
2nd ed. (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. 1962), pp. 142-49. David E.
Luscombe, "St. Anselm and Abelard," Anselm Studies 1 (1983): 213-18 sees Abe-
lard as closer to Anselm here than most scholars do.
454 CHAPTER SEVEN

against Anselm, Abelard states that God indeed does have the
power, and mercy, to forgive man's sin without sacrificing His Son
and killing an innocent person. The reason why God chose the
mode of redemption that He did choose, in Abelard's view, was not
because God needed to have His attitude toward man changed.
God's love for man is unfailing. What was needed was the altera-
tion of man's attitude toward God. Christ accomplishes this
change, and He does so in two ways, according to Abelard. By his
condescension and by His teaching, in word and example, Christ
gives man a model to follow. And, secondly, by displaying the
depths of His love for man, Christ gives man the moral power to
turn around his own heart and to respond to the love which God
has given to him. Through His own love for man, Christ inspires
man's love for Him, and man's yearning for the divine grace He
proffers, which man now gratefully receives and with which he can
now collaborate, in the moral reclamation of himself in charity.
The love that man is now capable of receiving and giving exceeds
the wildest dreams of fallen man. Christ's loving sacrifice of Him-
self on the cross, which caps this teaching and example during His
lifetime, in this sense was just, for Abelard, "because, in inflaming
man's love for God He grants a gift greater than man had hoped
for" (quia amplius in amorem accendit completum beneficium quam
sperandum) .12° It is clear that in raising the issue of justice here,
Abelard is advocating a stress on intentionality designed to replace
legalism. There is no trace in his theory of the atonement of
satisfaction, God's honor, or His rightful jurisdiction, of the type
found both in the "rights of the devil" position and in Anselm's
argument. The conversion of man's heart away from the bad
intention of the siirner into the good intention required of the saved
is the work of Christ in the redemption. The devil, for Abelard,
never had any power over God's elect; but the elect still need to be
converted. And, by both Who He is and by what He does, Christ
makes effectual their salvation by energizing men morally and
psychologically, by liberating their power to love.

120
Peter Abelard, In Ep. ad Romanos 3:26, CCCM 11:114—18. The quotation is
on pp. 117-18. Abelard's position is reiterated by his disciples. See Hermannus,
Sent.9 pp. 102-5; Ysagoge in theologiam, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf in Ecrits théolo-
giques de l'école d'Abelard (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), pp.
158-61. For the school of Abelard on this doctrine, see David E. Luscombe, The
School of Peter Abelard: The Influence of Abelard's Thought in the Early Scholastic Period
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 158-64, 236-40; Neilsen,
Theology and Philosophy, pp. 231-34.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 455

Although Abelard was his bête noire, Bernard of Clairvaux

develops a doctrine of Christ's saving work that is extremely close
to his, marked by a similar disinterest in the criteria of theological
seemliness that govern Anselm's reasoning in the Cur deus homo.
Bernard is likewise disinclined to view the redemption in political
or military terms along the lines of the "rights of the devil" theory.
Like Abelard, Bernard accents the efficacy of Christ's action in
changing man's attitude and in releasing his capacity to love
God.121 At the same time, he retains the idea of the rights of the
devil, while radically reinterpreting this notion. Bernard's position
on the atonement has to be gathered from a number of his works,
where it is brought in by way of advancing some other argument.
These include his De consideratione^ his writings promoting the new
religious order of the Knights Templars, and his sermons on the
Song of Songs. For Bernard, Christ does triumph over the devil.
But He does so emotionally, not politically, militarily, or juridical-
ly, by emptying Himself, taking on human nature and human
suffering. For Bernard, the most painful aspect of human suffering
that Christ endured was not His physical agony on the cross, but
the experience of rejection. By His willingness to accept these trials,
which He undertakes in order to heighten His empathy with other
men, Christ inspires man's love, exacting in return from man a
debt which only love can repay (Sane multamfatigationis assumpsit, quo
multae dilectionis hominem debitorem tenerit)}22 This love, which Christ
makes possible for man, enables man to turn away from the attrac-
tion of sin. It is this internal proclivity toward sin and man's
bondage to it that Bernard understands as the devil's sway. He
internalizes completely his interpretation of the devil in this con-
nection. As he sees it, man is liberated not from an external power
but from slavery to his own vice and ignorance. And, it is the
superior attractiveness of the loving and suffering Christ that serves
as the corrective, in turning around man's heart. As Bernard

121
For Bernard on the redemption, see Gillian R. Evans, "Cur Deus Homo: St.
Bernard's Theology of the Redemption. A Contribution to the Contemporary
Debate," Stadia Theologica 36 (1982): 27-36; The Mind of St. Bernard of Clairvaux
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 152-59; Franks, The Work of Christ, pp.
149-55, who note the similarities with Abelard. Jean-Marie Déchanet, "La chris-
tologie de S. Bernard," in Saint Bernard théologien (Rome: Tipografia Pio X, 1953),
pp. 78-91, notes the parallels and yet treats Abelard as a pure exemplarist. J.
Gottschick, "Studien zur Versöhnungslehre des Mittelalters," Zeitschrift für Kir-
chengeschichte 22 (1901): 384—429, sees Bernard's view as opposed to Abelard's.
122
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 11.7, ed. J. Leclercq
and H. M. Rochais in Bernard of Clairvaux Opera, vols. 1-2 (Roma: Editiones
Cistercienses, 1957-58), 2: 58-59.
456 CHAPTER SEVEN

instructs his brethren in his Song of Songs allocutions, "Your

affection for your Lord Jesus should be both tender and intimate, to
oppose the sweet enticements of sensual life. Sweetness drives out
sweetness as one nail drives out another."123 This sweetness Ber-
nard analogizes to a pleasing fragrance that is multiform, addres-
sed to the psychological needs and responses of different sorts of
men. Some are drawn by the memory of Christ's passion, some by
the example of His virtue, some by His wisdom; each man receives
the sweetness that will energize him.124
The framework in which Bernard sets this doctrine in his ser-
mons on the Song of Songs is particularly well adapted to display
his understanding of the subjective efficacy of Ghrist's saving work
and its continuation in the inner life of the Christian, since the Song
of Songs is a nuptial poem which he reads as a figurative statement
about the relation of the soul with Christ. The text, for him, is an
itinerary of the inner life, in which Christ is the bridegroom whose
kiss, given to the bride in the opening passage, awakens the soul's
love and helps the hearer to activate the redemptive love which
Christ bestows, enabling the soul to move through the steps of
conversion and penance to the stage of growing intimacy with God.
It is not just the fact of His incarnation and suffering, but also the
emotional initiative which He takes, that gives man the assurance
he needs to make a loving response. Further, as the example of
Christ as a sweet fragrance drawing each man according to his own
spiritual disposition suggests, Bernard combines an objective as
well as subjective view of Christ's saving work with the understand-
ing that Christ operates in and through each man's emotions.
Christ comes to man where and how man is, and loves each person
according to his own longings and needs. This theory of the atone-
ment is not only generic, it is also individualized. As with Abelard,
Bernard clearly has no interest in satisfaction, the weighing of
accounts, or God's honor. These categories are utterly irrelevant to
his view of Christ's saving work. His closest bond with Abelard is
the fact that each combines an objective and exemplary under-
standing of the redemption with a highly subjective mode of its

123
Ibid., 20.3-4, trans. Kilian Walsh and Irene Edmonds, On the Song of Songs, 4
vols. (Spenser, MA/Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971-80), 1: 150.
The Latin text at 1: 117, reads: "Sit suavis et dulcis affectui tuo Domino Jesus,
contra male utique dulces vitae carnalis illecebras, et vincat dulcedo duK iinum,
quemadmodum clavum clavis expellit."
124
Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica 2.6, 2.9, 6.3-4, 11.7.20, 20.2.3-
4.5, 22.3.3-4.9, 1: 11-12, 13-14, 33-34, 58-59, 115-18, 133-36.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 457

transferral to man, in which Christ efficaciously inflames the hu-

man heart and empowers it to love, and to love the good. It may be
no accident that Bernard's image of sweetness driving out sweet-
ness as one nail drives out another is an unacknowledged allusion
to Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, where it speaks to erotic love, the
context in which Abelard refers to the same citation in his fifth
letter to Heloise, exhorting her to replace himself in her affections
with the members of her monastic community.125 The chief differ-
ence between Bernard and Abelard is Bernard's retention, if in
drastically modified form, of the idea that Christ liberates man
from the devil. But, as has been shown, for him this notion is
purged of all externalism and militarism and it refers to man's
internal, self-inflicted sin. The terrain where this liberation is
effected is the inner life of man; and Bernard understands it pri-
marily in terms of Christ's unshackling of man's affective faculty.
Faced with the alternatives presented by the "rights of the devil"
theory, the Cur deus homo, and the sweeping rejection of both of these
approaches to the redemption found in Bernard of Clairvaux and
Abelard, the majority of theologians in the first half of the twelfth
century responded not by aligning themselves with one or another
of these positions exclusively but by effecting a combination of two
of them. Exceptions to the rule are the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum, who supports the "rights of the devil" argument without
indicating that there is a debate, and the author of the Sententiae
divinitattSy who follows Anselm in the same vein.126 The more typical
tendency toward a combination of theories cuts across the alle-
giances which a theologian might otherwise have felt to the master
or masters whom he follows in other areas. For instance, despite his
up-to-the-minute familiarity with the Cur deus homo argument, early
in the century Honorius Augustodunensis freely combines it with
the "rights of the devil" position. Declining to comment on whether
the devil's power over man is just, he agrees that it exists, and
argues that Christ's nature as a God-man and His unmerited
suffering as a man are both required to enable Him to win victory
over the devil as well as to offer a worthy satisfaction to God for
man's sin.127 The only point of his own that he adds to this com-
bination is that both Jews and gentiles were involved in Christ's

125
Cicero, Tusc. disp. 4.35.75. Cf. Peter Abelard, Epistola 5; the Ciceronian
connection is noted by Betty Radice in her trans, of The Letters ofAbelard and Heloise
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 159.
126
Summa sent. 1.15, PL 176: 70B; Sent. div. 4.1.2, p. 72*.
127
Honorius Augustodunensis, Elue. 1.104-18, 1.141-53, pp. 380-82, 387-89.
458 CHAPTER SEVEN

death, because He died to redeem both groups of people.128 A more

influential exponent of the mixture between the Anselmian and the
"rights of the devil" theories is Hugh of St. Victor. For Hugh,
Christ's work of redemption is to make an adequate satisfaction for
man's sin, and thereby to change God's attitude by calming His
anger toward man. At the same time, Christ liberates man from the
devil's unjust and usurped power.129 Hugh stages the anti-devil
scenario in two ways. In the prologue to Book 2 of De sacramentis, he
uses the military language traditional to this position. He envisions
Christ as a princely commander, going forth into battle with His
saints arrayed in His host and fighting under His banner, and the
sacraments of the church as His weapons.130 In the body of Book 1,
Hugh agrees that the devil's power is unjust vis-à-vis God, since it
is a usurpation. From the devil's point of view, his power over man
is just since man ceded to him voluntarily; from man's point of view
it is unjust, since the devil defrauded man. In any event, man
cannot terminate this situation by himself and needs an advocate
(patronus). Shifting from military to forensic language here, Hugh
portrays Christ as pleading man's case with God, persuading God
to turn aside His wrath and to entertain the idea of man's redemp-
tion. Having succeeded in that plea, Christ next functions as the
unmerited sacrifice that is fully compensatory in repaying God for
the injustice done to Him. The one new twist added by Hugh is
this: once God welcomes man back, man can simply pick up and
leave the devil behind. The devil's power, as Hugh sees it, is
exercised by default. Once the divine alternative is made available
to man again, the devil's power evaporates on the spot.131
Another possible combination was to mix the "rights of the
devil" position with an Abelardian or Bernardine doctrine of the
atonement. Roland of Bologna and Robert of Melun take this tack.
They agree that the devil holds sway over man, although unjustly,
internalizing the character ofthat power. And, they also agree that

128
Ibid., 1.158, p. 389.
129
Good accounts which, however, do not note the modes in which Hugh
presents the "rights of the devil" argument, are Franks, The Work of Christ, pp.
159-67; and Gottschick, "Versöhnungslehre," pp. 429-36. See also Roger Baron,
ed., "Tractatus de trinitate et de reparationis hominis du MS. Douai 365," Mélanges de
science religieuse 18 (1961): 111-12, 115-16; Poppenberg, Die Christologie, pp. 7—19.
130
Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith prologue 2, trans.
Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1951), p. 3.
This passage is drawn from the edition on which Deferrari bases his translation,
which does not occur in the Migne ed.
131
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.8.4, 1.8.6-10, PL 176: 307D-309C, 310D-
312A. The quotation of at 1.8.4, 308B.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 459

Christ's role is to activate man's power to love, changing man's

mind so that he looks in the right direction for the good and
empowering his heart so that he desires it.132 Easily the most
eclectic of the mid-century theologians on this subject is Robert
Pullen, who draws on both the mixture of Anselm and the "rights
of the devil" view as found in Hugh and on the Abelardian or
Bernardine argument. Agreeing with Hugh, he sees Christ both as
a mediator, engaged in changing God's mind, and as the giver of an
acceptable gift, in His own obedience, which satisfies God. Robert
likewise sees man as a captive held unjustly. His new angle on the
theme of the liberation of man from the devil is that it is God the
Father Who performs this function; the Father and Son agree to a
division of labor here. Robert adds that, although God is in no
sense constrained in so doing, He effects this liberation by the
sacrifice of His Son, reverting here to the more standard assign-
ment of duties. This mode of redemption was chosen by God,
according to Robert, in order to stimulate man's love and to
instruct man. As for the transmission of Christ's saving work,
Robert departs from the Anselmian idea of imputation. Just as
Christ changes God's mind in the initial phase of the story, so He
changes man's mind and heart. Christ enables man to win redemp-
tion, by giving him the faith that works in love, and by enabling
him to love, and thus to collaborate with God's grace and to earn
merit.133

The Lombard's Doctrine of the Atonement

Peter Lombard's treatment of Christ's saving work is even more

broad-gauged than that of Robert Pullen. Like Bernard of Clair-
vaux, to whom he is deeply indebted, he retains the notion of the
rights of the devil while radically internalizing his understanding of
that doctrine. He agrees with Bernard, Abelard, Roland, and
Robert of Melun in seeing the subjective change brought about by
Christ in man's mind and heart as the manner in which His
redemptive work is communicated to man and made efficacious in
man. While Peter certainly can be positioned clearly in relation to
these contemporary thinkers, he also draws heavily on his own

132
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 157-62; Anders, Die Christologie, pp. xx-xxxv;
Clerck, "Le dogme de la rédemption," pp. 253-67.
133
Robert Pullen, Sent. 4.13-15. PL 186: 820B-822D. Gottschick, "Ver-
söhnungslehre," pp. 436-38 sees Robert's position as primarily Abelardian.
460 CHAPTER SEVEN

commentary on the Pauline epistles, notably his gloss on Hebrews

1:11-18 but even more on his gloss on Romans 8:10. Indeed, this
segment of Peter's Christology offers an extended example of the
creative interplay between his exegesis and his systematic theology,
as we have also noted in chapter 4 above, for we see both a
carryover of ideas found in his Pauline commentaries and a depar-
ture from them as well. The departures are most noticeable in
Peter's treatment of the devil, in his understanding of the theme of
justice, and in his increasingly critical stance toward Anselm of
Canterbury in his most mature work.
It will be recalled that, as an exegete of Paul, Peter had been
both a supporter of the "rights of the devil" theory and of some
features of Anselm's doctrine.134 As he explains in his Romans
gloss, God could have saved man some other way, since He is
omnipotent; but He ordained the incarnation and passion of Christ
as the most suitable way. This is because one of the effects of the fall
is that man can grasp both the hopelessness of his situation and the
fact that he is fully responsible for it. He has lost the eternal life he
desires and he is frustrated by his futile attempts to possess it. This,
according to Peter, is why Christ must be a God-man. Since He is
the Son of God, He is immortal. He can therefore free man from
mortality and hence from his frustration and despair. Christ's
saving work thus has a subjective dimension, in Peter's Romans
gloss, as well as an objective one. This is true of the effects of
Christ's actions in the hearts of men. It is also true of Christ's
liberation of man from the devil, whom Peter still sees here as an
external power. He agrees with those who hold that the devil's
power is an unjust usurpation of God's legitimate authority. The
devil himself rules man by brute force. If He had so wished, God
could have overcome the devil by an act of violence of His own,
since He is more powerful than the devil. But God does not want to
counter violence with violence. Rather, He wants to oppose the
injustice of the devil with divine justice. At this juncture, Peter
incorporates Anselm's analysis into his gloss. Since Christ is wholly
blameless as a man, His unmerited death on the cross is a just
recompense to God for man's sin. At the same time, Christ's justice
in this connection plays an exemplary role for man. He serves as a

134
See above, chapter 4, pp. 217-20. The rights of the devil, in this case seen as
the "princeps regionis illius dissimilitudinis," are also noted by Peter in Sermo de
adventu domini, ed. Damien Van den Eynde, "Deux sermons inédits de Pierre
Lombard," in Misc. Lomb., p. 78.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 461

moral example for man, offering a behavioral model that God

wants man to imitate, by following the path ofjustice, not violence,
in his own moral life. In this connection, as well, Christ must be
both God and man. His divinity is the guarantee of His ability to
offer an infinitely worthy gift to God, a gift certain of acceptance by
the Father, Who is already bound to the Son in love. Christ must
also be a man, otherwise he could not have been put to death. As
with Anselm, in the Romans gloss Peter views Christ as transfer-
ring to man the immortality that He has won for man by imputa-
tion. Eternal life is His objective gift to man, and it is the meaning
of His liberation of man from the devil, while His subjective gift is
the substitution of hope for fallen man's despair and frustration.
In Peter's reworking of his doctrine of Christ's saving work in the
Sentences, he continues to regard the atonement as having both an
objective and a subjective dimension. At the same time, in the
manner of Bernard of Clairvaux, he assimilates the externalist
understanding of the rights of the devil into a thoroughly internalist
account of the redemption as occurring entirely within man's
soul.135 He now grounds his doctrine of the redemption in his
doctrine of Christ's human nature, and, in particular, in the princi-
ple that Christ possessed all the virtues. Christ had complete
ethical merit because, in the exercise of His faculty of free will, and
despite His capacity to be tempted, He brought His will into
perfect conformity with the will of God at all times. This total
obedience to the Father made the human Christ perfectly virtuous.
Since He did not need anything for Himself, His merit allows Him
to win redemption for mankind from the devil, from sin, and from
punishment for sin. Christ's redemption means as well the opening
of God's kingdom to man, the glorification of the body and the
impassibility of the soul which He earned for Himself and made
possible for man in the resurrection. 136 Here Peter emphasizes that
the obedience and hence the merit of the human Christ was so
exhaustive that it was fully present at all points during His earthly
life. Christ was obedient to the Father not only in submitting to
death on the cross but also in submitting to His conception and

135
The appreciation of both of these dimensions is found in the balanced
commentaries of Franks, The Work of Christ, pp. 167-76; Rivière, "Le mérite du
Christ," pp. 234-35; Gottschick, ''Versöhnungslehre," pp. 35-36. On the other
hand, Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 2: 338 overemphasizes the objective
aspect, while Fritz Bünger, "Darstellung und Würdigung der Lehre des Petrus
Lombardus vom Werke Christus (Sentent. 1. Ill, dist. 18-20)," Zeitschrift for
wissenschaftliche Theologie 45 (1902): 92-126 overemphasizes the subjective side.
136
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 18. c. 1, 2: 111-12.
462 CHAPTER SEVEN

birth and throughout all the stages of His life on earth. In the
behavior He manifested at all times, the virtues and charisms were
perfect in Him to the full limits of the human condition; they could
not, at any time, have been improved on. This view is one that
Peter holds so strongly that it moves him to conclude that the
passion of Christ was not, for Him, a critical event in His rela-
tionship with God the Father. The passion simply afforded Him
another opportunity to display the perfect obedience that He had
always possessed. Qualitatively, the passion did not enlarge
Christ's merit. He may have merited more, in a quantitative sense,
because of His passion and crucifixion, but not better.137
Given this startling claim that Christ's crucifixion was not greater
in merit than the virtue He possessed throughout His life, Peter
has to address the question of why the passion was ordained, given
the fact that God could have effected man's redemption in some
other way. Here, he begins by making the point that Christ under-
went the passion not for Himself but for mankind. His suffering and
death were meant to be a form and a cause, a form of virtue in man,
especially in the imitation of His paramount virtues of obedience
and humility, and a cause of liberty, beatitude, and glory. In a very
objectivist description of the redemption here, Peter states that
Christ earned paradise for man, in freeing him from sin, from
punishment, and from the devil, and in a more positive sense, in
creating the opportunity for men to become adopted sons of glory.
For this, is was necessary for Christ to be a man of the line of
Judah, consubstantial both with Adam and with the rest of the
human race. And, He must be the possessor of the most consum-
mate humility, in order to counteract the consummate pride that
led to Adam's fall. Perfect humility cannot be shown more fully
than in the voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering and
death. Here, Peter departs from Bernard's view that personal rejec-
tion was the most grievous suffering that Christ endured, adhering
to the more standard notion of the passion and crucifixion and
anchoring the point with Ambrosiaster, the author who, like every-
one else at the time, he takes to be Ambrose. Still, like Bernard, he
sees pride as the quintessential sin and humility as its necessary
antidote, although in more specifically dogmatic terms.138

137
Ibid., c. 2, c. 4, 2: 113-114, 115-116. This point is misinterpreted by
Gottschick, "Versöhnungslehre," p. 35, who overemphasizes the function of
Christ's death in Peter's soteriology.
138
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 18. c. 5, 2: 116.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 463

But how, then, do Christ's suffering and death, which He accepts

thanks to His perfect humility, redeem mankind from sin, from
punishment, and from the devil? It is instructive to note that, in
addressing this question, Peter begins with man's subjective
appropriation of the redemption. It is, indeed, the very conditions
of man's subjective appropriation of the redemption that set the
terms for Peter's description of Christ's objective nature and ac-
tions. By displaying His humility up to His death on the cross,
Christ, although He does not enlarge His own merit thereby, shows
forth His love for man in a manner so full of drama and pathos that
He revolutionizes the human heart, inflaming in it a responding
love of God, the God Who has offered this electrifying sacrifice for
man's sake. As with Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard, Roland, and
Robert of Melun, Peter sees this love, both as extended to man and
as responded to by man, as a force that changes man from within,
energizing him and enabling him to reorder his own loves, to accept
the grace of God, and to reorient himself, as justified, in charity to
his fellow man: "Having shown, with regard to us, such an earnest
of His own love, He both inflames us and moves us to the love of
God, Who has done so such for us, and by this we are justified, that
is, released from our sins; we are made just. The death of Christ
thus justifies us, since through it charity is excited in our hearts"
{Exhibita autem tantae erga nos dilectionis arrha, et nos movemur accendimur-
que ad diligendum Deum, cuipro nobis tantum fecit; et per hoc iustificamur, id
est soluti a peccati, iusti efficamur. Mors igitur Christi nos iustificat, dum per
earn caritas excitatur in cordibus nostris).139 While the word arrha is
evocative of Hugh of St. Victor in another context, we see Peter
decisively departing from the Anselmian doctrine of imputation in
favor of the more subjective understanding of Christ's effecting a
change within man's soul itself, thanks to which man can now set
foot on the positive path of moral growth that leads to glory.
It is with this interpretation of the redemption in mind that Peter
addresses, and internalizes, the idea that Christ's passion liberates
man from the devil. In agreement with Bernard of Clairvaux, he
now sees the sway of the devil not as an external, political con-
straint but as nothing else than man's self-inflicted bondage to his
own sin. The love that Christ inspires in the human heart enables
man to turn away from sin, to resist temptation. Unlike Hugh of
St. Victor, who holds that, once the divine alternative is tendered, the
devil's power self-destructs, Peter argues that the devil will still be

Ibid., d. 19, c. 1.2, 2: 118.

464 CHAPTER SEVEN

able to tempt redeemed and justified mankind. But, he stresses, it is

the unimpeded and unopposed failure to love within the human
heart that must be understood as the devil's power. The love that
man now feels empowers him to shed the devil who resides within
his own heart. The appropriation of Christ's saving work frees man
from the pressure to consent to evil under which he suffered as
fallen and unredeemed. Peter points out that this continuing ability
to be tempted is a function of the f omes peccati which remains in man
after the redemption, if in a milder form than before. He uses this
analysis against authorities who support the idea that the devil is
totally vanquished by the cross, such as Augustine with his pun-
gent phrase about the cross as the devil's mousetrap, because he
sees it as too external an understanding of the redemption, and also
one that denies the continuing reality of temptation and backslid-
ing in the moral lives of justified Christians. 140
It is as a corollary of this account of man's subjective appropria-
tion of redemption as the liberation from his own internal bondage
to sin that Peter introduces the all-important point that Christ had
to be a God-man in order to accomplish His saving work. Here, he
brings in some of the argumentation of his Collectanea while hand-
ling the subject in a different way. Unless Christ were a man, Peter
observes, He would not have been able to inspire the love that
enables other men to overcome voluntarily the devil within their
own psychology of sin. Anselm of Canterbury had made the point
that, since the fall was voluntary, on man's part, Christ's accept-
ance of the suffering and death that corrects for it had to be
voluntary as well. Peter turns this argument around. Because the
fall was voluntary, on man's part, so his turning away from the
devil within must also be voluntary, on man's part. God wants man
to respond to the violence of the devil with justice, and this is what
Christ's empowering love enables man to do. Peter resists any
interpretation of this liberation that treats man as passive in the
process, acted on by forces outside himself. Just as Christ must be a
man in order to inspire the change of heart that makes possible the
virtuous use of man's free will, so He must be God, in order that He
Himself may be rendered free from sin. For Peter, Christ's sinless-
ness is important in this connection not because it enables Him to
offer an acceptable gift, payment, or propitiatory sacrifice to the
Father, sufficient to assuage God's wounded dignity. It is not
necessary, in Peter's view, for Christ to change God's mind.

Ibid., c. 1.3-4,2: 119-20.

 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 465

Rather, Christ's sinlessness is important because it is what enables

Him to possess the perfect humility that is sufficient to overcome
the pride causing man's fall and keeping man enslaved to the sins
from which Christ's activating love redeems him.141 For Peter, the
redemption is as little a transaction between Christ and God the
Father as it is a battle between Christ and the devil, seen as
external forces. It is, instead, an interaction between Christ and
mankind, which takes place entirely within the ground of the
individual human soul.
Having explained the sense in which he holds that Christ re-
deems man from sin and the devil, Peter turns to the question of
how Christ redeems man from the punishment and guilt which
original sin incurred. There are two kinds of punishment involved,
he observes, eternal and temporal. We are released from eternal
punishment and from guilt absolutely, and are granted immortal-
ity, he states. But we are released from temporal punishment only
partially, for the physical and spiritual weaknesses deriving from
original sin remain part of the human condition. At the same time,
he argues, there is a real if not a total release here in that these
weaknesses no longer have to dominate man's moral life as they do
before the redemption. In explaining how Christ achieves these
forms of release, Peter again offers a balance between the objective
and subjective approaches to the atonement. Christ releases us by
meriting, for man, the lifting of punishment and guilt, through His
own acceptance of a punishment which He did not deserve. At the
same time, Christ makes this release efficacious in the human soul.
Our punishment abates when we feel, in an operational sense, the
love of Christ that leads to our conversion, baptism, and penance.
Christ is thus properly called the redeemer, Peter observes, both in
His exercise of the divine power and in the subjective effects which
His humility produces in man, as well as through the efficacy which
He grants to His sacraments, which in turn are causes of man's
redemption in the Christian life.142 For Peter, the accent is as much
on Christ's operations as on His nature, and His operations are
seen as both exemplary and efficacious in man. This whole section
of his account of the redemption can be read as an extended
critique of Anselm's view of Christ's merits being imputed to men,

141
Ibid., c. 2, 2: 120-21. This stress on Christ's humility is also found in the
Lombard's sermons. See, for instance, Sermo de Ascensione, ed. Damien Van den
Eynde, "Deux sermons inédits de Pierre Lombard," in Misc. Lomb., p. 83. This
point is also noted by Longère, Oeuvres oratoires, 1: 85-86.
142
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 19. c. 3-c. 5, 2: 121-22.
466 CHAPTER SEVEN

who are thereby given a status they have not earned but without
being changed in the process. Instead, with Bernard and Abelard
and the theologians whom they influenced, he holds that Christ's
merits accomplish a psychic and moral change in man, a change
that now enables him to earn his own merit, in collaboration with
God's grace.
Peter rings yet another change on a standard description of the
work of Christ as interpreted by Anselm. Christ can, he agrees, be
regarded as a mediator between God and man, but not in the sense
of an advocate or negotiator arguing man's case with a God whose
mind Christ wants to change. Rather, Christ mediates in the sense
that He acts as a catalyst or facilitator, removing the obstacles
between man and God that have made man an enemy of God, so
that man can now return to God in loving friendship. God has no
need of this mediation, for His love is constant. It is man who
stands in need of the unblocking of his power to love which the
work of Christ achieves.143
Like other contemporary theologians, Peter raises the question of
whether there could have been another mode of redemption; and,
like them, he holds that one must answer in the affirmative, since
God is omnipotent, but also that the mode He did choose was the
most suitable. His own handling of this question makes use of some
of the reasoning in his Romans gloss, in responding to the point
that the chosen mode was the most suitable one. The union of God
and man in Christ, His combination of divine immortality and
heart-wrenching humanity, cures mankind of desperation, substi-
tuting hope for sinful man's frustrated yearning for eternal life.
Peter is well aware of the extensive tradition supporting the exter-
nalistic "rights of the devil" position and outlines it in extenso here,
insisting that the authorities have to be read in the internalist and
nonlegalistic manner in which he interprets the redemption. It is
the justice of Christ's humility that liberates man, he stresses, and
not justice in the sense invoked either by the partisans of the "rights
of the devil" or by Anselm.144 This being the case, and along with
the sharply restricted understanding of what "the devil" means in
this context, he agrees that there are three parties in the scenario,
God, man, and the devil. The devil is convicted of injury against
God, because he fraudulently abducted man, God's servant, and
violently held him. Man is convicted of injury against God because

Ibid., c. 6~-c. 7, 2: 122-24.

Ibid., d. 20. c. 2.2-c. 3.2, 2: 125-27.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 467

he repudiated God and gave himself over to another lord. This

human injury can also be charged to the devil's account since it was
he who deceived man with fallacious promises, and afterwards,
afflicted man. With respect to himself, the devil holds man unjustly;
with respect to man, his sway is just, because man, through his own
fault, deserves the sufferings he receives at the devil's hands. Now,
God, had He willed it, could have resolved this situation by fiat.
But, for the reason given above, He wished to use the justice of
humility instead.145 This passage is a reminder of how important it
is to read the Lombard on the devil in context. If one were not
aware of His radical internalizing and psychologizing of the devil
along Bernardine lines, one might think that the analysis just given
places Peter in alignment with the school of Laon and with the
traditional authorities whom he subjects to such forcible reinter-
pretation on that point. For, given the way in which he does under-
stand the devil, not to mention the psychogenesis of sin, the three
parties in the scenario he describes can actually be reduced to two,
God and two dimensions or consequences of the divided self in man.
There are two other topics which Peter takes up in his considera-
tion of Christ's saving work. One is a subject to which other
theologians of the time advert, the question of who bears the
responsibility for Christ's passion and crucifixion.146 The position
Peter takes, while aimed largely against Abelard's claim that the
people who crucified Christ were not culpable because they did not
regard the deed as the contravention of God's will, has a wider
interest for its analysis of causation, no less than of intentionality.
Who was responsible, Peter asks, God the Father? the whole Trin-
ity? Judas? the Jews? Curiously, he omits the Romans, although the
analysis he is about to offer would cover their case as well. In any
event, he responds by distinguishing the senses in which we can
talk about responsibility, in maintaining that all the parties he
names are responsible in some way. Christ is responsible, in that
He gave Himself up to suffering and death freely. The Father and,
indeed, the whole Trinity, is also responsible, for ordaining this
mode of redemption and for predestining the human Christ to be
joined to the Word in order to carry it out. Judas brought about
Christ's death by his betrayal, and so did the Jews, by instigating
it. Had Peter included the Romans, he could have added that they

145
Ibid., c. 4.1-2, 2: 127.
146
On this subject, see the survey by Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 2 part 2:
329-58.
468 CHAPTER SEVEN

gave the order for the crucifixion and executed it. In discriminating
among the roles and responsibilities of the persons he does include,
Peter observes that Christ's own act was a good one, as were the
acts of the other persons of the Trinity, for they were undertaken for
the salvation of man. On the other hand, the acts of Judas and the
Jews were evil, because they sprang from malicious intentions.
Thus, although the same event is at issue, these different actions are
really quite distinct with respect to it, because of the difference in
intentionally which the persons in question brought to it. And, in
the case of Christ and the Trinity, the persons involved functioned
as a sufficient cause, while in the case of Judas and the Jews they
functioned as an efficient cause, forms of causation which, as Peter
notes, are not the same thing.147
Peter also brings up another question which is not found in many
of the scholastic theologians of his time, under the heading of the
merits of Christ. Christ merited, he states, the name above all
names, the honorific title "God." This topic derives not from the
controversies carried on by the summists and sentence collectors,
but from Peter's own exegesis of Philippians 2:9 and that of Gilbert
of Poitiers.148 This is another good example of the positive interac-
tion between Peter's Pauline commentaries and his systematic
theology, not only as an index of what to say and which authorities
to call upon but also of what questions to put into his doctrinal
schema in the first place. The question is also a good example of the
way Peter reconciles conflicting authorities, at least in cases where
he thinks that it is possible to do so. The two competing authorities
at issue here, Augustine and Ambrose, apparently disagree. Augus-
tine says that the appropriate title to be given to the human Christ,
by grace, is "Son of God." Ambrose says that the appropriate title
to be given is "God." The two positions, Peter observes, are not
incompatible. Ambrose was referring not to the humanity of Christ
but to the divinity of Christ, which certainly merits the term "God"
quite literally. For his part, Augustine was referring to the trope by
which a thing is said to exist when it becomes known, as the
resurrected Christ came to be known both by men and by other
spiritual beings. Thus, the terms "God" and "Son of God" are
both applied appositely, and honorifically, to the resurrected hu-
man Christ.149

Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 20. c. 5-c. 6, 2: 128-29.

Noted by Brady ad loc, 2: 114.
Peter Lombard, Sent 3. d. 18. c. 3, 2: 114-15.
 CHRIST, HIS NATURE, AND HIS SAVING WORK 469

Interesting as these last two points may be, it is not so much from
the introduction of new questions or new distinctions that the
Lombard's soteriology acquires its own personal character. Rather,
what gives it its distinctiveness is his ability to bring together an
objective understanding of the atonement based on Christ's nature
and action with a subjective understanding of the atonement based
on a psychological account of the existential change that Christ's
actions, and the humility inspiring them, provoke in man. Just as
the human Christ has to attain His own merit by the consistent,
obedient functioning of a will that remains free, so human beings
are made capable of liberation from their lesser selves by an ena-
bling act on Christ's part that unleashes their love for the good and
their capacity to exercise their own free will in pursuit of it in
conjunction with God's grace, despite the remaining, if partial,
weakness under which the human will must labor. Peter places the
redemption of mankind by Christ on a trajectory that includes their
justification, their sanctification, and their glorification. No doubt
the single most striking feature of this Lombardian doctrine is his
emphasis on Christ's perfect humility, as the sufficient corrective to
the perfect pride that brought about the fall, a humility expressive
of the consummate obedience manifested at all times during the
earthly life of Christ, so that His crucifixion is rendered unneces-
sary, except for its unique power to provoke an emotional response
from man. With Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter emphasizes the suffer-
ing of Christ more than His other deeds and experiences, and he
does so more restrictively. On the other hand, the systematic
account he takes of the "rights of the devil" theory, which we do
not find in Bernard, has the effect of enabling Peter to marginalize
that theory in scholastic theology after his time, in favor of a more
internalist understanding of sin and redemption, and one that
squares more neatly with the intentionalism of twelfth-century
theology than its alternatives. If the "rights of the devil" model
continued to appeal to the popular imagination and to medieval
artists, being easier to visualize than the turning around of man's
heart, the Lombard succeeded in bringing the latter view, which he
shares with Bernard and Abelard, fully into the mainstream of
scholastic analyses of Christ's saving work.
Peter's success in attaining his objectives in the other areas of
Christology which he takes up in Book 3 of the Sentences is not
always as striking. As the debates of his contemporaries and im-
mediate successors indicate, it took some time for the lexical clar-
ifications he imposed on terms such as substance, nature, and
person, essential in the consideration of the hypostatic union, to
470 CHAPTER SEVEN

sink in, and there remained thinkers who failed to take his point
and who garbled what he had said, thanks to their own insensitivity
to his terminology. And, no sooner had they been dismissed, when
the reception of Aristotle provided theologians in the sequel with a
larger and less ambiguous vocabulary of terms which they could
apply to the understanding of that doctrine. Peter's account of the
three opinions, and their problems, became a classic one, wherever
these later theologians decided to plant their own standards. Pe-
ter's willingness to leave the question open and to admit the ortho-
doxy of the three opinions, despite their difficulties, stands as an
object lesson of the advantages of viewing the orthodox consensus
as a non-monolithic one. Peter's handling of the human Christ,
reflective as it is of the growing interest which this subject was
attracting in devotion and dogmatic theology alike, suffers from the
twelfth century's unwillingness, and ultimately, the Lombard's
own, to grant a truly human psychology to the human Christ. This
problem emerges with particular acuteness in his discussions sur-
rounding Christ's human knowledge, and it can also be seen in his
consideration of His free will and His nature and functions as a
moral agent. In part, the hard line that Peter takes on the transmis-
sion of original sin and Christ's exemption from it inclines him to
agree with the picture of a quasi-superhuman Christ favored by his
contemporaries. In part, he seems to be as inspired as they are by
the devotional attractiveness of the humanity of Christ. While he
does try to take a minimalist line in these debates, and to hedge his
description of the honors, dignities, and exemptions of the human
Christ with qualifications, in the end Peter's human Christ is no
more a man like us in all but sin than theirs is. This conclusion is
one that Peter does not avoid drawing despite the fact that it is at
odds with the doctrine that neither of the two natures of the
incarnate Christ was altered by their union, so central to his
treatment of the communication of idioms in the incarnate Christ,
and with the doctrine of the full consubstantiality of Christ with the
rest of mankind, so central to his soteriology.
 BRILL'S STUDIES
IN
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
General Editor

A J. VANDERJAGT, University of Groningen

Editorial Board
M. COLISH, Oberlin College
J.I. ISRAEL, University College, London
J.D. NORTH, University of Groningen
H.A. OBERMAN, University of Arizona, Tucson
R.H. POPKIN, Washington University, St. Louis-UCLA
VOLUME 4 1 / 2
PETER LOMBARD
BY

MARCIA L. COLISH

VOLUME TWO

EJ. BRILL
LEIDEN · NEW YORK · KÖLN
1994
T h e paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.

Library o f C o n g r e s s Cataloging-in-Publication D a t a

Colish, Marcia L.
Peter Lombard / by Marcia L. Colish.
p. cm. — (Brill's studies in intellectual history, ISSN
0920-8607 ; v. 41)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 9004098615 (set : alk. paper). — ISBN 9004098593 (v. 1 :
alk. paper). — ISBN 9004098607 (v. 2 : alk. paper)
1. Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, ca. 1100-1160. 2. Theology,
Doctrinal—History—Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Title. II. Series.
BX1749.P4C64 1993
230'.2'092—dc20 93-8757
CIP

D i e D e u t s c h e Bibliothek - CEP-Einheitsaufhahme

Colish, Marcia L.:

Peter Lombard / by Marcia L. Colish. - Leiden ; New York ;
Köln : Brill.
(Brill's studies in intellectual history ; Vol. 41)
ISBN 90-04-09861-5
NE:GT
Vol. 2 (1993)
ISBN 90-04^09860-7

ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 90 04 09860 7 (Vol. 2)
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© Copyright 1994 by E.J. Bull, Leiden, The Netherlands

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 CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE

Author's Note ix
List of Abbreviations xi

Preface 1

1. Peter Lombard's Life and Works 15

Biography 15
Works 23
Reputation 30
2. The Theological Enterprise 33
Systematic Theology in the Twelfth Century 34
Monastic Parallels and Contrasts 35
The Scholastic Sentence Collection as a Genre of
Theological Literature 42
The Criticism and Evaluation of Authorities 44
Peter Abelard and His Followers 47
Gilbert of Poitiers and His Followers 52
Hugh of St. Victor and the Summa sententiarum 57
Roland of Bologna, Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun 65
The Lombard 77

3. The Problem of Theological Language 91

The Abelardian Challenge 96
The Lombardian Response 119
The Porretan Challenge 131
The Lombardian Response 148

4. Sacra pagina 155

Psalms Exegesis: The Monastic Approach 158
Pre-Lombardian Scholastic Psalms Exegesis 162
Peter Lombard on the Psalms 170
Pauline Exegesis: The Monastic Approach 189
Pauline Exegesis among the Lombard's
Scholastic Predecessors and Contemporaries
and the Lombard's Collectanea 192
vi CONTENTS

5. The Doctrine of God 227

Man's Knowledge of God: Proofs of God's
Existence, Analogies of the Trinity 229
Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Pullen, Robert of Melun 230
The Lombard 238
Nature and Person in the Trinity 245
The Critique of Abelard 254
The Divine Nature in Relation to the Creation 263
God's Ubiquity 264
God's Foreknowledge, Providence, and
Predestination, and Free Will and Contingency 268
Can God Do Better or Different Than He Does? 290

6. The Creation, Angels, Man, and the Fall 303

The Doctrine of Creation 303
The Chartrain Challenge 305
The Response of the Scholastic Theologians 319
The Lombard on Creation 336
Angels among the Lombard's Scholastic
Predecessors and Contemporaries 342
The Lombard on Angels 347
Human Nature before the Fall: The Contemporary
Debates 353
The Lombard on Prelapsarian Human Nature 366
The Fall: The Contemporary Debates 372
The Lombard on the Fall 377
The Effects of Original Sin: The Contemporary
Debates 381
The Lombard's Position 383
The Transmission of Original Sin: The
Contemporary Debates 385
The Lombard on the Transmission of Original Sin 393

7. Christ, His Nature, and His Saving Work 398

The Hypostatic Union: Ancient and Current
Understandings 399
The Lombard on the Hypostatic Union 417
The Debates over the Lombard's Christology 427
Christ's Human Knowledge: Ancient and Current
Debates 438
The Lombard on Christ's Human Knowledge 442
Other Attributes of Christ's Humanity 443
 CONTENTS vii

The Atonement: The Contemporary Debates 448

The Lombard's Doctrine of the Atonement 459

VOLUME TWO

8. Ethics, Sacraments, and Last Things 471

Ethics 471
Intentionalism in Ethics: The Consensus
and the Disagreements Within It 473
The Lombard as an Intentionalist 480
Vice and Sin 484
Virtue: Free Will and Grace in Its Attainment 488
The Theological Virtues 493
The Cardinal Virtues 504
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit 507
The Moral Law of the Old Testament 510
Conclusion 514
The Sacraments 516
The Idea of Sacrament in General 517
Baptism 532
Confirmation 548
The Eucharist 551
Penance 583
Unction 609
Holy Orders 614
Marriage 628
Last Things 698
The Non-Scholastic Challenge 700
The Scholastic Response 704
Peter Lombard on Last Things 710
Conclusion 718

Bibliography 779

Index of Names 819

Index of Subjects 859

 AUTHOR'S NOTE

I include this author's note in order to clarify some technical

stylistic decisions made in this book which entail apparent inconsist-
encies, inconsistencies which medievalists have long since come to
live with, if not to love, but which may trouble readers coming to
this book from another part of the landscape.
First, there was no agreement on Latin spelling in the Middle
Ages, a fact reflected in the policies of editors of medieval texts and
the houses that publish them. Some editors and publishers sys-
tematically classicize the spelling of medieval Latin, however the
language may be used in the manuscripts on which the texts
depend. For example, they substitute " i " for " j " or "u" for "v" on
this basis. On the other hand, some editors and publishers retain
the spellings found in the manuscripts. I have followed the practice,
when quoting from editions of medieval Latin texts, of preserving
whichever decision regarding the spelling is followed by the edition
in question.
Another discrepancy concerns the Anglicization, or not, of the
Latin names of medieval personages, and the titles of well known
works. There are names, such as John of Salisbury, Gilbert of
Poitiers, and Peter Lombard, whose English form is in common use
among Anglophone readers. It would be an affectation to refer to
these people in Latin or in another language. On the other hand,
there are figures, such as Ordericus Vitalis and Jacques de Vitry,
for whom this is not the case. My practice has been to use which-
ever version of the name has the greatest immediate recognition
value, regardless of the lack of symmetry that any result. Similarly,
while the titles of works written in Latin will usually be cited in that
language in the text, others, such as Abelard's Ethics and Augus-
tine's City of God or Eighty-Three Diverse Questions, will be given in
English as more familiar or as less cumbersome than their Latin
originals.
I will have occasion to cite repeatedly in this book the works of
scholastic theologians and canonists, not only by the page or col-
umn number in the texts in which their works are printed, but
according to the more specific, and traditional, finding tools indi-
cated by the subdivisions within their texts. This practice, too, is
quite standard for medievalists, who will readily recognize abbre-
viations such as "d" for distinctio, " c " for capitulum or causa, "q" for
χ AUTHOR'S NOTE

quaestio, and dictum for a canonist's summation of a point. This

system of abbreviations should serve as a guide for any readers
unfamiliar with this standard scheme of citation for medieval texts.
Let me note as well that no effort has been made here to regular­
ize the spelling of "mediaeval" to "medieval" or vice versa. When
these adjectives occur in titles or in the house style of publishers,
the spelling given by the author or by the publisher is the spelling
that will be followed.
I will have occasion to cite female scholars, both in the bibliogra­
phy and in footnotes organized alphabetically, who began to pub­
lish under one surname but who have changed their surnames
thanks to a change in their marital status. I will cite their works
alphabetized according to the first surnames under which they
began to publish, with their subsequent surnames indicated in
square brackets following their original names. I trust that this
practice will not be confusing to readers who may initially seek
citations to the writings of these scholars in locations where they
will not be found.
 ABBREVIATIONS

AHDLMA Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire

du moyen âge
Beiträge Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philoso-
phie [und Theologie] des Mittelalters
CCCM Corpus Christianorum, continuatio
medievalis
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, series latina
CI M A GEL Cahiers de l'Institut du moyen âge grec et
latin de Γ Université de Copenhague
GSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum
latinorum
DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
FS Franciscan Studies
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte Artur Michael Landgraf, Dogmen-
geschichte der Frühscholastik, 4 vols. (Re-
gensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1952-56)
MGH, Scriptores Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
Scriptores
Misc. Lomb. Miscellanea Lombardiana (Novara: Isti-
tuto Geografico de Agostini, 1957)
PL Patrologia latina, cursus completus, ed. J.
P. Migne
RHE Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique
Rolls Series Rerum Brittanicarum medii aevi,
Scriptores
RSPT Revue des sciences philosophiques et théolo-
giques
RSR Revue des sciences religieuses
RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale
ZkT Zeitschrift fur katholische Theologie
 CHAPTER EIGHT

ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS

The topics to be treated in this chapter, with the exception of

ethics, are all found in the fourth and final book of Peter Lombard's
Sentences. They received widely varying degrees of attention in the
first half of the twelfth century. Some of them were regarded as
meriting sustained and systematic investigation and were treated
as subjects that warranted a clear and well-rationalized location in
any summa or sentence collection. Others were taken up in a more
random manner, without the sense that they needed discussion at
some specifically chosen place in a theologian's writings, or were
omitted altogether. Some aspects of these questions elicited a strik-
ing degree of consensus among contemporaries, while in other
areas they were sharply divided. Controversy was particularly
acute in the field of sacramental theology, both in response to the
need to define and defend these rites of the church against heretics
of an anti-sacramental persuasion and as an expression of the
desire to work out practical and theoretical problems attached to
their administration and reception. Peter Lombard plays a range of
roles in his address to the subjects dealt with in this chapter. On
some topics he takes a strongly partisan stand, and makes a critical
contribution in helping to undermine the countervailing view. In
some parallel areas, his equally partisan position does not have the
same kind of effect. There are some fields in which he argues for
caution and reticence over against what he regards as groundless
speculation that has gotten out of hand. Finally, there are areas
where his goal, a goal successfully attained, is to sum up and to
expand upon the contemporary consensus, incorporating the in-
sights of its bolder articulations while moderating their extremes.

ETHICS

This last-mentioned orientation is definitely the one that Peter

takes in the field of ethics. From a schematic point of view, ethics is
the major subject on which his gift for lucid organization deserts
him. He does not take up all the points relevant to this topic in one
place. There is some analysis of the psychology of ethical decision-
making in his Pauline exegesis, and this theme recurs in his consid-
472 CHAPTER EIGHT

eration of the fall in Book 2 of the Sentences. It is there, as well, under

the heading of human nature, that he considers the vices, and the
relationship between man's free will and divine grace in the moral
life both before and after the fall. Ethical intentionality and sin
reappear, in detail, in his analysis of the sacraments, typically
penance and marriage, in Book 4. While Peter discusses the gifts of
the Holy Spirit and the virtues which they help mankind to develop
as an extension of his treatment of grace and free will in Book 2, his
principal analysis of virtue, both the theological virtues, the cardi-
nal virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit occurs in Book 3, in
connection with the moral aptitudes of the human Christ. Notwith-
standing the schematic disjunctions which this plan of attack
involves, Philippe Delhaye, our leading guide on Peter's ethical
doctrine to date, is quite right in pointing out that his ideas do
manage to cohere, on the whole, even though they are not pre-
sented synthetically.1
In general, Peter's ethics is marked by two notes, both of which
are clear hallmarks of the theology of his time. On the one hand, he
is deeply committed to the view that all meritorious acts require the
collaboration of man's free will and God's grace. While he is
resolutely opposed to the idea that grace is irresistible or that man,
in his fallen state, is unable to desire the good, Peter is only
marginally interested in what might be called a purely natural
ethics. We recall here that, in his treatment of the nature of man as
such, before the fall, he holds that grace must interact with man's
free will if man is to acquire virtue. At the same time, Peter shares
the view, widespread in his time, that the psychic ground on which
man makes ethical decisions and on which he acts, reacts, and
develops, is a subject that requires extended and sympathetic con-
sideration. The systematic interiorizing of ethics, the analysis of
what ethical behavior means in the inner life of the moral subject,
and the consequent stress on intentionality in ethics that mark this
period are equally compelling themes for Peter. He gives lucid
articulation to these concerns. While seeking to preserve a sense
that some acts are objectively wrong and while arguing that good
intentions should normally be expressed in appropriate good ac-
tions, he retains the common view of the period that intentionality
is the essence of the moral act and that, absent the act, it defines the
moral status of the moral agent.2

1
Philippe Delhaye, Pierre Lombard: Sa vie, ses oeuvres, sa morale (Montreal: Insti-
tut d'Études Médiévales, 1961), pp. 24-25, 28-100.
2
The best overall study of this theme in our period is Robert Blomme, La
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 473

INTENTIONALISM IN ETHICS: T H E CONSENSUS AND THE

DISAGREEMENTS WITHIN I T

The analysis of the psychology of moral choice on which Peter

draws is ultimately Stoic in provenance and was mediated to the
twelfth century by patristic authorities such as Jerome and Augus-
tine. This position was held widely during the period. The theory is
based on the principle that sin, or virtue, lies in a fixed intentionality
toward evil, or good, respectively. These moral states are controlled
by the mind, not by the body. Temptations to sin or inclinations to
virtue may, to be sure, arise in any part of the human constitution.
But it is not the inclination itself, but a rational and deliberate
assent to it, the mind having judged it to be morally desirable, that
constitutes the moral agent's ethical commitment and that makes
him vicious or virtuous. In Hieronymian language, the process
involves, with respect to sin, a passio or temptation, a propassio or
hospitable contemplation of the temptation, and a consensus, or
conscious capitulation to it. Language also found in this period
which embodies precisely the same analysis substitutes suggestio,
delectatio, and consensus, the first term including the idea that the
temptation may be internal or external. The school of Laon uses
both of these vocabularies, repeating the point frequently, and their
lead is followed widely. Peter follows suit.3

doctrine du péché dans les écoles théologiques de la première moitié du XIΓ siècle (Louvain:
Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1958). See also Artur Michael Landgraf,
"Die Bestimmung des Verdienstgrades in der Frühscholastik," Scholastik 8 (1933):
1-40; Dogmengeschichte 1 part 2: 210-61; Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XU' et
Xlir siècles, vols. 1-5 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont-César, 1948-59), 2: 421-22, 4
part 1: 310-19.
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 10, 85-86; Sentences of Plausible Authenticity, no.
218; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 277-78; Sentences of the School of Laon, no.
422, 423, 447, 449, 450-54, ed. Lottin in Psych, et morale, 5: 22, 73-74, 138-39,
221-22, 292, 302-03, 303-05; Sententie Anselmi 2, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder in
Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2-3 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1919), p. 71; Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: In Mattheum 5:27; In Epistolam ad
Romanos 6:12; In Epistolam II ad Corinthios 12:7, editio princeps (Strassburg: Adolph
Rusch?, c. 1481); repr. with intro, by Karlfried Froelich and Margaret T. Gibson
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1992); also PL 114: 94D, 488D-489A, 568C; Gratian, Decre-
tum pars 1. d. 6. c. 1-c. 3; pars 2. c. 15. q. 1. pars 1 prologus, d. 2. c. 21, ed.
Aemilius Friedberg, Corpus Iuris Canonici, 1 (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879), cols.
9-\\, 744-45, 1197; Roland of Bologna, Die Sentenzen Rolands, ed. Ambrosius M.
Gied (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1969 [repr. of Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1891 ed.]), p. 255; Peter Abelard, Ethics, ed. and trans. David E. Luscombe
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 32; Commentarius in I Corinthios 10 in Commen-
tarius Cantabridgensis in Epis tolas Pauli e schola Petri Abaelardi, ed. Artur Michael
Landgraf, 4 vols. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1937-45), 2:
256-57; Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentisfideichristianae 1.5.25, 2.13.1, PL 176:
257B-258D, 525C; Sententiae divinitatis 2.2.3, ed. Bernhard Geyer, Die Sententiae
474 CHAPTER EIGHT

Whether or not the theologians make express use of either of

these vocabularies, there is a broad consensus among them on the
point that intentionality is of the essence in the moral life.4 Yet,
within that consensus, a number of related questions emerged on
which there was a wider play of opinions. One, which focused on
the sin of lying, involved a critique of Augustine's position in his
Contra mendacium, where he defines lying as involving both an objec-
tive untruth and the intention to deceive. Twelfth-century theolo-

divinitatis: Ein Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertischen Schule, Beiträge 7:2-3 (Münster Aschen-
dorff, 1909), pp. 24*-26*, 28*-29*; Robert Pullen, Sententiarum libn octo 5.33, PL
186: 854D-856A; Peter Lombard, In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos 6:12-14, 7:7-8, PL
191: 1407C-D 1416D. Scholars who have noted this vocabulary and this analysis
of the psychogenesis of ethical decisions in one or more of these figures include
Ermenegildo Bertola, "La domina morale di Pietro Abelardo," RTAM 55 (1988):
53-71; Blomme, La doctnne du péché, pp. 21-87; Scott Davis, "The Unity of the
Virtues in Abelard's Dialogues" Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 11, ed. Phillip
Pulsiano (Villanova: Augustinian Historical Institute, 1986), pp. 71-82; Lottin,
Psych, et morale, 2: 494—96; David E. Luscombe, "The Ethics of Abelard: Some
Further Considerations," in Peter Abelard, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 1974), p. 71.
4
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 68, 78; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no.
277-78; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 422, 423, 447, 449, 5: 59, 67, 221-22, 292,
302-03, 303-05; Biblia latina cum Glossa ordinaria, 4: In Matt. 6:22-23, also PL 114:
104 C-D; Honorius Augustodunensis, Elucidarium 2.2-5, ed. Yves Lefèvre, L'Eluci-
darium et les lucidaires: Contribution, par Vhistoire d'un texte, à l'histoire des croyances
religieuses en France au moyen âge (Paris: É. de Boccard, 1954), pp. 405-07; Alger of
Liège, De misericordia et iustitia 1.74, ed. Robert Kretzschmer, Alger von Lüttichs
Traktat {De misericordia et iustitia'; Ein kanonistischer Konkordanzversuch aus der Zeit des
Investiturstreits (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1985), p. 244; Gratian, Decre-
tum d. 6. c. 1-c. 3, pars 2. c. 32. q. 5, col. 9-11, 1132-36; Nikolaus M. Häring, ed.,
"Die Sententiae magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi I" 10.15, AHDLMA 45 (1978):
157; Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 4-14, 16-20, 22-26; In Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos
1:16-17, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert in Opera theologica, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert and
Constant J. Mews, CCCM 11-13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969-87), 11: 65; Herman-
nus, Sententie magistri Petri Abaelardi (Sententie Hermanni), ed. Sandro Buzzetti,
Pubblicazioni délia facoltà di lettere e filosofia delFUniversità di Milano, 101,
sezione a cura di storia della filosofia, 31 (Florence: La Nuova, Italia, 1983), pp.
141-55; Ysagoge in theologiam, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf in Écrits théologiques de
l'école d'Abélard (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), pp. 76, 91-93;
Sent. div. 2.2.3, pp. 24*-26*, 28*-29*; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.4.15, PL 176:
240C-241A; Summa sententiarum 3.14-15, 4.4-5, PL 176: 111A-113B, 122B-124B;
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.33, 6.2-11, 6.18-23, PL 186: 854D-856A, 865C-871A,
876C-880D; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 150, 255-61; Summa magistri Rolandi c.
15. q. 1, ed. Friedrich Thaner (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1962 [repr. of Innsbruck,
1874 ed.]), pp. 31-33. On this point, see Blomme, La doctrine du péché, passim; John
F. Benton, "Consciousness of Self and Perception of Individuality,'' in Renaissance
and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 274; Lottin, Psych, et morale,
3: 99-104; Luscombe, "The Ethics of Abelard," pp. 67, 71; intro, and annotations
to his ed. of Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. xvii-xviii, xxv, xxxiii, p. 14 n. 1, pp. 46-47
n. 1.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 475

gians who take exception to this view, and to Augustine's categorical

ban on lying for any reason whatever, make use of the counter-
vailing analysis of pious fraud found in Gregory the Great. The
issue, for Gregory, arises specifically in connection with the be-
havior of the nurses of the enslaved Israelites in Egypt at the time of
Moses's birth, who denied the existence of their charges in order to
protect them from the Pharaoh's decree of death. Anselm of Laon
and his followers, including the author of the Summa sententiarum,
take the position that the nurses' intention of saving the infants'
lives excuses their lie, buttressing their argument with Gregory.5
On the other hand, Robert Pullen agrees with Augustine that this
instance of lying, as with all acts of lying, was wrong. But, he
argues, a good deed can wipe away a bad one. Thus, the nurses of
Exodus 1:20 were given a dispensation by God concerning their lie
because of their virtuous intentions.6
Another debate related to ethical intentionality was the one
surrounding the virtue or vice with which people in different walks
of life exercise their callings. Although all involved are proponents
of intentionalism, not all the masters who take up this question
deploy that principle consistently in practice. Anselm of Laon
withholds his favor from merchants, who, he thinks, are motivated
only by greed and fraud; Honorius Augustodunensis extends his
criticism to knights, craftsmen, jongleurs, and even to public peni-
tents, who, he thinks, are guilty of self-advertisement. He can find
virtuous intentionality only in the profession of farming.7 On the
other hand, disciples of Anselm of Laon reverse his negative judg-
ment on merchants, arguing that they perform a useful public
service, and that they are just as capable of doing so for good as for
selfish reasons. They find it possible as well to accept the idea that
the songs of the jongleurs may inspire their audience to emulate the
valiant deeds of great men and to serve the common weal, and that
they do not always draw their hearers into immorality, in a striking
reversal of the bad press generally given to members of this profes-
sion by twelfth-century theologians.8 Robert Pullen provides the

5
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 88; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 47-72, 5:
76-77, 310; Summa sent. 4.5, PL 176: 122D-124B.
6
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.35, PL 186: 859B-C.
7
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 14, 5: 24; Honorius, Elue. 2.54-59, 2.61, pp.
427-28, 429.
8
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 441-43, 5: 300-01. For the general attitude of
theologians in this period toward jongleurs, see Charles Homer Haskins, The
Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), p. 56.
476 CHAPTER EIGHT

most elaborate, and generous, analysis of professions as callings in

the church which, while they do have their particular temptations,
are all licit and capable of being conducted with virtue, thereby
contributing to the salvation of their practitioners and the service of
their fellow Christians. He ranges across the clergy and the laity,
the regnum and the sacerdotium, the contemplative and the active
lives, the celibate and the married, the rulers and the ruled, and the
professions of magistrate, soldier, farmer, merchant, and miller,
accenting the point that, in all cases, these callings can be seen as
occasions for the practice of virtue if conducted with the proper
intentionality.9
Still another debate concerned how the ethical intentionality
defining moral states was itself to be understood and whether it
conditions virtue and vice globally or not. Those contemporary
theologians who give ethical intentionality a name describe it as a
habit of mind {habitus mentis) focused on good, or evil, as the case
may be. Despite the universality of the use of the term habitus by
those who offer this definition, however, they do not always under-
stand the term in the same way. Anselm of Laon, defining virtue as
"a habit of mind well constituted" and vice as "a habit of mind
badly constituted" {virtus est habitus mentis bene constitute, et vicium
habitus est mentis male constitute), raises the question of whether a
person can have virtues and vices at the same time. His under-
standing of the problem clearly goes back to the Stoic principle of
intentionality as a fixed mental disposition which admits of no
contrasting modalities at the same time. This notion, in Stoicism,
had led to ethical claims regarded as paradoxes, such as the idea
that he who possesses one virtue possesses them all, and the idea
that all virtues and all vices are equal, since they all express equally
a virtuous or a vicious intentionality. Augustine had considered
these claims repeatedly. While he had agreed with the Stoics on the
interconnection of the virtues, recasting all the virtues and vices as
equal expressions of charity, or its absence, he had disagreed with
the premise that all sins are equal or that an individual who is
basically virtuous cannot experience backsliding in certain respects
while retaining his paramount moral orientation. Anselm of Laon
agrees with Augustine here. He sees the habitus of virtue as a mental
disposition, but one that is not so total that its existence would be
annulled by a minor peccadillo. He also agrees with Augustine that
the reverse is the case, unsymmetrically, with a moral agent con-

9
Robert Pullen, Sent. 7.7-9, 7.19-27, PL 186: 879C-922A, 931A-943B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 477

firmed in vice. Nothing that such a person does can be virtuous,

since the absence of charity is his prevailing moral orientation. The
same view of habitus and of the equality of the virtues as rooted in
charity is found in Hermannus. The author of the Sententiae divinita-
tis, while he ignores the pendant to this question, likewise views the
habitus mentis involved in ethical decisions purely from the perspec-
tive of the consent of the intellect to suggestio and delectation
On the other hand, Peter Abelard understands habitus in a more
Aristotelian sense. For him, a virtuous habitus mentis is to be defined
not just as the willingness to obey God but also as a commitment
that is confirmed in its exercise. It involves practice and improve-
ment, and perdurance in virtue; and it is connected with the
perseverance of the saints. While this attitude undergirds all modes
of virtue and vice, Abelard agrees with Augustine that sins are not
all equally important. He cites the standard distinction between
mortal and venial sins, which he distinguishes in terms of the state
of mind which the sinner displays in them. Venial sins spring from
forgetfulness, carelessness, and triviality, while serious sins stem
from deliberation and planning (studio et deliberation). It is the
degree of intentionality, and not the aspect of the human constitu-
tion from which sins derive or the amount of damage that they do,
that counts.11 Without the same elaboration on the difference be-

10
Sentences ofAnselm of Loon, no. 68, 5: 59; Hermannus, Sent., pp. 141-48; Sent.
div. 2.2.3, pp. 28*-29*.
11
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 68-70, 128-30. The quotation is on p. 70. Scholars
who have noted the Aristotelian sense which Abelard gives to habitus here and the
existence of an objective standard in his ethics include Bertola, "La dottrina
morale," pp. 53-71; Robert Blomme, "A propos de la definition du péché chez
Pierre Abélard," ETL 33 (1957): 319-47; L· doctrine du péché, pp. 103-294; Davis,
"The Unity of the Virtues," pp. 71-82; Frank De Siano, "Of God and Man:
Consequences of Abelard's Ethics," Thomist 35 (1971): 631-60; Maurice de Gan-
dillac, "Intention et loi dans l'éthique d'Abélard," in Piene Abélard, Pierre le
Vénérable: Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques au milieu du ΧΙΓ siècle
(Paris: CNRS, 1975), pp. 585-97; Angela Giuliano de Padova, "Alcuni relievi
sulPetica abelardiana," Atti delVAccademia délie scienze di Torino, classe di scienze
morali, storiche e filologiche 102 (1967-68): 437-60; B. Landry, "Les idées
morales du XII e siècle: Les écrivains en Latin," Revue des cours et conférences 40
(1938-39): 387-89; Luscombe, "The Ethics of Abelard," pp. 71, 80-84; Roger J.
Van den Berge, "La qualification morale de l'acte humain: Ébauche d'une réinter-
pretation de la pensée abèlardienne," Studia moralia 13 (1975): 143-73. These
studies effectively refute the view of Abelard as a pure subjectivist in ethics put
forth by G. de Giuli, "Abelardo e la morale," Giornale critico deltaßosofia italiana 12
(1931): 33-44 and Jean Rohmer, Lafinalitémorale chez les théologiens de Saint Augustin
à Duns Scot (Paris: J. Vrin, 1939), pp. 31-^K); or the view of Abelard as an "ethical
nominalist" as claimed by Richard J. Thompson, "The Role of Dialectical Reason
in the Ethics of Abelard," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
12 (1936): 141-48.
478 CHAPTER EIGHT

tween mortal and venial sin, the author of the Ysagoge in theologiam
agrees with Abelard's Aristotelian definition of virtue as a habitus
mentis oriented to the highest good and developed by exercise, and
adds to it another Aristotelian note, virtue as the mean between the
extremes of excess and defect.12 The author of Sententiae Parisiensis I
agrees with the notion of habitus as a quality of soul that develops
through exercise, as well as a mental disposition toward good or
evil, and connects the point with the grading of the virtues.13
There are some theologians of the day who reflect on the ques-
tion of the equality or gradation of vices and virtues and their
mutual interdependence or lack of it without taking a stand on the
nature of habitus. The followers of Anselm of Laon agree with him,
and with Augustine, that all vices and virtues are interrelated,
respectively, because of their common source in the absence or
presence of charity. They agree with Abelard in distinguishing
between venial and mortal sins on the basis of their accidental or
deliberate character. To this they add that the severity of a sin
depends on the particular vice inspiring it and on the status of the
perpetrator. At the same time, they drop the Augustinian idea that
a vicious person must, perforce, be vicious in all he does, unlike the
virtuous person.14 Robert Pullen also supports the critique of the
Stoic principle that he who has one virtue, or vice, has them all. He
offers no arguments or authorities in defense of this position, pre-
senting the mix of vices and virtues in individual human beings as a
phenomenon widely encountered and as a conclusion based on
experience and common sense. It is one he finds compatible with
the fact that people can, and do, change in their moral habits; this
situation, for him, argues against anyone's moral state as a fixed
intentionality.15 Robert also grades the sins. With Abelard, Hugh of
St. Victor, and others, he regards the degree of deliberation in-
volved as an index of their seriousness. Also, with Abelard, he lists
ignorance and unintentional error as factors mitigating or remov-
ing guilt, citing one of Abelard's examples, that of a man who
inadvertently sleeps with another woman, believing that she is his
wife. He adds another example of a case which he thinks ignorance
excuses, and one usually reserved for the discussion of the condi-

12
Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 76.
13
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 424-25, 458, 460, 462,, 5: 293, 306, 307.
14
Sententiae Parisiensis I, ed. Artur Michael Landgraf in Ecrits théologiques de VécoU
d'Abélard (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1934), pp. 50-52, 55-59.
15
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.31, 5.34-36, PL 186: 853I>-854B, 856B-860B; cf. Hugh of
St. Victor, De sac. 2.13.1, PI 176: 526B-C.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 479

tions nullifying a marriage, that of a young man separated from his

family as a child who returns to his native land and unknowingly
contracts an incestuous marriage.16 A more independent approach
to the question of whether a person who has one vice or virtue has
them all is taken by Roland of Bologna. He distinguishes between
interior and exterior virtue (in affecto interion et in effectu exteriori).
With respect to their inner affects, he agrees that all the virtues are
one and the same since they derive from an identical good inten-
tion. But, he adds, they manifest their outward effects in different
ways. The same analysis holds for the vices. Here, Roland seeks to
emphasize equally the primacy of intentionality and the idea that
different people have their paramount virtues and vices, or that
they may express these moral states in a variety of ways.17
The matter of ignorance, on which Robert Pullen touches, also
evoked a range of opinions. As will be recalled, Hugh of St. Victor
regards ignorance as a punishment for original sin, a view in which
he is followed by the author of the Summa sententiarum. Ignorance is
thus one of the conditions, along with concupiscence, that inclines
fallen man to sin, in general, and it is not viewed by these masters
as a circumstance that conditions or relieves the guilt of particular
actions that would otherwise be regarded as actual sins. On the
other hand, amplifying on the school of Laon here, Abelard reflects
a more analytical approach to the problem of ignorance, and one
displaying an awareness of the ways in which the canonists treat
this issue.18 Gratian, for example, gives a thorough analysis of the
modes of ignorance and the ways in which they may or may not
affect moral culpability. There is ignorance stemming from mental
incapacity, which mitigates responsibility. There is ignorance of
matters on which a person is humanly incapable of informing
himself, which has a similar effect. On the other hand, there is
ignorance of matters a person needs to know in order to conduct
himself with propriety, matters of which he fails to inform himself
through negligence. This type of ignorance, in Gratian's view, does
not excuse a person from things he may say or do while acting
under the resultant ignorance or misapprehension.19 Abelard poses
the question of ignorance in relation to intentionality in its most

16
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.35, 5.40, 6.2-11, PL 186: 854D-856A, 862A, 865C-
871A.
17
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 257-59.
18
Lottin, Psych, et morale, 3: 12-13, 18-19, 56-57; Sentences of the School of Laon,
no. 420, 5: 291.
19
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 22. q. 4. c. 23, dictum, col. 881-82.
480 CHAPTER EIGHT

extreme form, and in a manner calculated to raise the hackles of his

contemporaries. He agrees with the consensus position that vice
and virtue lie in inner intentionalities, whether or not they are
expressed outwardly. A virtuous intention is the intention to obey
God; a vicious intention is consent to an attitude or an act that
stands in contempt of God. In order to make the intellectual
judgment on which this consent rests, the moral agent has to know
what God requires. His knowledge or belief in this respect is as
critical as what the will of God actually may be, since different
people in different dispensations or different states of faith may be
given a differential access to that information. Abelard also in-
cludes ignorance, willy-nilly, of facts that are relevant to particular
ethical decisions as excusing a person from culpability. In illustrat-
ing this point, he presents several highly charged examples. There
is the example of the husband who mistakes another woman for his
wife, also cited by Robert Pullen, and one that inspires a certain
skepticism. Worst yet, in the eyes of contemporaries, there is the
example of the people who put Christ to death. According to
Abelard, they acted in good conscience since, in their view, He was
a criminal and a blasphemer. 20 But, despite his vaunted reputation
as a logician, Abelard is far from consistent in applying this princi-
ple. Another example he gives is that of a mother too poor to afford
bedding for her infant, who takes him into her own bed to keep him
warm, and accidentally smothers him while asleep. Despite Abe-
lard's stand on the seriousness of sins as conditioned by delibera-
tion, and not by the damage they may do, in this case he argues
that the injury and scandal involved in the example given require
that the woman be considered guilty of infanticide and punished, as
an object lesson, notwithstanding the accidental nature of the event
and the protective maternal intention informing her action.21

T H E LOMBARD AS AN INTENTIONALIST

Peter Lombard subscribes to the consensus view that sees inten-

tionality as the essence of the moral act and as a description of the
moral status of the moral agent even in the absence of the act. At
the same time, he places this question on a broader canvas than is
the case with any of his contemporaries. He considers several
definitions of the nature of sin, the initial context in which he

20
Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 4-14, 16-20, 26-36, 53-56.
21
Ibid., pp. 38-48, 68-70.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 481

considers the psychogenesis of ethical acts, exploring their merits

and demerits before presenting his own solution. He begins with
two definitions drawn from Augustine, the Contra Faustum view that
sin is any thought, word, or deed that contravenes the law of God,
and the De duabus animabus view that sin is the will to retain and
follow what justice forbids. In both of these definitions, Peter notes,
Augustine accents the volitional character of sin, while conceding
that sin may also be manifested externally. Next, he offers a defini-
tion drawn from Ambrose's De paradiso, where sin is treated as the
disobedience through which a divine law is broken. Here, the
malice of the perpetrator is central, but the presence of an objective
external law that requires or forbids certain actions is given more
prominence.22 To this range of opinions, which he sums up as sin
defined as bad will as such, irrespective of external action and as
sin defined as both the bad will and the bad deed, he adds another
view. This third position is found in Augustine as well and had
been reprised recently by Anselm of Canterbury and Honorius. It
argues that sin is non-being, in the sense of the privative theory of
evil. Having observed that all three positions find support from
Augustine, Peter opts for the first mentioned view. Sin, he states, is
evil-doing in thought, word, and deed, with the accent falling most
heavily on volition: "Sin consists principally in the will, from which
evil deeds proceed as bad fruit from a bad tree" (Praecipue tamen in
voluntate peccatum consistit, ex qua tanquam ex arbore mala procédant opera
mala tanquam fructus malt) Ρ
Having displayed his colors early in this analysis, it now remains
for Peter to disqualify the definitions of sin he rejects. His handling
of the privative theory of evil is deft and knowledgeable. He begins
by contextualizing it, accurately, as a cosmological, not as an
ethical, doctrine, developed by Augustine in the first instance to
refute the Manichees. From a metaphysical standpoint, he notes, if
we equate being and goodness, then anything that exists is good,
insofar as it exists, including evil thoughts and deeds. This position
is clearly problematic in the field of ethics. At the same time,
according to the privative theory of evil, evil is not a being but the
corruption or absence of being. Sin is not a substance which, so far
as it exists, is good. Rather, it is a rejection of the good, a departure

22
Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 2. d. 35. c. 1, 3rd ed. rev., ed.
Ignatius C. Brady, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras
Aquas, 1971-81), 1: 529-30.
23
Ibid., c. 2.1-3, 1: 530-31. The quotation is at c. 2.3, p. 531. See also d. 44, 1:
577-80. For Honorius on evil as non-being, see Elue. 2.2, p. 405.
482 CHAPTER EIGHT

from being, whose existence can be grasped only by applying to it

the epistemology of the via negativa. A far better way of understand-
ing the condition of sin, in Peter's view, is to substitute for a
content-free absence of good a willed turning from the good. His
proposal is to invoke the theme of the regio dissimilitudinis, the region
of unlikeness, in which sinful man has placed himself by his own
voluntary action, thereby abandoning the image of God in himself.
As Peter explores this idea, he shows how far it had developed, by
the twelfth century, away from a cosmic Plotinian "fall of the soul"
over which the soul has no control, and away from a purely
monastic understanding of human existence apart from conversion
and adherence to the contemplative life. Now it has come to mean,
simply, the sinful state in which men find themselves thanks to
their own moral choices.24 In effect, Peter disposes of the privative
theory of evil by substituting for it a notion of moral deprivation
rooted in man's will. The one point of agreement with the privative
theory that he feels he can maintain is the principle that sins, and
other evils, are not substances or natures. This idea is essential, he
concedes, in order to show that, although the punishment God
metes out to sinners is earned, God does not create evil. He is not
responsible for man's sins; they spring exclusively from man's bad
use of his free will, a use of free will which man is not constrained to
make.25
As to the argument that sin can be reduced entirely to subjective
intentionality, Peter turns the question around by observing that
the end of the good is charity. This is the goal toward which a good
will is oriented. To be sure, we can distinguish intentions from the

24
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 35. c. 2.4-c. 6, 1: 531-36. Peter adverts frequently
to the theme of the regio dissimilitudinis in the same generic sense elsewhere in his
writings. See his Sermo 12, 13, 21, 23, 55, 99, 111, 112, PL 171: 397A, 404D,
435D-436A, 445C, 610C, 798B, 850D, 857B; Sermo de adventu Domini ed. Damien
Van den Eynde, "Deux sermons inédits de Pierre Lombard," in Misc. Lomb., p. 78;
In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas 2:23, PL 192: 128C-129A. Good studies of the changes
in interpretation undergone by this theme up through the twelfth century include
J. C. Didier, "Pour la fiche Regio disnmilitudinis" Mélanges de science religieuse 8 (1951):
205-10; Etienne Gilson, "Regio disnmilitudinis de Platon à Saint Bernard de Clair-
vaux," MS 9 (1947): 108-30; and, especially, Margot Schmidt, "Regio disnmilitudinis:
Ein Grundbegriff mittelhochdeutscher Prosa im Lichte seiner lateinischen Be-
deutungsgeschichte," Freiburger ZätschnftfirPhilosophie und Theologie 15 (1968): 63-83.
On the other hand, Pierre Courcelle, "L'Âme en cage," in Parusia: Studien zur
Philosophie Platons und zur Problemgeschichte des Piatonismus, FestgabefirJohannes Hirschber-
gerf ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva GMBH, 1965), pp. 103-16 treats the theme
by way of decontextualized topos research that offers no sense of how the meaning of
the theme changed over time.
25
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 36-d. 37, 1: 536-47.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 483

ends they serve. But, intentions are directionalities. They always

have destinations in view, by definition; for the ends in question are
what the moral subject wills when he wills. Now, when the will is
disordered, that is, ordered to the wrong end, we sin. The will, in
making a disordered choice, may misjudge what the good is, espe-
cially if it lacks the help of grace. The misguided choice is sinful,
and so is the act that connects it with its inaccurately understood
end. Peter is perfectly willing to grant that acts are not good or evil
per se, but that they are good or evil in the light of the ethical
intentionalities that inform them. At the same time, and here he
argues against the Abelardian position concerning the people who
put Christ to death, the acts themselves are not matters of indiffer-
ence. Some acts, indeed, are objectively evil. In this connection he
cites Augustine's rule in the Contra mendacium that lies stating an
objective untruth are sinful even if spoken with a good intention,
thereby distancing himself from contemporaries who accepted
Gregory's justification of pious fraud. Like the lie which Augustine
castigates, an evil act can be intrinsically evil and also evil in that it
manifests an evil intention. Also, a person may have a good, or
excusable, intention and at the same time he may express it in
deeds that are not good or suitable. Where Peter draws the line is at
the point where an intention, of whatever quality, is expressed in an
act that is objectively wrong: "All human actions are judged good
or bad according to their intention and cause, except those which
are intrinsically evil, that is, those which are unconditionally prohib-
ited" (Omnia igitur hominis opera secundum intentionem et causam iudican-
tur bona vel mala, exceptis his quae per se mala sunt, id est quae sine
praevaricationefieri nequeunt).26
Thus, for Peter, one can accept intentionality as the basic defini-
tion of the essence of the moral act, with two stipulations. First, one
must acknowledge the normal continuity between the intention and
its expression in appropriate action, in relation to the end with
which it is connected. Second, one must acknowledge that an act
cannot express a good intention if it stands in manifest opposition
to one's own moral duties. The contemporary theologian to whom
he comes the closest in articulating these conclusions is the author
of the Summa sententiarum. Peter has sharpened the focus of his
teaching. His position also takes account of Abelard's claim, and
seeks to make it as palatable as possible, although he is not entirely
responsive to Abelard's point that the executioners of Christ

Ibid., d. 38-d. 40, 1: 547-61. The quotation is at d. 40. c. 12, pp. 560-61.
484 CHAPTER EIGHT

thought they were doing something right and appropriate. The

Lombard does not expressly take up here the issue of ignorance. He
does, however, include the issue of grace, in discussing the human
will's judgment of the good, which Abelard omits. The Lombard's
analysis here suggests that, had he included it, he would have felt
comfortable with Gratian's treatment of ignorance, particularly the
responsibility of an individual to inform himself of what he needs to
know in order to carry out his duties virtuously, and his culpability
if he fails to do so. As to the absence of grace in the will's erroneous
judgments, it is on the same trajectory, for Peter, as the absence, or
subtraction, of grace from those persons whom God does not pre-
destine to salvation. As he sees it, such persons are none the less
fully responsible for the consequences of the bad use which they
make of their free will.
Before leaving this part of his analysis, Peter raises the related
question of whether good intentions and good deeds require good
faith. Here, he draws a distinction. An affirmative answer can be
given if good faith means lack of hypocrisy. On the other hand, if
we mean by faith the theological virtue of faith or the set of
theological propositions to which faith constitutes assent, then we
can answer in the negative. For, one does not have to be a Christian
to possess good faith in the first sense, and hence to be capable of
good intentions and good deeds. In support of this conclusion,
Peter observes that the Jew or the non-believer is perfectly capable
of good faith, good intentions, and good deeds, which he manifests
in his own virtues and in ministering to the needs of his neighbors,
"drawn by natural piety" (naturali pietate ductus).21 While, in con-
sidering man's capacity for virtue under the heading of human
nature as such, before the fall, Peter, like Hugh of St. Victor, closes
off the concept of natural virtue by arguing that ethical acts, to have
merit, must be assisted by grace, here he opens up the concept of
natural virtue and the possible existence of the virtuous pagan or
non-Christian.

Vice and Sin

Another related question which Peter next takes up is whether all

sins are reducible to a single, central, sinful intentionality and
whether sins can be graded. His handling of these issues is some-
what different from what we have found in other current theolo-

Ibid., d. 41, 1: 561-66. The quotation is at d. 41. c. 2, p. 564.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 485

gians. Peter is not always interested in the same aspects of this

constellation of ideas as intrigue many of his compeers. He agrees
with the principle that all sins stem from a central evil attitude or
orientation, just as a bad will and a bad deed reflect the same bad
intention. He uses the term habitus here but he does not pursue the
question of whether the intention at issue is a mental disposition
only, or an Aristotelian habitus, or both. Peter also agrees with those
masters who think that sins can, none the less, be graded. The
criterion for doing so, however, is not the degree of deliberation
that informs particular sins, but rather the particular vice that
inspires them. This rule obtains, for Peter, whether the sins are
committed against God, oneself, or one's neighbor; whether they
occur in thought, word, or deed, or all three; whether they are
crimes as well as sins; and whether they involve the active perpetra-
tion of evil or the failure to do good. Peter also distinguishes
between mortal and venial sins, and is inclined to invoke considera-
tions of how much harm or outrage is done, and not the kind of
intentionality involved, in making discriminations here.28 Although
he does not call upon the language used by Roland of Bologna at
this juncture, he reflects Roland's idea that the same evil intention
can be manifested by different people or even by the same person in
different ways. In addition, and this is in line with his view that
some sins are more serious than others because of the intrinsic evil
they represent or because of their moral consequences, he brings to
bear on this point the doctrine of the seven deadly sins given in
Gregory the Great's Moralia. This was a standard topic in Peter's
day, although theologians used it to illustrate a variety of points.
Thus, Hugh of St. Victor introduces Gregory's scheme of the sins to
underscore the idea that all sins spring from the mind, not the
body.29 The author of the Summa sententiarum uses it to illustrate the
point that different passions give rise to different kinds of sin.30 The
author of the Ysagoge in theologiam treats the seven vices horizontally,
as equal manifestations of man's bad use of free will.31 William of

28
Ibid., d. 42. c. 1-c. 5, 1: 566-70. Artur Michael Landgraf, "Some Unknown
Writings of the Early Scholastic Period," New Scholasticism 4 (1930): 17 has noted
that a quaestio found in an unpublished manuscript on the British Museum, dating
to the mid-twelfth century, states that the Lombard distinguished between virtue
in habitu and virtue in usu, in a manner approximating Roland of Bologna, although
this language does not appear in the Sentences. Peter's reasons for distinguishing
between mortal and venial sin are not noted by Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 4 part
2: 10-11, 110-16, 144-45.
29
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.13.1, PL 176: 525A-526B.
30
Summa sent. 3.16, PL 176: 113D-114C.
31
Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 100.
486 CHAPTER EIGHT

Champeaux provides a detailed analysis of pride and envy, which

later theologians drew upon, but stops there.32
The contemporary theologian closest to Peter in this area is one
of the Porretan sentence collectors who, like him, is interested
in viewing these vices vertically, hierarchically, and develop-
mentally.33 Pride, in the estimation of both this author and Peter, is
the deadliest of the sins, not only because it involves the most
exhaustive capitulation of the self to sin but also because it leads to
the other sins, each engendered in turn by the one in back of it. As
both masters see it, pride has four manifestations. It attributes the
good things one has to oneself and not to God; it regards the good
things one has from God as His response to one's own merits; it
claims to have good things which one lacks; and it lords it over
others on account of the good things one has. Envy springs from
pride, in the estimation of the Porretan master, following William
of Champeaux. For, unless one loved one's own excellence, one
would not be jealous of another's good or resentful of another's
pleasure. This jealousy and resentment in turn breed wrath, out of
one's inability to attain equality with one's superiors or to deprive
others of the desirable things they have. The frustrations emerging
from this state in turn engender acddia or spiritual sloth, the dep-
rivation of internal joy in the spirit. In that state, the sinner
mistakenly turns to external pleasures, in the effort to derive joy
from them, leading to avarice, gluttony, and lust.
Peter follows the same analysis, with equal fidelity to Gregory.
His only gloss on this text is to include cupidity in the list of vices,
as a species of pride, in the effort to harmonize Gregory's account
with the biblical idea that love of money is the root of all evil.34 The
same sense that some sins are intrinsically more destructive and
disabling informs Peter's conclusion that the single worst sin that
can be committed is the sin against the Holy Spirit. This is not
simply because God is the supreme being and sins against Him are
weightier than sins against created beings. Rather, it is because this
sin—the sin of despair, which makes a person obdurate in evil,
impenitent, unwilling to accept the help of fellow Christians, and,
worst of all, lacking in confidence in God's mercy and love—locks
him in a state in which he rates his own self-importance more
highly than God's grace. Reprising here his own analysis of the

32
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 279, 5: 222-23.
33
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 10.19-26, pp. 15&-59.
34
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 42. c. 6-c. 8, 1: 570-72.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 487

irremissibility of the sin against the Holy Spirit in his Romans

commentary, Peter draws the same conclusion. This sin, he con-
cludes, is irrémissible not in the sense that God cannot or will not
forgive it but in the sense that the sinner has so convinced himself of
the hopelessness of his state that he rarely responds to God's call to
repent.35 The purpose of this discussion of the sin against the Holy
Spirit in this particular context, however, is less to compare the
three Augustinian reasons for why this sin is irrémissible and to
show why the solution chosen makes the best sense of both Augus-
tine and St. Paul than it is to reinforce the principle that some sins
are more serious than others, both objectively and subjectively,
notwithstanding the principle that all sin stems from the same evil
intentionality.
There are two striking features of the Lombard's handling of the
subject of sin overall. In the first place, while he certainly partici-
pates in the consensus view that sees inner intentionality as para-
mount in defining the ethical status of moral agents and moral acts,
he is concerned with defending the idea that ethics has an objective
as well as a subjective dimension. He insists that both aspects of
ethical reality need to be taken into consideration. While he ac-
knowledges the fact that Abelard had included conscious and de-
liberate contempt of God in his own definition of sin, Peter is aware
of the fact that Abelard's intellectualizing of that state of mind
could lead to the reduction of God's express commands to those
commands as misperceived and misinterpreted by fallible minds
who would then use their own limited knowledge and understand-
ing as an excuse for wrongdoing. The result, in Peter's estimation,
would be an erosion of the very concept that man, in his fallen
state, remains capable of grasping what God requires and capable
of resisting temptations, including the temptation to self-delusion,
that would incline him to flout those requirements. Secondly, Peter
is eager to make man fully responsible for his own sins, even to the
point of ignoring in this context the problem of diminished respon-
sibility owing to invincible ignorance or defective mental states and
circumstances, which other theologians and canonists bring to bear
on the point, and helpfully so. The only place where Peter raises the

35
Ibid., d. 43, 1: 572-77. René Wasselynck, "La présence des Moralia de Saint
Grégoire le Grand dans les ouvrages de morale du XIF siècle," RTAM 35 (1968):
236-38 has noted Peter's dependence of Gregory here, although he ignores the
Porretan parallels to Peter's handling of this topic and sees the Summa sententiarum as
his closest neighbor. For the comparison with the Collectanea on the sin against the
Holy Spirit, see above, chapter 4, p. 209.
488 CHAPTER EIGHT

issue of ignorance is in connection with the fall of Adam and Eve,

and, as we saw in chapter 6 above, he raises it there only to dismiss
it categorically as a mitigating factor in original sin. While Peter
rejects the privative view of evil, associated in western Christian
theology primarily with Augustine's polemic against the Man-
ichees, he shares fully with the anti-Manichean Augustine the
desire to place the burden of sin squarely on man's shoulders in
order to reinforce the point that God is in no sense the author of evil
or sin. In this connection, Peter's treatment of the moral relations
between man and God is consistent with his treatment of the
metaphysical and physical relations between God and the creation
more generally. Just as God creates a world containing beings
capable of acting as secondary causes in their own spheres of
activity, so, in His ethical relations with rational beings, He creates
a universe in which they have the posse peccare et non peccare, the
capacity to damage their own natures and to reject the moral law
given for their own well-being. They are likewise free, in the realm
of sin, to blemish their own similitude to God and to live at a lower
level of existence than their natures make possible. And, this they
can do on their own initiative and volition, whether prompted by
internal or external temptation.

Virtue: Free Will and Grace in Its Attainment

In moving from sin to its correlative, virtue, we move to an area

in which there is also a high degree of consensus in early twelfth-
century theology, in this case regarding the relations between
man's free will and God's grace in the development of virtue.
Within this consensus position one can also detect some lesser
points of disagreement, or differences in emphasis among the
theologians of Peter Lombard's time. They may offer alternative
definitions of virtue in general, of particular virtues and their
interrelations, and of their applications in practice. They may also
manifest a greater or lesser interest in this subject altogether. Their
principal point of agreement is one deriving from their understand-
ing of human nature. Some, like Hugh of St. Victor and his follow-
ers and like the Lombard himself, regard that nature, in its
prelapsarian state, no less than after the fall, as requiring the
assistance of grace in the acquisition of virtue that bears merit. In
the case of postlapsarian man, they agree that he needs operating
grace to gain the state of justification, on which man's subsequent
moral growth is based with the help of cooperating grace. There is
also general agreement on the freedom of the will, however much it
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 489

may be damaged by original sin. The will, they hold, remains

capable of resisting both of these types of grace. A middle-
Augustinian position on this subject, in which the notion of irre-
sistible grace is pointedly ignored, finds a wide hearing in the first
half of the twelfth century, as we noted above in chapter 6.36 The
same understanding of grace and free will occurs in monastic
writers in this period, such as Bernard of Glairvaux, as we find in
the scholastic theologians, laying the foundation for the considera-
tion of virtue on the part of Christian thinkers of the time in
general. It has been claimed that the Abelardians taught an ethics
of natural eudaimonia, in which the yearning for the good is seen as
deriving from a psychic impulse arising in man himself and not
from a moral capacity energized by God's grace.37 This claim is not
borne out by the evidence.38 The Abelardians, like other theolo-
gians at this time, including the Lombard, see no difficulty in
reconciling eudaimonia with a collaborative relationship between
man and God. On this broad foundational issue, the Lombard's
basic contribution is to explain clearly how divine grace can take
the initiative and can do its work in man without thereby divinizing
man or functioning as an immanental participation of the deity in
man, and also how man's virtues and merits, although requiring
the operation and cooperation of grace, can truly be his own
possessions and can justly make of him the moral being on which
his future reward depends.
Like his compeers, Peter grounds his analysis of virtue on the
analysis of free will and grace. He first articulates his position on

36
See above, pp. 289, 383-85. For the period in general, see Landgraf, Dogmenge-
schichte, 1 part 1: 44-48. For more on Hugh of St. Victor, in this connection, see A.
Mignon, L·s origines de la scolastique et Hugues de Saint-Victor, 2 vols. (Paris: P.
Lethielleux, 1895), 1: 258-59; Roger Baron, "L'Idée de liberté chez S. Anselme et
Hugues de Saint-Victor," RTAM 32 (1965): 117-21. The author of the Sententiae
divinitatis is a salient example of the crossover between monastic and scholastic
writers on this theme, citing verbatim Bernard of Clairvaux's "Tolle enim gra-
tiam, et non erit unde salvetur; tolle liberum arbitrium, et non erit, in quo fiat
salus vel cui fiat." Sent. div. 2.2.2, p. 20*. Bernard is also reprised by the Summa sent.
3.7-9, PL 176: 98D-105A, as noted by Mignon, Les origines, 2: 13. Robert Pullen
preserves the general contemporary balance between grace and free will, although
he grants more importance to angelic help in man's development of virtue than is
typical in this period. Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.7-9, 6.22-50, PL 186: 834D-838A,
879C-896A.
, 3 7 Philippe Delhaye, "L'Enseignement morale des Sententiae Parisiensis" in
Etudes de civilisation médiévale (ΙΧ-ΧΙΓ siècles) : Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labonde
(Poitiers: Centre d'Études Superieures de Civilisation Médiévale, 1974), pp. 197-
207.
38
Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 58-59. See also Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 91-99.
490 CHAPTER EIGHT

that subject in his Romans commentary and then develops it in

treating Adam's virtue before the fall in Book 2 of the Sentences,
expanding it to include the cardinal and theological virtues in Book
3, under the heading of the human Christ and His moral aptitudes.
He discusses the gifts of the Holy Spirit in both of these two latter
contexts. Having defined virtue as a good quality of mind, which
lives rightly and does not use anything badly, and having illus-
trated this point with justice and faith as works of God in man,
Peter raises the question of whether the grace that activates the will
is a virtue, and, if so, whether this means that virtue does not derive
from free will and that virtue is not a motion of the mind. He
concludes that virtue is not itself a motion or affect of the mind but
a good quality informing the mind, which free will activates to
develop good intentions and actions. Free will is thus an operative
condition of virtue, and virtue is a disposition to be motivated to
the good by means of it. In this sense, both free will and virtue are
sources of the good motion and good affection in the soul of a
virtuous person. Grace, for its part, is an enabling condition in this
process as well. But grace, Peter insists, cannot be defined as a
virtue, whether we understand virtue as a quality possessed by the
human soul or as the outcome of its disposition and action. We can
only regard grace as a virtue in the lexical sense of a virtus, a power
or force that activates something else.39
In explaining how this relationship works, Peter is heavily de-
pendent on the account given in the Summa sententiarum of the
relationship between virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a topic
to which he himself turns after his discussion of grace and virtue.
The author of the Summa sententiarum invokes the analogy of agricul-
ture in presenting his analysis. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, he says,
are "the first motions in the heart, as it were, like seeds of virtue"
{primi motus in corde, quasi quaedam semina virtutum). They are sown in
human hearts by God, Who, as He does so, operates without man's
collaboration. The virtues, for their part, are "effects of the disposi-
tion of the gifts" (effectus donorum habitus) in man, like the crops
growing from the seeds God has sown, which draw as well on the
fertility of the soil in which they are sown and on their active
cultivation by the husbandman; here God and man work
together.40 As Peter expands on this analogy with respect to grace

39
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 27. c. 1.1-3, 1: 480-81.
40
Summa sent. 3.17, PL 176: 114D-115A. The quotation is at 114D. On this
passage and its influence, see Lottin, Psych, et morale, 3: 330-32.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 491

and virtue, he adds another integer to the equation and reassigns

the role of the seed. In agriculture, he notes, we have rain, the
earth, the seed, and the fruit. The rain is analogous to divine grace;
the earth is analogous to human free will; the seed is like virtue as a
mental disposition or an inclination to the good; and the fruit
resembles that inclination translated into virtuous intentions and
actions. None of these four elements is identical with the others or
can be substituted for them. The germination process that enables
the seed to flower and the process enabling the flower to mature
and to bear fruit are both assisted by grace, operating and cooper-
ating, in Peter's terms. But in neither stage is the activation sup-
plied by grace the same thing as the virtue it helps to produce.41
What is striking about Peter's handling of this topic in comparison
with the author of the Summa sententiarum and with Augustine,
whom he cites profusely in support of his position, is that he sees
the interaction of grace and free will in the engendering of virtue as
a simultaneous division of labor, more than as a succession of cause
and effect. This understanding endows his treatment of the theme
with a theandric, synergistic view of the interaction of grace and
free will that is in some ways more akin to the Greek patristic
tradition than it is to Augustinianism. To be sure, Peter sees grace
as the principal cause of the merit man gains in developing virtue,
since it excites, heals, and aids the free will so that it can become a
good will. At the same time, grace begins a process that in no sense
constrains or excludes free will; and, for him, "there is no merit in
man except by free will" {nullum meritum est in homine quod non sit per
liberum arbitrium) ,42
As Peter sees it, man's reception and use of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit is on the same trajectory as his reception and use of grace.
These gifts are given by God and they are activated by man
through his free will. Man plays an active role here in the use to
which he puts the gifts. The virtues and merits he develops thereby
are rewarded by God. Here, too, the gifts are not the same thing as
the consequent virtues or merits and neither is man's free will.
Rather, the gifts energize the will and the will is the agency through
which virtue and merit arise, in the will's good exercise.43 Through-
out this entire analysis, Peter repeatedly cites the anti-Pelagian
Augustine and reads his position as one that needs to be put into

41
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 27. c. 1-c. 2.3, 1: 480-82.
42
Ibid., c. 3.2, 1: 482-83.
43
Ibid., c. 4-d. 28. c. 4, 1: 483-91. On this topic, see Johann Schupp, Die
Gnadenlehre des Petrus Lombardus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1932), pp. 243-55.
492 CHAPTER EIGHT

perspective, and judged, by the rhetorical needs of his polemic. He

also, repeatedly, cites the anti-Manichean Augustine, along with
other authorities, to defend a position on grace and free will and on
the gifts of the Holy Spirit and virtue that is far less extreme than
that of the late Augustine. At the same time, he distinguishes
clearly between the divine virtus, as an enabling condition, and the
human virtues which can develop with its help. Human virtues, for
Peter, depend as well on the human contribution of will and effort;
and, when they are attained, they are attributes of the human
beings who possess them and who manifest them in their own
particular ways. In rewarding such virtuous persons, God rewards
those persons, and not the Holy Spirit. It is clear that neither Peter
nor any of his contemporaries had yet emerged with the concepts of
infused or created grace. But it is equally clear that his account of
grace, free will, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit provides a terrain in
which later scholastics could plant that doctrine, and that Peter has
provided an environment congenial to that later development.
Peter's handling of the theological virtues, the cardinal virtues,
and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in specific rather than in generic
terms is placed in the third book of the Sentences, as a pendant to the
human nature of Christ, along with the theme of Christ's human
knowledge. As our discussion ofthat subject above in chapter 7 has
shown, he is scarcely a maximalist in comparison with such think-
ers as Hugh of St. Victor, although he certainly concedes that the
human Christ knew more than any other human being and that He
did not have to undergo a learning process of the type that ordinary
mortals experience. Likewise, while seeking to preserve a human
posse peccare et non peccare for the human Christ, a man spared from
original sin, Who maintained throughout His life a perfect con-
formity between His human will and the will of God, Peter offers a
human Christ Who, similarly, possesses a moral personality with a
psychology that is different from that of other men. While Peter
maintains that Christ truly could be tempted, he also thinks that, in
resisting temptation, Christ experienced propassio and consensus, but
not passion This being the case, the Lombard, along with Roland of
Bologna and other masters who treat virtue in the context of
Christ's human nature, faces something of problem. For Christ is,
morally, sui generis. In what sense, then, can the virtues, as He may
be held to have possessed them, function as norms or descriptions
of virtues as they may be possessed by humankind?

See above, pp. 442-43, 444, 447-48.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 493

The Theological Virtues

It cannot be said that Peter resolves this problem entirely, given

his chosen mode of organizing his treatment of virtue. He does
make an approach to addressing it, however, by first asking what
the virtues are, in themselves, and the capacity in which they are
possible in ordinary mortals before considering whether and how
the human Christ possessed them. This, however, is only one part
of his agenda. For, in handling both the theological and the cardi-
nal virtues, Peter also wants to take a stand on the issue of their
definition and interrelation, a topic on which there was a wide
range of contemporary opinions. He begins with the theological
virtues, starting with faith. All theologians at this time agreed that
faith is an epistemic state as well as a virtue. But attention had been
distracted to the first of these considerations by Abelard and his
followers, both with respect to the status of faith vis-à-vis other
modes of knowledge and with respect to its content, in relation to
what can be known by natural reason.45 Abelard initially accents
faith as an epistemic state and as a body of information by the
schema he proposes in his theologiae, where he divides the material
into faith, charity, and sacraments. According to this subdivision,
"faith" covers the fundamental doctrines of the church which need
to be held if a person is to be saved, while the other two subdivi-
sions of theology deal with the Christian's practice of his faith. On
faith itself, Abelard offers two main ideas, both of which proved to
be controversial. The first is that Christ's incarnation and resurrec-
tion constitute the only Christian dogmas for which revelation and
grace are required. As we have seen in our consideration of Trinitar-
ian theology in this period in chapters 5 and 6 above, Abelard
claimed that the doctrine of the Trinity was accessible to reason
alone and that the pagan philosophers, especially the Platonists,
had grasped its basic character, a claim that made his Trinitarian
theology a cause célèbre for decades, even in the somewhat moder-
ated form in which he eventually presents this teaching in his
Theologia "scholarium".46 The claims Abelard made regarding the
Trinity proved to be intellectually indigestible on the part of his
contemporaries. But his second contribution to the discussion of

For an overview on this issue in the period, see Georg Engelhardt, Die Entwick-
lung der dogmatischen Glaubenspsychologie in der mittelalterlichen Scholastik, Beiträge, 30:4-6
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1933), pp. 1&-42.
46
See above, pp. 51, 212-13, 239, 245, 254-59.
494 CHAPTER EIGHT

faith, while it evoked dismay from his monastic critics, proved to be

more durable and acceptable among the scholastics.
This was his definition of faith, presented in its most influential
form in his Theologia "scholarium", as "the conviction of things not
seen, that is, things not available to the corporeal senses" (Fides
est. . . existimatio rerum non apparentium, hoc est sensibus corporeis non
subiacentium) ,47 The key word in this definition is existimatio. Now,
existimare is a verb used in the Vulgate translation of the New
Testament to describe epistemic states generically, regardless of
their content. It can be rendered in English in most of these
contexts as "to consider," "to deem," "to esteem," "to expect," "to
suppose," or "to regard." Existimare is also used more specifically in
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans to refer to beliefs and hopes held
firmly by Christians about the future, on the basis of which they
comport themselves in accordance with Christ's teachings in the
here and now, as at Romans 6:11, 8:18, and 14:14. But, despite its
Pauline credentials, the word existimatio in Abelard's definition
evoked a storm of protest. Bernard of Clairvaux and his associates
thought that it stood for "opinion," which they, in turn, understood
as knowledge that is uncertain. The disciples of Abelard sought
both to clarify what he meant and to show that his language was
Pauline, and that it had patristic support. Several of them point out
that Paul's argumentum non apparentium in Hebrews 11:1 is basically
the same cognitive state as the one to which the apostle refers in
Romans with the use of existimare, and that this is what Abelard
means by that term as well.48 The authors of the two Sententiae
Parisiensis seek, further, to explain how this existimatio is related to
other forms of knowledge. One of them points out that conviction of
this sort differs from knowledge (cognitio) in that its objects of
knowledge are invisible. As he observes, once something has been
seen, it is known and is no longer believed. The key to Abelard's
definition of faith, then, is not its alleged lack of certitude but rather
the certitude it possesses in the absence of empirical evidence. We
may believe that the king of France is not in Paris, he notes,
because we have not seen him in the city, as contrasted with
knowing that he is in Paris because we have seen him there.49 While

47
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 1.2, 1.11-15, ed. Constant J. Mews,
CCCM 13: 318, 322-25.
48
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 25-30; Friedrich Stegmüller, ed., "Sententiae Varsavien-
sis: Ein neugefundenes Sentenzenwerk unter dem Einfluss des Anselm von Laon
und des Peter Abelard," Divus Thomas 45 (1942): 318; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp.
79-84.
49
Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 3; Johannes Trimborn, ed., Die Sententie "Quoniam missio"
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 495

this example enables us to localize this text, it ignores the fact that,
unlike the data of faith, kings are not intrinsically invisible in
this life.
The backdrop against which this Abelardian scenario was
played out was the tradition, maintained by the school of Laon, of
confining the understanding of faith to the substance of things
hoped for, the argument of things not seen of Hebrews, while
ignoring Paul's use of existimare elsewhere. Members ofthat school
go on to note that faith can be understood as a substance in that it
subsists in the heart of the believer. It is an argument in that it rests
on heresay, concerning matters invisible to us, both with respect to
events in the past and those in the hereafter which we in the present
are unable to witness. It is also an argument in the sense of being a
demonstration, in that it manifests its claims by its effects in the
lives of believers.50
This language was deemed to be too imprecise by a number of
theologians later in the century. The chief figure to succeed in
moderating Abelard's account, or to succeed in explaining its
acceptability in Pauline terms as well as its compatibility with the
teaching of the Laon masters, was Hugh of St. Victor. He has an
even keener interest than Abelard in considering the status of faith
as a mode of knowledge, in relation to other kinds of knowledge. He
agrees with Abelard that this is an issue requiring clarification, and
supports the orthodoxy of existimatio against Abelard's critics. As a
mode of knowledge, faith, according to Hugh, is a sacrament, in the
broad sense in which he uses this term, and one that needs to be
placed on a wide epistemological canvas that includes all forms of
the knowledge of God man may have, direct and indirect, internal
and external, up to and including contemplative vision. Hugh sees
no tension between what later would be called the natural and
supernatural modes of knowledge.51 With this in mind, he agrees
with the school of Laon's analysis of faith as the substance of things
hoped for, in that it subsists in the believer's heart although he does
not yet possess the things to which it refers. Likewise, he agrees,
faith is the argumentum non apparentium, involving matters seen
through a glass darkly, because it is a likeness of invisible realities
although it is not corporeal itself. To this Hugh adds his own

aus der Abelardschule (Cologne: Photostelle der Universität zu Köln, 1962), pp.
152-58. The latter will be cited below as Sententiae Parisiensis II.
50
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 80.
51
An excellent general orientation on Hugh's view of faith is provided by Roger
Baron, "Le Sacrement de la foi' selon Hugues de Saint-Victor," RSPT42 (1958):
50-78.
496 CHAPTER EIGHT

refinement concerning the epistemic status of faith, which absorbs

Abelard's view and makes it more precise. "Faith," he states, "is
certitude concerning things that are absent; it is above opinion and
below knowledge" (Fides est certitudo rerum absentium supra opinionem et
infra scientiam constituta). As with the knowledge involved in opinion,
the knowledge involved in faith is indirect. At the same time, unlike
opinion, which is a more free floating cognitive state, faith consti-
tutes knowledge that is certain. But, in comparison with scientia,
faith also constitutes knowledge that is limited. Now, we know only
in part. And, agreeing here with Abelard and his disciples, Hugh
adds that when that fuller scientia becomes available, in the next
life, the knowledge that it conveys will no longer be faith. Faith will
have passed into sight. Hugh also imports another dimension into
his discussion of faith. Despite his concern with the epistemological
analysis of faith, a topic of deep importance to him, he reflects an
appreciation of the fact that the debate surrounding Abelard on
this subject had pushed to the side the idea of faith as a virtue and
as an affective state. Here, he draws a distinction. The matter of
faith, he states, is its cognitive content. The mode of faith, as he has
described it above, is the limited yet certain knowledge of things
not empirically available, above opinion and below science. But the
substance of faith, that is, the act of faith and the spiritual attitude
represented by faith, is grounded in affection. And, Hugh con-
cludes, one can grow in faith, both as a cognitive and as an affective
state.52
Hugh's treatment of faith exerted an influence on two mid-
century theologians who, in turn, influenced Peter Lombard. Ro-
land of Bologna agrees that Hugh's understanding of faith as the
substantia sperandum rerum, argumentum non apparentium, infra scientium et
supra opinionum is a large improvement over Abelard's certa existima-
tio rerum absentium. Aside from taking Hugh's analysis to heart here,
another reason he advances for setting aside Abelard's definition is
one derived itself from Abelard's own philosophy. Existimatio, in
Abelard's sense, can include knowledge of many things that have
nothing to do with religious faith. A conviction concerning some-
thing not present to the senses, in Abelard's logic, would also
describe a concept standing for a sensible thing, which is capable of
being thought about and used in propositions independent of the
continued existence or present availability of its referent. Likewise,

52
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.10.1-4, PL 176: 327D-333D. The quotation is at
1.10.2, 330C.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 497

the certitude with which religious beliefs are held does not neces-
sarily distinguish them from beliefs in other areas which may be
held with equal certitude. In Roland's estimation, a better reason
for elevating faith above opinion is that, although it is based on
heresay, it derives from authoritative sources, even though, since it
is indirect knowledge, it cannot be proved.53
The author of the Summa sententiarum also expands on Hugh.
Reprising the definition of faith as below science and above opinion
and as partial but certain, held in the absence of full evidence and
as not susceptible of proof in the sense of empirical demonstration,
he adds the point that faith cannot be held without the reception of
revelation, whether through internal inspiration or through exter-
nal instruction by the words and deeds of other believers. In this
respect, faith differs from the knowledge of God that may be had
through natural theology. In particular, the key content of faith,
which differentiates it from the rational knowledge of God available
in philosophy, is the doctrine of God's unity and trinity as well as
the incarnation.54 While he expatiates on the content of faith,
against Abelard, this author confines himself to faith as a body of
knowledge and as a cognitive state, and the special epistemic
conditions making it possible, and ignores Hugh's move to push
faith as a virtue and as an affective state back into the picture.
Although he does not use Victorine language, Peter Lombard's
definition and description of faith come down squarely in support
of the Victorine position, especially as articulated by the Summa
sententiarum and by Roland. He accepts their resolution of the
controversy inspired by Abelard. He combines this position with a
number of other ideas on which consensus reigned in the period,
with the effect of offering a fuller and more balanced account of
faith both as a virtue and as a mode of knowledge than any other
theologian of his time. Peter begins by defining faith as a virtue, one
which enables us to believe what we cannot see, insofar as the
knowledge at issue pertains to religion.55 He uses the argumentum non
apparentium language of Hebrews and glosses "argument" by
adding the term convictio, derived from Augustine, in order to
emphasize the certitude of knowledge possessed by faith. He is also
concerned with locating faith among the diverse modes of knowl-
edge. Its objects of knowledge, he notes, are not sensible. Thus,

53
54
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 10-12.
55
Summa sent. 1.1-3, PL 176: 43A-47C.
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 23. c. 2.1, c. 7.1-c. 8.1, 2: 141, 145-47. The
quotation is at c. 7.3, p. 146.
498 CHAPTER EIGHT

what is known by faith is known "not corporally, not by imagina-

tion, but intellectually" (non corporaliter, non imaginarie, sed intellec-
tualiter). Combining these definitions with a three-fold distinction
concerning faith, articulated by the school of Laon and held widely
in this period by many theologians, including the Peter of the
Romans gloss, he notes that faith is a content of propositions to be
believed, among them the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarna-
tion, and confidence in the trustworthiness of the person who
proposes those propositions. The third, and definitive aspect of
faith, the faith that separates the justified believer from the believ-
ing reprobate or even from the devil, is the adhesion to God with
love and confidence which inspires the faith working in love that is
salvific.56 As a virtue, Peter continues, here reprising as well a
doctrine that states the consensus position, faith is the foundation
of hope and charity. It covers the past, present, and future, and
things both good and bad. It provides hope with the confidence it
has in the goods to which it looks in the future; and it is the basis
and the motivation for the charity that perfects faith and enables it
to work in love.57 Returning to faith as a mode of knowledge, Peter
confirms the Victorine view that it refers to knowledge that is
incomplete; it can, he adds, be supplemented by intellectus or intel-
lectual clarification of the content of the faith, which can be added
on by subsequent study and reflection.58 Having tipped his hat here
to Augustine and to Anselm of Canterbury, he then distinguishes
between the faith possessed by mankind prior to the revelation of
Christ and the faith possessed by simple Christians who do not
understand all the points of faith which they profess. While the
people of God before the time of Christ possessed all the revelation
currently available and while they may have believed it fully, that
faith, since it knew nothing of Christ, was not sufficient to save

56
Ibid., c. 3-c. 6, c. 8, d. 25. c. 3-c. 4, 2: 143-45, 146-47, 155-58. On this trifold
view of faith, see also Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 313, 415-16, 5: 247, 290; Sent.
Anselmi 2, pp. 80-82, 86-90; Peter Abelard, In Ep. ad Romanos 4:57, CCCM 11: 24;
Sent. Varsaviensis, p. 318; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 79-84.
57
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 23. c. 9, d. 25. c. 5, 2: 147-48, 158-59. See also Sent.
Anselmi 2, pp. 80-82; Hermannus, Sent., p. 25; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 3; Ysagoge in
theologiam, pp. 79-84; Summa sent. 1.2, PL 176: 43C-45C. The author of the Sent.
Parisiensis II, pp. 148-50, disagrees with the grounding of hope and charity in faith
and treats each of these virtues as equally dependent on the others. On the relation
of hope to faith in this period and in Peter's teaching, see Jacques-Guy Bougerol,
La théologie de l'espérance aux ΧΙΓ et ΧΙΙΓ siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustini-
ennes, 1985), 1: 21-101; Servais Pinckaers, "Les origines de la définition de
l'espérance dans les Sentences de Pierre Lombard," RTAM 22 (1955): 306-12.
5é
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 24. c. 3.3-5, 2: 151-52.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 499

them. On the other hand, the simple Christian believer, whose faith
is proportioned to his intelligence and education, and which may
thus be anything but profound, does believe in Christ as the
mediator and does assent to the other propositions of the creed.
This faith, provided that it is manifested in works of love, is
sufficient, for him.59 With this last point, Peter signals the fact that
he is going to make a significant departure from the Victorine
position on the efficacy of the "sacraments" of the Old Law and on
the redemption of persons lacking a specifically Christian faith.
Peter maintains a thoroughly consensus position on hope, as the
virtue through which Christians look with confidence toward the
spiritual and eternal goods to come in their future beatitude. He
agrees that this virtue is based on faith and that the rewards it
envisions derive from God's grace and the merits of the individual
believer. Like faith, he notes, hope deals with things unseen. But,
unlike faith, these things are all good things and they are to occur
only in the future. He cites his own Romans gloss as his major
source, although these views are the common coin of the period.60
One line of analysis on hope which he ignores, although it was
influential in other quarters in the twelfth century, is the Augustin-
ian distinction among hope of pardon, hope of grace, and hope of
glory (spes vente, spes gratiae, spes gloriae), popularized in this period
by the school of Laon.61 Instead, he moves on to the question of
whether the human Christ possessed the virtues of faith and hope,
and hits a major snag. On the negative side of the question, it
would appear that, since Christ possessed a fullness of knowledge as
well as a fullness of grace, like the beatified saints, He would have
had no need of these virtues. However, Peter wants to argue that
Christ, having decided to live the life of a man in via prior to His
resurrection, did possess these virtues, as the saints do in this life,
although to a much higher degree. For the saints, the knowledge
attaching to faith and the confidence attaching to hope are partial.
These limits, in Peter's estimation, were not present in the faith and
hope possessed by the human Christ.62 What remains unclear here,
and understandably so, given the definitions of these virtues put
forth by Peter above, is how, indeed, faith and hope can remain
faith and hope when they lack the incompleteness that is an intrin-

59
Ibid., d. 25. c. 1-c. 2, 2: 153-55.
60
Ibid., d. 26. c. 1-c. 3, 2: 159-60.
61
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 313, 5: 247. On this theme, see Bougerol, La
théologie de l'espérance, 1: 21-23, 65-76.
62
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 26 c. 4, 2: 160-61.
500 CHAPTER EIGHT

sic feature of their nature, by definition. It has to be said that Peter

does not resolve this problem and that he does not succeed in
explaining comprehensibly how the human Christ, given the
psychology with which he endows Him, can truly be said to have
had faith and hope.
Peter does at least acknowledge that the human Christ, in the
light of His fullness of knowledge and grace, did not have faith and
hope in the same way that other human beings can possess these
virtues. But he insists firmly that Christ possessed the greatest
possible degree of human charity, both in heart and deed. This
virtue, he reminds the reader, is an essential condition of Christ's
accomplishment of His saving work, in displaying His love to man,
inspiring man's conversion, and instructing man in the love of God
and neighbor. The fact that there might be a problem regarding
Christ's charity, parallel to the problem regarding His faith and
hope, is simply not countenanced by Peter. He proceeds im-
mediately to an analysis of charity. There were only two notable
areas in which there was any debate on this virtue in Peter's day.
One was the definition of charity and the other was the question of
whether, and how, it could be graded and manifested. In the first
case, the Abelardians and the author of the Summa sententiarum offer
a definition of charity as the love of the good (amor honestus) which
directs one's affections to their proper ends, and which loves other
people with respect to those ends. This definition, in its expanded
form, certainly views God himself and eternal life as the highest
ends in question and as the criterion of intermediate ends. At the
same time, Abelard's definition tends to emphasize the generic and
volitional aspect of the transaction.63 The Laon masters and Hugh
of St. Victor, on the other hand, adhere to a more strictly conven-
tional and Augustinian definition of charity as the love of God
for His own sake and the love of self and neighbor for God's sake.
Peter Lombard follows in this latter tradition,64 drawing on some of

63
Peter Abelard, Theologia "scholarium" 1.3-5, CCCM 13: 319-20; Hermannus,
Sent., p. 25; Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 5, 48; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 85-91; Roland of
Bologna, Sent., pp. 3, 5; Summa sent. 4.8, PL 176: 128A. On this point, see Robert
Wielocks, "La discussion scolastique sur l'amour d'Anselme de Laon à Pierre
Lombard d'après les imprimés et les inédits," Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Hoger Instituut vor Wijsbegeerte Ph.D. diss., 1981, pp. 277-96.
64
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 71-72, 5: 61-64; Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 80-82;
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.13.6-12, PL 176: 528D-550C; Peter Lombard, Sent. 3.
d. 27, 2: 162-68. On this definition, see Ruggero Balducci, // concetto teologico di
carità attraverso le maggiori interpretazioni patristiche e medievali di I ad Cor. Ill (Washing-
ton: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), pp. 148-53; Wielocks, "La
discussion scolastique," pp. 175-97, 297-99, 300-02, 306, 342-45.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 501

the refinements added to Augustine by both the Laon masters

and Hugh.
With the school of Laon, Peter holds that charity has several
stages, although he expands the school's three levels of sweet and
inchoate charity, wise and strengthening charity, and robust and
perfecting charity into four stages. He retains the Laon masters'
first three, which he labels incipiens, proficiens, and perfecta, and adds
a final most perfect (perfectissima) phase denoting the charity en-
joyed by the perfected saints.65 The school of Laon's definition of
charity as the Holy Spirit, "that is, the love between the Father and
the Son" (id est amor patris etfilii) is also one that influenced Peter.
The Laon masters are straightforward in stating that those who
dwell in charity are engrafted into the inner life of the Trinity. For
his part, Peter is more guarded. He seeks to avoid a participatory or
immanental view of the mission of the Holy Spirit. As Peter sees it,
in communicating charisms, the Holy Spirit conveys the grace of
the whole Trinity. He does not convey the divine nature to man.66
While Peter draws on the school of Laon, at least in part, in these
respects, he completely disregards the Laon masters' five-fold sub-
division of charity as analogous to the five senses.67
Peter joins Hugh in drawing on Augustine's analysis of the goods
to which charity should direct our attention, although each master
imparts his own accent to this topic. Hugh distinguishes what is
good in and of itself, namely God as the supreme and normative
good; intermediate goods which are substantially good but good
only in part, although they may also be good in relation to some-
thing or someone else; and purely derivative goods, which are not
good in and of themselves but which may lead to good. Under this
last heading he thinks some evils may be placed.68 In his analysis,
the first two goods, which are either wholly or partly good, will
therefore be good for something or someone else as well. The

65
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 313, 5: 247; Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 29. c.
3.1 2: 177.
Sent. Anselmi 2, pp. 80-82; the quotation is on p. 80; Peter Lombard, Sent. 1. d.
14. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 126-28. For Peter on the Holy Spirit as caritas, see above, chapter 5,
pp. 260-62. The distinctions drawn by him on this subject, in relation to the school
of Laon, are not given their due weight by Ignaz Siepl, "Die Lehre von der
göttliche Tugend der Liebe in des Petrus Lombardus Büchern der Sentenzen und
in der Summa theologica des hl. Thomas von Aquin," Der Katholik, 3:34 (1906):
37-49, 196-201; Franz Zigon, "Der Begriff der Caritas beim Lombarden, und der
hl. Thomas," Divus Thomas 4 (1926): 404-11. Both of these authors draw too much
of a contrast between Peter and Thomas.
67
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 431, 5: 296-97.
68
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.4.15-20, PL 176: 240B-242D.
502 CHAPTER EIGHT

evident purpose of Hugh's distinction is to rationalize the existence

of evils as having a potential to serve the good, willy-nilly, as much
as it is to distinguish between the supreme good and lower goods as
objects of charity. On the other hand, Peter's focus on the levels of
goodness is specifically designed as an index of how men should
direct their loves. We should, he states, love God, Who is above us,
the most; and our souls and those of our neighbors, including the
angels, with a lesser degree of love and one that keeps their eternal
destiny in view. Human bodies, our own and others', are intimately
linked with the soul and are also destined for salvation; and so they
should also be loved, in the sense of promoting what is conducive to
their health and self-preservation. Finally, we should love what is
below us, insofar as it is conducive to the wellbeing of the body.69
Aside from his concern with the gradation of man's display of love,
and its rationale, Peter's treatment of this point emphasizes man's
hylemorphic constitution, a theme which he gives much more
prominence than Hugh does in his understanding of human nature
more generally.
Aside from the definition of charity itself, the other major topic
under this heading on which the theologians and their authorities
disagreed was the question of what criterion should be invoked in
extending charity to one's fellow man, given the finitude of the
means at one's disposal. The three criteria considered by theolo-
gians who wrestle with this point are virtue, need, and relationship
to the donor. Not all of them are able to make a decision here. The
author of the Summa sententiarum considers all three positions, and
their pros and cons, and draws no conclusions of his own.70 The
author of the Sententie Anselmi opts for virtue, being particularly
concerned that we not grant charity or alms to notorious evildoers,
lest we thereby appear to condone their behavior.71 Most of the
masters of the school of Laon think that need should be the primary
determinant, but that if need is not a factor, relationship should be
the guide, with charity dispensed first to parents, then to other
relatives, then to friends, members of one's household, neighbors,
and compatriots.72 Roland of Bologna defends the principle of need
above all. He also imports into the discussion the same distinction
between interior affectus and exterior ejfectus which he draws in

69
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 28. c. 1-c. 4, 2: 16&-71.
70
Summa sent. 4.7, PL 176: 125A-126A.
71
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 84; Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 79, 5: 67-68.
72
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 71-72; Sentences of the School of Laon. no. 432-33,
436, 5: 61-64, 297, 298-99.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 503

considering virtue more generally. The needs that should deter-

mine our charitable responses will vary according to the nature and
circumstances of the needy people we assist, he notes. Thus, the
specifics of the effectus of charity will differ accordingly. But they
will all be inspired equally by the same inner charitable affectus.73
Peter Lombard borrows this affectus-effectus distinction but uses it
to support a view of the distribution of charity according to rela-
tionships, while going beyond the standard analysis to include
enemies as well as relatives and friends. He agrees with Roland that
all people are to be loved with the same charity, seen as a qualita-
tive intentionality. With this idea in mind, it is possible to invoke
the sliding scale of relationship, understanding that a different
effectus will be appropriate to the different kinds of relatives and
associates we have. Peter includes enemies not only in response to
the biblical injunction to love one's enemies, but also as a means of
reinforcing the point that the sliding scale of relationships speaks to
charity as a virtue. We should love the people in question for the
sake of God and their eternal life, not out of a merely natural
affection. The rule of love of neighbor, moreover, is a general one.
While it is harder to love those less closely bound to us than it is to
love our nearest and dearest, and while, a fortiori, it is harder to love
our enemies than our friends, it is also true that the virtue of charity
is more perfect when it is exercised in the more difficult cases. Peter
leaves open the question of whether we should aid relatives even if
they are morally inferior to persons not related to us.74 The Lom-
bard also has two points to make on the perdurance of charity, in
this case following Gratian.75 When the apostle says that charity
endures, he does not mean that individual people cannot grow
stronger or weaker in this virtue. Rather, he is referring to the
merits of charity perse, as a virtue. At the same time, while faith and
hope will no longer be needed in the next life, having been super-
seded by sight and by the possession of what we hope for, charity
will not be superseded but will rather be strengthened in Heaven,
with all the limits and imperfections that may mar it in this life
removed.76 Peter concludes this treatise on the theological virtues
on the same ambiguous Christological note as he had begun it.
Having already stated that the human Christ had the most perfect
charity possible for a human being in via, he now observes that,

73
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 318-20.
74
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 29. c. 2-c. 12, d. 30, 2: 172-76, 177-80.
75
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 1 part 2: 136-203.
76
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 31. c. 1-c. 2, 2: 180-84.
504 CHAPTER EIGHT

while He was still alive, the human Christ possessed the even more
perfect charity of xhzpatria.11 He thereby reinforces the problematic
character of his treatment of Christ's humanity while at the same
time raising questions, which he does not answer, about the very
appropriateness of the consideration of the virtues under this head-
ing in the first place.

The Cardinal Virtues

The same holds true for Peter's treatment of the cardinal virtues,
which he considers in a primarily Christological context as well.
Most of the theologians of the day did not place themselves under
the constraints that follow from this decision. Many of them, in-
cluding Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, the Porretans,
and the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum,
display no interest in this topic at all. Those who do had available
to them not only the classical definitions of these virtues, whether
Platonic, Aristotelian, or Stoic, by means of both pagan and patris-
tic intermediaries. They also had, as resources, the reformulations
of the cardinal virtues in association with the theological virtues
put forth by Ambrose and Gregory and the redefinition of them as
modes of charity found in Augustine. Ambrose's treatment of the
theological virtues as imparting the power to practice the cardinal
virtues had no takers in this period. The Gregorian redefinition of
the cardinal virtues had one supporter, the author of the Sententie
Anselmi. Following Gregory, he presents these virtues as expressions
of the Christian virtues of penance, obedience, poverty in spirit,
and humility; all of them are fruits of the fear of the Lord. Also,
with Gregory, he analogizes them to the figures in Ezechiel's vision,
the man, ox, lion, and eagle standing for discretion, self-mortifi-
cation, fortitude, and exaltation. The master adds that, along with
memory, intellect, and will, contempt of the world, hope of eternal
reward, and patience, these virtues will build the "house of God"
within the human soul.78
A more Aristotelian approach to the cardinal virtues found favor
with some theologians. Without placing them in an Aristotelian
hierarchy, other members of the school of Laon join the Peripa-
tetics in viewing the virtues as a mean between extremes. Prudence
mediates between flightiness and sluggishness, temperance be-

Ibid., c. 3, 1: 184.
Sent. Anselmi 4, pp. 110-11.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 505

tween luxury and insensibility, fortitude between rashness and

timidity, and justice between the greater and the lesser good.79 The
Abelardians also tend to put an Aristotelian construction on the
cardinal virtues. Abelard himself does not provide a discussion of
the cardinal virtues as such, but singles out prudence or discern-
ment as the mother of the virtues, a point associated with the
Stoics.80 His disciples reject that idea. According to the author of
Sententiae Parisiensis I, prudence is not a virtue at all, since it
involves knowledge of evil as well as good. As for the other three
virtues, he follows Aristotle in making justice, defined as rendering
to each his own and serving the common weal, the paramount
virtue. Temperance and fortitude he sees as ordered to justice,
aiding its exercise, with temperance strengthening the soul against
the infrarational temptations that might deflect it from justice and
fortitude arming the soul to repel whatever is opposed to justice.81
Hermannus includes prudence as one of the cardinal virtues, but,
like the author of Sententiae Parisiensis I, he places justice at the head
of the list and gives all four of the virtues Aristotelian definitions.
He adds that they can be possessed by virtuous pagans.82 Hugh of
St. Victor comes up with a list of virtues which also places justice at
the head but whose relationship to Aristotle, or to any of Hugh's
potential patristic sources, is difficult to see, as is its internal
coherence. He begins with justice, followed by clemency, remorse,
love ofjustice, mercy, purity of heart, and inner peace of mind. He
does not explain the difference, if any, between justice and love of
justice or between clemency and mercy. He neither redefines the
cardinal virtues in Christian terms nor explores whether or how
these virtues are antidotes to the seven deadly sins. This collection
of virtues, to which he annexes the beatitudes and the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, appears to be sui generis with Hugh.83
In relation to these contemporary and recent discussions, and to
the patristic possibilities, the Lombard takes a line of his own on
the cardinal virtues. In an early sermon, he echoes the language of
the author of the Sententie Anselmi, although without his Gregorian
overtones, in describing the four cardinal virtues as the four walls of
the house of God, along with its four gates as the four evangelists,

79
Sentences of the School of Loon, no. 424-25, 5: 293.
80
Peter Abelard, Ethics, p. 128.
81
Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 52-54. On the Abelardian definition of justice, see
Lottin, Psych, et morale, 3: 284-85.
82
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 145, 149.
83
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.13.2, PL 176: 526C-527B.
506 CHAPTER EIGHT

its twelve towers as the apostles, and its roof as the gifts of the Holy
Spirit. He does not provide definitions of the virtues here.84
In a still earlier sermon, he describes the cardinal virtues as
antidotes of the vices of lust, vainglory, gluttony, and anger. In the
same sermon, however, he proposes a non-Gregorian schedule of
vices, including negligence, curiosity about things that are none of
one's business, fleshly concupiscence, consent to sin, habituation to
sin, contempt of the good, and delight in sin, proposing the gifts of
the Holy Spirit as their remedies.85 In the Sentences, Peter first brings
up the cardinal virtues as virtues possessed by man before the fall.
Like all meritorious action open to prelapsarian man, these virtues,
he states, required the active collaboration of grace with free will.86
In his treatise on Christology, Peter essays his only definition of
these virtues. Although elsewhere he agrees with the Augustinian
principle that charity is the ground of the virtues just as lack of
charity is the ground of the vices, even though the internal habitus
may be manifested outwardly in different ways in either case,87
Peter does not follow Augustine's redefinition of the cardinal vir-
tues as modes of charity. He does appeal to Augustine's authority
here, but it is the Augustine of De trinitate 14.9.12, an Augustine in a
less adaptive mood. In line with the definitions found in De trinitate,
Peter states that justice is relief of those in misery, prudence is the
outwitting or forestalling of attacks on virtue, fortitude is the calm
bearing of suffering, and temperance is the restraining of evil pleas-
ures. He adds that the human Christ, to Whom he accords both the
perfect charity of the via and the still more perfect charity of the
patria, possessed these virtues, which have their uses both in the via
and in the patriae
In examining the cardinal virtues more specifically, Peter begins
with justice, but in no sense because he wants to put an Aristotelian
construction on this virtue. The assuaging of need which marks this
virtue in via will give way, in the patria, to the contemplation of the
divine nature for which human nature was made, and than which
nothing could be better, more amiable, or more appropriate, and
hence, more just.89 As for the other virtues, they too will remain in

84
Peter Lombard, Sermo 32, PL 171: 497A.
85
Peter Lombard, Sermo 4, PL 171: 354R-357B.
86
Peter Lombard, Sent. 2. d. 29. c. 1-c. 2, 1: 492-93. Delhaye, Pierre Lombard,
pp. 75-80, ignores this consideration of the cardinal virtues in Peter, and, in
general, gives this subject shorter shrift than it deserves.
87
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 36, 2: 202-06.
88
Ibid., d. 33, c. 1-c. 2, 2: 188.
89
Ibid., c. 3.2, 2: 189. Charles Lefebre, "La notion d'équité chez Pierre Lom-
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 507

the next life and their accent will likewise shift from the negative or
disciplinary to the positive, since there will be, in the patria, no
danger of error, no suffering, and no evil desires to be overcome.
Instead, wisdom will propose God as the good; fortitude will
adhere to Him; and temperance will enjoy Him with no im-
pediments.90 These remarks concerning the function of the car-
dinal virtues in the next life are also drawn from Augustine's De
trinitate. This concludes Peter's extremely abbreviated treatment of
the cardinal virtues. He does not redefine them as expressions of
charity. He neither confirms nor denies in Book 3 the point made in
Book 2 of the Sentences that they require the collaboration of grace
and free will. He says nothing about how these virtues may be
related or engendered. The virtuous pagan, who makes a brief
potential appearance earlier in Peter's analysis of virtue, is neither
claimed nor dismissed here. Peter offers no suggestions as to how,
or whether, the cardinal virtues are related to the theological
virtues or to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, although he places them in
between his account of those two topics. This is clearly an area that
called for further reflection, both in the mid-twelfth-century in
general and in Lombardian theology more specifically.

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

After considering the cardinal virtues, Peter next turns to the

gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, in Book 3 of the Sentences, he treats as
virtues, although in Book 2 he had distinguished quite sharply the
gifts from the virtues which they enable man to develop, in col-
laboration with free will. That same distinction, as we recall, he
had repeated at the beginning of his discussion of virtue in general,
and the interaction of God and man therein. In any event, the first
of these gifts which he takes up is the fear of the Lord. This provides
him with the occasion to rehearse a topic that had received con-
siderable attention in this period. Although there was some slight

bard," Ephemerides Juris Canonici 9 (1953): 291-304 gives a good overview of the
meanings ofjustice in Peter Lombard, from the one given in this passage, to justice
as justification, to justice as linked to or contrasted with mercy in the last
judgment. The latter of these points in Peter is discussed by Landgraf, "Some
Unknown Writings," p. 14. On the other hand, Hermenegildus Lio, Estne obligatio
iustitiae subvenire müeris? Quaestionis positio et evolutio a Petro Lombardo ad S. Thomam ex
tribus S. Augustini textibus (Rome: Desclée & Socii, 1957), pp. 1-4, 15-29, considers
justice only from the narrow perspective of poor relief, more properly treated in
conjunction with charity in Peter, and poses the question anachronistically in the
light of the economic ethics of Aquinas.
90
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 33. c. 3.3-4, 2: 189.
508 CHAPTER EIGHT

difference in the terminology used, there was a rather general

agreement on the substance of the doctrine. Fear was divided,
usually, into four categories, servile fear, mundane or worldly fear,
initial fear, and chaste or filial fear. The first was seen as motivating
action so as to avoid worldly punishment, the second as prompting
action so as to avoid the loss of worldly good, the third as inspired
by fear of eternal punishment, and the fourth as triggering virtuous
action out of the love of God alone. Filial fear was generally held to
be the only perfectly acceptable ethical motivation; but it was
accepted that initial fear could serve as the beginning of wisdom in
prompting the conversion of heart that would lead to filial fear.91
This doctrine is found in Anselm of Laon and his followers and in
Hugh of St. Victor, under the heading of ethics.92 Robert Pullen
agrees with the substance of the consensus position, but brings it up
in considering the conditions making for acceptable contrition in
the sacrament of penance.93 William of Champeaux and the author
of the Summa sententiarum discuss this topic in the context of the
virtues possessed by the human Christ, agreeing that He had a
perfect filial fear.94 The Lombard follows these two latter theolo-
gians, but adds his own perspective to their common teaching.
The key to Peter's handling of the theme of fear as a moral
motivation is his desire to apply to the gifts of the Holy Spirit as
possessed by the human Christ a treatment parallel to the treat-
ment he gives to the theological and cardinal virtues. There, he had
been concerned to show that these virtues are needed in via, and
that, with the exception of faith and hope, they will be retained in
the patria, although in an altered and perfected form. He likewise
wants to show that the human Christ possessed those virtues that
will endure into the next life both according to the via and to the
patria during His life on earth. In arraying his authorities on fear of
the Lord, Peter's major concern is to tackle figures such as Bede
and Augustine, who say that fear will cease in Heaven. Peter agrees
that initial fear, in this life, can be a useful first step toward the filial
fear which, again, in this life, is the sufficient and perfect motivation

91
On this doctrine in the first half of the twelfth century, see Schupp, Die
Gnadenlehre, pp. 164-66; Damien Van den Eynde, "Autour des 'Enarrationes in
Evangelium S. Matthei' attribués à Geoffroi Babion," RTAM 26 (1959): 71-73.
92
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 31, 75; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 420, 429,
5: 33, 65-66, 291, 294-95; Sent. Anselmi 3, pp. 105-06; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac.
2.13.5, PL 176:528A-D.
93
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.30-31, PL 186: 851D-853C.
94
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 276, 5: 220-21; Summa sent. 3.17, PL 176:
115A-116A.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 509

for virtue. He resolves the problem provoked by Bede and Augus-

tine by drawing a distinction. Initial fear, along with its even less
worthy companions, servile and mundane fear, will, to be sure,
cease in Heaven. On the other hand, filial fear will endure. But, like
charity and the cardinal virtues, it will be perfected and manifested
only in its most positive aspects. In Heaven, the filial fear that
inspires the virtuous to avoid offending God and to desire never to
be separated from God will be transformed into the desire to revere
God always, now that they can remain with Him forever, in a
reverence mixed with love.95 As for the definitions of the modes of
fear themselves, Peter is a bit more generous than are most of his
contemporaries. He regards initial fear as a form of inchoate love of
God, and not just as a fear of eternal punishment, and he sees the
lower servile fear, while clearly outside of the state of wisdom to
which initial fear can lead, as at least possessing the capacity to
prepare the way to it in some sense. He affirms that the human
Christ possessed a perfect filial fear, both of the via and of the patria,
throughout His life and that, while as a human being He could
experience the fear of death, such fear was not servile or mundane
fear in His case.96
Peter's handling of the other gifts of the Holy Spirit is quite
abbreviated. Aside from fear, the only other gifts he takes up are
wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia). The chief framework of
patristic authority in which he positions his analysis is Augustin-
ian. Better, it can be read as a good case of Peter's use of Augus-
tine against Augustine, in aid of his own desired conclusions. The
first definition of wisdom he cites is the philosophical one given by
Augustine in his Contra academicos, the knowledge of things divine
and human. Against this idea Peter offers what he finds a better
definition, one easier to gear to the notion of these mental states not
as natural aptitudes and achievements but as gifts of the Holy
Spirit. This is the definition of sapientia and scientia found in Augus-
tine's De trinitate, where wisdom is seen as the knowledge of things
divine, and science is seen as the knowledge of things human,
omitting, that is, information that is vain, frivolous, or superfluous,
and focusing on knowledge that nurtures, helps, and defends the
faith and that therefore promotes beatitude.97 According to Peter,
wisdom can also be distinguished from understanding (intellectum,
intelligentia). To be sure, understanding, like wisdom, applies to the

95
96
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 34. c. 3.1-4, 2: 191-92.
97
Ibid., c. 6.3-c. 9, 2: 196-98.
Ibid., d. 35. c. 1.2-3, 2: 198-99.
510 CHAPTER EIGHT

knowledge of invisible, spiritual realities. But wisdom is eternal,

while understanding operates temporally. In addition, wisdom has
God alone as its object, and understanding is oriented both to God
and to creatures. Further, through understanding we grasp what
we know; through wisdom we delight in what we know. Both
wisdom and understanding can thus be differentiated from sdentia.
Scientia applies to our right ordering and administration of temporal
things and to the turning from evil to good things. Intelligentia
applies to our speculation on the creator and the invisible creation
in time. Sapientia applies to our contemplation and delectation of
eternal truth. Following the model developed above for holy fear,
Peter concludes that, at the end of time, it is sapientia that will
endure.98 In elaborating on this point, he once more reminds the
reader that he is not talking about natural modes of knowledge
here—a category to which he certainly assigns a place in Book 2 of
the Sentences—but about gifts of the Holy Spirit that are given for
the specific purpose of theological reflection, analysis, and enlight-
enment. The grace so imparted assists the human mind in turning
its natural functions to subjects that lead to virtue and salvation."
Despite his dependence on Augustine here, Peter does not use the
Augustinian language of divine illumination in discussing man's
direct or indirect theological knowledge. At the same time, he
marks a departure from the modes of knowledge outlined by Hugh
of St. Victor, who places natural knowledge and knowledge for
which divine assistance is required on more of a continuum than
Peter does.

The Moral Law of the Old Testament

This willingness to depart from the Victorine tradition is also

visible in the final area Peter addresses in connection with ethics in
Book 3 of the Sentences, the Ten Commandments and other features
of the Old Testament moral law, and the degree to which they
continue to bind Christians. Following the consensus view, which
goes back to Augustine, he observes that the first three of the Ten
Commandments apply to the love of God and are more important
than the next seven, which apply to the love of neighbor.100 He also
agrees with the consensus, shared by the canonists as well as the

98
Ibid., c. 2, 2: 200.
99
Ibid., c. 3.1-2,2: 201.
100
Ibid., d. 37. c. 1.1, 2: 206. Cf., for example, Sentences ofAnselm ofLaon, no. 12,
5: 23; Summa sent. 4.3, PL 176: 120D-125A.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 511

theologians, that the moral rules of the Old Testament continue to

bind, but that the ritual and ceremonial rites, which are subject to
change and which in any case apply to religious practices that have
been superseded for Christians, do not.101 The master to whom
Peter comes the closest in this area is the author of the Summa
sententiarum. With him, the Lombard firmly rejects the placement of
the Old Law on a broad "sacramental" trajectory, of the sort found
in Hugh of St. Victor. The rites of the Old Law having been
replaced, definitively, with those of the New, their salvific character
even in their own day receives short shrift. Anticipating what he
will say about the sacraments in Book 4 of the Sentences, Peter views
these Old Testament ceremonies as significant, but not as a means
for the transmission of divine grace. He also joins the author of the
Summa sententiarum in asserting that the ethics of the New Testament
likewise perfects and goes farther than the moral rules of the Old
Testament, even in the case of those earlier rules that are retained.
The reason for this is that Christ's teaching pays attention to
intentionality and not just to action. Sexual ethics is an example
cited by both authors to defend this claim. The author of the Summa
sententiarum adds the example of homicide, which likewise can be
committed "in deed, word, and intention" {manu, lingua, consensu).
Thus, character assassination and compassing a person's death, in
the Christian dispensation, count as murder.102 Similarly, both
Peter and the author of the Summa sententiarum take up, and con-
demn, usury under the heading of theft, a topic far less standard
among theologians in the mid-twelfth century than it was later to
become.103
On the other hand, Peter parts company with the Summa senten-
tiarum and with the majority of his contemporaries in his treatment
of the sin of lying, to which he gives extended attention. Two notes
emerge in his discussion of this subject. First, reprising and ex-
panding on what he had said in Book 2 of the Sentences, where he
rejects the view of the school of Laon, the Summa sententiarum, and
Robert Pullen on the admissibility of pious fraud in the lie of the
Hebrew nurses of Exodus, he gives the most thorough analysis of
the Augustinian position on lying of anyone of his time. And,

101
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 40, 2: 22&-29. Cf., for example, Sentences ofAnselm
of Laon, no. 51, 53, 5: 48-49, 50; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum prologus 2-6, PL 161:
50A-60A; Gratian, Decretum pars 1. d. 6. c. 3. dictum, col. 11.
102
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 40, 2: 228-29. Cf. Summa sent. 4.3-6, PL 176:
120D-125A. The quotation is at 4.4 122B.
103
Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 37. c. 5.3, 2: 211; Summa sent. 4.4, PL 176: 122C-D.
512 CHAPTER EIGHT

second, he includes within his consideration of lying the discussion

of perjury provided by Gratian, a topic not discussed in the work of
his theological compeers. Peter brings four Augustinian texts to
bear on his treatment of lying. He is aware of the fact that Augus-
tine changed his mind on this subject, and that, in the De mendacio,
he located the lie in the intention to deceive alone, while in the
Contra mendacium, he included the objective untruth of the speaker's
statement as well as his deceptive intention. Peter is also aware of
the fact that, both in the Contra mendacium and in the Enchiridion,
Augustine adds subjective certitude as a factor in the equation.
According to his argument in these two works, then, a statement
may be objectively false. But, if the speaker believes it to be true
and speaks without a deceptive intention, he commits an error but
does not tell a lie. Likewise, Peter is familiar with the three-fold
distinction, found in Augustine's commentary on Psalm 5 as well as
in the De mendacio, among a tall tale or jocose lie, told to entertain
and understood as such, which therefore deceives no one, a lie told
to protect someone else from harm—the case of the Hebrew
nurses—and a lie told out of malice or duplicity. The Lombard,
finally, is conversant with the example given by Augustine in the
Contra mendacium, which illustrates the point that existing personal
relationships and susceptibilities condition the way a hearer inter-
prets a statement. In this example, a man gives misdirections to an
acquaintance planning to take a trip, an acquaintance who, he
knows, mistrusts him and will do the opposite of what he counsels,
in the effort to prevent him from taking the dangerous route that he
would otherwise take.
With this array of Augustinian materials on the subject before
him, Peter composes a position on lying which combines insights
from the De mendacio and Contra mendacium while squarely affirming
the conclusions of the late Augustine against the countervailing
opinion of Gregory the Great. All lies, he asserts, are sinful. They
may be graded, as Augustine grades them, as more or less serious
on the basis of their provocation. But, he agrees, no provocation,
however acute, excuses a lie. This judgment excludes jocose lies,
which deceive no one, and honest errors, or falsehoods told in good
faith, or beliefs mistakenly but sincerely held, which report what
the speaker really thinks is true. It does not excuse pious fraud,
which is sinful, if perhaps venially so. For Peter, as for the late
Augustine, a lie combines an objective untruth, except for the
conditions noted above, with the speaker's knowledge that it is
untrue and with the intention to deceive. The only example he will
admit of a lie that is excusable is one also accepted by Augustine,
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 513

the case of Jacob masquerading as Esau in order to obtain his

father's blessing. Peter follows Augustine in saying that this is not a
lie but a mystery, and that Jacob, in any event, is to be given a
dispensation because he was obeying his mother's instructions
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.104 The main issue on which
he does not agree with Augustine is on the evaluation of the pious
fraud as a venial, and not as a serious, sin. This analysis, both fuller
and better informed than that of any contemporary, presents the
strongest case against lying made by any theologian of the day, and
one that is entirely consistent with Peter's desire to give wider scope
to the objective dimension of sin side by side with ethical inten-
tionality, in his ethical teaching more generally.
To this Peter adds an analysis of perjury, drawn from Gratian,
and defined as a lie sealed by an oath. In line with this position, the
Lombard notes that some say one can swear falsely, but unknow-
ingly, thereby not lying or foreswearing oneself. In response, he
draws a three-fold distinction. Perjury, first, is the voluntary taking
of an oath while knowingly swearing what is false, for the sake of
deception. A person can also swear that what he thinks is true is
true, when it is false, and he can swear that what he thinks is false is
false, when it is true. The two latter cases may involve honest
mistakes. But, unlike the first case, or perjury proper, they do not
involve a deceptive intention. In the first case, the speaker knows
perfectly well that he is not telling the truth. In the second and
third cases, the speaker may actually be in error, but his statement
accurately reports what he thinks to be the case, in good faith. The
latter two cases can be assimilated to the statements involving
objective error but subjective conviction in the absence of deceptive
intention in the foregoing analysis of lying. On the basis of the same
reasoning, persons who swear to what is not objectively the case
may not be guilty of perjury. Perjury, as such, requires both the
deliberate distortion of the truth and the intention to mislead, as is
the case with lying.105 This account is quite faithful to Gratian, so
far as it goes, although Peter is more interested in integrating the
subject of perjury into the Augustinian theory of lying than Gratian
is. He also omits a consideration which Gratian presents as essen-
tial in his own analysis of oaths, the question of ignorance, especial-
ly culpable ignorance, as a factor bearing not only on the accuracy
of the statements to which one swears but also on the culpability of

Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 38. c. 1-c. 6, 2: 213-18.

Ibid., d. 39. c. 1-*. 3, 2: 218-21.
514 CHAPTER EIGHT

the person taking the oath. Here as elsewhere in his ethical doc-
trine, Peter chooses not to take account of the issue of ignorance.
Peter also follows Gratian, while theologizing him, in dealing with
the related question of when it is appropriate to swear oaths and
when it is permissible to break them. He agrees that oaths should
not be sworn falsely, unnecessarily, or frivolously. But oaths are
acceptable in order to prove innocence, to confirm a peace treaty,
or to convince one's hearers of facts that are useful to them. These
conditions mitigate the Scriptural injunctions against swearing
oaths. But, no one should be forced to swear to something he knows
to be false, however good the end served by this action may be.
Peter adds that it is important to swear only on God, and not on
false gods or creatures. As to the breach of vows, he admits this in
cases where they were made foolishly or against faith or charity. It
is better, he thinks, to break one's oath in such a case than to
remain in a state of dishonor or bad faith.

Conclusion

It will be noted that the theme of the Old Law and its abrogation
or continuing applicability, which serves as the context for these
reflections on such subjects as lying, perjury, usury, and adultery,
has little or nothing to do with the subject of Christ's human
nature, His human knowledge, His human moral capacities, and
the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to which it has been annexed. This fact
underscores an observation made earlier and one which this chap-
ter has explored more fully: ethics is the single most disorganized
subject in Peter Lombard's theology. There are, to be sure, a
number of powerful and consistent ideas that serve as overriding
themes, tying together what Peter has to say on ethics wherever the
material is presented in his Sentences. Of particular note is the desire
to moderate Abelard's teaching and to incorporate more of an
objectivist strain into the prevailing intentionalist consensus, a
consensus position which he supports. Also important is Peter's
desire to emphasize the need for the collaboration of grace and free
will in the development of human virtue and merit. He makes that
point very clearly, while preserving a crisp distinction between the
deity, or the Holy Spirit as such, and God's graces and gifts as His
effects, working in man, graces and gifts which man remains free to
reject and which, if voluntarily accepted and acted upon, enable
him to develop virtues and merits that are truly his own. This
process is understood by Peter as man's return from the regio
dissimilitudinis to which he has exiled himself by sin, and the recov-
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 515

ery of man's inborn similitude to God. Peter emphasizes that the

working of grace in man does not divinize man; rather it helps him
to restore his true humanity.
In other areas of his moral doctrine, Peter is less conclusive and
consistent. While he teaches that the collaboration of grace and free
will, in one form or another, is a necessary enabling condition in
man's moral life, he also thinks that non-believers, who presumably
lack knowledge of and access to that grace, are capable of the good
faith, good intentions, and good deeds that express their natural
pietas. Yet, Peter does not come to grips expressly with the problem
of the virtuous pagan. It has to be said that his Sentences offer
support for the acceptance of the virtuous pagan, as the Abelar-
dians do, and for his exclusion, along with Hugh of St. Victor. Peter
does not seem to be aware of his own ambiguity on this point.
Another area in which the reader seeks clarification that he does
not find is the relationship between natural reason, of the sort that
makes possible proofs for God's existence and the grasp of the
invisibilia dei by the rational inspection of the creation, on the one
hand, with the scientia directed to created and temporal things with
an eye to their ethical and theological significance, as a gift of the
Holy Spirit, on the other.
Unquestionably the most problematic feature of the Lombard's
ethics is his decision to deal with sin and with ethical intentionality
and the psychogenesis of ethical decision-making in general as a
pendant to his account of human nature and the fall, and with
virtue in conjunction with Christ's human nature. Had Peter's
Christ been a man like us in all but sin, this choice might not have
made for any real difficulties. But, although he is not as extreme on
this point as are many contemporaries, he endows the human
Christ with a nature that does not have a fully human psychology.
While Peter tries to circumvent the dilemmas flowing from this
schematic decision, and from the Christology he professes, by
analyzing the virtues as such before exploring their mode of posses-
sion by the human Christ, the fact remains that, with the human
Christ as his paradigm, understood as Peter understands Him, a
gap between mankind and the Son of man has been opened in
which questions may legitimately be raised about Christ's role as a
moral example for man. This arrangement of the material creates a
pronounced asymmetry and disparity between the analysis of vice
and sin, on the one hand, and of virtue, on the other, and one that
transcends the differing operative factors conditioning the exercise
of vice and virtue by man before and after the fall. The decision to
treat virtue under the heading of Christology also leads, as we have
516 CHAPTER EIGHT

seen, to the inclusion of the moral law of the Old Testament at the
end of Book 3 of the Sentences, even though it has no immediately visible
relationship to the moral capacities of the human Christ. As a schemat-
ic device, the one and only merit of Peter's placement of this material
where he does is that it serves as a point of transition to the sacra-
ments, to which he devotes most of Book 4, and on which, despite the
deep and critical influence of Hugh of St. Victor which he reveals at
many points, he plans to distance himself decisively from the broad
and generic Victorine understanding of sacrament.

T H E SACRAMENTS

In the first half of the twelfth century, there was a felt need, for
the first time in the history of the western Christian tradition, for an
organized, systematic, general theology of the sacraments. On one
level, this fact is an expression of the emergence of systematic
theology and systematic canon law as professional academic disci-
plines. Within each of these disciplines, practitioners felt the urge to
present an organized treatise on the sacraments, conceptualized in
such a way that it would cohere intellectually with the other
subjects that a systematic account of their field of study would need
to include. At the same time, and despite the difference in their
guild mentalities and their division of labor, the canonists and
theologians overlap and borrow from each other on the sacraments.
It was the theologians who took the lead in organizing the author-
ities, defining the range of issues to be discussed, asserting their
independence from earlier theory and practice, and considering the
role of the sacraments in the Christian life and not just the juridical
circumstances that would guarantee the validity of their adminis-
tration. At the same time, the theologians drew on the canonists'
dossiers of sources and cited them, sometimes to agree and some-
times to disagree with their reasoning and conclusions. 106 But,

106
On the relations between theologians and canonists in the field of sac-
ramental theology, the influence and greater independence of the theologians is
accented by Paul Fournier and Gabriel Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques en
occident depuis les fausses décrétâtes jusqu'au Décret de Gratiën (Paris: Sirey, 1932), 2:
314-52; Nikolaus M. Häring, "The Interaction between Canon Law and Sac-
ramental Theology in the Twelfth Century," in Proceedings of the Fourth International
Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Stephan Kuttner (Vatican City: Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, 1976), pp. 483-93; Artur Michael Landgraf, "Diritto cano-
nico e teologia nel secolo X I I , " Studia Gratiana 1 (1953): 371-413. On the other
hand, the dependence of theologians on canonists in this area is accented by
Alfonso M. Stickler, "Teologia e diritto canonico nella storia," Salesianum 47
(1985): 695.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 517

much more was at stake than the reinvigorating, institutionalizing,

and crossfertilizing of pedagogy and reflection within and between
these sister disciplines. Two other circumstances also fed into the
explosion of interest in speculating on the sacraments in this
period. One was the Gregorian reform movement. Focusing on the
improvement of clerical morality and leading to partisan clashes
within the church that left some clerics in the status of schismatics
or excommunicates if they found themselves supporting an anti-
pope or a bishop or ruler who was under papal censure, the reform
movement, in raising for the first time since the days of the early
church the question of the validity of sacraments administered by
immoral, simoniac, or excommunicated priests also alerted Chris-
tians in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries to the fact that
they lacked a general theory of the sacraments in terms of which
they could adjudicate such matters. Aside from the question of
what validates a sacrament, arising from these struggles within the
church, the emergence of anti-sacramental heresies on a wide scale
demanded a justification and defense of the church's rites. And, as
the controversy surrounding the Eucharistie heresy of Berengar of
Tours revealed, a clearer definition of sacrament as such was
required. For, in formulating his own grounds for rejecting the real
presence doctrine, Berengar had collected a host of patristic cita-
tions that enabled him to give precise expression to his own posi-
tion. In order to refute him, orthodox thinkers recognized, it was
necessary to be equally precise, not only on the Eucharist but also
on the nature of sacraments in general.107

The Idea of Sacrament in General

There was, initially, some uncertainty in this period as to where

a treatise on the sacraments belonged in a more general work, how

107
On these internal and external influences, see Nikolaus M. Häring, "Beren-
gar's Definitions of Sacramentum and Their Influence on Mediaeval Sacramentolo-
gy," MS 10 (1948): 109-46; "Character, Signum, und Signaculum: Der Weg von
Petrus Damiani bis zur eigentlichen Aufnahme in der Sakramentslehre im 12.
Jahrhundert," Scholastik 31 (1956): 41-69; "Character, Signum, und Signaculum:
Die Einfuhrung in die Sakramententheologie des 12. Jahrhunderts," Scholastik 31
(1956): 182-212; "The Augustinian Axiom: Nulli Sacramento Injuria Facienda Est"
MS 16 (1954): 87-114; Gary Macy, "Berengar's Legacy as a Heresiarch," in
Auctoritas und Ratio: Studien zu Berengar von Tours, ed. Peter Ganz et al. (Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 49-67; The Banquet's Wisdom: A Short History of the
Theologies of the Lord's Supper (New York, Paulist Press, 1992), pp. 76-81; John Van
Engen, Rupert ofDeutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 118-21.
518 CHAPTER EIGHT

it should be introduced, and what it should cover. As will be

recalled from our consideration of the schemata of the systematic
theologians in chapter 2 above, only three of them, Honorius
Augustodunensis, Hugh of St. Victor, and the author of the Senten-
tiae divinitatis, here working under heavy Victorine influence, situate
the sacraments in the context of an ecclesiology in which the
sacramental ministry of the church is seen as an extension of
Christ's saving work in time. Honorius follows this point with a
discussion of the Eucharist, as the most important of the sacra-
ments, after which he treats the priesthood, as needed to consecrate
it. He interperses various ethical points in between the priesthood,
baptism, and marriage, the only sacraments he considers, and
never gives a general definition of sacrament. For Hugh, the church
mediates the sacraments of the New Law, and he presents the
clergy immediately after introducing the church, as their min-
isters.108 But, as we have seen, and will observe again in more
detail below, his extremely loose, broad-gauged, and sometimes
contradictory understanding of "sacrament" blurs the focus ofthat
idea in his work. The author of the Sententiae divinitatis picks up on
the ecclesiological siting of the sacraments, describing the church
as a nest where the mother bird protects and nourishes her young
and, in even more Hugonian language, as Noah's ark, navigating
believers through the flood, as the sacraments serve Christians in
via, voyaging between birth, rebirth, and final arrival. The author
does not, however, subscribe to Hugh's organization of the sacra-
ments themselves, as we will see below.109
The principal definition of sacrament inherited by Christian
thinkers in this period was the Augustinian visible sign of invisible
grace, sometimes recast as a visible sign of a sacred thing or a
visible form of an invisible grace or thing. There are some contem-
porary theologians and canonists who do not offer a general defini-
tion of sacrament at all. But many who do are satisfied with the
Augustinian formula and repeat it.110 On the other hand, some

108
On the connection between Hugh's ecclesiology and his sacramental theolo-
gy, see Jean Châtillon, "Une ecclésiologie médiévale: L'idée de l'église dans la
théologie de l'école de Saint-Victor au XII e siècle," Irénikon 22 (1949): 115-38,
395-411; Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: J. Vrin,
1957), pp. 176-77.
109
Sent div. 5, proemium, pp. 105*-06*.
110
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 2. c. 8, PL 161: 148C; Peter Abelard, Theologia
"scholanum" 1.9, CCCM 13: 321; Sent. Parisiensù II, p. 150; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I
4.2, pp. 132-33; Heinrich Weisweiler, ed. Maître Simon et son groupe De sacramentis
(Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1937), pp. 1-2. On Abelard's purely
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 519

thinkers recognize the fact that this definition could be used to

support the purely symbolic view of the Eucharist put forth by
Berengar, that it was not responsive to his thesis, and that it was
necessary to claim for at least some sacraments, such as the
Eucharist,111 baptism,112 or baptism and the Eucharist,113 that
the sacred sign not only signifies but also conveys what it signifies.
The authors in question, however, do not expand this definition
beyond those horizons. Not all masters in this period manifest a
sure-footed certitude about which sacraments to treat and where to
do so. Even when they possess a definition of sacrament in general,
they do not necessarily conduct a systematic inquiry into rites that
might be thought of under that heading, testing them and ruling
them in or out on the basis of their conformity to the definition, and
organizing them according to some discernible plan. Abelard, for
instance, has no systematic treatise on the sacraments, probably
because of the incomplete nature of his theological works. He only
treats three of the sacraments, baptism, marriage, and penance,
and each is discussed in a different one of his works and in a
different context. Marriage comes up in his Hexaemeron, in connec-
tion with the creation of Eve; baptism is addressed in his Romans
commentary in conjunction with original sin; and penance is treat-
ed in his Ethics as a corollary of his analysis of the nature of
ethical acts. Abelard inherits from Anselm of Laon the tendency to
call Old Testament rites sacraments, although he confines this
usage to circumcision, without explaining why it is apposite there
but is not applied to other Judaic rites.114 Gratian discusses the
sacraments in two separate places, his De consecration*·, where bap-
tism and the Eucharist come up as an example of ceremonies
performed in consecrated houses of worship, and the De penitentia,
in which, despite its title, the other sacraments except unction are
considered. Put together, these separate treatises offer a relatively
full account of the sacraments, but the organization of the material
has raised questions as to whether their author is the same as the

sign-oriented theory, see Richard E. Weingart, "Peter Abailard's Contribution to

Medieval Sacramentology," RTAM 34 (1967): 164-66.
111
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 154-56.
112
Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 4-5, 36.
113
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 26, 132-33. On Hermannus, see Wendelin Knoch,
Die Einsetzung der Sakramente durch Christus: Eine Untersuchung zur Sakramententheologie
der Frühscholastik von Anselm von Laon bis zu Wilhelm von Auxerre (Münster: Aschen-
dorff, 1983), p. 150.
114
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 51, 5: 48-49; Peter Abelard, In Ep. Pauli ad
Romanos 2:25; Theologia Christiana 1.9, CCCM 11: 94, 12: 321.
520 CHAPTER EIGHT

author of Gratian's Decretum.115

There is also notable uncertainty as to how to classify the sacra-
ments and on the order in which to discuss them. As we have seen,
Honorius treats the Eucharist first, because he thinks that it is the
most important sacrament, and holy orders next because priests
are needed to administer it. Baptism is a sacrament that no one
omits; and marriage would be the state of life to which most of the
lay people who are the ultimate audience of the Elucidarium are
drawn. But Honorius offers no insights into why he omits penance,
a subject quite controversial at this time, or confirmation and
unction, on which few debates raged, although they would be an
ordinary part of the Christian life as well. The Porretans come up
with a four-fold scheme of organization. There are sacraments of
initiation, sacraments that fortify, sacraments that restore, and
sacraments that perfect. The logic of this subdivision suggests that
baptism should be the first sacrament treated. But the Porre tan
masters begin with the Eucharist, even though they have defined it
as a sacrament of perfection. They give as examples of initiation,
fortification, and restoration the sacraments of baptism, confirma-
tion, and penance. 116 They do not indicate in which category mar-
riage and unction, the other two sacraments they include, belong.
The author of the Ysagoge in theologiam presents the sacraments in a
sequence all his own—baptism, confirmation, marriage, unction,
the Eucharist, and penance—and offers no rationale for it.
One of the most prevalent ways of distinguishing one type of
sacrament from another and of prioritizing them was suggested
early in the century by the canonist Alger of Liège. He separates
sacraments of necessity from sacraments of dignity, a distinction
that has two dimensions. Sacraments of necessity are necessary for
salvation; sacraments of dignity are not. Furthermore, and here
Alger reflects the canonists' concern with who can properly admin-
ister a sacrament and how the minister's moral or juridical state
affects the validity of his sacramental ministry, sacraments of ne-
cessity are valid and efficacious {vera et sancta) so long as the
minister has been validly ordained and so long as he uses the

115
The most recent review of this debate, with a guide to the literature, is
provided by John Van Engen, "Observations on the 'De consecratione'," in
Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Stephan
Kuttner and Kenneth Pennington (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
1985), pp. 309-20. Van Engen supports the idea of Gratian's authorship.
116
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.61, p. 144; Nikolaus M. Häring, ed. "Die Sententie
magistri Gisleberti Pictavensis episcopi II: Die Version der florentiner Handschrift" 4.
61, AHDLMA 46 (1979): 67.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 521

correct verbal formula. On the other hand, in the case of sacra-

ments of dignity, if immoral, excommunicated, heretical, or
schismatic priests administer them, even if they use the correct
form, the sacraments are true but not efficacious.117 This distinc-
tion, in essence, is designed both to address the clerical fall-out of
the Gregorian reforms and to exempt baptism, the only sacrament
that Alger regards as a sacrament of necessity, from the strictures
he places on the sacramental ministry of bad or unlawful priests in
other respects. It is true that he holds that the moral status of the
recipient affects his ability to internalize spiritually what he has
received. But Alger's accent is on the minister's side of the transac-
tion. Gratian absorbs the distinction between sacraments of ne-
cessity and other sacraments but defines these categories differently
and disagrees with Alger on some of the specifics of the exercise of
the sacramental ministry. For Gratian, the sacraments of necessity
are those that cannot be repeated, and hence include baptism,
confirmation, holy orders, and also penance. While he removes
clerical immorality from the list of disqualifications, he agrees that,
with sacraments of necessity, priests in poor standing juridically
can administer them validly and efficaciously. With respect to the
sacraments of dignity, that is, the Eucharist, unction, and mar-
riage, validity and efficacy are present if they are administered "to
the worthy, worthily, and by the worthy" (digni, digne, a dignis).118
Gratian likewise sees an objective character in the sacraments and
is less concerned with the verbal formula than Alger and more
concerned with the standing and attitude of the minister and the
recipient. But his handling of this topic reflects the same basic
canonical priorities.
Some theologians pick up the distinction betweea sacraments of
necessity and of dignity without always classifying the sacraments
which they place under these rubrics in either Alger's or Gratian's
way. The author of the Sententiae Parisiensis I classifies baptism,

117
Alger of Liège, De misericordia 1.48, 1.55-50, 1.69, 1.72, 3.2-4, 3.16, 3.19-20,
3.55, 3.83, pp. 224, 231-34, 239, 242, 315-18, 325-27, 328-29, 333-34, 365, 379.
An excellent account is Nikolaus M. Häring, "A Study of the Sacramentology of
Alger of Liège," MS 20 (1958): 41-78. Kretzschmar, Alger, pp. 27-30 and Gabriel
Le Bras, "Le Liber de misericordia etjusticia d'Alger de Liège," Nouvelle Revue historique
de droit française et étranger 45 (1921): 96-98 date the work, most probably, to
1105-06 and as not later than 1121.
118
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 1. q. I . e . 39. dictum, col. 374. For this rule on
baptism in particular, see ibid., c. 1. q. I . e . 47. dictum, col. 377, 379, 380, and
Gratian's summary and reprise at c. 54. dictum, c. 57. dictum, c. 97, dictum, col.
397.
522 CHAPTER EIGHT

confirmation, and the Eucharist as the sacraments of necessity.119

More of the theologians who invoke this distinction combine it with
some other prevalent way of organizing their material. Hugh of St.
Victor notes that we can subdivide the sacraments three ways.
There are those necessary for salvation, and here he includes
baptism and the Eucharist; those helpful for man's sanctification
but not necessary for man's salvation, and here he gives as exam-
ples such things as the ashes used on Ash Wednesday and holy
water; and those instituted so that the sacraments of necessity can
be administered, that is, holy orders. Yet another way of framing
this subdivision, he says, is to distinguish among sacraments of
sanctification, exercise, and preparation.120 This classification has
its confusing elements, in that Hugh does not explain where con-
firmation, penance, unction, and marriage fit in, although, and
presumably by default, they would be placed in the second categ-
ory. But if they were so placed, they would inhabit that category
side by side with rites that Hugh later rules out as sacraments
in any case, relegating them to the subordinate rank of
sacramentals.121 He muddies the waters still more by adding that,
from the beginning, there were three sacraments necessary for
salvation, faith, the sacraments of the faith, and good works. He
makes this point in order to emphasize the idea that sacramental
ritual and reception are meaningless unless they are undergirded
by faith and manifested in good works.122 But it is clear how
unhelpful his polyvalent use of the term "sacrament" is in this
connection. Another combination is made by Master Simon, a
theologian likely to have been writing in the lower Rhine area or
Flanders around 1145. He holds, like Alger, that baptism is the
only sacrament of necessity, and calls the other sacraments volun-
tary. To this he yokes an even more widespread distinction, be-
tween sacraments common to all Christians, and sacraments
received only by some Christians, such as marriage and holy
orders. As for the five common sacraments on Simon's list, they
cleanse, as with baptism; arm the cleansed, as with confirmation;
relieve the armed, as with penance; incorporate the relieved, as
with the Eucharist; and make present the vision of God, as with
unction.123 The author of the Sententiae divinitatis, reflecting the

119
Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 36.
120
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.9.7, PL 327A-B.
121
Ibid., 2.9.10, PL 176: 471D-478B.
122
Ibid., 1.9.8, PL 176: 328A-B.
123
Master Simon, De sac., p. 2. For the dating and location of this work, see
Weisweiler's intro., pp. xlvi—lxii, lxxv, lxxx, xcvi, ccxii—ccxiv.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 523

influence of both Hugh and Simon here, repeats the distinction

between necessary and voluntary sacraments, placing baptism
alone in the first category, and unites this idea with two other
principles, the distinction between sacraments common to all
Christians and orders and marriage, and, within the common
sacraments, the treatment of the sacraments in the order in which
they are received. Hence, his lists reads baptism, confirmation, the
Eucharist, penance, and unction. This is how he states his case in
principle.124 In practice, he discusses only five sacraments. He
mentions unction, but does not say anything about it. And, alone
among the canonists and theologians of the time, he omits mar-
riage. Roland of Bologna confines what he has to say about the
relative necessity of individual sacraments to his commentary on
each of them in course, and presents the common sacraments, in
the order in which they are received, followed by marriage and an
extremely abbreviated treatment of holy orders, confined to the
power of the keys.
The theologian who did more to set the agenda on the nature of
the sacraments in general to which the Lombard responded, both
positively and negatively, was Hugh of St. Victor.125 Hugh makes a
major contribution to the development of doctrine in this field of
theology by systematically expanding the Augustinian definition of
sacrament well beyond the scatter-gun tactics of other thinkers in
this period. For him, a sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing, whose
external form resembles the internal thing (res) or divine power
(virtus) contained within the sacrament. By its institution, more-
over, the sacrament contains the grace it signifies and conveys it,
through its material medium, to the recipient, for the purpose of
sanctifying him. The exterior medium is visible and material; the
interior res sacramenti is invisible and spiritual. The physical
medium is a container of invisible and spiritual grace and, when
the recipient comes to it properly disposed, it is efficacious in

124
Sent. div. 5, proemium 2, pp. 108*-09*.
125
The best account of Hugh's sacramental theology is Heinrich Weisweiler,
Die Wirksamkeit der Sakramente nach Hugo von St. Viktor (Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1932), pp. 5-154; see also his "Sakrament als Symbol und Teilhabe: Der
Einfluss des Ps.-Dionysius auf die allgemeine Sakramentenlehre Hugos von St.
Viktor," Scholastik 27 (1952): 321-43; "Sacramentumfidei:Augustinische und ps.-
dionysische Gedanken in der Glaubensauffassung Hugos von St. Viktor," in
Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Michael Schmaus zum sechzigsten Geburtstag
dargebracht von seinen Freunden und Schülern, ed. Johann Auer and Hermann Volk
(Munich: Karl Zink, 1957), p. 434; Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 85-92; Paulo M.
Pession, "L'ordine sacro e i suoi gradi nel pensiero di Ugo di S. Vittore," La Scuola
Cattolica 64 (1936): 130-31.
524 CHAPTER EIGHT

conferring that spiritual grace upon him. The two new generic
keynotes of the sacraments that are important for Hugh are thus
the fact that they do not merely signify; they effect what they
signify. Also, they do so not merely because the physical medium
bears a resemblance to its inner significatum but because of the
express biblical institution of the sacraments.126 This is, no doubt,
Hugh's single most significant contribution to sacramental theolo-
gy; but there is more. The matter of the sacrament, that is, its
physical form as contrasted with its inner reality or virtus, has three
notes, for Hugh, "things, deeds, and words" {rebus, /actis, dictis).
The first of these is the appropriate physical medium, such as water
in baptism and bread and wine in the Eucharist. The second,
deeds, speaks to the liturgical rite and the gestures used in the
administration of the sacrament, such as the ablution of the bapti-
zand and the fraction of the host during the mass. The third is the
verbal formula, such as the invocation of the Trinity in baptism or
the words of consecration in the Eucharist.127 Hugh also adds a
characteristic explanation of why the sacraments were instituted.
As he has already observed, they are there for the sanctification of
Christians. The way they carry out this function is by working in
the recipient's soul, for his "humbling, enlightenment, and exer-
cise" (humiliatio, eruditio, exercitatio hominis). For God, they are a
dispensation, since He can save without them; for man, they are a
necessity.128 What Hugh has accomplished here in a few brief
chapters is to redefine the sacraments as efficacious channels of
grace and to emphasize the importance of the sanctification they
impart in the inner lives of Christians. Just as the canonists stress
the external aspects of the sacraments and the juridical conditions
that validate them, principally from the standpoint of the minister,
so Hugh turns the subject around by considering sacraments as
valid because they effect what they signify and communicate an
ongoing growth in grace in the soul of the recipient. This shift in
emphasis and this expansion of the definition of sacrament in
general by Hugh proved to be an achievement of critical impor-
tance in the sequel.

126
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.9.2, PL 176: 317C-318D.
127
Ibid., 1.9.6, PL 176: 326B-327A. On the combination of these three ele-
ments in the thought of this period, see Damien Van den Eynde, "The Theory of
the Composition of the Sacraments in Early Scholasticism, 1125-1240," FS 11
(1951): 1-20.
128
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.9.3-5, PL 176: 322A-326B. The quotation is at
1.9.3-4, 322A.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 525

At the same time, this decided doctrinal advance travels in the

company of Hugh's imprecise and often confusing handling of the
idea of sacrament more widely, as anything manifesting God to
man and anything helpful in man's restoration. From this perspec-
tive, sacraments have been available to man since the beginning of
time, well before Christ's arrival, reflecting God's intention all
along to save mankind and to provide an alternative to the sacra-
ments of the devil.129 Given his more specific definition of sacra-
ments as rites of the church, just noted, or even his wider view of
sacraments as manifesting God and restoring man, it is truly dif-
ficult to envision what these sacramenta diaboli may be, in Hugh's
estimation. Black masses? Special rituals engaged in by fallen man?
Unlike sacraments in any other of Hugh's conceivable senses of the
term, these sacraments of the devil cannot be envisioned as stem-
ming from God's institution or as playing a role in man's restitu-
tion. Without making any effort to explain this anomalous term,
Hugh proceeds to extend the concept of sacrament to the moral
precepts of the natural law, perceptible by reason, and to the Old
Testament covenant. On the latter, he is far from consistent on
whether the precepts and rites involved were salvific, in the same
sense as Christian sacraments. On the one hand, he observes, the
ritual prescriptions of the Old Law were morally neutral and not
unchangeable. On the other hand, the rite of circumcision was
salvific, although females could be saved without it, through faith
and works. Yet again, these rites signified salvation only; they did
not impart saving grace.130 This inconsistency aside, there is also
Hugh's conflation of sacramentals with sacraments in the Christian
dispensation. Hugh retains the sacramentals within his general
definition of sacrament, as we have seen above, even though he also
takes pains to disqualify them because they signify only, and effect
nothing.131 Coupled with his disorganized and redundant discus-
sion of the Christian sacraments in practice, these teachings pre-
vent Hugh from offering a fully coherent sacramental theology.
Now, there was some carryover of Hugh's broad understanding
of sacrament in the theology of the mid-twelfth century, as can be
seen in Roland of Bologna.132 But the key figures who serve as

129
Ibid., 1.8.11, PL 176: 312B.
130
Ibid., 1.12.1-2, 1.12.5-10, PL 176: 347D-351B, 352A-364A. On these in-
consistencies, see Heinrich Weisweiler , "Hugos von St. Victor Dialogus de sac-
ramentis legis naturalis et scriptae als frühscholastisches Quellenwerk," in Miscellanea
Giovanni Mercati (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1946), 2: 179-219.
131
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.9.10, PL 176: 471D-478B.
132
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 194.
526 CHAPTER EIGHT

points of transition between Hugh and the Lombard are, rather,

eager to repress this dimension of the Victorine legacy and to
retain, or press further, what they perceive to be Hugh's more
positive contributions. His influence extended into the Abelardian
circle, as we may note in the Ysagoge in theologiam, whose author
agrees that the sacraments are educational, bringing humility,
insight, and exercise, and who repeats Hugh's point that sacra-
ments are visible forms of invisible grace that are distinct from
mere signs in that they confer grace as well as signifying it.133 More
detailed are the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and the Summa
sententiarum. The former master likewise distinguishes between a
sign and a sacrament in that the sign "does not confer on us the
thing it signifies" {signum non confert nobis rem significantam) while
the sacraments "effect what they signify" (ejficiunt quodfigurant).134
The author agrees that the sacraments were instituted propter erudi-
tionem, humilitatem, exercitationem, although he accents enlightenment
and behavior modification more than sanctification.135 He also
distinguishes between the sacramentum or physical medium and the
res sacramenti or invisible grace it contains, and agrees that the
recipient does not receive and internalize this grace fruitfully if he
lacks the proper faith, intention, and attitude.136 The main area in
which he amplifies Hugh's teaching is in connection with the
things, deeds, and words that constitute the matter of the sacra-
ments. He follows Hugh's definitions of what these aspects are but
adds that they reflect the remedial character of the sacraments,
since Adam sinned in rebus in bringing damnation on the human
race, in/actis by taking the forbidden fruit, and in dictis by seeking to
exculpate himself.137
The author of the Summa sententiarum also displays his fidelity to
most of Hugh's formulae, although he annexes holy orders to the
power of the keys as exercised in penance and emphasizes the
salvific function of the sacraments as well as their educational and
disciplinary functions.138 Like the author of the Sententiae divinitatis,
he incorporates a remedial view of the sacraments into their role as
media of grace and as stimuli of moral action, in his handling of

133
Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 179-80.
134
Sent. div. 5, proemium 1, 5.1, pp. 106*, 123*.
135
Ibid., 5, proemium 2, p. 107*.
136
Ibid., 5.1, pp. 113*-15*.
137
Ibid., 5, proemium 2, p. 108*.
138
On the Summa sententiarum in relation to Hugh of St. Victor, on the sacra-
ments, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 114-18, 120.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 527

their work oïeruditio, humiliation and exercitatio and their correction in

rebus, /actis, and dictis.139 He agrees that all sacraments contain a
sacramentum or physical medium and a res sacramenti or interior
grace, which the exterior medium conveys.140 He emphasizes very
strongly the efficacy of sacraments, as contrasted with mere signs.
In part, this is a function of his effort—and it is a successful one—to
restrict sacraments to the rites of the church, eliminating both
sacramentals on the one side and all ceremonies of the Old Law on
the other. It is also a function of his desire to reinforce Hugh's point
that the sacraments are efficacious not because their outward form
resembles their inner spiritual content, but because of the power of
divine institution. This is what enables sacraments, unlike signs, to
serve as efficacious channels of grace. In placing sacraments, so
understood, over against pre-Christian rites and practices, how-
ever, this master does not go the full distance in his criticism of
Hugh, although his ethical doctrine, discussed above, gives him the
tools to do so. He retains the use of the term "sacrament" in
referring to the practices of men under the natural moral law, and
the written or Mosaic law, as well as the Gospel. Sacraments have
developed over time, he notes, and have improved until they have
reached their current state of Christian perfection. While he does
soft-pedal the salvific capacities of the earlier rites, and while he
cuts the amount of space he allocates to this topic, in comparison
with Hugh, he does not relegate them to the status of mere pré-
figurations of rites that alone can be called true sacraments accord-
ing to his own definition of them.141 Robert of Melun, on the other
hand, is willing to offer what he regards as a correction of Hugh on
this point,142 and in this sense is bolder than the Summa sententiarum,
which is somewhat inconsistent here, and than the Sententiae divini-
tattSy which does not raise the matter.
It is generally, and rightly, agreed that Peter Lombard's major
contribution to the understanding of sacraments in general is both
programmatic and substantive. He closes Book 3 of the Sentences
and opens Book 4 with a crisp and unambiguous definition of
sacraments in general, laying the foundation for the treatment he

139
Summa sent. 4.1, PL 176: 118B^-C.
140
Ibid., 4.1, PL 176: 117B-C.
141
Ibid., 4.1-2, PL 176: 118C-120D.
142
Ulrich Horst, Gesetz und Evangelium: Das Alte Testament in der Theologie des
Robert von Melun (Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1971), pp. 3-5, 35-53. Horst is
working from the unpublished manuscripts of that part of the incomplete section
of Robert's Sentences where he takes up this question. We have not inspected the
manuscripts ourselves.
528 CHAPTER EIGHT

gives to each of them in turn, a treatment which also reflects how

controversial or problematic each of them happened to be at this
time, Substantively, he relies on the Victorine and post-Victorine
masters just discussed. While underscoring his points of agreement
with them, particularly the idea that sacraments effect what they
signify, he also rigorously excludes the rites of the Old Law from
this designation.143 Peter also integrates his definition of sacrament
with the Augustinian theory of signs and things, use and enjoy-
ment, which he makes the overall theme of the Sentences.144 In
addition, he takes his own position on the issue of remedy and
sanctification as functions of the sacraments. He distinguishes
clearly between the validity imparted by proper administration to
their material elements, on the one hand, and the sanctification or
remedy which they impart to the recipient, on the other, and
considers the conditions affecting both processes fully. In that same
connection, he devotes more attention than his theological prede-
cessors to the role of the minister as an instrument in the transmis-
sion of grace through the sacraments.145 As well, he provides a clear
and coherent basis for the definition of seven sacraments, omitting
none of the Christian rites ventilated by contemporaries in this
connection.146 In all these respects, his handling of sacraments in
general seizes upon and redirects an emerging consensus and puts
it on a more articulate and at the same time a personal foundation.
Peter launches his discussion of sacraments in general with a
forthright statement on their relation to the rites of the Old Testa-

143
For good accounts of Peter's relationship with his predecessors here, on
which there is a good deal of consensus, see Adriano Caprioli, "Alle origini della
'definizione' di sacramento da Berengario a Pier Lombardo," La Scuola Cattolica
102 (1974): 718-43; Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle, pp. 309-10; Joseph de
Ghellinck, "Un chapitre dans l'histoire de la définition des sacraments au X I Ρ
siècle," in Mélanges Mandonnet; Etudes d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale du moyen âge
(Paris: J. Vrin, 1930), 2: 79-96; Häring, "Berengar's Definitions," pp. 109-16,
128-32; Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 227-29; Macy, The Banquet's Wisdom, pp. 89-91;
Mignon, L·s origines, 2: 116-18, 121-22; Damien Van den Eynde, Les définitions des
sacrements pendant la première période de la scolastique (1050-1240) (Rome: Antonianum,
1950), pp. 31, 40, 42-46. These authors effectively refute the claim, made by
Elizabeth Frances Rogers, Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System (New York,
1917), p. 76, that Peter made no contribution to this subject.
144
Seamus P. Heaney, The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage from
Anselm of Laon to Thomas Aquinas (Washington: Catholic University of America
Press, 1963), pp. 26-28.
145
Häring, "The Augustinian Axiom," pp. 87-117; Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte,
3 part 1; 173-76.
146
For Peter's relationship to his predecessors here, see Caprioli, "Alle origini,"
pp. 735-40; Edouard Dhanis, "Quelques anciennes formules septénaires des
sacrements," RHE 26 (1930): 574-608, 916-50; 27 (1931): 5-26.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 529

ment. In contrast with the promises of earthly good embodied in

those practices, he states, sacraments promise heavenly goods:
"The sacraments are different," he asserts, "since the former [the
rites of the Old Law] only signified, but they [the sacraments]
confer grace" [Diversa etiam sacramenta, quia ilia tantum significabant,
haec conferunt gratiam) ,147 The promise of future heavenly good that is
made in each sacrament thus begins to work and is progressively
activated by the grace transmitted to the recipient through the
sacraments in this life. In addition to being promises, and the
means by which Christians are made capable of attaining them,
the sacraments are remedies repairing the damage caused by orig-
inal and actual sin. As Peter points out in these introductory
remarks, he plans to consider, in each individual case, what the
sacrament is, why this particular one was instituted, in what it
consists, and how it differs from the Old Testament rites that may
parallel or prefigure it.148 Before doing so, he cites the Augustinian
definition of a sacrament as a sign of a sacred thing and notes its
inadequacies, bringing the sign theory of the De doctrina Christiana to
bear on the point. As Augustine observes, signs are either natural
or conventional. In the first case, they indicate natural processes or
involuntary reactions, as smoke indicates fire and a grimace indi-
cates pain. Conventional signs are signs whose significance is not
automatic; it is, rather, imposed on the signs by the users of the
verbal or non-verbal language in question, by common agreement.
In neither case, however, is a sign identical with its significatum or
productive of it. In relation to a sign, Peter observes, a sacrament
does far more than to stand for its significatum or to bring it to mind.
He agrees with Hugh of St. Victor and the Summa sententiarum that
the material medium resembles the sacrament's inner spiritual
content, or, in his terms, its interior grace, promise, and remedy. In
that sense, sacraments may be compared with natural signs. But,
here agreeing with these masters again while rephrasing the point
in Augustine's semantic terms, the power of the sacrament is given,
not an automatic consequence of that resemblance. Its given pow-
er, in this case, is not a function of the conventional understanding
imparted to it by its users but is a consequence of its divine
institution. It is the divine institution that empowers a sacrament
to effect what it signifies. This is the basis on which it is different
from a sign, which merely signifies but does not sanctify. And so, he

Peter Lombard, Sent. 3. d. 40. c. 3.1, 2: 229.

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 1. c. 1.1-2, 2: 231.
530 CHAPTER EIGHT

concludes, a sacrament properly speaking is more than the sign or

form of the invisible grace of God. It is also the cause of the
recovery of his image in man: 'Tor it was not just to signify grace,
therefore, that sacraments were instituted, but also to sanctify"
(Non igitur significandi tantum gratiam sacramenta instituta sunt, sed et
sanctificandï) ,149 Aside from the clarification imported into the Vic-
torine position thanks to the Augustinian analysis of signs with
which Peter associates it, and which enables him to offer a crystal-
line rationale for departing from Augustine's definition of sacra-
ment and for distinguishing the sacraments from both sacramentals
and from pre-Christian rites, Peter has expanded the understand-
ing of sacraments by proposing that they have both a remedial
character and a sanctifying character, features that enable their
users to grow in grace so as to be worthy of the promise of salvation
which the sacraments also contain.
With this definition in place, Peter offers, as a concrete example
of the difference between sacraments, properly understood, and the
signs represented by Old Testament rites, a comparison between
circumcision and baptism. This example is not chosen at random.
For, even among contemporary theologians who may have been
inclined to dismiss other rites of the Old Law asfigurae only, there
was a substantial inclination to regard circumcision as efficacious,
or as salvific, in its own time and place prior to the Christian era,
even if they did not go to the lengths of Hugh of St. Victor in this
connection.150 Peter's opening salvo is a semantic one. When we use
the term "sacrament" to refer to these Old Testament rites, he
states, the word should not be understood literally. It is a courtesy
title only, since they only promised but did not give salvation. Peter
has no scruples about attacking and rejecting authorities such as
Augustine and Bede, who could be and had been used to support
the claim that circumcision was efficacious against original and
actual sin. In so doing, he raises the question of what happened to
the men, not to mention the women, who lived upright lives prior to
the institution of circumcision. Calling on Gregory the Great and
his own gloss on Romans, and the doctrine of justification found
there, he states that these people were saved by their faith and good
works. In this respect, circumcision, while its symbolism is useful
as a moral reminder of the need to cut off sin and to guard against

149
Ibid., c. 2-c. 4.4, 2: 232-34. The quotation is at c. 4.2, p. 233.
150
Ibid., c. 6-c. 10, 2: 235-39. For current treatments of circumcision and its
efficacy, see above and below, pp. 49, 52, 198, 199, 519, 525, 530-31, 533, 578 and
p. 533 n. 154.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 531

concupiscence, is superfluous and was superfluous even in the

pre-Christian dispensation. Unlike baptism, which is available to
persons of both sexes and which not only forgives sin but communi-
cates the grace that assists recipients in doing good and developing
virtue, circumcision did not and does not justify. In this analysis,
Peter brings the notion of justification by the faith that works in
love to bear on the problem of pre-Christian rites as a cogent
rationale for rejecting them as sacraments. The same principle will
also afford a useful basis for his understanding of the salvation of
the Old Testament worthies at the end of time. He departs quite
pointedly from the Victorine position here. On the other hand, he
endorses, essentially verbatim, the Victorine rationale for the in-
stitution of the sacraments propter humiliationem, eruditionem, exercita-
tionem, as occasions for enlightenment, moral education, and self-
discipline, and agrees that, as liturgical events, their celebration in-
volves action, physical media, and the apposite verbal formulae.151
As for the sacraments of the New Law, Peter spells out seven,
joining Master Simon, Roland of Bologna, and others who do the
same. His own scheme for organizing them comes closest to that of
Roland, but he presents another perspective on this issue. Sacra-
ments, he notes, can be divided into three types. There are those
that are remedies for sin and that also bring with them assisting
grace (gratia adiutrix), such as baptism. There are those that bring a
remedy, such as marriage. He hastens to add that marriage was
ordained in the original creation as a sacrament, a good thing, and
an office. It remains a sacrament after the fall but now is also a
remedy. The third type of sacrament strengthens recipients in
grace and virtue; the Eucharist and holy orders are given as exam-
ples. Of whichever type, he concludes, all sacraments are effi-
cacious.152 This typology of the sacraments, however, is not the
order Peter uses in the discussion of the sacraments in particular
which follows. In the sequel, to which we now turn, he joins Roland
in reserving the remarks he wants to make about their necessity for
salvation to each sacrament in turn, and presents the sacraments
common to all Christians, in the order in which they are received,
before turning to holy orders and marriage, as sacraments received
only by some Christians. This fact, coupled with his comment on
marriage in these stage-setting observations, raises a question con-
cerning the status ofthat sacrament, in his mind. His actual mode

151
132
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 1. c. 5.1-6, 2: 234-35.
Ibid., d. 2. c. 1, 2: 239-40.
532 CHAPTER EIGHT

of organizing sacramental theology woijld suggest that marriage is

a parallel of holy orders, a sacrament administered in order to
convey to those receiving it a particular office in the church, which
they alone are legitimately empowered to exercise and whose grace
strengthens them in the conduct ofthat calling. On the other hand,
Peter's remarks here suggest that marriage as a sacrament does not
convey grace and is remedial only, in that it affords to the married a
divinely sanctioned way of avoiding fornication. This apparent
disjunction has provoked debate as to whether Peter truly extends
his definition of sacrament in general to marriage, or whether his
treatment of marriage is asymmetrical with his treatment of the
other sacraments as means of grace.153 It alerts us to the fact that
we will need to be attentive to that question in considering his
discussion of marriage below.

Baptism

As a theologian of baptism, the first sacrament received by all

Christians, Peter registers the fact that there was considerable
consensus among canonists and theologians on many aspects of this
subject and that, at the same time, there were features of baptism
that were debated, both because the practices of the early church
were being called into question as inappropriate, because tradition-
al authorities were coming under fire or being manipulated to
support contrasting conclusions, and because some contemporaries
were posing difficulties that demanded a response. Although there
are a few topics aired in connection with baptism at this time that
he does not address, such as conditional baptism, and the proper
time of baptism, the latter of which was controverted, Peter reflects
the consensus position in the areas that were not controversial in
his time. In the areas attracting debate, he sometimes takes a
conservative line while at other times he is far more flexible and
critical of the established tradition. In these debates, it is occa-
sionally the case that Peter is strongly influenced by one or another
of the thinkers in his period, in terms of how he poses the question,
or answers it, or both. At the same time, he often supplies his own
rationale for the solutions he proposes, or imports his own empha-
sis into the subject.

153
On this point, Heaney, The Development, pp. 26-28, asserts that marriage is a
full sacrament for Peter, while Joseph de Ghellinck, "Pierre Lombard," in DTC
(Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1935), 12 part 2: 1999-2002, argues that Peter failed to
extend his understanding of sacraments as a means of grace to marriage.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 533

As might be expected from his remarks on circumcision as an

example of a rite that was never a sacrament, properly speaking,
Peter firmly distances himself from those theologians who place
baptism on a sacramental trajectory that includes circumcision,
and also the baptism of John, as efficacious in the remission of sin.
He sides with those who draw a clear distinction between Christian
baptism and its préfigurations, taking a stronger line here than his
compeers.154 For Peter, the baptism of John can similarly be called
a sacrament only as a courtesy title. This being the case, the reason
Christ accepted it although He did not need it was to signify His
humility. The function of John's baptism, according to Peter, was
to call mankind to repentance, as a preparation for the true bap-
tism that would remit sin, and also to serve as the first occasion
when the Holy Spirit disclosed the divinity of Christ.155
There were several other controversies surrounding baptism in
the first half of the twelfth century. As we have already noted, a
number of canonists and theologians described it as a sacrament of
necessity. In supporting this position they could and did draw on
the views of the late Augustine, who stressed, along with the
unrepeatability of baptism, that it was mandatory for salvation and
that persons neglecting to receive it, infants included, would be
irrevocably damned. There are a number of thinkers in the early
twelfth century who reflect the opinion that this teaching is too
harsh. They take two lines of attack against the Augustinian view,
one from the perspective of the damnation of unbaptised infants
and the other from the perspective of the doctrine of baptism by
desire and baptism by blood.156 Early in the century, Anselm of

154
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 2. c. 2-c. 6, 2: 241-43. Theologians admitting the
sacramentality of circumcision include Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.6.4, PL 176:
449D; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 5.1-13, pp. 144-46; Sent. div. 5.1, pp. 110*—11*; Roland
of Bologna, Sent., pp. 194-96. Theologians who provide the background for Peter's
position include Anselm of Laon, Sententie divine pagine, ed. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder
in Anselms von Laon systematische Sentenzen, Beiträge, 18:2-3, (Münster: Aschendorff,
1919), pp. 42-43; the Laon master who wrote Augustinus: Semel immolatus est
Christus, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in Das Schrifttum der Schule Anselms von Laon und
Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen Bibliotheken, Beiträge, 33:1-2 (Münster: Aschen-
dorff, 1936), pp. 281-91; Hermannus, Sent., p. 12Ö; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 37; Ysagoge
in theologiam, p. 187; Summa sent. 5.2, PL 176: 128C. The author closest to Peter is
Master Simon, De sac., pp. 12-13, 15. See also Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 1:
61-108.
155
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 2. c. 2-6, 2: 240-43. The Sent. mag. Gisleberti I
6.1-3, p. 146 supports this position on the baptism of John received by Christ as
an act of humility.
156
For an overview of this theme, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 1:
216-53.
534 CHAPTER EIGHT

Laon airs his own discomfort with the Augustinian hard line on
baptism, indicating what he finds problematic with it. Noting that
baptism is necessary for salvation, he observes that adult bapti-
zands must bring faith to their reception of the sacrament if it is to
be efficacious, while for infants, the sacrament is sufficient. There
are exceptions, however. Catechumens and other people who desire
baptism but who die before they can receive it, except in cases of
negligence, are also saved. Anselm cites the case of Cornelius, to
whom Christ gave the res sacramenti, the remission of sins, without
the baptismal rite. The same is the case for infants who die unbap-
tized. In their case, the negligence involved will be charged to the
account of their parents, who will be punished for it; but Anselm
can see no reason why the infants themselves should be deemed
responsible, or why they should be taxed with the sins of others.157
In another connection, a different concern of his surfaces, which
also informs his disquiet with the traditional teaching. The Holy
Innocents, he notes, are venerated as saints, and there is a feast day
in the liturgy in their honor. They are indubitably believed to have
been received into Heaven and are rightly revered.158 William of
Champeaux does not cite the Holy Innocents or other biblical
exceptions, but summarizes Augustine's opinion on the damnation
of unbaptized infants and states that it is not at all clear that
Augustine is correct.159 Other followers of Anselm of Laon express
other misgivings. Acknowledging that the correct faith is needed for
the efficacious reception of baptism on the part of adults, they see
infant baptism as efficacious on the basis of the sacrament alone,
even if the faith of the parents is heterodox. Still, perfect charity is
salvific, without baptism, and the martyrs' baptism by blood is
another exception.160
Another anti-Augustinian perspective is presented by Abelard.
His rejection of the need for infant baptism altogether, as a function
of his rejection of the principle that infants are guilty of original sin,
since all sin springs from intentionality,161 was certainly the most
extreme reason for opposing the traditional view. It did not catch

157
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine, pp. 42-46; Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no.
57-59, 5: 53-54.
150
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 94-97, 5: 79-81.
159
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 269, 5: 216.
160
Sent. Anselmi 2, p. 84; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 364-67, 5: 273-74. For
the school of Laon on baptism, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 27-44.
161
Peter Abelard, In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 5:9, CCCM 11: 164, 166, 170-72;
Weingart, "Abailard's Contribution," pp. 166-69.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 535

on, even among Abelard's disciples. The author of the Ysagoge in

theologiam is only willing to go as far as stressing the priority of faith
over the objective efficacy of the rite in the case of adults who
receive baptism by blood and by desire. In the case of infants, who
lack faith, this condition does not obtain, in his view. It is less the
faith of the elders or the efficacy of the rite itself that counts than
God's decision to accept them, which can occur if they die unbap-
tized or are raised by non-believers.162
Hugh of St. Victor launches another line of reflection on this
subject, one based on source criticism. In treating the question of
baptism by blood and by desire, he notes that authorities who
support these ideas include Augustine but that Augustine hardened
his position in the Retractationes. Faced with this conflict of Augus-
tine against Augustine, the farthest Hugh is willing to go is to frame
the problem in hypothetical terms. If a person could have perfect
faith and charity without baptism, in a situation where it is im-
possible for him to receive it, it is not likely, in Hugh's opinion, that
he would be condemned.163 Hugh responds to the controversy on
infant baptism by omitting that topic. Robert Pullen follows Hugh
here, although only in part. He combines a reassertion of the
Augustinian hard line on infant baptism and the need for adult
baptizands to have faith with the exceptions of baptism by blood
and by desire, citing not only Cornelius but the good thief on the
cross received by Christ.164 An equal effort to balance the uncon-
ditional necessity of infant baptism, yoking it to the objective
efficacy of the sacrament in their case, with a willingness to make
exceptions, in this case for baptism by desire, is found in Master
Simon. But he is rather more repressive on the latter point than
Robert or Hugh. Like the author of the Ysagoge in theologiam, he
presents this exception as lying under the control of divine omnipo-
tence but also as a privilege extended to biblical personages which
is not the basis of a common rule.165
Much bolder in pulling together the misgivings of theologians in
this area, whether those aired by Abelard or those articulated by
the school of Laon, are the Porretans and the author of the Summa
sententiarum. The Summa sententiarum reprises the notion that, when
baptism is correctly administered, infants receive both the sacra-
ment and the matter of the sacrament without faith, although

Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 187-88.

Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.6.7, PL 176: 452A-454C.
Robert Pullen, Sent. 1.14, 5.17, PL 186: 702B^-C, 843D-844B.
Master Simon, De sac., pp. 3-5, 9-10.
536 CHAPTER EIGHT

adults require faith; otherwise they receive the external sacrament

only. Martyrs and those seeking baptism but prevented from re­
ceiving it receive the res sacramenti without the exterior rite. The
author expressly rejects Augustine's exclusion of baptism by desire
in his late work and thinks, regarding his own position, that it is
proved by reason {quod ratio probat). He feels the same way concern­
ing Augustine on infant baptism. Augustine's position, he argues, is
not solidly grounded. ' O n this matter," he asserts, reprising Wil­
liam of Champeaux, "we have nothing definite" {De quo nihil de-
finitum habemus). He cites the case of the Holy Innocents, who are
believed to be saints, as an argument against the opposition. But he
pulls back from asserting the contrary in a positive sense.166
The Porretans, taking a cue from the Abelardians, go even farther.
Their method is both to cite other, countervailing, authorities against
the Augustinian hard line on infant baptism, and also to introduce
another tactic, the citation of Augustine on predestination, against
Augustine on the damnation of unbaptized infants, possibly as sug­
gested by one of the quaestiones in Abelard's Sic et non. They agree that
faith is necessary, in the case of adults, and that the faith of their elders
meets this condition in the case of infants. Baptism by blood and by
desire are fully acceptable, provided that no contempt of the sacra­
ment is involved, in the case of those who love God. Cyprian and
Ambrose are the chief alternative authorities here. The Porretan
master who expounds this position most fully goes on to note that faith
and martyrdom, which can suffice for adults, do not suffice for chil­
dren, who are incapable of bearing witness. Unless, that is, pagans
overrun a Christian city and infants are put to death before they can
be baptized. Such infants, the master asserts, are saved "although this
opinion has not been expressly given by the learned" {licet non nt hoc a
doctoribus expositum). None the less, it is a valid opinion that these
infants should be regarded as martyrs, baptized by blood, "as we
believe of the Holy Innocents" {sicut de innocentibus credimus). The
clinching argument, however, is the one derived from Augustine on
predestination. God has chosen His elect, from all eternity, the master
observes; and His decree of predestination does not change. God will,
therefore, save His elect, whether baptized or not.167

166
Summa sent. 5.5-7, PL 176: 130B-C, 131B-133A. The quotations are at 5.5,
132B and 5.6, 133A, respectively.
167
Ysagoge in tkeologiam, pp. 187-88; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.6-7.7, 7.9-11,
7.19-20, 7.25, 7.28, pp. 148, 148-49, 150, 151, 152. The quotations are at 7.20, p.
150. Cf. Peter Abelard, Sic et non q. 106, ed. Blanche Β. Boyer and Richard
McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 343-46.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 537

The independence of this line of thinking reflected by the theolo-

gians expressing discomfort with the Augustinian tradition on
baptism can be better appreciated when we recognize the sternness
of their contemporary opponents, who refused to budge one inch
away from that tradition. This obduracy is found in canonists and
theologians alike. The unconditional necessity of infant baptism,
and the tendency to gloss over or omit exceptions, is found in
Honorius Augustodunensis, Ivo of Chartres, and Gratian;168 Ro-
land of Bologna sums up this position by stating categorically that
an unbaptized infant "is damned, without any doubt" (procul dubio
dampnatur) .169 The toughest defense of this principle in our period,
and one that also takes into account the claims made by opponents
for baptism by blood and by desire and for the irrelevance of the
sacrament for the elect, is indubitably the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis. No one, of whatever age, he asserts, can escape damna-
tion without baptism. While he is willing to admit that baptism by
blood and by desire may have saved some people, his tactic for
undercutting this claim as an ongoing possibility is to historicize it
or to treat it as a unique personal exemption. The martyrs, he
points out, lived at the time of the ecclesia primitiva, an age when
Christians were a persecuted minority group. Circumstances then
differed markedly from the situation today. And so, he concludes,
while baptism by blood may have been efficacious in the past, it is
now irrelevant. As for the good thief on the cross, the salvation
extended to him by Christ can be viewed as a unique case. The
thief's situation makes him sui generis. Picking up on a point made
by Master Simon, the author insists that the thief, like the martyrs,
does not constitute a category of persons who can serve as models
or as precedents for contemporary twelfth-century theory or prac-
tice. The author pointedly ignores adult catechumens as well,
although his technique of historical relativization could have been
used to deal with them as well. As for those who say that baptism
cleanses only the elect, who, in any case, will be saved, the author
argues that, even for the elect, their salvation depends on their own
behavior.170
Faced with this array of opinions, Peter Lombard aligns himself
with the Victorine position, as articulated by the author of the

168
Honorius, Elue. 2.42-45, pp. 423-24; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 1. c. 35, PL
161: 75D; Gratian, Decretum pars 3. c. 30. d. 4. c. 3-c. 7, c. 129, c. 132-c. 146, col.
1362-64, 1402-04, 1405-09.
169
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 209.
170
Sent. div. 5.1, pp. 115*-17*, 122*-24*.
538 CHAPTER EIGHT

Summa sententiarum, while including some of the dimensions of the

argument introduced by the Ysagoge in theologiam and the Porretans.
He brings this constellation of ideas to bear on baptism by blood
and by desire, which he defends strongly on the grounds of author-
ity, reason, and theological appropriateness. On the other hand, he
ignores the disquiet expressed by thinkers concerned with the Holy
Innocents as a rationale for providing exceptions to the rule of
infant baptism, while arriving at a defense of his own for the
necessary and universal requirement of that practice. Peter begins
with the distinction between the sacramentum, or external rite alone,
the res sacramenti, or matter and effect of the sacrament alone, and
the combination of the two, in the language common at this time,
which had been articulated the most crisply to date in the Summa
sententiarum. Infants, he continues, receive both the sacramentum and
the res. All recipients are freed from original sin, although only
those who are elect will be saved as well. Peter cites the late
Augustine on this point, not for the purpose of confining salvation
to the elect so much as to underscore the universality of the remis-
sion of original sin in baptism. Faith is not critical for infants, in
Peter's view. For, infants who are not baptized cannot be saved
even if the faith of the whole church supports them. In the case of
infants, the efficacy of the sacrament is objective.171
In the case of adults, those who receive baptism without faith
receive the sacramentum without the res. More than faith is required,
he argues, if adults are to receive baptism efficaciously and fruitful-
ly. They must come to the font with the sincere intention of aban-
doning a sinful way of life and any unfraternal or uncharitable
attitudes they may harbor, in addition to assenting to the proposi-
tions in the creed. They must conform themselves to Christ in order
to put on Christ in baptism. Those adults who receive the res
without the sacramentum include the martyrs and those possessing
faith and contrition whom necessity prevents from coming to the
rite, although without contempt for it. On this point, Peter express-
ly acknowledges Augustine's change of opinion in the Retractationes
and the objection to his later teaching raised by some contempo-
raries. He agrees with that objection. As for Augustine, Peter re-
gards his retraction of the example of the good thief as an error on
his part; according to the Lombard, the basic argument Augustine
had made earlier concerning baptism by blood, which he had
extended to baptism by desire, was a perfectly cogent one that

171
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 1, c. 4.12, 2: 251-52, 259.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 539

embraces both cases. So, his position in the Retractationes has to be

read as a lapse, not as a correction. Not only does the earlier
Augustine make sense on this point, so do other authorities; and
"reason also supports it" {ratio etiam id suadet). For, as Peter sees it,
if baptism alone suffices for infants, who are incapable of belief,
how much the more does faith suffice for an adult who desires
baptism when it is not available? We should, therefore, accept that
baptism is necessary for salvation, but with this stipulation. For, to
insist that baptism is required in all cases would be to constrain
God's power. Anticipating here what was later to be developed into
a more elaborate distinction between God's absolute and ordained
power in the order of salvation, Peter concludes that, while God
instituted baptism as the path to be followed by mankind in ordi-
nary cases, He Himself is not bound by the order of salvation that
He lays down for man; "His own power is not constrained by the
sacraments" (suam potentiam sacramentis non alligavit) .172
Returning to infants and the importance of universal infant
baptism, Peter adds a point that is an original opinion in defense of
that practice. It is not only the objective efficacy of baptism in
cleansing the infants of original sin that is critical, he observes, but
also the grant of operating and cooperating grace which they
receive at the same time. This grace will enable the infants, like
adults, to gain access to a positive source of sanctification that will
make it possible for them to develop virtue and merit when they
reach the age of discretion. Peter harks back here to his definition of
baptism as a sacrament with a double effect, that of imparting
sanctifying grace as well as remitting sin. In the case of infants, to
be sure, the grace remains latent in them until they are old enough
to be able to accept it voluntarily and collaborate with it; until that
time, it remains in them in a potential, not an active state {in munere,
non in usu).173
The whole question of the effects of baptism on the recipient was
another debated issue, although not one as widely controverted as
the matters just discussed. In this area, there were three contem-
porary opinions.174 The school of Laon holds that baptism destroys

172
Ibid., c. 2-c. 4.10, 2: 252-58. The two quotations are at c. 4.8, p. 257 and c.
4.10, p. 258, respectively. For the positioning of Peter on these issues, see Land-
graf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 2: 53-56, 130-34, although Landgraf accents too
exclusively his Victorine sources and his desire to refute Abelard.
173
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 7.5, 2: 262-63.
174
Lottin, Psych, et morale, 4 part 1: 288-97, for the school of Laon, the Victor-
ines, Abelard, and Peter Lombard. See also above, chapter 6, pp. 381-85 for
contemporary views on the effects of original sin.
540 CHAPTER EIGHT

the guilt of original sin, although the effects of original sin, that is,
mortality, concupiscence, and the inclination to sin, remain. The
Porretans agree with this view, adding that baptism also removes
the eternal punishment due for original sin.175 Hugh of St. Victor
agrees that the guilt of sin and eternal punishment are removed and
that the suffering imposed by sin remains; he includes in the
subsisting inclination to sin both ignorance and concupiscence. His
disciples follow suit. Since he does not think infants are guilty of
original sin and that they are not yet capable of actual sin, Abelard
argues that there is no need for baptism to wash away a culpability
that does not, in his opinion, exist. At the same time, he admits that
unbaptized persons share the consequences of original sin, in the
form of mortality and the inclination to sin. To be sure, his han-
dling of original sin itself makes it difficult for him to explain why
this should be the case. In any event, he holds that baptism
removes the punishment for sin. Roland of Bologna agrees with
Abelard.176 On this subject, Peter Lombard takes a modified Vic-
torine line. Baptism, he holds, cleanses us of original sin and, in the
case of adults, actual sin as well, removing the guilt and eternal
punishment they bring upon fallen man. He agrees that baptized
persons retain the inclination to sin and that this inclination in-
volves concupiscence and ignorance. At the same time, and here he
departs from Hugh and his followers, the inclination to sin is
weakened in people who have received baptism. The operating and
cooperating grace which they receive at the same time strengthens
them and makes them better able to resist temptation, so that the
inclination to sin is now no longer as automatic or as compelling as
it would have been otherwise. As well, the grace of baptism, in the
case of recipients whose actual and original sins are removed
thereby, may relax the temporal punishment due for such sins.177
Compared with his contemporaries, Peter widens the scope of the
healing and empowering effects of baptism.
There were several other controversies surrounding baptism in
this period which were less acutely felt and which did not receive
attention from every master. Two of them had to do with the

175
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.1-4, pp. 146-47.
176
Peter Abelard, In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 5:9, CCCM 11: 164, 166, 170-72;
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 203.
177
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 4-c. 6, 2: 255-61. This position is also found
in Peter's sermons. See Jean Longère, Oeuvres oratoires des maîtres parisiens au XIIe
siècle: Etude historique et doctrinale, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1975), 1:
234.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 541

administration of baptism and not with its basic theology; they are
of interest as indices of how the participating masters used author-
ity, or reason, or pastoral relevance, or liturgical symbolism, as a
rationale for defending either their own desired departures from the
tradition of the early church or their support for its practices. The
subject of one of these controversies, single versus triple immersion,
went back, as a debated question, to the patristic period. Augustine
and Pope Leo I had required triple immersion, although the cus-
tom was not universal in the western church. In the sixth century,
Leander, bishop of Seville, had signaled that fact by writing to
Gregory the Great as pope and requesting a ruling on the practice.
Gregory had recognized both the diversity of customs within the
church and also the fact that single and triple immersion both have
an edifying symbolic significance; the former signifies the unity of
the deity and the latter signifies both the Trinity and the three days
Christ lay in the tomb between His death and His resurrection,
prefiguring the death to sin and the spiritual rebirth of the newly
baptized Christian. In responding to Leander, Gregory does not
require or rule out either practice, emphasizing that the unity of
faith in the church is not obstructed by the diversity of baptismal
custom. A fair number of the theologians who discuss this topic in
the first half of the twelfth century advert to this Gregorian analy-
sis, although they do not always put it to the same uses.
One can, to be sure, find supporters of triple immersion, such as
the Laon masters, Hugh of St. Victor, the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis, Master Simon, and Robert Pullen, who simply state that
this is a required practice without referring to the contemporary
debate, indicating support for the triduüm symbolism where they
can find it and saying nothing about, or to, the other side of the
question.178 Ivo of Chartres lists the pros and cons of both modes of
administration while leaving the matter open, along Gregorian
lines.179 The author of the Summa sententiarum also invokes, and
quotes, Gregory. He personally prefers triple immersion because he
finds the triduüm symbolism appealing. But his prime consideration
is the principle that local custom ought to be followed.180 On the
other side of the debate, Roland of Bologna defends single immer-
sion; he argues that, if triple immersion is used, it is on the first

178
Sent. Anselmi 6, pp. 113-14; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.6.1-2, PL 176:
441EM47D; Sent. div. 5.1, pp. 118*-19*; Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.10-12, 5.24, PL
186: 838B-840C, 847D-848A; Master Simon, De sac., p. 5.
179
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 1. c. 130, PL 161: 914A-B.
180
Summa sent. 5.4, PL 176: 130A-B.
542 CHAPTER EIGHT

immersion that the baptizand's sins are remitted. But he offers no

reasons or authorities for that opinion.181 A much fuller rationale
for single immersion is provided by the Porretans. Concerned with
the susceptibility to chills of infants, who now constitute the major-
ity of baptizands in the church, their overriding reason for aban-
doning Leo's rule is pastoral utility. But they do not let the matter
rest just on that point. Their own patristic research indicates that
the first ancient authority to rule on the matter was Cyprian. He
imposed single immersion. How, then, did the church fathers and
early popes justify a departure from that practice? The Porretan
masters note that Augustine had cited Cyprian, and that, in so
doing, he had garbled Cyprian's text, thus substituting triple for
single immersion. And then, instead of cross-checking his sources,
Leo had simply repeated Augustine's corruption of Cyprian in
making his own ruling. In their own argument, the utility of citing
Gregory the Great is that he provides both a history of baptismal
practice in the primitive church and a way around both the triple
immersion tradition and the local custom theory advanced by
contemporary opponents. The Porretans' own quotation of Greg-
ory, in their view, validates the sweeping away of the Leonine and
Augustinian departures from "true" tradition so that it can be
invoked as the rationale for universalizing single immersion.182 This
daring exercise in source criticism finds, as a happy outcome, that
the earliest authority, Cyprian, supports the conclusions which the
masters want to reach, in any case. But, in the logic of their
argument, it is less Cyprian's antiquity than his correctness that
matters, from the Porretan standpoint, coupled with the fact that
Cyprian and Gregory together can be used to show that the more
widely held Augustinian and Leonine rulings are both based on
faulty patristic research. As for the Lombard, he gives this debate,
and the authorities used to support both sides of it, a full review.
Along with many others, he cites Gregory's maxim about the
diversity of custom and its lack of interference in the unity of faith.
His position is closest to that of the Summa sententiarum. While he
approves warmly of the triduüm symbolism, and sees the more
general shift in the church to the practice of triple immersion as
hence desirable, he agrees that respecting local custom is the most
important consideration, and the reason for maintaining both

Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 210.

Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.14, p. 149.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 543

forms of baptismal initiation; other necessary conditions obtaining,

the sacrament is valid either way.183
There was another debate concerning the administration of
baptism on which the Lombard does not feel inspired to take a
stand, the question of when the sacrament should be administered.
Ancient custom, as crystallized by Leo I and other early popes,
required candidates for baptism to be received into the church on
Easter or Pentecost Sunday, unless they were in danger of death.
This ruling, and its congruity with the events in the life of Christ
recalled by the Christian community on the great feasts of the
resurrection liturgy, were duly noted and reinforced by a large
number of masters in the first half of the twelfth century.184 The
chief opposition to this largely consensus view came from the school
of Laon. Reflecting the same kind of pastoral concern which we
have seen animating the Porretan defense of single immersion
above, and which will also inform the Laon masters' view of the
administration of the Eucharist below, their objection to the
Easter-Pentecost rule is made with the needs of infants in mind. To
be sure, the authorities were willing to waive this rule if the candi-
date were in danger of death. But, notes the Laon master who
speaks to this point, the health of infants is very fragile, and they
are unable to advertise the fact if they are in danger of death.
Further, the church has a responsibility to minister as well to the
anxieties of parents, who have a legitimate worry if their babies
have to weather the hazards of their first winter without benefit of
baptism. He accents the differences between the ecclesia primitiva
and the present day here. Then, the majority of baptizands were
adult converts. Their collective reception into the church on the
great feasts of the Easter season was a source of group reinforce-
ment for the struggling early Christian community and a powerful
witness to the pagan society surrounding it. But now, he concludes,
these conditions no longer obtain. For the sake of the current
baptizands and their families, baptism should be administered
whenever it is needed.185 This argument is an authentic index of the
pastoral considerations that often urged changes in sacramental
practice in this period, as well as reflecting an authentic concern of

183
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 7, 2: 249.
184
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 1. c. 45-c. 58, PL 161: 79A-82B; Gratian, Decretum
pars 3. c. 30. d. 4. c. 11-c. 18, col. 1364-67; Sent. div. 5.1, pp. 118*—19*; Master
Simon, De sac., pp. 9, 13-14.
185
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 371, 5: 275-76. See above, chapter 2, pp.
46-47.
544 CHAPTER EIGHT

current sacramental theology, the desire to remove impediments to

the accessibility of sacramental grace, which twelfth-century mas-
ters often felt had been imposed too strictly in the early church. In
this case, however, the Laon master finds himself swimming
against the current. In the sequel, neither he nor the proponents of
the majority view could look to Peter Lombard for support, for he
does not take up this question.
The one remaining debate that he does enter on baptism is one
that has neither a real theological nor a real pastoral significance. It
was joined, by those who entered into it, more as a matter of
biblical history. It was agreed that the sacrament of baptism was
instituted personally by Christ. But when, in His career, did He do
so?186 Some masters, such as Anselm of Laon and Hermannus, ask
this question only to review the options while making no personal
determination.187 Master Simon thinks that Christ instituted bap-
tism when He told Nicodemus that rebirth through water and the
Holy Spirit was required for salvation.188 But Simon does not
advert to the other positions taken on this subject, which received
more support. Hugh of St. Victor and Roland of Bologna teach that
the institution of baptism took place when Christ commissioned
His apostles to baptize and to preach the Gospel in His name at
Pentecost.189 The majority view, and the one espoused by the
Lombard, was the opinion that Christ instituted baptism at the
time of His own baptism; here, he follows the Ysagoge in theologiam,
the Sententiae divinitatis, and the Summa sententiarum. Peter thinks that
Christ's speech to Nicodemus has something to be said for it as the
moment of institution, but rules out the position taken by Hugh
and Roland because he holds that baptism must have been insti-
tuted by Christ during His lifetime, and not after His resurrection.
The preferability of Christ's own baptism to His response to
Nicodemus as the key moment, in his view, lies in the fact that the
name of the whole Trinity, a basic requirement of the verbal
formula used in baptism since then, was first invoked at that
time.190
These constituted the issues controverted regarding baptism,

186
For an introduction to the range of opinions on this point, see Weisweiler,
intro, to his ed. of Master Simon, De sac., pp. lxxx-lxxxix.
187
Anselm of Laon, Sent, divine pagine, p. 42; Hermannus, Sent., pp. 120-24. On
this point, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, p. 150.
188 Master Simon, De sac, p. 3.
189
Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 92-94.
190
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 4. c. 5, 2: 247.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 545

and, as can be seen, they ranged from those directed to the essence
of that sacrament, to those addressed to administration and litur-
gical practice, and to those that are relatively marginal. There were
also a number of features of baptism on which all Christian think-
ers agreed in the first half of the twelfth century and on which Peter
joined his voice to the chorus without altering the consensus view.
Under this heading we have the unrepeatability of baptism; bap-
tism as a liturgical event composed of water as the sacramental
medium, so chosen because of its general availability and cheap-
ness and its symbolic resemblance to the res sacramenti, or the
spiritual ablution it conveys, coupled with the correct invocation of
the Trinity; the proper disposition and faith of the recipient with
the stipulations regarding infants noted above; and the intention to
baptize as the church intends, on the part of the minister. When
these conditions are present, anyone can validly administer bap-
tism, including a heretic, schismatic, non-believer, or lay person.191
The necessity of a proper baptismal intention in the minister rules
out, for Peter as for everyone else the validity of baptisms that are
fictive or done in jest. Peter acknowledges that a baptism will be
valid, assuming a proper intention, if the minister garbles the
verbal formula as a consequence of poor grammar or a slip of the
tongue, so long as this misadventure does not bespeak a heretical
intention or malice on his part. Here, he departs from the stricter
rulings of some of the canonists. His model is the Summa
sententiarum.192 In handling these standard points, Peter is fully
aware of how the canonists treat them, especially Gratian. While he
frequently finds himself in agreement with Gratian's conclusions, it
is still to be noted that these two thinkers tend to pose the questions
differently. Thus, while they agree that the virtue of the sacrament
comes from Christ, and from the intentions of the minister and the
recipient, Gratian accents the problem of whether a bad priest can
validly confer the sacrament, while Peter approaches the in-
strumentality of the minister from the perspective of the idea that
the gift of grace comes from God, not from man, and God's love
and power cannot be obstructed by the shortcomings of the human
ministers through whom He ordained its transmission. Finally,

191
Ibid., d. 3. c. 1-c. 4, c. 6, d. 5-d. 6. c. 2, c. 5, 2: 243-47, 248-49, 263-69,
272-74. Ludwig Ott, Untersuchung zur theologischen Briefliteratur der Frühscholastik,
Beiträge, 34 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1937), p. 160, draws some comparisons
between Peter and other theologians but ignores the canonists.
192
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 6. c. 4, 2: 272; cf. Summa sent. 5.9, PL 176:
135C-136A.
546 CHAPTER EIGHT

other consensus topics which Peter addresses are the point that the
ceremonies preceding and accompanying baptism, the appoint­
ment of godparents, the exorcisms, and the requests of the parents,
while decorous and appropriate, are not of the essence in baptism,
as well as the point that an infant cannot be baptized in the womb,
following, as everyone else does, Augustine's opinion that, in order
to be reborn in baptism, one must first be born. In both cases, he
follows most closely the language as well as the conclusions of the
Summa sententiarum™
There are, finally, a few issues which other thinkers mention but
which, like the time of baptism, Peter ignores. Some are raised by
only one master. Thus, the author of one of the Porretan sentence
collections forbids the alarming possibility that people might bap­
tize a baby by throwing him in a well, lest he be hurt or killed.194
The author of the Sententiae divinitatis raises and rejects the possibil­
ity that a person can baptize himself.195 He also notes that, in the
ecclesia primitiva, thirty to forty days of penance were required of
adult converts prior to their baptism, and queries this practice,
given the fact that baptism washes away all sin. He concludes that,
while unnecessary, the custom was useful in helping to promote the
intention of the conversion needed for a fruitful reception of the
sacrament by an adult. The Summa sententiarum reviews the same
argument and comes down on the other side of it, agreeing with
Augustine that this penance should not be required.196 The matter
of conditional baptism is also aired by a few thinkers. The Porretan
master thinks that, if there is any doubt at all as to whether a
person has been baptized, one should go ahead and baptize him;
the necessity of baptism for salvation, in his view, is more impor­
tant than the canonical non-repeatability of the sacrament. On the
other hand, Master Simon points ahead to later usage, by suggest­
ing that a conditional baptism be performed in such a case, and by
offering a formula for that purpose.197 An item that is taken up more
widely, and by Peter as well, but more typically under the heading
of conditions that nullify or impede a marriage, is the question of
the continuing validity of the marriage of a couple who baptize

193
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 6. c. 3, c. 6-c. 7, 2: 270-72, 274-76; cf. Summa sent.
5.4 5.12, PL 176: 129C-D, 136D-138A.
194
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.24, p. 151.
195
Sent. div. 5.1, p. 121*. Weisweiler, ibid., η. 1, notes that he is the only
theologian of the time to raise this question.
196
Ibid., pp. 113*-15*; Summa sent. 5.5, PL 176: 130D.
197
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 7.21, p. 150; Master Simon, De sac., pp. 15-16.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 547

their infant in a circumstance of necessity, thus standing as godpar-

ents as well as parents to the child and contracting a condition of
spiritual affinity. Both Master Simon and the author of the Summa
sententiarum agree that such a situation does not automatically nul-
lify the marriage. The latter author observes that there are decre-
tals on both sides of this matter and indicates that he finds the more
lenient position to be the more acceptable one.198
The Lombard is more concerned with engaging in reflection and
debate on issues that he finds more central to the theology of
baptism. He is not interested in the details of the ministry of the
sacrament from the standpoint of canonical rules and regulations
and their administrative corollaries. He is interested in what makes
the sacrament valid, but largely from the perspective of the capac-
ity of the valid sacrament to serve as an efficacious channel of God's
grace to the recipient and as a condition of his fruitful reception of
it. Both in his affirmation of the points on which consensus reigned
and in the choices and contributions he makes in debated areas, he
seeks to strike a balance between the principle of intentionality and
the principle of the objective efficacy of baptism. He is incisive in
distinguishing definitively between the precursors of Christian
baptism and the baptism instituted by Christ, with only the latter
justifying its recipient and putting him on the path to salvation. For
Peter, the grace imparted by baptism is more than the spiritual
ablution that washes away sin and remits the punishment that
mankind would otherwise bear for it. Baptism, as well, conveys the
operating and cooperating grace and the mitigation of the inclina-
tion to sin which still afflicts the human race. With this grace, and
the weakening of the grip of ignorance and concupiscence on him,
man can now make a new beginning. Baptism, for Peter, is hence a
true rebirth, a renewal of the mind (innovatio mentis),19* which
cleanses, heals, and strengthens the recipient and arms him with
the grace with which, latently in infants and immediately in adults,
he can work voluntarily as he moves ahead into the Christian life.
Altogether, Peter is far less interested in the social and ecclesiolog-
ical dimensions of baptism than he is in its function as the hinge
on which the capacity to grow in virtue and sanctification turns in
the inner life of the individual Christian. The more corporative

198
Master Simon, De sac., pp. 8-9; Summa sent. 5.10, PL 176: 136B. Weisweiler,
intro, to his ed. of Master Simon, pp. xci-xcii, is therefore incorrect in claiming
that Simon is the only author to air this question at the time.
199
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 3. c. 9, 2: 251.
548 CHAPTER EIGHT

aspects of the sacramental life he reserves for his discussion of some

of the other sacraments. But baptism, for him, is a rather more
strictly personal event.

Confirmation

Much the same can be said for Peter's understanding of con-

firmation. This sacrament evoked little attention in the first half of
the twelfth century and inspired few controversies. Those that did
arise give the appearance of having attracted only a half-hearted
interest. There are several points on which all the masters agree.
The sacrament of confirmation, they concur, was instituted to
strengthen the recipient in the battle against sin; it must be admin-
istered by a bishop; and it is not repeatable. There are also a few
areas in which they disagree, or where they give the subject a
different emphasis.200 The question of when and by whom the
sacrament was instituted does not elicit wide interest. The masters
who raise it, Simon, Roland of Bologna, and the author of the
Sententiae divinitatis, assert that confirmation was instituted by
Christ, Roland adding that He did so when He imparted the Holy
Spirit to His apostles at Pentecost. 201 The Laon masters dissent
from the view that confirmation remits sin, describing its effects,
rather, as the communication of grace as a gift of the Holy Spirit;
the Abelardian Sententiae Parisiensis I, Hugh of St. Victor, and the
Summa sententiarum agree that the sacrament is a gift of the Holy
Spirit.202 Roland, the Porretans, and Master Simon see its effects as
a combination of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the remission of
venial sin.203 It is agreed that confirmation should be administered
after baptism, but how much later was disputed. Some authors,

200
Heinrich Weisweiler, "Das Sakrament der Firmung in den systematischen
Werken der ersten Frühscholastik," Scholastik 8 (1933): 481-523 provides the only
existing overview. He considers only the debates over the age at which confirma-
tion should be administered and by whom it was instituted. On the latter point, p.
483, he is in error in stating that Roland of Bologna held that confirmation was
instituted by the apostles. For the patristic background on confirmation, see Franz
X. J. Dölger, Das Sakrament der Firmung, historisch-dogmatisch dargestellt (Vienna:
Mayer & Co., 1906), pp. 1-156.
Master Simon, De sac., p. 18; Sent. div. 5.2, p. 126*; Roland of Bologna, Sent.,
p. 212.
202
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 372, 374, 5: 276-77; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 40;
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.7.6, PL 176: 462C; Summa sent. 6.1, PL 176: 137C-
139A. For the school of Laon on confirmation, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp.
44-47.
203
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 213; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 8.1-3, p. 153; Master
Simon, De sac., p. 21.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 549

such as Gratian and Simon, are not specific on the point.204 Some,
like Roland and the author of the Sententiae Parisiensis I, reflecting
the Abelardian stress on intentionality, emphasize that the recip-
ient should be an adult, or at least that he should have reached the
age of discretion.205 Robert Pullen contradicts himself on this point,
saying that confirmation should be given "to children in their
childhood" (parvuli in parvitati) and then supporting the view that
candidates must have attained the age of discretion.206
Aside from the recipient's age, few masters display an interest in
any of the other of the conditions or dispositions that he should
bring to the reception of confirmation. The school of Laon teaches
that he should approach it without sins on his conscience;207 but for
Master Simon, Gratian, the Porretans, and the author of the Senten-
tiae divinitatis, the only consideration mentioned is that he should
come to the sacrament fasting.208 Most of the same masters are
concerned with the condition of the ministering bishop, and agree
that he, too, should be fasting, a view in which they are joined by
Hugh of St. Victor and the Ysagoge in theologiam. Predictably, the
author who devotes most of his attention to the technical aspects of
administration is Gratian.209 There is a fair degree of vagueness as
to which aspect of the sacrament constitutes its physical medium.
Most authors ignore this issue. Among those who do not, the
author of the Summa sententiarum states that the sacramentum is the
bishop's laying on of hands; but Hugh of St. Victor thinks that it is
the unction used in the rite while the Porretans locate the sac-
ramentum in both the unction and the laying on of hands.210 There is
wide support for the view that confirmation is not a sacrament of
necessity, although it should not be neglected on that account. But
the school of Laon and the Sententiae divinitatis depart from that
consensus, the latter qualifying the point by conceding that con-
firmation is not required in the case of a baptized infant.211 There is

204
Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d. 5. c. 1-c. 2, col. 1413; Master Simon, De sac., pp.
18-20.
205
Roland of Bologna, Sent, p. 214; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 40.
206
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.23, PL 186: 847A-B.
207
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 374, 5: 276-77.
208
Master Simon, De sac., p. 21; Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d. 5. c. 3-c. 12, col.
1413-15; Sent. mag. Gislebert I 8.4, p. 153; Sent. div. 5.2. p. 128*.
209
Master Simon, De sac., p. 21; Sent. div. 5.2, p. 128*; Hugh of St. Victor, De
sac. 2.7.1-6, PL 176: 459C-462C; Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d. 5. c. 3-c. 12, col.
1413-15. For Hugh on this sacrament, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 94-96.
210
Summa sent. 6.1, PL 176: 137C; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.7.1-6, PL 176:
459C-462C; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 8.1-3, p. 153.
211
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 372, 374, 5: 276-77; Sent. div. 5.2, p. 127*.
550 CHAPTER EIGHT

also some dissent from the more generally held view that confirma-
tion is less important than baptism. Both the author of the Sententiae
Parisiensis I, the Porre tans, and Robert Pullen think that confirma-
tion is greater in dignity because of the higher rank of the admin-
istering clergyman. Robert adds that its greater dignity lies as well
in its effects, using as an analogy the point that the regime for
training an athlete is better than one that merely cures an illness.212
Two other themes surface, of a more idiosyncratic nature. Predict-
ably, Hugh of St. Victor devotes much attention to Old Testament
parallels of confirmation, getting rather confused in comparing it
with assorted forms of unction that are also used in other Christian
rites, and adding that the confirmand should not wash off the oil
until seven days have passed, in honor of the seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit.213 And Roland of Bologna uses the agreed-on point concern-
ing episcopal administration to expatiate on the need to revamp
ancient practices on the basis of the differing historical circum-
stances in the present. In the ecclesia primitiva, he notes, citing the
pertinent decretals, it was acceptable to waive the requirement of
episcopal administration and to concede it to priests, because, in a
missionary church with widely scattered Christian communities, a
bishop might not be easily available. But, since nowadays this
problem no longer exists (quae hodie locum non habent), the earlier
dispensation should be rejected.214
Peter Lombard does not address all the issues aired by contem-
poraries in connection with confirmation. He is not interested,
for instance, in the age of the recipient, the time and agency of
the sacrament's institution, or the condition of the ministering
clergyman.215 Although other masters of the time serve as his
source for the idea that the sacramentum in each case involves words,
deeds, and a material medium, Peter is more consistent than his
contemporaries in adhering to this rule for confirmation. For him,
the external medium combines the words of the bishop, the chrism
he applies to the confirmand's forehead, and the sign of the cross
with which he signs him. Peter joins Roland of Bologna, Master
Simon, and the Porretans in seeing the effect of the sacrament as
both the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is more
flexible than Roland in conceding that a priest may administer

212
Sent. Paruiensis I, p. 40; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 8.2, p. 153; Robert Pullen, 5.23,
PL 186: 847B.
213
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.1.6, PL 176: 462C.
214
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 214.
215
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 7, 2: 276-80 for the entire treatise on confirmation.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 551

confirmation if a bishop is lacking, and sees the ancient dispensa-

tions as retaining a continuing utility. He agrees with the standard
consensus view concerning the ordinary episcopal ministry, the
non-repeatability of confirmation, and its strengthening function,
and joins the majority in disallowing the claim that it is more
dignified than baptism, arguing that those who make this argument
have confused the rank of the minister, whose role is purely in-
strumental in any case, with the effects of the sacrament and its
relative necessity for salvation. All told, the strongest impression
Peter's handling of this sacrament makes is his desire to avoid
strictures that might impede its availability, his desire to make his
account of confirmation conform to the guidelines he erects for the
consideration of sacraments in general, and his affirmation of the
broad view of its effects, as encompassing a remedial as well as a
sanctifying and strengthening component.

The Eucharist

If confirmation received comparatively little attention in this

period and if the debates it inspired seem to have been less than
earthshaking in the eyes of the participants, the same cannot be
said of the Eucharist. The Eucharist attracted considerable atten-
tion in the first half of the twelfth century, and with excellent
reason. All orthodox Christian thinkers at the time warmly en-
dorsed the words of the author of the Sententiae divinitatis, who
elevated the Eucharist above all other sacraments as worthy of
reverence "because, while in the other sacraments grace alone is
given, in this one not only is grace given but also the giver of
graces" (quia cum in aliis sacramentis sola gratia detur, in isto non solum
gratia, sedetiam dator gratiarum) .216 The theological principle affirmed
here was matched, in this period, by a surge of Eucharistie devotion
in popular piety and mystical experience, one that would continue
to flourish in the following centuries.217 This fascination with the
Eucharist is a genuine case of how the convergence between reli-
gious devotion and theological speculation helped to direct the

216
Sent. div. 5.3, p. 128*; the same sentiment is expressed on p. 129*. The
language of the Summa sent. 6.2, PL 176: 139B comes very close to this: "In hoc
enim sacramento non solum gratia, sed ille a quo est omnis gratia sumitur."
217
The best treatment of this subject, which integrates the history of theology
with that of popular Eucharistie piety, is Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Euchanst
in the Early Scholastic Period: A Study of the Salvific Function of the Sacrament according to
the Theologians c. 1080-c. 1220 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
552 CHAPTER EIGHT

course of twelfth-century Christian thought. Aside from its appeal

both to the learned and the unlearned, the Eucharist demanded
attention because of the sharply felt need to defend it against
anti-sacramental heretics and against those who denied the real
presence doctrine. The terms of this debate had been shaped in the
late eleventh century by Berengar of Tours and antagonists of
Berengar such as Lanfranc of Canterbury. Whether or not they
traced their genealogy back to Berengar in the full doctrinal sense,
more recent heretics of a similar persuasion found his formulation
of the issues and the dossier of authorities he had assembled to
support his case to be of continuing utility. So, perforce, did their
orthodox opponents.218 Given their concerted interest in defending
and promoting the importance of the Eucharist in the Christian
life, both canonists and theologians, in the backwash of the contem-
porary Gregorian reform movement, also sought to clarify the
conditions required for a valid administration of the sacrament, on
the part of priests who might be unworthy, heretical, schismatic, or
excommunicated, as well as the differential efficacy of the sacra-
ment upon recipients who might bring heterodox and not orthodox
understandings of the Eucharist to their reception of it. Likewise,
the Berengarian controversy reimported into the arena topics that
had tended to remain in abeyance since the Carolingian period,
such as what happens if a consecrated host is accidentally dropped
on the ground, vomited by a recipient who is ill, or eaten by an
animal.219 These, like virtually all the debates about the Eucharist
raised by the masters of the first half of the twelfth century, derive
from the conviction of the truth of the real presence doctrine. It is
either the desire to expound that doctrine more persuasively to
those who rejected it or the felt need to address questions that arise
within the orthodox consensus given the belief in the real presence
that set the contemporary agenda on the Eucharist.
The belief that the physical elements of bread and wine become
the body and blood of Christ when the celebrant utters the words of
consecration, echoing the personal institution of the Eucharist by
Christ at the Last Supper, coupled with the principle of concomi-
tance, or the full presence of both the body and the blood of Christ

218
For Berengar's continuing influence, see Haring, "Berengar's Definitions,"
pp. 109-46; Macy, "Berengar's Legacy," pp. 49-67, "Of Mice and Manna: Quid
mus sumit as a Pastoral Question," RTAM 58 (1991): 157-66; The Banquet's Wisdom,
pp. 76-84.
219
Macy, "Berengar's Legacy," pp. 55-67; "Of Mice and Manna," pp. 157-
66. See also Landgraf, Dogmengeshichte, 3 part 2: 207-22.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 553

in either of the two consecrated species, serves as the consensus

position on which the theologians and canonists ground their differ-
ences of opinion and differences of emphasis in other areas of
Eucharistie theology and practice.220 It is the real presence of
Christ that the Eucharist transmits, they agree. But, how best to
respond to Berengar's efforts to reduce this claim to absurdity by
posing objections such as the notion that Christ's body, as a finite
physical entity, would be affected by repeated Eucharistie celebra-
tions, damaged by the fraction of the host during the mass, or by
the chewing and swallowing and digestion of the elements by the
recipient, or physically added to, if repeated consecrations repeat-
edly convert more bread and wine into more of Christ's body and
blood? Orthodox thinkers are unanimous in rejecting all these
assertions; yet, they differ on the best way to go about refuting
them.
One idea, inherited from Lanfranc's side of the debate, acknowl-
edges that these problems would be insuperable if it were, indeed,
Christ's historical body that was communicated in the Eucharist.221
Orthodox thinkers could and did respond that this is not the body
of Christ now given in communion, but rather the resurrected body
of Christ, incorruptible and not subject to physical containment,
growth, or diminution. Still, which body did Christ give to His
disciples at the Last Supper? Was it His mortal or His immortal
body? Some masters, such as Anselm of Laon, William of Cham-
peaux, Ivo of Chartres in his Panormia, Hugh of St. Victor, and
Master Simon, seize on the advantages offered by the doctrine that
communion conveys Christ's resurrected body and argue that He
gave this same resurrected body, which Christians now receive in
the Eucharist, to His disciples at the Last Supper.222 William

220
Macy, Theologies, passim and esp. pp. 1-17 for a fine review of the previous
literature on this subject; Walter Dürig, "Die Scholastiker und die Communio sub
una specie," in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes (Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef
A. Jungmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970), 2: 864-75; James J. Megivern, Con-
comitance and Communion: A Study in Eucharistie Doctrine and Practice (Fribourg: The
University Press, 1963), pp. 36-47. Collectively, the work of these scholars cor-
rects and supersedes all earlier accounts, such as Joseph de Ghellinck, "Eucharis-
tie au XII e siècle en occident," in DTC (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1913), 5:
1233-1302; Josef Geiselmann, Die Eucharistielehre der Vorscholastik (Paderborn: Fer-
dinand Schöningh, 1926); Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, trans.
Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1955), 2: 385-86.
221
Mariateresa Beonio-Brocchieri [Fumagalli] and Massimo Parodi, Storia della
ßosofia médiévale da Boezio a Wyclif (Bari: Laterza, 1989), pp. 136-42.
222
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 26, 62; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no.
274, 5: 27, 55-56, 219; Ivo of Chartres, Panormia 1.134, PL 161: 1075B; Hugh of St.
554 CHAPTER EIGHT

responds to an objection that can be raised against this position,

about which Hugh also worries: How can Christ's resurrected body
be available before He received it, after suffering and dying on the
cross? William's answer is that this was quite possible, in the same
way that Christ could manifest His future glorified body in His
transfiguration, while He was still alive. But Roland of Bologna
uses this same point about the transfiguration as an argument for
the countervailing view that Christ, by means of a miracle, gave
His mortal body to His disciples, although without dismembering
or destroying it, just as the transfiguration did not prevent Christ
from continuing to possess the mortal body in which He completed
the rest of His life and met His death. Robert Pullen agrees with
this conclusion but manifests no awareness of the physical difficul-
ties which it entails. He emphasizes the point that, whichever body
Christ gave to His disciples, it was a miracle either way.223 Ivo of
Chartres, in his Decretum, appears to be groping toward an answer
of this sort, in the statement that the body Christ gave His disciples
was the one He currently possessed, although this has to be under-
stood in a spiritual sense.224 On the other hand, one of the Porretan
sentence collectors seeks to split the difference between these two
positions. Acknowledging that the theory that Christ gave to His
disciples the body He possessed at the time of the Last Supper has
the support of Augustine, he argues against it by making a distinc-
tion. The body of Christ had two physical modes, he asserts. It was
immortal by nature and mortal by will. This natural immortality is
something for which he offers no explanation. In any event, the
master concludes that what Christ gave his disciples was the im-
mortal body.225 The Abelardians tend to hold themselves aloof from
this problem. Hermannus and the author of Sententiae Parisiensis I
raise the question and refrain from answering it.226
Even more taxing and fraught with metaphysical problems
which theologians before the reception of Aristotle were ill equipped
to handle was the vital issue of explaining how the change of

Victor, De sac. 2.8.3, PL 176: 462D-464C; Master Simon, De sac., pp. 31, 38-40.
Anselm's position is reported incorrectly by Ludwig Hödl, "Sacramentum und
res-Zeichen und Bezeichnetes: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Arbeit zum frühscholas-
tischen Eucharistietraktat," Scholastik 38 (1963): 161-70.
223
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 218-21; Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.4, PL 186:
964G-965C.
224
Ivo of Chartres, Décrètent 2. c. 5, PL 161: 140C-142G.
225
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.59, p. 143.
226
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 123-31; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 43. On Hermannus's
treatment of the Eucharist, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 50-51.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 555

the elements into the body and blood of Christ takes place. In some
respects this topic offers a parallel with the contemporary problem
of theological language. But, in Eucharistie theology the problem is
more a question of the period's lack of a philosophical and scientific
vocabulary precise enough and generally accepted enough with
which to clarify the nature of the change and the metaphysical
anomaly which it entails. While some of the thinkers who take a
stand on this vexed question use terms such as substantia, which
have a specific sense in Aristotelian philosophy, others do not. Even
when the masters use Aristotelian-sounding language, they do not
always give to substantia the technical meaning that it has in Peri-
patetic terms. And, while the term "transsubstantiation" does
occur in this period, it does not have the denotation which it had
acquired by the time of the fourth Lateran council in the usage of
the master who employs it.227
Easily the most nebulous of the theologians who tackle the
change in the elements is Anselm of Laon. He states, merely, that
the species remain, although the substance changes into the body
and blood of Christ. He neither defines the terms he uses nor
displays an interest in explaining how this change occurs. The
same laconic type of statement is made by William of Champeaux,
and Roland of Bologna follows his lead.228 Another member of the
school of Laon claims that the res sacramenti, that is, the body and
blood of Christ, cannot be separated from the sacramentum, or
physical medium. This rather unclear statement is as far as he tries
to go; he remarks, simply, that the change is a miracle which defies
explanation.229 Alger of Liège likewise says that the substance
changes while the species remain, a process that transcends
reason.230 Gratian is also convinced of the reality of the change but

227
A good sense of the overall terminological issues is provided by Ludwig
Hödl, "Der Transsubstantiationsbegriff in der scholastischen Theologie des 12.
Jahrhundert," RTAM 31 (1964): 230-59. Both Hödl and Hans Jorissen, Die
Entfaltung der Transsubstantiationslehre bis zum Beginn der Hochscholastik (Münster:
Aschendorff, 1965), pp. 4-7 state that the term transsubstantio was not used until
the late twelfth century. In this claim they are, lexically, incorrect; although they
are correct in noting that the use of this term in the same sense as it was given
when written into orthodox theology by Lateran IV does not appear in the first
half of that century.
228
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 25, 62; Sentences of William of Champeaux, no.
272-73, 5: 28-29, 62, 518; Roland of Bologna, Sent, pp. 221-29. For a useful
survey of discussions of the change in the Eucharistie elements in this period, see
Damien Van den Eynde, "William of Saint-Thierry and the Author of the Summa
Sententiarum," FS 10 (1950): 252-56.
229
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 375, 5: 277-78.
230
Alger of Liège, De misericordia 1.48, 1.16-62, pp. 224, 235-36.
556 CHAPTER EIGHT

is vague on how to account for it. His principal concern here, and
the one point which he feels he is able to determine with precision,
is when the changes occurs, at the time of the consecration. 231 The
Abelardian authors of the Sentententiae Parisiensis I and Ysagoge in
theologiam agree that the change occurs and are more interested in
considering why this is the case than how. Their answer is that the
body and blood of Christ retain the physical attributes of bread and
wine so that the sensibilities of recipients will not be offended.232
Master Simon describes the change as a change in substance
(commutatio substantie) which leaves the accidents intact, and pre-
sents this position as if it were non-problematic. 233
On the other hand, Hugh of St. Victor, the Porretans, the
Sententiae divinitatis, the Summa sententiarum, and Robert Pullen reflect
a more circumspect effort to come to grips with the change in the
elements, wrestling manfully with the difficulties which, they ac-
knowledge, the orthodox teaching presents. Of these five masters,
Hugh, Robert, and the Porretans are particularly bedevilled by the
imprecision and inconstancy of their chosen lexicons. 234 Hugh notes
that the Eucharist is made up of its visible appearance (species), on
the one hand, and, on the other, of the real body and blood of
Christ and the spiritual grace which its reception imparts to com-
municants. This sacramental substantia replaces the substance of
bread and wine when the elements are consecrated. Hugh agrees
that the species of bread and wine remain intact. He recognizes
that it is difficult to see what these species now inhere in, and
describes the change of substance very loosely as a transition
(mutatio). His chief concern is to make the point that, although the
grace conveyed by the sacrament makes use of a transitory physical
medium which is swiftly assimilated into the recipient's digestive
tract, its spiritual effects endure beyond the moment of his physical
intake of the elements.235
The Porretans are also concerned with the idea that the physical
elements are assimilated according to a different timetable than
their spiritual content. One master holds that the body and blood
of Christ remain united to the consecrated bread and wine so long

231
Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d. 2. c. 35-c. 42, col. 1324-29.
232
Sent. Parisiensis 1, p. 43; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 200-07.
233
Master Simon, De sac., p. 30.
234
This point has been noted, à propos of Hugh, by Mignon, L·s origines, 2:
171-79; Heinz Robert Schlette, "Die Eucharistielehre Hugos von St. Viktor," ZkT
81 Π 949): 170-76.
2i5
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.8.7-9, 2.8.13, PL 176: 466C-*68C, 470B-471C.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 557

as these elements retain the distinguishable species of bread and

wine. Once they lose those traits in the recipient's digestive process,
he assimilates the species like other food while he retains the union
with Christ spiritually. The master's analysis of how the change in
the elements comes about deploys a vocabulary that is unique to
him. He distinguishes between essence and substance in the sacra-
ment. He uses the term substantia in a very un-Aristotelian way. The
substantia of the elements, he states, does not change; it is, rather,
their essence that changes. Substance, for him, means the percepti-
ble, physical aspects of the bread and wine. There is no transsubstantio,
he argues, because these visible, tangible features of the conse-
crated species remain in them, unchanged. Equating substance
with species in the Eucharist, he concludes that it is the essence
which changes, not the substance (mutantur secundum proprietatem
essentie tantum et non secundum substantiam subiectam). His reason for
equating substance with species in the consecrated elements is that
there can be no accidents unless they have a substance in which to
inhere, a position which simultaneously distinguishes substance
from accidents and identifies them with each other. The master's
chosen formula also fails to explain how a substance subtending
accidents is different from an essence, in his usage.236
Unclear and inconsistent language also haunts Robert Pullen's
handling of this subject. On the one hand, he states that the
substantia of the elements changes, although the form (forma) of
bread and wine remains the same. Alternatively, he states that the
substantia changes, although the properties (proprietates) of the bread
and wine do not. Yet again, he says that the substantia changes,
although the natural qualities (qualitates naturae) of the bread and
wine are unaltered. Without offering definitions of any of these
terms, Robert appears to think that these three statements are
equivalent or synonymous; he does not acknowledge the diverse
metaphysical significance which they may have.237
A much more energetic effort to pinpoint the issue is found in the
Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum. The author of the first of
these works indicates a clear-eyed awareness of the problem in-
volved in the Eucharistie change, which he describes as a change in
substance without a change in accidents. He understands these
terms in an Aristotelian sense. He begins by distinguishing this

236
Sent. mag. Gùleberti I 4.19-21, 4.23-24, 4.46, pp. 135-36, 136, 141. The
quotations are at 4.19, p. 135.
237
Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.9, PL 186: 966D-977A.
558 CHAPTER EIGHT

kind of change from a change in accidents only, which does not

bring with it a change in substance. Examples he cites to illustrate
the latter case are the change of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt and
the change of water into ice crystals. He is fully conscious of the
difficulty in explaining how the accidents of bread and wine can
remain when the substance in which they formerly inhered has
been changed into a different substance. He poses the question
lucidly and admits that he can find no philosophical answer to it,
falling back on the idea that the Eucharist involves a supernatural
miracle parallel with the miraculous mode of Christ's birth.
Beyond this, and the affirmation that the change does take place, he
feels he can say no more (non ampliuspotest dici); he agrees with the
Abelardians that the reason for the change is so that the reception
of the Eucharist will not be offensive, while adding that it is a test of
faith which brings merit to those who perceive the true body and
blood of Christ in the visible species of bread and wine.238 The
Summa sententiarum makes essentially the same points, although
without the analysis of change from one accidental mode to
another. The author agrees that the substantia of the bread and wine
changes into Christ's resurrected body and blood and that this
event parallels the miraculous conception of His historical body.
Manifesting the same interest in why the elements retain the sensi­
ble appearance of bread and wine after the consecration, and giving
the same answer as the Abelardians and the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis to that question, he poses clearly the metaphysical dif­
ficulty which this doctrine entails. The accidents of bread and wine
remain, he concludes, although they no longer have the substance
of bread and wine in which to inhere (et ut praeter substantiam). He,
too, is able to pose the problem crisply, a problem which he
understands in Aristotelian terms, and to admit that he lacks an
explanation of the change, in those same terms.239
To the extent that progress is made on the matter of the Eucha­
ristie change in the period just prior to Peter Lombard, the most
that can be said is that the thinkers who discuss it move from the
position that this article of faith should be restated but that it
cannot be explained to the position that it must be posed in
Aristotelian language and that the resources of philosophy current­
ly available do not make possible an account of the change which

238
Sent. div. 5.3, pp. 131*-33*. The quotation is on pp. 131*-32*.
239
Summa sent. 6.4, PL 176: 141 Α-D. The quotation is at 141 A. On this point,
see Van den Eynde, "William of Saint-Thierry," pp. 241-56.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 559

the theologians see as required, and imperatively so. On these

major issues surrounding the real presence doctrine, the Lombard
comes the closest to the views of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa
sententiarum, particularly in his adherence to an Aristotelian vocab­
ulary. On the other hand, in the debate over which body Christ
gave to His disciples at the Last Supper, his closest immediate
forerunner is Roland of Bologna. Peter's own account of the change
of the Eucharistie elements uses language that reproves the termi­
nology of Robert Pullen and the Porretans. The change in the
Eucharist, he affirms, is a change in substance. The change cannot
be a formal change, he notes, because the species of bread and wine
are retained in those elements after the consecration. As for the
claim that a change in substance is not the same thing as a change
in essence, Peter expressly takes it up and rejects it. He also denies
that support of this notion entails acceptance of the idea that all the
Eucharists celebrated over time add new substance to Christ's
historical body, since the body of Christ with which Christians
have dealings in the Eucharist is His immortal, impassible, resur­
rected body, which can neither be enlarged, subdivided, or broken
by the celebration and reception of the sacrament. As to the mode
of existence of the accidents of bread and wine which remain after
the change, Peter considers a range of opinions. Some say that
these accidents continue to exist, even though they no longer pos­
sess a material substratum (preiacentem materiam) in which to inhere.
They exist, anyway, inhering in nothing. Others thinks that the
change in the elements is not total, and that enough of the bread
and wine remains to provide a metaphysical foundation for the
accidents of bread and wine. This latter view, he points out, is
refuted by the authorities who say that the change is full and
complete. Having ruled out the second opinion on these grounds,
Peter is left with the first position cited.240 He is not entirely happy
with it, but he has clearly benefited from the way in which the
Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum have posed the problem.
He agrees that, normally, accidents cannot exist unless they inhere
in a subject. At the same time, these particular accidents cannot
inhere in the body and blood of the resurrected Christ. Peter thus
comes to the conclusion that "these accidents remain, subsisting by
themselves" (Remanent ergo ilia accidentia per se subsistentia), attached

240
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 8. c. 4, d. 10, d. 11. c. 1-c. 2, d. 12. c. 2-c. 3, 2:
282, 290, 296-97, 304-Ό5.
560 CHAPTER EIGHT

to no substance.241 Peter acknowledges the fact that this position is

a metaphysical anomaly. The most that can be said about his
handling of the topic of the Eucharistie change is that he articulates
the problem and presents its difficulties more sharply than does
anyone else in this period. And, like the masters who serve as his
immediate models, he reflects the increasing tendency of mid-
twelfth-century theology to conceptualize this question in Aristote-
lian terms, with Aristotelian meanings attached to the vocabulary
used in this context. If Peter recognizes the metaphysical problem
attached to the position he takes on the Eucharistie change, how-
ever, the same cannot be said of his espousal of the relatively
unpopular view that it was His mortal and passible body that
Christ gave to His disciples at the Last Supper.242 The main point
he wants to make here is that this mode of Eucharistie communion
was no more or less efficacious, for the apostles, than the Eucharis-
tie reception of Christ's resurrected body is for later Christians.
But, uncharacteristically, Peter makes no attempt to acknowledge
the difficulties, difficulties already in circulation since the time of
Berengar of Tours, which this doctrine bears in its train; nor does
he attempt to refute the opposing view.
The two debates concerning the real presence just discussed
constitute the weightiest speculative controversies raised in connec-
tion with the Eucharist in this period. They both remained unre-
solved in the immediate sequel, pending the arrival of the richer
philosophical resources on which the orthodox formulations later to
develop could be grounded. There were also other aspects of the
sacrament of the Eucharist which provoked disagreement, even
though they were less philosophically intractable in mid-twelfth-
century terms. It was agreed by all that, for the sacrament to be
fruitfully received, the communicant had to approach it with the
right intention and with a belief in the real presence. Yet, not all
contemporary masters agreed on the kind of efficacy the sacrament
had for different kinds of human recipients, and, indeed, subhuman
ones as well. Debate also centered on the mode of administration of
the Eucharist and the conditions empowering the minister to conse-
crate it validly. Also, the masters do not always define the res
sacramenti received by the communicant in the same way.
The responses which the masters give to these questions are

241
Ibid., d. 11. c. 2.5-10, d. 12. c. 1, 2: 298-99, 304. The quotation is at d. 12. c.
l , p . 304.
*42 Ibid., d. 11. c. 6.1, 2: 303.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 561

usually related to the way they understand the nature of the res
sacramenti transmitted efficaciously through the sacramentum of the
Eucharist; in most cases, the position they take on that issue lays
the foundation for their treatment of the effects of communion on
the recipient. The distinction between the external physical
medium of a sacrament, its spiritual content, and the capacity of an
individual to receive either without the other had been drawn early
in the twelfth century à propos of baptism, in which connection it
had evoked considerable interest and support. Alger of Liège
appears to have been the earliest thinker in this century to apply
this idea to the Eucharist as well. For him, the sacramentum is the
species of bread and wine, the res sacramenti is the body and blood of
Christ, and the effectum sacramenti, the grace which reception con-
veys to the communicant, depends on his disposition, bringing him
eternal life or damnation, depending on whether he believes in the
real presence or not.243 The same idea is found in masters writing
closer to the middle of the century, who expand on Alger's theme.
A good case in point is the author of the Sententiae divinitatis. As he
sees it, the sacramentum tantum, or physical medium by itself, is the
physical species, which, he notes, following Hugh of St. Victor on
this point, resembles what it signifies, in that the individual grains
and grapes that make up the bread and wine stand for the indi-
vidual Christians united with each other and with Christ in the
church. Likewise, the water added to the wine in the chalice recalls
the blood and water issuing from the side of Christ on the cross,
and symbolizes the combination of divine and human elements in
the church. Along with the elements, he continues, the sacramentum
includes the verbal formula of consecration and the rest of the
Eucharistie rite, the mixing of water with wine in the chalice, the
elevation, deposition, and fraction of the host, and the distribution
of communion. For this master, the res sacramenti has two aspects,
the body and blood of Christ, which the sacrament signifies and
contains, and the union of Christians in the church, which it
signifies but does not contain. To receive the sacramentum tantum is,

243
Alger of Liège, De misericordia 1.48, 1.61-62, pp. 224, 235-36. On Alger, see
Häring," A Study of the Sacramentology of Alger," pp. 41-78. Alger is left out of
the account in the survey of the use of this distinction in our period by Hödl,
"Sacramentum und res," pp. 161-82. He is also ignored by Macy, Theologies of the
Eucharist, pp. 85, 96-98 and Van den Eynde, "William of Saint-Thierry," pp.
241-56, who both see William of St. Thierry as the first thinker to transfer the
definition from baptism to the Eucharist and the Summa sententiarum as its only
channel of entry into scholastic discourse.
562 CHAPTER EIGHT

like Judas, to receive the physical species only, but not what they
signify and effect. According to this master, one can also receive
spiritually the res tantum, the sacred matter of the Eucharist alone, if
one is properly disposed and prevented from receiving the physical
elements by some emergency. Such a spiritual communion, while
clearly possible for the author of the Sententiae divinitatis, is not
standard. A worthy, and normal, communion involves a reception
of both the sacramentum and the res sacramenti.2**
The essentials of this position, which offers the fullest account of
the issue prior to Peter Lombard, are found in other thinkers in this
period, although in a more abbreviated form. The author of the
Summa sententiarum omits the sacramental ritual in defining the
sacramentum tantum, although he adds that it signifies the spiritual
nourishment of Christians as well as the body and blood of Christ
and the union of Christians in the church. He, too, agrees that, for
the res sacramenti to be internalized efficaciously by the communi-
cant he must have the proper belief and disposition; failing those
conditions, communion works to his damnation, not his sal-
vation.245 While he uses a different, and older, vocabulary, call-
ing the physical medium the sign of a sacred thing (sacre rei signum)
and the union of Christ and the church the visible sign of invisible
grace (visibile signum invisibile gratium), and while he sees the body
and blood of Christ as the hidden holy thing (sacrum secretum)
conveyed by the sign, his pre-Victorine language describes, for
Roland of Bologna, a res sacramenti that combines the bonding of
Christians in the church with the salvific consequences of Christ's
sacrifice in the remission of the recipient's sin and his sanctification
through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Roland, too, distinguishes
between the mere physical reception of the consecrated elements,
which, in the case of unbelieving or unworthy recipients leads to
their damnation, as was the case with Judas, and the fruitful
reception of both the sacrament and its sacred content by the
properly disposed communicant. The former, he states, do receive
the body and blood of Christ; but they are unable to assimilate and
profit from its effects spiritually. 246 In omitting the idea of spiritual
communion, Roland offers a less well developed version of this
doctrine than the author of the Sententiae divinitatis; but he agrees
with most of the main points presented in that master's teaching.

244
Sent. div. 5.3, pp. 130*-31*, 135*-36*.
245
Summa sent. 6.3, 6.5, PL 176: 140A-D, 142B.
246
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 157, 216, 229-30. On Roland here, see Macy,
Theologies of the Eucharist, p. 117.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 563

One can find a similar kind of understanding of the differential

effects of Eucharistie reception even in authors who do not refer
overtly to Alger's distinction and its development by more recent
masters. The Porretans offer their own scheme here, distinguishing
among spiritual, sacramental, and neutral reception. Infants, mar-
tyrs, and people who cannot consume the physical elements but
who unite themselves to Christ in spirit, faith, and good works
communicate spiritually. The conditions which the Porretan mas-
ter attaches to spiritual communion make it difficult to see why he
includes infants on his list here. Sacramental communion, which
involves the reception of the body and blood of Christ by means of
the consecrated elements, he divides into two categories, fruitful
and unfruitful. The first applies to people who keep the faith and it
works toward their sanctification. The second applies to people
who, like Judas, betray the faith, and it works toward their damna-
tion. Neutral reception, in the eyes of this master, occurs when a
non-believer receives communion. The master is regrettably vague
on whether such a person receives more than just the physical
elements. What he is sure of is that this kind of recipient is not
saved by this kind of reception.247
One corollary of this issue that receives attention, in the wake of
the Berengarian controversy, and which may or may not benefit
from a master's possession of a well developed distinction among
sacramentum tantum, res tantum, and et sacramentum et res sacramenti, is
the problem of what happens if the consecrated species are inadvert-
ently dropped on the ground or, worse yet, consumed by an
animal. Berengar himself had raised these questions for their shock
value in the effort to embarrass proponents of the real presence
doctrine, well before Alger's distinction provided a way of dispos-
ing of it.248 Master Simon offers the opinion that, in such occur-
rences, God withdraws the body and blood of Christ from the
elements, keeping them invisibly suspended in the air, so that they
will not suffer contact with the ground or be processed by the
digestive system of a mouse, the animal typically singled out
for attention since Berengar's time. The Porretans second this

247
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.11-15, 4.51-56, pp. 133-34, 142-43. To some extent
this author here parallels Master Simon, De sac., pp. 25, 28, 33-36, 41-42. Another
parallel, although it is less marked, is Honorius, Elue. 1.180-84, pp. 394-95. See
Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, pp. 106—11.
248
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3, part 2: 207-22; Macy, "Of Mice and Manna,"
pp. 157-66; "Berengar's Legacy," pp. 49-67.
564 CHAPTER EIGHT

interpretation.249 A less circumstantial account is given by the

author of Sententiae Parisiensis I. He agrees that the mouse receives
the species only, and not the body and blood of Christ, but declines
to speculate on what happens to the body and blood in that
event.250 Oddly enough, Roland of Bologna, presenting pros and
cons, leaves the matter undecided, even though the principle con-
cerning the communion of Judas which he has articulated could
have supplied him with a means of resolving it. The most he is
willing to say is that he does not think that the mouse receives the
res sacramenti; but he does not feel confident as to how this position
can be defended.251 It is perhaps noteworthy that the masters best
qualified to deal definitively with the mouse, the authors of the
Sententiae divinitatis and the Summa sententiarum, do not take up this
question, and that Roland, who also has what he needs to do so,
does not use his own armory effectively. The other contemporary
masters interested in this topic are canonists such as Ivo of Char-
tres, who is more concerned with the culpability of persons who
vomit the Eucharist, who allow it to fall on the ground, or who fail
to guard it against animals, and the penance appropriate to them,
than he is with the theological issues involved.252
Interest was much more widespread, and diverse, on another
aspect of the distinction between the sacrament and its effects
launched by Alger of Liège, the question of what these effects actu-
ally are. Although we have to wait until Hugh of St. Victor and his
followers to find the full shift away from the Augustinian definition
of sacrament in general as a visible sign of an invisible grace to its
definition as a sign that contains and effects what it signifies,
thinkers in this period, even if they write before or outside of this
decisive Victorine development, none the less concur in the view
that the Eucharist can be understood as efficacious as well as
significant. Where they disagree is on the point of what the proper-
ly disposed recipient actually receives by means of the sacrament.
Gary Macy has offered a distinction here, between what he calls the
mystical and the ecclesiological understanding of the way the
Eucharist was thought to be internalized in the twelfth century.
Thinkers in the first group, according to Macy, accent the impact
of communion on the inner life and religious experience of the
recipient, whether or not it triggers mystic transports in the strict

Master Simon, De sac., pp. 40-41; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.16-18, pp. 134-35.
Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 43-44.
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 234-35.
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 2. c. 55-c. 61, PL 161: 172C-173D.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 565

sense of the term. Thinkers in the second group see the primary if
not exclusive effect of the Eucharist as the incorporation of the
communicant into the church, seen as Christ's mystical body and
as a historical institution.253 Another way of putting the same point
is to contrast thinkers who emphasize the subjective side of the
sacramental transaction with those who emphasize its objective
side. Macy's view in general can certainly be supported. One can,
to be sure, find authors in our period who can be used to document
these extremes in his interpretation. But a great many masters in
the first half of the twelfth century present a much more eclectic or
nuanced position on this question, and this irrespective of whether
they are monks, scholastics, or canonists.
Perhaps the most extreme case of an author who views the
reception of communion from a largely subjective standpoint is the
Laon master who lists seven states of soul as needed for a proper
reception and seven spiritual benefits which reception brings. In
addition to the standard prerequisite of faith, the consensus posi-
tion, he thinks that a communicant receiving worthily needs fre-
quent thoughts about Christ, understanding, memory, and love of
Christ, and adhesion to Christ, each state growing out of the one
anterior to it. In turn, communion brings the communication of the
effects of Christ's passion to the faithful, in their own measure.
This, to be sure, is an objective gift. But, as noted, it is differential
in the way it is appropriated by different communicants. This gift
engenders six other benefits that enrich the inner life of the recip-
ient: the thirst for God, the drink that quenches it, the inebriation
of the spirit, tranquillity, and eternal life. The objective component
that is undeniably present in this analysis is regarded from the
perspective of how the soul of the communicant internalizes it.254
At the other end of the spectrum we may place Honorius Augus-
todunensis and Hugh of St. Victor. Each of these theologians, it will
be remembered, is unusual in that he prefaces his account of the
sacraments with an abbreviated ecclesiology, it being more typical,
in this period, for theologians to leave ecclesiology to the canonists
and publicists in their division of labor. Both Honorius and Hugh
present the church as the mystical body of Christ. Honorius makes
the connection even more organic than Hugh does, in that he takes

253
Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, passim.
254
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 381, 5: 280. For the school of Laon on
communion, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 47-55, although Knoch does not touch
on all aspects of their teachings.
566 CHAPTER EIGHT

up the Eucharist as the first sacrament he discusses, rather than

marriage, as the first sacrament instituted. Honorius describes the
effects of communion as the engrafting of Christians into the eccle-
sial body of Christ and, through it, as obtaining the spiritual
nourishment that begins in this life and that is perfected, for the
community of the elect, in Heaven. The bread and wine, with their
many grains and grapes, signify this union of Christians with
Christ and with each other.255 Hugh agrees that the Eucharist,
since it contains the body and blood of Christ, is the sacrament of
sacraments and the source of all sanctification. This sanctification,
for him, is also a function of the incorporation of the recipient into
the ecclesial body of Christ. The particularly Hugonian twist he
imparts to this doctrine is to present it in terms of participation in
the divine light, an idea which he derives from the Celestial Hierarchy
of the Pseudo-Dionysius, a text on which he commented. This
notion gives a rather Neoplatonic cast to the engrafting of Chris-
tians into the church through the Eucharist, in Hugh's account.256
Most masters in the first half of the twelfth century cannot be
fitted so neatly into a framework bounded by personal religious
experience on the one side and ecclesiology on the other. Not all the
thinkers who accent the objective effects of communion conceive of
this issue in ecclesiological terms. Ivo of Chartres, for instance, sees
the effects of the Eucharist as a combination of the union of Chris-
tians in the church and the gift of eternal life; and he is seconded by
the Summa sententiarum. But his fellow canonists, Alger of Liège and
Gratian, who take an equally objective line, leave out the ecclesial
dimension and describe the effects of communion as eternal life,
salvation, and union with Christ.257 The disciples of Abelard do not
always distinguish what is a condition of fruitful reception from
what is a consequence of it. Hermannus states that the effect of the
sacrament is to remind us of Christ's love, while the author of
Sententiae Parisiensis I asserts that the Eucharist helps us to recall
Christ's crucifixion and that we should bring this recollection to

255
Honorius, Elue. 1.177-84, pp. 393-95.
256
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.8.1, PL 176: 46ID. This Dionysian slant has
been noted by Erich Kleineidam, "Literaturgeschichtliche Bemerkungen zur
Eucharistielehre Hugos von St. Viktor," Scholastik 20-24 (1949): 564-66; Knoch,
Die Einsetzung, pp. 96-98; Schlette, "Die Eucharistielehre," pp. 193-99, 204-10;
Weisweiler, "Sakrament als Symbol und Teilhabe," pp. 321-43. Macy, Theologies
of the Eucharist, pp. 83-84, reads this point less Neoplatonically.
257
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 2. c. 4, PL 161: 138B; Summa sent. 6.3, PL 176:
139C-D; Alger of Liège, De misericordia 1.48, 1.61-62, pp. 224, 235-36; Gratian,
Decretum pars 3. d. 2. c. 44-c. 53, col. 1130-33.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 567

communion when receiving it. In addition, he thinks that the

recipient is rendered immune from vice {immunem facit ab omni vitio)
by the Eucharist.258 Still, the accent of the Abelardians is on the
subjective side, another unacknowledged legacy of Abelard's from
the school of Laon. The master who accents this point most heavily
is the Cambridge Commentator. If we do not respond to Eucharis-
tie reception with love, he states, then Christ's saving work, itself
understood as the conversion of man's heart, is frustrated in us and
we cannot appropriate it in the Eucharist.259 Other masters who
may or may not have absorbed Abelardian influence on this point
include Master Simon and the Porretans, who give as the effects of
reception conversion, perfection, and the remission of venial sin;260
Robert Pullen, who proposes spiritual nourishment;261 and the
author of the Summa sententiatum, who says that reception of the
Eucharist remakes the communicant spiritually and liberates him
from evil.262 The one author who goes the farthest in balancing
these diverse modes of understanding the effects of Eucharistie
reception is Roland of Bologna. For him, the effects are threefold:
the engrafting of Christians into the church, the remission of sin,
and the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit.263
In dealing with the fact that there are two material elements in
the Eucharist, bread and wine, although the doctrine of concomi-
tance stresses that they equally contain the body and blood of
Christ, the theologians in this period tend not to defend the point
simply on the grounds that this was the way Christ instituted the
sacrament, but rather view the two species from the standpoint of
man's needs and how the sacramental media are responsive to
them, both as signs and as signs that effect what they signify. Here,
is it not surprising that authors who see the prime effect, or one of
the effects, of Eucharistie reception as the engrafting of Christians
into the church should advert to the symbolism of the individual
grains of wheat and grapes united in the Eucharistie bread and
wine. This is the case with Roland and Honorius.264 The instructive

258
Hermannus, Sent., p. 125; Sent. Pansiensis I, p. 43.
259
Comm. in Epistolam adHebraeos 9 in Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 4: 782. Macy,
Theologies of the Eucharist, pp. 114-16, 118, states that the Abelardians waver
between an individual and a corporate view of the effects of communion. We have
not found much to support the alleged corporative ingredient in their teaching.
260
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.60, p. 143. The author cites Simon by name as his
source.
261
Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.2, PL 186: 961C-963B.
262
Summa sent. 6.2, PL 176: 139B.
263
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 157, 216.
264
Ibid., pp. 157, 216; Honorius, Elue. 1.180-84, pp. 394-95.
568 CHAPTER EIGHT

power of this symbolism is so appealing that it also attracts masters

who take a less ecclesial view of the effects of Eucharistie commun-
ion, such as the Laon masters, Master Simon, Robert Pullen, and
the author of the Ysagoge in theologiam.265 Some authors combine
man's need for signs that enlighten him as to how the sacrament
works in his soul with his need for redemption tout court. Although
agreeing that both the body and blood of Christ are fully contained
in each of the consecrated elements, they observe that the wine
none the less stands for and nourishes man's soul while the bread
stands for and nourishes man's body. Christ, they argue, took on
both a human body and a human soul in order to redeem mankind
both in body and soul; and, in the Eucharistie elements, He pro-
vided species that signify and effect this redemption of the whole
human person. This Christological and soteriological argument is
joined to the symbolism of the grains and grapes by the Porretans,
Master Simon, and the authors of the Summa sententiarum and Senten-
tiae divinitatis.266
There were two other issues related to concomitance that evoked
a certain amount of discussion, as this doctrine affected the mode
by which the Eucharist was administered to the laity. In this
connection it is worth keeping in mind that the laity had been
receiving the Eucharist under both species, separately, since the
days of the early church. While communion in both kinds was the
rule, there is evidence to suggest that some pastors were practicing
intinction, or the dipping of the host into the chalice before giving it
to the communicant. Pope Paschal II (1099-1118) had reproved
this practice, citing the standard argument that intinction was
unscriptural. The only one of the disciples to whom Christ gave
communion in this way was Judas, another clear reason for pro-
hibiting it. Paschal reinforced the traditional insistence on recep-
tion in both kinds, sequentially. He also granted a traditional
dispensation, by conceding that aged, infirm, and moribund per-
sons who are unable to consume solid food are allowed to receive

265
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 275, 5: 277-78; Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.2, PL
186: 961C-963B; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 200-07.
266
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.6-10, pp. 133-34; Sent. div. 5.3, pp. 129*-30*, 138*;
Master Simon, De sac., pp. 26-29; Summa sent. 6.5-6, PL 176: 142B-143B. Macy,
Theologies of the Eucharist, pp. 68-69, 172 argues that the first person to develop this
body-soul argument was Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu in his Pauline commentary of
ca. 1150; Philippe Delhaye, "Un dossier Eucharistique d'Anselme de Laon à
l'abbaye de Fecamp," in L'Abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp: Ouvrage scientifique du ΧΙΙΓ
centenaire, 658-1958 (Fécamp: L. Durand et Fils, 1960), 2: 156, rightly sees it as
arising earlier than that. The notion was more widespread than either of these
scholars thinks.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 569

the chalice alone. This dispensation was a standard one, but it

omitted, in Paschal's case, another category of communicant, in-
fants in danger of death, who had been included in the dispensation
in earlier decretals. Concomitance certainly supplied a rationale for
Paschal's exception, but he made it less in defense of concomitance
itself, or of pastoral need, than in conjunction with his ban on
intinction.267
Whether they cite Paschal or rely on the authorities to whom he
himself refers, the vast majority of masters in the first half of the
twelfth century defend utraquism, oppose intinction, and connect
this teaching with the doctrine of concomitance. Exceptions to this
consensus are few; and they are interesting in that they reflect a
desire to depart from established tradition on the basis of pastoral
utility. The availablitiy of the Eucharist to the people who need it,
and in the form in which they are able to receive it, is the operative
norm here, a norm reflecting the more general desire to remove
obstacles that might separate Christians from the grace available
through the sacraments that is quite characteristic of this period.
Considering, especially, the common wish to emphasize the sacred
dignity of the Eucharist and its necessity for salvation, this criterion
impelled several theologians to swim against the current of contem-
porary opinion on its behalf. Their views are thus more interesting
for the concerns that animate them than for their ability to overturn
the consensus position or to offer what could be regarded as another
viable option within it. Roland of Bologna stands out as the one
and only master to present a defense of intinction in the face of
universal opposition to it on the part of the papacy, the canonists,
and the theologians alike. He is fully aware of the objection based
on Holy Scripture. In a remarkable if totally uninfluential turn-
about ofthat objection, he argues that the fact that Christ gave the
Eucharist to Judas in this form validates intinction, even though, as
he has argued elsewhere, the bad faith which Judas brought to
communion meant that it worked to his damnation. The reason
why intinction should be permitted, according to Roland, is that it
is an easier way to administer communion than by the host and
chalice separately. The fear of dropping the host, or of accidentally
spilling the contents of the chalice, he notes, may make some
communicants anxious. This anxiety may undercut the proper
state of devotion and receptivity which they need to bring to the

See the references cited above, n. 220.

570 CHAPTER EIGHT

sacrament. Their worry, indeed, may keep them away from com-
munion altogether. And so, for practical pastoral reasons (curis
secularibus) intinction should be allowed.268
As the twelfth century moved along, the clearer articulation of
the doctrine of concomitance, coupled with the increasing inci-
dence of "bleeding host" miracles, was to bring about a major
change in the administration of communion to the laity. By the end
of the century, the western church had abandoned the age-old
practice of utraquism for the laity and had made the reception of
the host alone the new standard. But, members of the school of
Laon, along with the Porretans, resisted this change. To be sure,
they could appreciate the rationale supporting communion in one
kind in the light of the doctrine of concomitance. What they sought
to retain, however, was the older custom of administering the
chalice alone, not only to the aged and infirm and to those in
danger of death, but also to infants, who are likewise unable to
consume solid food. Pope Paschal's recent ruling, they noted, while
it retained the dispensation permitting the chalice alone to the
aged, infirm, and moribund, had ignored the infants. The desire of
these masters to rush to the defense of the pastoral needs of infants
is exactly parallel with the desire of these same theologians to relax
the rule confining baptism to Easter and Pentecost, although their
stance in the face of ecclesiastical tradition differed in these two
areas of sacramental theology. In the case of baptism, as we have
seen above, they wanted to depart from a historically conditioned
rule which no longer spoke to the needs of the cohort of people now
largely receiving the sacrament. In the case of the Eucharist, on the
other hand, the masters defend the retention of an ancient practice
which, in their eyes, has as much pastoral relevance in the here and
now as it had ever had. Granting that, if no neccessity arises, the
first communion of infants can safely be deferred, Anselm of Laon
insists that, if the infant is in any danger, he should be given
communion at the next celebration of the Eucharist following his
baptism, by means of the chalice alone, because he cannot take
solid food. Anselm urges that this practice is essential since the
child's salvation will otherwise be placed in jeopardy. He adds that
the priest who fails to administer the chalice to the child has failed
miserably in his pastoral duty; Anselm compares him with a
shepherd who abandons his flock.269 William of Champeaux force-

Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 230.

Sentences of Anselm of Laon from the Liber Pancrisis, no. 61-62, 5: 55-56.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 571

fully seconds this opinion and connects it more specifically with the
doctrines of the real presence and concomitance.270 Another Laon
master repeats Anselm's argument almost verbatim and adds a
point which we see cropping up elsewhere in twelfth century sac-
ramental theology, the idea that, should the priest be negligent, his
failure to give the chalice to the infant will be charged to his own
moral account by God, Who will not condemn the infant because of
someone else's irresponsible behavior.271 This observation also par-
allels exactly the reason why some members of the school of Laon
reject the automatic damnation of the unbaptized children of negli-
gent parents. Both the disciples of Gilbert of Poitiers and Gilbert
himself strongly support the position of the school of Laon here,
although they are fully conscious of the fact that it is a minority
view, not given an extensive hearing in the schools (Hec quaestio
quamvis a doctoribus non sit ventilata) .272
There were two other issues related to the recipients of the
Eucharist that provoked a mild flurry of interest, one illustrating a
logical application of the agreed-upon conditions making for valid
and fruitful reception held by all at this time and the other illustrat-
ing the desire to loosen older strictures. Anselm of Laon insists that
communion should not be given to heretics and excommunicates,
not even as a viaticum. His reasons are perfectly straightforward.
Heretics lack the correct faith needed for fruitful reception, and
severance from communion is precisely what excommunication is
all about as well as being the penalty it imposes on the malefactor
whose behavior has warranted such drastic requital.273 The desire
to make communion available to persons known or suspected of
being evildoers or persons of bad character informs opinions on
criminals, and on actors and magicians, at the hands of the Porre-
tans and canonists, respectively. A priest should not deny commun-
ion to someone he knows to be a criminal, states the Porretan
master, on the model of Christ's giving of the Eucharist to Judas,
who, He knew, would betray Him. The only exception that the
master admits is the case of a criminal who has also been publicly

270
Sentences of William of Champeaux, no. 270, 5: 216-17.
271
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 372, 5: 276.
272
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.42, p. 140. As the editor notes, p. 140 n. 48, a gloss on
this passage in a copy of the work preserved in MS. Paris BN lat. 14423, f. 97v
states that this is Gilbert's teaching as well: "Parvuli debet dari, tarnen in liquida
forma . . . sicut magister Gillibertus instituit.,, This point has also been noted by
Landgraf, Dogmengeschichtey 3 part 2: 192.
273
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 63, 5: 56.
572 CHAPTER EIGHT

excommunicated.274 And, Ivo of Chartres and Gratian, although

well aware of earlier canonical hostility to actors and magicians
(histrionic magi) as persons likely to have evil habits, noxious beliefs,
or both, argue that they should be admitted to communion. Ivo
cites the supporting authority of Cyprian; Gratian is not quite so
generous, stipulating that the actors and magicians must first re-
pent of their putative bad behavior and that they should not be
given communion side by side with other, presumably Godfearing,
Christians, but separately.275
This largely concludes the list of questions raised, by a greater or
smaller range of masters, concerning the recipient of communion,
the conditions affecting its efficacy in him, what it actually trans-
mits to him, and how it ought to be administered. These debates
have moved us from matters of pressing general concern to those
that interest only a handful of authors, and from those directly
connected with the essential definition of the sacrament itself to
those embracing ecclesiastical policies and administrative matters
regarded as subject to change. Looking at the Eucharist from the
other side of the rite, the side of the minister and not that of the
recipient, we encounter another debate, extremely widespread in
this period, and one on which there was a decided range of views.276
This aspect of the Eucharist, understandably, received detailed
attention from the canonists, along with the rules and regulations
for the liturgical celebration of the mass, provision of the reserved
sacrament for sick calls, and other concerns of the clergy in this
connection. Motivated by the reformist urge to deny priestly facul-
ties to schismatics, excommunicates, or heretical clergymen, the
canonists, by the mid-century, had arrived at a consensus among
themselves that is aptly summed up by Roland of Bologna. For the
Eucharist to be truly consecrated, he states, the minister must be a
priest validly ordained, regardless of his moral qualities. Roland,
however, withholds this capacity from priests who have been inter-
dicted, deposed, or unfrocked, or who are heretics, schismatics, or
excommunicates. The first set of disqualifications respects the fact
that they are no longer in good standing canonically. Heresy obvi-
ates the correct faith and correct intention required for a valid
consecration. Schismatics and excommunicates are ruled out by

274
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.49, p. 141.
275
Ivo of Chartres, Panormta 1.152, PL 161: 1080C; Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d.
2. c. 95-c. 96, col. 1352.
276
On this point, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 1: 119-45, 3 part 2:
223-34, 240-43.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 573

definition; the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity, and it cannot be

administered by a cleric who is not in union with the church.277
Many of the theologians of the day found this canonical position,
for all its clarity and cogency, to be too restrictive. Another model
was proposed by the Porretans, who argue that there are three
conditions needed to validate the consecration of the Eucharist:
ordo, actio, and intentio, or a validly ordained priest, the use of the
proper canonical formula of consecration during the mass, and the
intention to do what the church understands by the the celebration
of the Eucharist. With this principle in hand, the Porretan master
objects to the automatic disqualification of excommunicated
priests. To be sure, he agrees that non-believers cannot consecrate
validly; but, presumably, this category could exclude priests who
had lost the faith themselves but who might be willing to be of
service to communities of believers who would otherwise lack ac-
cess to the mass and the Eucharist. The inclusion or exclusion of
the non-believing priest is thus not a blanket one, in the master's
estimation. In the case of the priest who is excommunicated, the
master argues that it is perfectly possible for him to consecrate
validly, so long as the notes ofordo, actio, and intentio apply to him.278
The author of the Sententiae divinitatis also uses the ordo, actio, intentio
model and expands the range of acceptable ministers still farther.
Both heretics and schismatics may consecrate validly, in his opin-
ion, so long as they are validly ordained, use the appropriate rite,
and intend to do what the church intends. He does not take up the
excommunicates or raise the question of why a heretic would want
to participate in the sacramental ministry of the church.279 Master
Simon agrees that ordo and actio are required. He omits intentio, but
concedes legitimacy to the consecrations of priests who display the
first two traits.280 In praise of flexibility in this area, he cites
Gregory the Great's maxim that diversity of customs does not
impede unity of the faith in the church, without noticing that it was
directed by Gregory to the number of immersions required or
permitted in baptism and not to who is to be barred from the
Eucharistie ministry. The author of the Summa sententiarum also uses
the ordo, actio, intentio formula, although he takes a harder line than
some of his compeers. Agreeing with the Sententiae divinitatis here, he
admits that a properly ordained heretic may be able to consecrate

Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 216-18, 235-37.

Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.28, 4.32, 4.43-44, pp. 136, 137, 140.
Sent. div. 5.3, p. 141*.
Master Simon, De sac., p. 38.
574 CHAPTER EIGHT

validly for the people who receive communion at his hands,

although, in his own view, such a hypocrite would bring moral
obloquy upon his own head. He disallows schismatics and excom-
municates, since their own alienation from the church would pre-
vent them from connecting their congregations with its unity by
means of the Eucharist.281 Robert Pullen shifts his focus from the
issue of heresy, schism, or severance from communion as impedi-
ments to valid consecration to the problem of morally unworthy
priests. He agrees that their Eucharistie ministry is valid. But he is
less concerned with what gives the formula of consecration its
efficacy than he is with the blame and punishment attached to
clerical misconduct in this area.282
Three other observations are needed to complete our survey of
Eucharistie debates in the first half of the twelfth century before
turning to the question of how Peter Lombard addresses the issues
of reception, administration, and appropriation of the grace made
available by the Eucharist, in comparison with his contemporaries.
One area in which those canonists and theologians who take up the
issue agree in softening the rigor of an earlier age is the matter of a
nocturnal emission experienced by a priest scheduled to celebrate
mass the following morning, and whether this accident places him
in a state of ritual pollution which would bar him from celebrating.
The consensus position in this period rejects the strict idea of ritual
pollution and distinguishes among the reasons why the individual
experiences the seminal emission in the first place. He is guilty of
sin, it is agreed, if he has brought the event upon himself by
overindulgence in food or drink or by deliberately entertaining
lustful thoughts. For these offenses he must do penance and he may
not approach the altar as a minister of the Eucharist until he has
done so. On the other hand, if the seminal emission occurred willy
nilly, out of the superabundance of the man's animal spirits, then
no sin has been committed. Here, the principle of intentionality in
ethics is clearly at work. In the latter case, the priest should cleanse
his person, clothing, and bedclothes but he is not prohibited from
celebrating the Eucharist. Among the theologians, not all of whom
take up this topic, the canonico-theological consensus position is
spelled out the most crisply by the Porretans.283 Another matter
addressed by both canonists and theologians, although far less

Summa sent. 6.4, PL 176: 141A-D.

Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.6, PL 186: 968A-D.
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 4.47-48, p. 141.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 575

often, is the frequency of communion for the laity. Robert Pullen is

the best guide to the state of play on this subject. Even though he
does not name the authorities he cites, he gives an accurate report
of the tradition reprised by the canonists. This tradition states that
lay people should receive communion three times yearly, at Christ-
mas, Easter, and Pentecost. Robert offers no recommendation of his
own on the timetable, but stresses, rather, that what is most impor-
tant is receiving worthily, however frequently or infrequently
reception occurs.284 Finally, and the point is worth mentioning
mainly to illustrate a shift of major dimensions in the agenda of
writers on the Eucharist at this time, there is the evaporation of the
polemic against the Greek church, which had been given sustained
attention as recently as the final years of the eleventh century. Only
one scholastic in our period, Roland of Bologna, attacks the Greeks
for using leavened bread in the Eucharist; and he is the exception
who proves the rule.285
While in the field of Eucharistie theology, as in theology more
generally, one can find Peter Lombard characterized as the good,
gray mediator, striking a compromise or middle-of-the-road posi-
tion in relation to his contemporaries,286 a consideration of the
opinions he gives, or declines to give, on the range of Eucharistie
questions just discussed shows him taking sides, more often than
not, in areas where there was a range of views among the orthodox.
As we have seen, in addressing the critical debates stemming from
the defense of the real presence, he takes the relatively unpopular
line of Roland of Bologna on the matter of Christ's giving His
mortal body to His disciples at the Last Supper. And, he takes, and
sharpens considerably, the most recent and most Aristotelian way
of formulating the question of the Eucharistie change presented by
the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum, rather
than trying to coordinate it with other modes of framing the issue.
It is likewise from the latter two masters that Peter derives his
clearly stated distinction among the sacramentum, the res sacramenti,
and the existence of either without the other in the Eucharist. He is
closest of all to the Summa sententiarum here; for, as with its author,
he confines the physical medium to the species of bread and wine,
omitting the liturgical rite which the Sententiae divinitatis includes in

284
Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.7, PL 176: 968I>-969A. Cf. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 2.
c. 27-c. 30, c. 33-c. 51, PL 161: 167A-168A, 168B-171A.
285
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 231.
286
See, for instance, Domenico Bertello, 'La problematica eucaristica in Pier
Lombardo," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 149-61.
576 CHAPTER EIGHT

his definition of the sacramentum. As with both of these authors and

with Roland, he sees the res sacramenti as having two components,
using the language of the Sententiae divinitatis here. This res includes
the body and blood of the resurrected Christ, which it signifies and
contains, and the union of Christians in the church. He adds,
qualifying the latter point, that the societas ecclesiastica involved is
both the mystical body of Christ and its institutional manifestation,
and that this Christian community includes all those who are
predestined, called, justified, and glorified.287 This double res sac-
ramenti, he adds, is one of the reasons why there are two species in
the physical sacramentum. He agrees with the Victorine idea that there
is a similitude between the elements and their sacred significata.
The new twist he imparts to this theme is that both the bread and
the wine signify both aspects of the res sacramenti. The Eucharis-
tie bread and wine, in Peter's handling of this point, do not stand
for the ministry of the sacrament to different components of the
human constitution. Both severally and together, the two species
nourish the human body, and, in so doing, both species stand for
and transmit Christ's nourishment and support of the human soul.
At the same time, Peter agrees with the widely held idea that the
many grains and grapes that make up the elements stand for the
union of Christians in the society of the church. Another reason, in
his estimation, for the double physical medium, and here Peter
concurs as well with the Sententiae divinitatis in particular, is their
Christological symbolism and soteriological effects. Notwithstand-
ing the fact that Christ's body and blood are both fully present
under each species, He provides this mode of sacramental ministry
in the Eucharist in order to show that He assumed both a human
body and a human soul so as to redeem mankind in both body and
soul. In this connection, Peter accepts the idea that the bread
signifies and ministers to the salvation of the body and the wine
signifies and ministers to the salvation of the soul. He agrees with
the Abelardians, and those influenced by them, that the body and
blood of Christ are made available under the species of bread and
wine both as a test of faith and in the light of human sensibilities. In
his teaching here, Peter firmly links concomitance with his eccle-
sial, soteriological, and Christological agendas alike, as do the
Porretans, Master Simon, the Sententiae divinitatis, and the Summa
sententiarum, while at the same time connecting the point organically
with the notion of a double res sacramenti. Just as this does not make

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 8. c. 7, 2: 284-86.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 577

the Eucharist two sacraments in its institution, so concomitance

does not mean, for Peter, that the reception of both elements,
sequentially, constitutes more than one act of communion.288
Peter omits the topic of spiritual communion through the recep-
tion of the res tantum, concentrating on people who receive, in the
normal course of events, the res sacramenti by means of the sac-
ramentum. But he is fully appreciative of the point that the idea of
the sacramentum tantum provides a basis for analyzing the differential
effects of communion on people who bring different beliefs and
intention to the Eucharist. He also extends the notion of the double
res sacramenti into a broader understanding of what the worthy
communicant appropriates. Peter states firmly that the beliefs and
intentions of communicants do not alter the objective content of the
Eucharist, and criticizes thinkers who, in his estimation, have failed
to grasp and to support this principle. Human failings and limita-
tions cannot override what God has decided will happen when the
elements are consecrated. What they can do, and here Peter agrees
with the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum in their formula-
tion of the issue, is to interfere with the capacity of the recipient to
make a spiritual appropriation of that objective content.289 The
recipient must bring to communion both belief in general and belief
in the real presence in particular. Also, he must be morally and
intentionally in concord with Christ. Peter gives full weight to these
subjective considerations as controlling what the recipient derives
spiritually from the Eucharist. But he gives more weight to the
objectivity of the body and blood of Christ which even the un-
worthy communicant receives. For Peter, the same res sacramenti is
received by whoever communicates, but not to the same effect. He
is not presenting a view of the objective efficacy of the Eucharist so
sweeping that it is internalized the same way by all communicants
irrespective of persons. The unworthy, he agrees, receive to their
condemnation. As to what the worthy communicant receives, Peter
sides with those masters who see both a subjective and an objective,
an individual and a corporative, dimension to this question.290 The
masters to whom he comes the closest are Roland of Bologna and
the author of the Summa sententiarum, but he goes beyond both of

288
Ibid., d. 8. c. 7, d. 10. c. 2.8, d. 11. c. 3-c. 4, c. 6.2, 2: 285-86, 296, 299-300,
303. On the basis of Peter's recognition of the ontological as well as the redemptive
and ecclesial significance of the two species, Megivern, Concomitance and Communion,
pp. 134—38, has rightly stated that, in his hands, the doctrine of concomitance
comes of age.
289
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 12. c. 4.3, 2: 308.
290
Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 233-35. Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, pp.
578 CHAPTER EIGHT

them. Roland had seen three effects of communion, the engrafting

of the recipient into the church, the remission of sin, and the
sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit. The author of the Summa senten-
tiarum had seen the effects of communion as fourfold, the engrafting
of the Christian into the church, spiritual renewal, spiritual
nourishment, and eternal life. For his part, Peter combines the
personal union of the communicant with Christ and with Christ's
redemptive ministry with the union of the communicant with his
fellow Christians in the church, as a function of the fact that these
are the two aspects of the double res sacramenti which he receives. As
he appropriates these graces in his own inner life, they provide both
a spiritual remedy and a means of spiritual growth. The Eucharist,
Peter observes, was ordained both to remedy our daily infirmities
and to increase our virtue. As a pendant to baptism, the Eucharist
remakes us spiritually; it nourishes and redeems us in body and
soul; it perfects us in the good. It is not only an augmentation of
virtue and grace, but "it is the source and origin of all grace" (est
fons et origo totius gratiae).291 Peter's language has as a strongly
Victorine coloration here. But, while he certainly underscores the
ecclesial dimensions of the effects of communion, he inclines more
to the consequences of communion in the recipient's inner life than
the Summa sententiarum does, and more than Roland does, although,
with the latter, he sees these effects as both remedial and perfective.
Another area in which he follows the Hugonian line of argument
to a conclusion reflecting Victorine influence which is, none the
less, post-Victorine, is the relation of the Eucharist to its pre-
Christian parallels. Hugh himself is inclined to grant salvific power
more to circumcision than to the Old Testament precursors of
other Christian sacraments. When it comes to the paschal lamb,
the forerunner of the Eucharist, he is vague on whether it saved the
Israelites in more than a political sense.292 In the next generation,
the authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum are
more insistent on the point that Old Testament analogies, such as
the manna in the desert and the sacrifice of Melchisidech, are
ßgurae, which merely foreshadow the Eucharist and do no more.293
Peter refers to all these types as only pointing ahead to Christ and

122-23; and The Banquet's Wisdom, p. 90 takes too preclusively ecclesial a line on
this point, in our estimation.
291
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 8. c. 1, c. 7, d. 12. c. 6.1, 2: 280, 284-86, 310. The
quotation is at d. 8. c. 1, p. 280.
292
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.8.5, PL 176: 465A.
293
Sent. div. 5.3, p. 120*; Summa sent. 6.3, PL 176: 139C-D.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 579

to His sacrifice on the cross, which endows the Eucharist with a

unique salvific efficacy. He draws here with particular sharpness
the distinction between mere sign and efficacious sign which he draws
in his definition of sacraments in general. In order to accentuate the
supersession of all of these Old Testament préfigurations, he calls the
reader's attention to the fact that, while communion is now received
fasting, at the Last Supper Christ gave it to His disciples at the end
of the Passover meal. This unique circumstance, he notes, is de-
signed to point up both the continuity and the discontinuity be-
tween past and present; the recollection of a past, physical, and
collective deliverance merges with and is radically transformed into
a rite that is not only corporative and commemorative but is also a
transfusion of grace that sanctifies and glorifies the soul of the
individual communicant in the here and now.294
When Peter turns to the conditions validating the consecration of
the Eucharist by its minister, he displays considerable indepen-
dence from the theologians, largely of Victorine provenance, on
whom he draws in other areas of Eucharistie doctrine, whether to
edit, streamline, refine, or embroider upon their views. In this case
Peter sides wholeheartedly with the canonists, repudiating the
efforts of most mid-century theologians to admit priests with certain
kinds of canonical disqualifications to the Eucharistie ministry.
Peter stands foursquare with masters such as Gratian and Roland
of Bologna in barring heretics, schismatics, and excommunicates.
Heresy of any kind, and not just the failure to believe in the real
presence, is an obstacle to valid consecration on the part of the
minister just as much as it is to the salvific appropriation of
communion on the part of a recipient with the same liability. A
heretic, Peter agrees, cannot have the same understanding of the
Eucharist as an orthodox priest does, and cannot bring to it the
same intention as the church brings. Peter also sees the full cogency
of excluding schismatics and excommunicates. Men who are sepa-
rated from the Christian community cannot act for it. Nor can they
draw their congregations into a deeper unity with a church from
which they themselves are detached. Here, he affirms both the
canonists' conclusions and the rationale behind them. Peter also
assents to the principle that the moral failings of a duly ordained

294
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 8. c. 2-c. 3, c. 5, 2: 280-81, 283-84. Here, Peter
also reflects the canonical consensus on the reception of the Eucharist fasting; cf.
Ivo of Chartres, Panormia 1.152, PL 161: 1080C; Gratian, Decretum pars 3. d. 2. c.
54, col. 1133-34.
580 CHAPTER EIGHT

priest in good standing canonically are not an impediment,

although he gives a somewhat different reason than the canonists
do. It is not so much the dignity and authority of holy orders that is
the key, for him, as the idea that the efficacy of the sacrament lies in
God's power. The human minister plays an essentially in-
strumental role; and God will not allow His grace to be impeded by
the un worthiness of its intermediaries. Aside from this important
shift in emphasis, the other personal nuance Peter gives to this
essentially canonical reading of the topic is to distinguish between
moral weaknesses that do not affect the priest's capacity to conse-
crate the Eucharist validly and sins so heinous that they have
resulted in drastic disciplinary action, such as his unfrocking or
ejection from the church.295
Although, as we have just seen, Peter reflects a generous use of
the canonists, especially Gratian, at some points in his Eucharistie
theology, there are also some points which concern the canonists,
and, to a lesser extent, other theologians of the day, in which he
displays no interest. The nocturnal emission of a priest scheduled
to celebrate mass the following day is not on his agenda. Nor is the
dispensation concerning communion in one kind, by means of the
chalice, for the aged, infirm, or moribund as given in the ancient
canons and more recently by Paschal II in connection with his
renewal of the ban on intinction. Peter certainly supports the
contemporary consensus on utraquism and against intinction, but
without mentioning these exceptions.296 Nor does he refer in any
way to the argument of the Laon masters and Porretans concerning
the communion of infants. Another consensus position he reflects is
a disinterest in arguing with Greek Eucharistie practices. Noting
that water is added to the chalice to signify the Christian people
who are redeemed by Christ's blood, he adds that the Greeks do
not do this, but judges that the omission, if it stems from ignorance,
does not invalidate the celebration of the Eucharist.297
There are two points taken up concerning the Eucharist by some
masters in this period on which Peter is less conclusive, or outright
dismissive, even though the general orientation he takes toward
this sacrament might have suggested another course of action.
Along with Robert Pullen and the canonists, he considers the
matter of the frequency of communion for the laity. He provides a
fuller array of authorities than anyone else does here. In addition to

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 13. c. 1-c. 7, 2: 311-14.

Ibid., d. U.c. 6.2, 2:303.
Ibid., c. 5, 2: 301-03.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 581

citing the standard rule that Christians should communicate on

Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, to which he adds, on his own
account, at the very least, he brings in the position, ascribed to
Augustine although it is actually the view of Gennadius, recom-
mending communion every Sunday. Like Robert Pullen, he declines
to take an overt stand of his own on this issue, and emphasizes
that the essential point is to receive worthily.298 Still, the logic of
his handling of the topic is to suggest the desirability of frequent
communion, a conclusion which, had he articulated it more de-
cisively, would certainly have been in harmony with his general
inclination to encourage Christians to avail themselves of the ben-
efits of sacramental grace as much as they can, or as much as they
need. Perhaps even more surprising, given Peter's keen interest in
the speculative issues surrounding the defense of the real presence
doctrine and his own clear statement that the body and blood of
Christ do not depart from the consecrated species when they are
received by a communicant whose unworthiness prevents him from
appropriating the grace of the sacrament in a fruitful and salvific
way, is his handling of the question quid sumit mus. Peter can
evidently compass the idea that the objective content of the
Eucharist may be appropriated, or not, depending on the status of
the human recipient. But he regards the extension of this state of
affairs to a mouse as an entirely frivolous question. His response to
it is: "What does the mouse receive? What does it eat? God knows!"
(Quid ergo sumit mus? quid manducat? Deus novit).299 This effort to
dismiss the problem, even though, in principle, like Roland and the
authors of the Sententiae divinitatis and Summa sententiarum, he has the
means at hand to resolve it, did not prove determinative, either in
the middle of the twelfth century or in the sequel, when a fresh
supply of philosophical and scientific analysis would be brought to
bear upon it.
The unwillingness or inability of Peter and some of the masters
best equipped to do so to engage themselves with the last-men-
tioned question is a reminder of the fact that the more speculative
aspects of Eucharistie theology were less amenable to princi-
pled resolution in the 1150s than was the case with other problem
areas in which this sacrament provoked debate. Even the most
philosophically minded of the theologians recognized that the con-
ceptual resources available to them were adequate to do no more

Ibid., d. 12. c. 6.2, 2: 310-11.

Ibid., d. 13. c. 1.8, 2: 314. See Macy, "Of Mice and Manna," p. 160.
582 CHAPTER EIGHT

than to pose the questions connected with the real presence doctrine
clearly, but that they were not adequate to provide a resolution
of those questions or a comprehensible rationale for the mys-
teries they embody. Peter's contribution in bringing this idea to
consciousness is most notable in connection with the account of the
change in the elements. Neither he nor anyone else in this period
was able to articulate, with a similar degree of lucidity, the physical
and metaphysical difficulties embedded in the questions of which
body Christ gave to His disciples at the Last Supper and quid sumit
mus. In other areas of Eucharistie theology, Peter takes a stance
that is highly selective. He agrees with the consensus, or majority,
positions on the institution of the Eucharist, the real presence,
concomitance, communion in both kinds sequentially, and the idea
that the unbelieving or unworthy recipient receives to his damna-
tion. When it comes to the conditions that validate the consecration
of the Eucharist, he sides unhesitatingly with the canonists in
rejecting the efforts of other theologians to make the rules more
flexible. He finds it perfectly reasonable to rule out heretic,
schismatic, and excommunicate priests, although, in admitting the
validity of the Eucharistie ministry of immoral priests, he accents
the instrumentality, and not the authority, of the priest in this
context. Concerning the reception of the Eucharist, what makes for
its efficacious appropriation, and what, indeed, is appropriated
when the communicant receives worthily, Peter concurs with the
idea of the double res sacramenti found in Roland of Bologna, the
Sententiae divinitatis, and the Summa sententiarum, which he under-
stands as the personal and the ecclesiological dimensions of the
sacrament. The personal appropriations are the ones that he
emphasizes the most heavily. In so doing, he combines an appre-
ciation of the subjective dispositions which the communicant needs
to bring to the sacrament if it is to do its work of healing and
sanctifying in him with a heightened sense of the objectivity of the
content of the sacrament, which remains present in the physical
elements received by the unworthy communicant as well, although
he does not appropriate them. Peter's conviction that man lacks the
power to thwart God in blocking access to the sacramental grace
which God institutes and administers through the Eucharist is thus
coupled with his equally clear conviction that man can and must
dispose himself, in belief and attitude, so that he can make spiritual
use of this grace in his own inner life. Above all, Peter accentuates
the positive. He is far more interested in how the effect and the
affect of this sacrament of sacraments can be realized in the bond-
ing of members of the Christian community and, even more so, in
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 583

the sanctification and perfection of individual Christians, than he is

in discussing impediments or conditions that would deactivate or
delegitimize it.

Penance

Penance was a sacrament that also attracted considerable atten-

tion in the early twelfth century. Both the administration and the
theological understanding of this sacrament had undergone sub-
stantial change since the days of the early church.300 Penance had
originally been viewed as a single, solemn, public event, one that
was unrepeatable during the penitent's lifetime, and one that re-
quired heavy and protracted satisfaction before he could be re-
stored to communion. In the spread of Christianity to the Germanic
and Celtic peoples during the early Middle Ages, private confession
was introduced and penances remained lengthy and heavy. Up
until the late eleventh century, the fact that those performing
satisfaction were visibly distinct within the community led to a
tendency to regard the completion of satisfaction as the point at
which the penitent's sins were remitted. The early twelfth century
witnessed a shift in the way in which penance was understood and
practiced. Penances became much lighter; public, solemn confes-
sion became the exception not the rule; and attention shifted to the
intention of the penitent and the role of the sacrament in his
spiritual growth and development. With this, the idea that penance
was an unrepeatable sacrament came under sharp attack and was
demolished. Prior to this time, writers on penance had approached
it from a polemical perspective, or from the standpoint of the
practical guidelines for its administration and the appropriate
satisfactions to be required for particular sins. In the formulation of
a theology of penance, to all intents and purposes for the first time
in the history of the western church, the masters before and during
Peter Lombard's generation were not only expressing the need to
systematize this subject and to coordinate it with what they had
to say on the sacraments in general. They also wrote in order to

300
Good general overviews are provided by Paul Anciaux, La théologie du
sacrement de pénitence au ΧΙΓ siècle (Louvain: É. Nauwelaerts, 1949), pp. 164--231,
329-35; Polycarp Schmoll, Die Busslehre der Frühscholastik: Eine dogmengeschichtliche
Untersuchung (Munich: J. J. Lentnerschen Buchhandlung, 1909), pp. 3-14, 18-74;
Amédée Teetaert, La confession aux laïques dans l'église latine depuis le VIIIe jusqu'au
XIV' siècle: Etude de théologie positive (Wetteren: J. De Meester et Fils, 1926), pp.
1-101. This last-mentioned work covers much more than what is indicated by its
tide.
584 CHAPTER EIGHT

rationalize the changes from the ancient and more recent practice
which penance was actually undergoing in their own century.
While there existed a good deal of consensus on the idea that this
was the contemporary agenda on penance, there were still two
broad areas of disagreement. One was on the best kind of argument
to be made for the repeatability of penance and for the principle
that, if a sin were repeated, it could be remitted again, as needed,
by this sacrament. The other debate focused on when, in the
three-part process of contrition, confession, and satisfaction inher-
ited from Augustine and Gregory the Great, the penitent's sin was
remitted. In both of these areas, canonists and theologians some-
times came to the same conclusions, and relied on each other's
work. Yet, even on occasions when this was the case, their ways of
conceptualizing the common problems they faced were often quite
different. In addition, the study of penance in this period reveals a
geographical differentiation between the practices of the Roman
and the Gallican churches. The latter church was swifter in setting
aside ancient practices. The question of where a master taught in
this period and which theory and practice of penance he was most
familiar with is thus, on occasion, a factor that he may bring to bear
on the finding of his own solutions to the debated questions on
penance.
The fact that canonists and theologians, even when they agreed
on the need to rationalize the changes that penitential practice was
undergoing in their own day, tended to do so in ways reflecting
their respective guild mentalities is well illustrated in the first
debate, on the repeatability of penance, and the associated question
of the reviviscence of sins.301 Like the theologians, the canonists are
advocates of change here, and seek to make the remedy provided in
the sacrament of penance more generally available to Christians.302
They are well aware of the ancient strictures banning the repetition
of penance and confining it to a single, solemn penance. They are
equally familiar with the ancient argument that, if a person com-
mits the same kind of sin for which he did penance earlier, this
proves that his earlier penance was hypocritical and he cannot be
forgiven again. Gratian does not shrink from listing the authorities

301
For a survey of contemporary views on the reviviscence of sins and the
repeatability of penance, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 4 part 1: 195-228; Joseph
de Ghellinck, "La reviviscence des péchés pardonnés à l'époque de Pierre Lom-
bard et Gandulphe de Bologne," Nouvelle Revue Théologique 41 (1909): 400-08,
although the latter paper is not a reliable guide to Gratian's position.
302
The best study of this motive in twelfth-century sacramental theology is
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 585

who support these ancient policies. He thinks they are wrong. In

his view, penance should be available as often as it is needed, since
human vices do not get eradicated all at once. If the same kind of
sin recurs, he maintains, it should be confessed and forgiven.
Gratian's tactic in defending this position against the authorities on
the other side of the issue is a twofold one. In the first place, he uses
countercitation. Penance is not a subject on which he thinks he can
find a middle ground or on which he tries to harmonize irreconcil-
able opinions. He cites the anti-Donatist Augustine as his main
weapon against the opposition. In attacking this sect, Gratian
notes, Augustine had defined penance as the method of handling
post-baptismal sin, in order to refute the Donatist idea that rebap-
tism could be used to deal with it. In this particular instance, then,
Augustine had contrasted penance, as a repeatable sacrament, with
baptism, as an unrepeatable one. Augustine thus comes in very
useful as a means of undermining the ancient rules and their
supporters, who include Augustine himself, writing in other con-
texts. In Gratian's hands, the rejection of the repeatability of
penance becomes tantamount to a belief in Donatism, or in the idea
that one cannot fall from grace once having received it. This line of
argument, as we will see below, attracted theologians as well as
canonists. Far more indicative of his canonical mentality is Gra-
tian's conclusion that, although the ancient tradition is wrong, for
the reasons he has given, the existing rules should still remain on
the books. But they should not be enforced, on grounds of charity.
This recourse to the principle of dispensation from the rules, rather
than the outright abandoning of the rules and their replacement by
new ones, is a hallmark of the canonists' caution with respect to
past precedents.303 Roland of Bologna shows an analogous kind of
caution, in connection with local custom. Agreeing entirely with
Gratian on the desirability of repeated penance, he notes that there
is a difference between the Gallican church and "us," that is, the
Roman church, on the repeatability of penance. The Italians
adhere to the hard line on the practice of only a single, solemn,
public penance. While his own reasoning would support the idea
that the practice followed north of the Alps should be extended to
the whole church, Roland shrinks from advocating an institutional
revamping of the Roman practice.304

Häring,
303
"The Augustinian Axiom," pp. 87-117.
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. d. 2. c. 1-c. 20, d. 3. c. l^d. 4. c. 24, col. 1189-97,
1211-38.
304
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 237-43, 249-51.
586 CHAPTER EIGHT

For their part, the theologians display no such hesitations. They

feel perfectly free to reject out of hand the ancient tradition as
fundamentally incompatible with the purposes for which penance
was instituted. Yet, there are a number of ways in which they
defend this common conviction. The members of the school of
Laon, convinced, with Gregory the Great, that the cure of souls is
the art of arts (ars artium est regimen animarum) and that pastoral need
requires the repeatability of penance, invoke the principle of histor-
ical criticism as a basis for overturning the traditional rules. Back
in the time of the primitive church, they note, the idea of a single,
solemn, public penance may have made good pastoral sense. In
those days, only the truly committed risked membership in the
church. The early Christians, moreover, were largely adult con-
verts. The single, solemn, public penance was a useful device for
putting the fear of the Lord (propter incutiendem terrorum) into new
Christians who might think they could join the church without true
moral conversion. But, nowadays, the situation is a different one.
The church is no longer a community of zealots. The current needs
of real, and fallible, Christians have to be taken into account, lest
people fall into despair. The abandoning of the old practice is thus
a real and relevant desideratum. It is now better to rule that
penance should be received as often as people sin (item salubriter
provisam est ut quotiens peccarent totiens ad penitentiam recipirentur). Each
of the rules, the old rule to be set aside and the new rule to be
observed in its place, is suitable to the conditions of its own time
(suo tempore congruum est). The Laon masters also see that private
penance can be invoked to circumvent the old rule. If a person has
already done public penance for a serious sin, his subsequent
penances for subsequent sins can be done in private.305 This pres-
sure to change the rules, in the estimation of the Laon masters,
stems from the necessity of penance for salvation,306 given the
present membership of the church and its pastoral requirements.
Historical criticism is not the only tack that a theologian in
accord with this conclusion may take. Hugh of St. Victor offers a
different rationale for rejecting the unrepeatability of penance. He
combines a cogent appeal to reason with an exegetically based
attack on the opposition. Once a person does penance for a sin, he

305
Sentences of Plausible Authentkity, no. 200; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 383,
385-87, 5: 134, 280, 282-83. The first quotation is at no. 383, p. 280; the others are
at no. 200, p. 134. See also Sent. Anselmi 8, pp. 122-23.
306
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 363, 5: 272.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 587

observes, it is forgiven and God does not tax him with it again. But,
a person can commit the same kind of sin again. This is not the
same act of sin that he committed and repented of earlier, Hugh
stresses, but a different, if analogous, event. Consequently, the
penitent can repent and be pardoned again. When this happens,
neither the sincerity of the penitent nor the mercy of God on the
first occasion needs to be called into question. This being the case,
how, Hugh asks, did the ancient fathers make the error in judgment
that led them to the imposition of the rule declaring that penance
was unrepeatable? Hugh's technique for exposing this error is the
countercitation of authorities, all deriving from the Bible, in order
to show that the opposition's view is founded on an incorrect
understanding of Holy Scripture. While his basic motive is certainly
the desire not to limit the occasions of divine mercy in the lives of
Christians, his tactic is to put the debate on an exegetical founda-
tion, and one that can be subsumed by the principle that the Bible
cannot be read correctly if it is read so as to undercut God's
goodness and His wish to redeem and to sanctify mankind.307
The author of the Sententiae divinitatis provides yet another kind of
argument in support of the new twelfth-century consensus position,
an argument by definition. He cites as his definition of penance one
derived from Augustine and Gregory and one widely held at this
time. Penance, he states, is sorrow for past sin and the sincere
desire not to commit it again. This sincere desire is laudable; but
human beings are fallible. Since people can and do sin again, they
can and do repent again. Thus, by its very nature as defined,
penance is repeatable. Its repetition does not obviate the sincerity
of an earlier penance. Further, the master warns sternly, the opin-
ion of those who reject this conclusion is impious and merciless
(impia et immisericors sententia ista). As with the members of the school
of Laon, he invokes private penance as a remedy for fresh outbreaks
of repentance, although he draws a different distinction than they
do between public and private penance. It is not the intrinsic
seriousness of the sin that mandates public penance, in his view,
but the fact that sin so remedied has social implications or has
given public scandal. In contrast, private penance can be used,
repeatedly, for sins that affect only the sinner himself, whether the
sin is major or minor. The master does not have a recommenda-
tion, however, on how to deal with renewed occasions when sins
having a public impact need to be repented, since he retains the

Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.14.4, 2.14.9, PL 176: 556C-559D, 570C-578A.

588 CHAPTER EIGHT

rule that public penance can be performed only once.308

The author of the Summa sententiarum takes still another line of
attack, and one, perhaps, that is less persuasive than the aggressive
appeals to pastoral need, history, exegetical accuracy, and the
nature of penance as such made by the masters just mentioned. His
approach is to try to relativize the force of the prohibition of the
repeatability of penance by asserting that the authorities who advo­
cate that position were referring only to public penance. He ignores
the fact that they may have been writing before private penance
had been developed as a substitute for public penance, or as a
simultaneous option. In his estimation, this reading of the anti-
repeatability authorities clears the field for the defense of repeated
private penance, although the master offers no positive rationale for
that practice.309 Other masters simply reiterate the conclusions that
can be drawn from all the above arguments for the repeatability of
penance, without developing a rationale for it, as if the position
were in no need of support.310
The second major debate concerning penance in our period, and
it is one involving the substance of the doctrine and not just the
tactics of argument adopted to defend a particular mode of admin­
istration, concerns the question of when, in the standard three-
part event embracing contrition, confession, and satisfaction, the
sins of the penitent are remitted. Here, the terrain was divided
between the contritionists and the confessionists. The canonists
were inclined to take the confessionist position and the theologians
the contritionist one, but the battle lines were not drawn hard and
fast and, as we will see, there were some masters on both sides who
broke ranks.311 There are, to be sure, masters who ignore this

308
Sent. div.bA, pp. 142*-44*, 148*-51*. The quotation is on p. 143*. Other
authors who give the same definition of penance include Ivo of Chartres, Deere tum,
15. c. 1, PL 161: 857C; Peter Abelard, Ethics, p. 76; Sent. mag. GisleberH II 10.65, pp.
85-86; Master Simon, De sac., p. 22. Master Simon, ibid., pp. 22-24 agrees tnat
public penance is not repeatable but that private penance is, although without
taking up the reviviscence of sins.
309
Summa sent. 6.12, PL 176: 149B-150C.
310
Thus the Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 207; Sent. mag. Gisleberti Π 10.63-64, p. 85;
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.41, 6.24, PL 186: 847C-D, 862D-863A. Knoch, Die Einset­
zung, pp. 196-97 misinterprets Robert here.
311
An extensive and excellent survey of this debate is provided by Anciaux, La
théologie du sacrement de la pénitence, pp. 164—223. Briefer but still useful are Francesco
Carpino, "Consensi e critiche ad una teoria sull'assoluzione sacramentale nel sec.
XII," La Scuola Cattolica 67 (1939): 308-21; "Un tentativo al secolo XII per
valorizzare 1'assoluzione sacramentale," La Scuola Cattolica 66 (1938): 281-98; Jean
Gaudemet, "Le débat sur la confession dans la Distinction 1 du "de penitentia"
(Décret de Gratian, C. 33, q. 3)," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungßir Rechtsgeschichte,
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 589

debate, noting merely that the sacrament has these three parts and
venturing no opinion on which of them is of the essence in the
remission of sin. In this category we can find Honorius Augusto-
dunensis, and Ivo of Chartres.312 As the century progressed, how-
ever, the only writer on the sacraments who manages to ignore this
question is Master Simon. Gratian takes a commanding lead in the
elaboration of the confessionist view. He is important here not only
for the classic rendition of this position which he provides, but also
for the elaborate dossier of authorities pro and con which he
assembles, material on which other masters draw whether they
agree with him or not. After his exhaustive review of the evidence,
Gratian concludes that the authorities supporting contritionism
have made a good case, but only up to a point. They are useful in
rebutting a totally unqualified confessionist line that would ignore,
or undervalue, the penitent's attitude, while placing the emphasis
purely on the external acts of confession and the completion of
satisfaction. This pure confessionism Gratian rejects as too mechan-
ical. He asserts that true contrition is necessary if penance is going
to be efficacious and fruitful. But, if it is a necessary step, contrition
is only the first step. It is required but, for Gratian, it is not
sufficient. In particular, it is in the confession stage of the sacra-
ment that he locates the moment when the penitent's sins are
remitted, at the point when the priest pronounces the words of
absolution. As for the satisfaction, it may be public or private,
depending on whether the sins confessed were confessed in public
or in private. The distinction Gratian draws here combines the
criteria given by the Laon masters and the author of the Sententiae
divinitatis. Public penance is reserved for serious sins that affect
others; while private penance is for lesser sins that affect only the
penitent. Both types of sins, Gratian stresses, need to be confessed.
Confession perfects the sacrament which contrition initiates. It is
mandatory, otherwise the power of the keys vested in the priest-
hood would be frustrated. Further, refusal to confess is a sign of
pride that compounds the penitent's existing moral problems and

kanonistische Abteilung 71 (1985): 54-56; Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 2:

244-45, 264-65, 273; 4 part 1: 275-99; Longère, Oeuvres oratoires, 1: 257-58; Jean
Charles Payen, "La pénitence dans le contexte culturel des XII e et XIII e siècles:
Des doctrines contritionistes aux pénitentiels vernaculaires," RSPT 61 (1977):
399-428; Joseph A. Spitzig, Sacramental Penance in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
(Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1947), pp. 38-67.
312
Honorius, Elue. 2.72, p. 432; Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 2. c. 71, PL 161:
857C-902A.
590 CHAPTER EIGHT

indicates that his contrition is insincere. Confession, Gratian con-

cludes, is, to be sure, first offered to God in contrition. But it must
also be offered, orally, to a priest. Appreciative as Gratian is of the
need for a truly contrite disposition in the penitent, he holds that
penance, in order to be ratified and perfected, must be carried from
the internal forum of conscience to an external, judicial forum. The
penitent's placement of himself under the judgment of the priest is
necessary for him, if he wants his sins to be remitted. It is also
necessary for the church, in its guarantee of the proper exercise of
priesdy authority, both in the priest's loosing of the penitent's sin with
the words of absolution and in his assigning of the satisfaction.313
This argument requires Gratian to make the claim that the
contritionist authorities are not talking about contrition as the
point when the forgiveness of sins occurs, although that is precisely
what they are in fact doing, but merely about contrition as the
sacrament's necessary but not sufficient first step, as he holds it to
be. This is the way in which he seeks to adjust their view to the
confessionist position that he, and the confessionist authorities as
moderated by his analysis, maintain. Gratian's technique here
involves the same sort of creative misreading of authorities as what
we have found in the Sententiae divinitatis on the repeatability of
penance. This manhandling of the sources forces them into align-
ment with the largely institutional view of penance which Gratian
presents.314 It is the legitimate exercise of the priestly power of the
keys that is foremost in his defense of the necessity and centrality of
confession, not the moral education of the penitent. This emphasis
is reflected in a range of other topics which Gratian takes up à
propos of penance, which likewise view it from the standpoint of the
minister of the sacrament, not the recipient. He devotes a good deal
of attention in this connection to how priests should administer
penance, whether, if they are penitents themselves, they should
hear the confessions of others—a question which, in its very for-
mulation, suggests that Gratian has not fully emancipated himself
from the idea that penance means the completion of satisfaction—
and how to deal with a penitent who the priest suspects of making a
hypocritical confession or who tries to buy absolution by bribing
the priest. Gratian also has urgent words of support for the princi-

313
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. d. 1. c. 87-c. 89, col. 1181-89. Good accounts are
found in A. Debil, "La première distinction du De poenitentia de Gratiën," RHE
15 (1914): 251-73, 442-55; Gaudemet, "Le débat," pp. 54-56.
314
Gratian's handling, or mishandling, of the contritionist authorities is ana-
lyzed fully by Gaudemet, "Le débat," pp. 52-75.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 591

pie that the seal of confession must be respected at all costs. The
defense of this principle, in his estimation, requires the deposition
of a priest whose ability to maintain confidentiality is compro-
mised. Finally, penance, for Gratian, can and should be admin-
istered up to the point of death; and priests should not fail, in their
ordained responsibility as the ministers of penitential absolution, to
hear the confessions of the moribund.315 In all these areas, as well
as in his stress on confession as the point in the sacrament of
penance when the penitent's moral state is determined, Gratian
emphasizes the institutional, sacerdotal side of the transaction.
This point of view is quite typical of the canonists, both before
and after Gratian. Alger of Liège also takes a strongly confessionist
line, stressing that it is the priest who has the power to forgive sin,
to loose and to bind, an authority he possesses ex officio, regardless
of his personal merits.316 Roland of Bologna summarizes Gratian's
argument and refines it slightly. He devotes attention to the charity
and lack of dissimulation that must inform the contrition which
begins the process of penance. While the penitent's guilt (culpa) is
remitted in contrition, in his view, Roland agrees that confession
and satisfaction are sure signs (certa signa) ofthat state and that it is
they that remit the temporal punishment due for sin. Contrition
alone would suffice only in cases of necessity where confession and
satisfaction are impossible. Otherwise, time permitting, both are
required. When we sin, Roland observes, we sin against both God
and the church. Thus, when we repent, we must satisfy both, God
by our contrition and the church by our auricular confession and
satisfaction. While Roland grants more attention to contrition than
Gratian does, his outlook, if marginally less clericalist, is equally
institutional.317
Not all of the masters in the first half of the twelfth century who
concur with Gratian's confessionism are fellow canonists. Among
the theologians, both Robert Pullen and the author of the Summa
sententiarum offer strong support for this position. With Gratian,
they argue that all three steps are required for penance to be real
penance. Sincere contrition, in which none of the penitent's sins are
held back, begins the process and is a critical factor in his capacity
to make moral progress by means of this sacrament. But the
decisive moment, at which his sins are forgiven, occurs when the

315
Gratian, Decretum pars 1. d. 50, pars 2. d. 5-d. 7, col. 178-203, 1236-47.
316
Alger of Liège, De misericordia 1.64-65, pp. 237-38.
317
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 343-49; Summa c. 33. q. 3, pp. 193-94. Schmoll,
Die Busslehre, pp. 249-51 depicts Roland as more of a contritionist than he is.
592 CHAPTER EIGHT

priest pronounces the words of absolution following the penitent's

oral confession. Following Anselm of Laon here, Robert states that
the worthy celebration of this rite demands absolution (quoniam in
ipsa digne celebrata peccatorum est absolutio). Further, taking a firmly
clericalist line, both masters insist on the right and duty of the
priest to impose satisfaction. Robert acknowledges the fact that the
confessor may be delinquent and fail to do so. The Summa senten-
tiarum adds that the confessor may lack good judgment and may
impose an unsuitable satisfaction, noting as well that the penitent
may neglect to do or to complete the satisfaction that he does
impose, whether it is appropriate or not. If so, additional time in
Purgatory will be required of the penitent by God so that the
deficiency can be remedied. The only exception to the need for
confession and satisfaction, in Robert's eyes, is martyrdom, or the
case of the good thief on the cross, on the analogy with baptism by
desire and baptism by blood.318
Likewise, not all of the canonists are confessionists. Paucapalea,
the earliest commentator on Gratian, whose work dates to the years
between 1144 and 1150, takes the point about contrition being
sufficient in emergencies and contrition being the moment when
God removes the penitent's culpa also found in Roland of Bologna
and develops it into a defense of contritionism that does not square
with Gratian's position.319 Without repeating the thoroughgoing
analysis of the confessionist authorities on whom Gratian bases his
own solution, he summarizes the contritionists' arguments and
presents his own view as a logical inference from them. While he
does not seem particularly comfortable with the conclusions he
draws, he presents them as a position which he can find no way of
refuting or relativizing, being unwilling, evidently, to make use of
Gratian's own strategy of argument here.
Indeed, discomfort with the logical corollaries of contritionism
can also be found in some of the most ardent defenders of that

318
Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.30-31, 6.52-53, 6.59-61, 7.1-5, PL 186: 851D-853C,
902R-904D, 908C-912C, 911C-913A. The quotation is at 6.61, 912C. Schmoll,
Die Busslehre, pp. 60-64 presents Robert as offering a more balanced view than he
does. See also Summa sent. 6.10, 6.13-14. PL 176: 146D-147B, 152A-153A. Cf.
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 64, 5: 57, where it is stated that forgiveness of sins
does not occur "nisi per ministros ecclesie solvitur." On Anselm, see Francesco
Carpino, "Una difficoltà contro la confessione nella scolastica primitiva: Anselmo
di Laon e la sua scuola," Divus Thomas ser. 3 a , 16 (1939): 94-103.
3,9
Paucapalea, Summa über das Decretum Gratiani, ed. Johann Friedrich von
Schulte (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1965 [repr. of Giessen, 1890 ed.]), p. 132. For the
dating of this text, see Schuite's intro., pp. viii-x.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 593

position. What troubles them is the fact that they are hesitant to
dismiss the desirability of confession and satisfaction. But they face
real difficulties in trying to explain why these steps in the sacrament
should be retained, given their conviction that the contrition stage
is when the penitent is forgiven by God. Proponents of contrition-
ism deal with this problem more or less cogently. The members of
the school of Laon are a good index of the unsuccessful effort to
resolve this dilemma. In general, they find Anselm of Laon's posi-
tion unacceptable. It is the intention of the penitent that they
accent. What inspires God to remit his sin is his true sorrow for sin
and for having offended God. If, after having been released from his
sin on account of such true contrition, the penitent fails to proceed
to confession and satisfaction, God does not withdraw the forgive-
ness He has already given; nor does God grant it conditionally.320
But, side by side with this assertion that contrition is sufficient in
the eyes of God, the Laon masters make other statements suggest-
ing the opposite. Noting that, when we sin, we sin in thought, word,
and deed, and so we must do penance in thought, word, and, deed,
they also say that, while contrition provides the cleansing (ablutio),
God does not actually remit the sin until the penitent is absolved by
the priest.321 Another member of the school makes the equally
confusing observation that, while the confession made to God in the
contrite penitent's soul purges sin, it remains for the priest to teach
how this sin is to be purged.322 At the same time, one can find
points made by the Laon masters suggesting adherence to the
opinion that penance can be defined as satisfaction, that it is the
works done under this heading that rise to God as an evening
sacrifice, and that a penitent has not truly repented and is not to be
given communion until the yoke of satisfaction has been lifted from
his shoulders.323
Hugh of St. Victor manifests some of the same kinds of incon-
sistency and self-contradiction as we have just seen in the school of
Laon, a fact reflected in the inability of modern scholars to decide
whether he is a contritionist or a confessionist, or something in
between.324 On the one hand, he presents the contritionists as

320
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 383, 5: 280-81.
321
Sent. Anselmi 8, pp. 121-25; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 64, 363, 389, 5:
56-57, 272-73, 280.
322
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 199, 5: 134.
323
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 384, 385-88, 5: 281, 281-82. Knoch, Die
Einsetzung, pp. 58-61 does not appreciate these inconsistencies.
324
Carpino, "Un tentativo," pp. 281-95 presents Hugh as a would-be confes-
sionist; Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 103-09 sees him as a full-fledged confessionist;
594 CHAPTER EIGHT

people seeking to avoid the biblical injunction to confess sins, one

to another, and as thinkers who have abandoned patristic as well as
apostolic authority. Yet, in his own treatment of penance, he dis-
tinguishes between interior and exterior penance. The first is the
grief and sorrow for sin and the firm purpose of amendment.
Interior penance, for Hugh, is penance proper. Exterior penance is
its fruit, and works to correct the sin. Hugh sees exterior penance as
satisfaction, omitting confession here, and states that the satisfac-
tion is not penance proper. Having made that point, he next asks
what happens to people who do not complete their penance in this
life, thus equating penance with satisfaction. The scenario he has in
mind is not that of a person whose completion of satisfaction is cut
off by death but rather that of a person given an inadequate
satisfaction by an imprudent confessor. Hugh's response is that
God will not tax this penitent with the inadequacies of his priest.
Anyway, leftover satisfaction can be dealt with in Purgatory.325
After pausing to discuss other aspects of the sacrament, Hugh
returns to this issue later in the same section of the De sacramentis.
There, he asserts that what is efficacious in penance is repentance,
not satisfaction. To be sure, a good will seeks to express itself in
good deeds. But, should the good deeds be thwarted or incomplete,
the good will suffices, and it is on this basis that God judges the
penitent. In addressing the question of when, in the penitential
process, the remission of sin occurs, he ventilates both sides of the
debate and takes what he tries to present as a compromise view,
which has the effect of muddying the waters. With the contrition-
ists, he states that it is contrition which is efficacious. Also, he
points out, it is God Who forgives, not the priest. But, as in all
sacraments, so here as well God has chosen to use physical means
as channels of His grace. In this case, God associates Himself with
the ministry of the priest, and the forgiveness He grants is given
through the words of absolution spoken by the priest. Further,
satisfaction must be done, in Hugh's estimation, even though he
has stated that it is not the sacrament proper. The necessity of
satisfaction is offered to buttress the argument for the necessity of
confession, as the point at which sin is forgiven officially. The
exchange between the penitent and the confessor reflects the peni-
tent's humility, good faith, and willingness to undertake satisfac-
tion. It also provides the occasion for the priestly exercise of the

Schmoll, Die Busslehre, pp. 47-57 argues that he is a contritionist. None of these
authors notes Hugh's inconsistencies.
325
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.14.1-3, PL 176: 549D-556C.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 595

power of the keys. The priest not only absolves, assigns satisfaction,
and counsels the penitent; Hugh presents him also as interceding
with God on the penitent's behalf, persuading God to forgive the
sinner in addition to persuading the sinner to repent. Here, Hugh
neglects to note that, at this point in the process, by his own
account, the penitent no longer needs to be so persuaded. And,
having ordained this mode of remedy for post-baptismal sin, nei-
ther does God.326 This effort at finding a middle road between
confessionism and contritionism thus emerges as a non-solution,
rather than as a coherent and viable compromise between those
two positions.
Judging from his overall stance on the role of intentionality in
ethics, and in sacraments such as baptism, we are not surprised to
find in Peter Abelard a staunch defender of contritionism. What is
surprising in his handling of penance is his unwillingness, or inabil-
ity, to press or even to follow the logic of his own position.327 As
with the author of the Sententiae divinitatis, he states that contrition is
the very definition of this sacrament; penance is nothing other than
the sorrow for sin in the penitent's mind. Furthermore, and here
Abelard opposes the school of Laon, Robert Pullen, and the author
of the Summa sententiarum, who allow that timor initialise or fear of
eternal punishment, can be an acceptable trigger to contrition, at
least if it leads to love of God as the penitent's motive, Abelard
asserts that, in order for contrition to be fruitful, contrition must
stem from the love of God and the hatred of sin because it offends
God, and not in any sense from the fear of punishment. If that state
of contrition is present, for Abelard, God grants the remission of
sin: "In the sigh of inner repentance inspired by charity we are
instantly reconciled to God for our past sins" (In hoc statim gemitu
Dei reconciliamur et precedentis venium assequimur) .328 Abelard follows up

326
Ibid., 2.14.6-8, PL 176: 560C-570C.
327
Abelard's inconsistencies on penance have been noted by Schmoll, Die
Busslehre, pp. 28-35; Sikes, Peter Abailard, pp. 196-200; Weingart, "Abailard's
Contribution," pp. 173-77; The Logic of Divine Love, pp. 197-200; Amédée de
Zedelghem. "L'Attritionisme d'Abélard," Estudis Franciscans 35 (1925): 178-84,
333-45.
328
Peter Abelard, Ethics, p. 76; the translation is Luscombe's, p. 77. On this
point, see Amédée de Zedelghem, "Doctrine d'Abélard au sujet de la valeur
morale de la crainte des peines," Estudis Franciscans 36 (1926): 108-25. For the
countervailing position on fear in the masters he opposes, see Sentences of the School
of Laon, no. 383, 5: 280-81; Robert Pullen, Sent. 5.30-31, PL 186: 851D-853C;
Summa sent. 6.10, PL 176: 146C-D. In agreement with Abelard on this point we
find not only disciples of his such as Hermannus, Sent., pp. 156-57 but also Master
Simon, De sac., pp. 24—25.
596 CHAPTER EIGHT

this forthright assertion of contritionism with the point that, since

contrition involves a complete inner reorientation toward the good,
one cannot be forgiven if he retains any unacknowledged sins on his
conscience, a consensus position. The forgiveness applies to the
remission of the eternal punishment due for sin, but not to the
temporal punishment. This claim establishes why satisfaction is
needed and provides Abelard with the occasion to observe, as other
masters do, that a person who dies before completing his satisfac-
tion is detained in Purgatory on that account.329
It is not, however, the relations between contrition and satisfac-
tion but the relations between contrition and confession where the
real, and perceived, problems lie in Abelard's doctrine of penance.
Despite the clarity and force of his contritionist claims, Abelard
wants to argue that confession is still necessary, even though the
penitent's sin has already been forgiven before he speaks to the
priest. It must be said that, notwithstanding his reputation as a
logician, Abelard is aware of the difficulties he imposes on himself
in seeking to make confession mandatory, and he makes heavy
weather of his argument here, jumping from one idea to another in
a kind of scatter-gun effort to distract the reader from the logical
insufficiency of any of the claims he makes. There is a pastoral
argument for confession, he notes: the prayers of the confessor will
assist the penitent. There is an argument for the moral education of
the penitent: the knowledge that we have to confess our sins may
serve as a deterrent to sin, for going to confession is difficult and
embarrassing. In this sense, the act of confessing is part of the
satisfaction. Moving to an ecclesiastical argument, Abelard notes
that priests have the right and duty to impose satisfaction, and
penitents have the duty to accept correction.330
This last-mentioned observation leads Abelard to a discussion of
the power of the keys, where he gets even more deeply ensnared in
contradicitions which he recognizes and shrinks from resolving.
Having noted the penitent's duty to accept correction, Abelard asks
what one should do if one cannot find a confessor who is religious,
discreet, and trustworthy, and who is intelligent enough to impose
a suitable satisfaction and to counsel the penitent effectively. This is
by no means a frivolous question. Abelard's posing of it here
reflects the fact that, the Gregorian reforms notwithstanding, the
improvement in the quality of clergymen at which they aimed was

Peter Abelard, Ethics, pp. 76-98.

Ibid., pp. 9B-100.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 597

being outpaced by the rising expectations of the Christian people to

whom these clerics ministered. Having aired this real and vexing
question, Abelard says that, even if a good priest cannot be found,
one should go to confession anyhow. Agreeing with Hugh here, he
states that God will not charge the failings of His ministers to the
penitent's account. Listing in some detail, and even with some
relish, the assorted sacerdotal shortcomings which penitents may
encounter in the practice of confession, he still insists that they are
not excuses for refusing to confess to an unworthy priest, even
though this conclusion is incompatible with the educational and
pastoral benefits which the penitent is supposed to derive from the
encounter.331 With respect to the power of the keys on the priest's
side of the transaction, Abelard argues that, in penance, the role of
the priest is not to loose and bind, on the grounds that it is God
Who does the loosing, and that He does it in the contrition stage of
the sacrament. In his view, the priest exercises the power of the
keys here only in connection with the imposition of satisfaction,
which falls under the heading of the key of discretion, not the key of
power. But, here Abelard notes that not all priests in fact possess
the attribute of discretion. Some priests lack the intelligence and
good judgment needed to exercise their faculties, in the administra-
tion of the sacrament of penance, in a seemly and circumspect
manner. Now, Abelard continues, if individuals do not possess
these attributes by nature, the reception of the sacrament of holy
orders on their part does not in itself remove that regrettable defect.
Abelard here tries to glide away from the dilemma in which he
leaves penitents confronted by such inadequate priests by trying to
turn the discussion toward the moral problems that unworthy
priests create for themselves. But, as for the moral problems that
they create for others, Abelard simply abandons the point. The
final observation he has to make about the power of the keys creates
another inconsistency, however. As we have seen, he has left the
power to loose and to bind, understood as the power to excom-
municate and to readmit to communion, out of the reckoning à
propos of penance. There is good reason for this omission, since this
dimension of the power of the keys is not really pertinent to pen-
ance. Still, Abelard brings it up at the close of his analysis of that
sacrament. The power to excommunicate and readmit, he states, is
canceled when it is exercised unjustly. This observation may or
may not have been included as a reference to Abelard's own

Ibid., pp. 106-10.

598 CHAPTER EIGHT

misadventures. In any event, he does not see that a parallel judg-

ment might be made, for the sake of logical symmetry, in the case of
the unworthy or deficient exercise of the key of discretion, despite
the harm that it may do. Why the power of discretion should not be
subject to the same logical analysis as the power of excommunica-
tion and readmission is a matter that Abelard declines to discuss.332
He ends by leaving penitents in a double bind by insisting on the
necessity of confession, a requirement that does not follow from his
definition of penance itself, and which, in the event of a counterpro-
ductive spiritual encounter with an indiscreet confessor, he fails to
justify.
Precisely the same problems are found in Abelard's disciples,
mitigated only to the extent that their treatment of this topic is
much more abbreviated than his own, giving them fewer opportu-
nities to get ensnared in their own reasoning. Still, the basic contra-
diction remains. They are contritionists; they see contrition as valid
only if it is inspired by the love of God; they seek to insist on the
necessity of confession; they recognize the fact that priests may not
possess the key of discretion in actuality; and they leave the peni-
tent in the same impasse as Abelard does.333 The same can be said
for the Porretans and for Gilbert of Poitiers himself, whom his
disciples cite as teaching that sins are forgiven in the contrition
stage of penance. They agree, but likewise require confession and
satisfaction and are not successful in explaining why, given their
recognition of the fact that discretion is no respecter of persons and
that holy orders are no guarantee that an individual will possess it.
One of the Porretan masters describes priests as having the official
function of discerning {officium discernandi); but he leaves the reader
in the dark as to how priests will be able to exercise this function if
they lack the mental and moral wherewithal required to do so.334
We can see little real effort to break the log-jam which the
mid-century defenders of contritionism create for themselves until
we get to the Sententiae divinitatis. The author of this work is an
unqualified contritionist. After reviewing with great thoroughness
the arguments on both sides, he invokes the definition of penance as
contrition noted above, and states firmly that sins "are remitted in
contrition of the heart" (dimissa sunt in cordis contritione). He adds
forthrightly that confession and satisfaction "have no effect on the

332
Ibid., pp. 112-26.
333
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 156-65; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 207-16.
334
Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 10.57-62, 10.66-67, pp. 84-85, 86. The quotation is at
10.67, p. 86.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 599

remission of sins" (valet quidem non ad peccatorum remissionem). One

should go to confession, he recommends, not because it has any
effect on the forgiveness of sin, but so as not to put the institutions
of the church in despite.335 In dealing with the problems surround-
ing priests handled so inconclusively by the Abelardians and Porre-
tans, this master imports into the discussion an authority whom
they do not cite, the De vera et falsa poenitentia. This work, written
anonymously in the mid-eleventh century, was ascribed to Augus-
tine. It validates a principle that had been part of the orthodox
consensus for centuries, and one which was to remain there during
and after the middle of the twelfth century if as a minor current of
opinion, confession to a lay person. Says the master, citing the
Pseudo-Augustine, if a priest is not available, confess to a deacon. If
a deacon is not available, confess to a neighbor (confiteatur proximo).
Such a confession will be valid and worthy so long as the proper
contrition is present and the desire to confess to a priest is present,
were one at hand.336 Further, the master adds that if the penitent
knows that a particular priest is excommunicated or is under a
disciplinary ban, as a punishment for sin, he should avoid that
priest and seek another confessor. But, he warns, one should not
avoid a priest simply because one does not like him personally.
Also, priests should not seek to rob their brother priests of their
penitents, reaping a harvest where someone else has sown.337 Dis-
playing more interest in the priest's side of the transaction than is
typical of the theologians, the master considers what priests ought
to bear in mind when they judge the severity of the sins confessed to
them and assign satisfaction. The conditions, in his view, should be
the quantity, quality, place, time, and occasion of the sin and the
person who has committed it. With respect to the person, the priest
should consider the individual's office, age, sex, wealth, and cir-
cumstances. Also, he should consider whether the sin was commit-
ted in thought only or also in act, whether it implicated or affected
others, and whether it was committed in public or in private.338
These concerns give the master's treatise on penance as much the
look of a penitential guidebook for confessors as the look of a

335
Sent. div. 5.4, pp. 145*-48*. The quotations are on p. 148*.
336
Ibid. 5.4, pp. 151*—52*. The quotation is on p. 152*. For the background on
confession to lay people, see Teetaert, La confession aux laïques, pp. 1-142. For the
De vera et falsa poenitentia and its influence, see in particular ibid., pp. 50-56,
102-42; on the Sent, div., see pp. 134-37.
337
Sent. div. 5.4, p. 152*.
338
Ibid., 5.4, pp. 152*-55*.
600 CHAPTER EIGHT

sacramental theology. He does not raise the issue of the power of

the keys or the problem of priestly indiscretion in connection with
penance. Still, it has to be said that this master goes farther toward
assisting contritionism to a cogent resolution of its difficulties than
does any of his predecessors. His influence on Peter Lombard is
considerable.
The Sententiae divinitatis is not, however, the only recent source on
which the Lombard draws in elaborating his doctrine of penance.
Another author whom he uses extensively, both in a positive sense
and in order to turn his argument on its head, is Gratian.339 Abelard
receives both criticism and homage and Hugh of St. Victor and the
Summa sententiarum are treated as helpful only intermittently. While
the Lombard has been characterized as doing no more, and no less,
than summarizing the aspects of the doctrine of penance on which
consensus reigned in his time,340 in actual fact he does much more.
In areas where he agrees with the consensus position, he anchors
his points in his own way, and with a richer array of authorities
than is generally the case. In addition, he takes a forceful stand in
debated areas, a stand which is typically both more extreme and
more coherently defended than is usual among recent and contem-
porary masters.
One striking and unusual feature of Peter's handling of penance
is that he offers his fullest definition of the sacramentum and the res
sacramenti at the end of his treatise on the subject, rather than at the
beginning. While he has a clear understanding all along of how he
proposes to define these terms, and one that certainly controls his
exposition of the topic throughout, Peter adopts this strategy be-
cause he seeks to present the definitions with which he concludes as
following logically from the analysis and argumentation that pre-
cede them. At the start of his discussion, then, he confines himself
to observing that penance was given to help people reapproach
God after they had distanced themselves from Him by falling into
the regio dissimilitudinis of post-baptismal sin. Penance is both a
sacrament and a virtue of the mind. The exterior rite is the
sacrament.341 The virtue of the mind is interior; and here Peter

339
This point is noted, correctly, by Debil, "La première distinction," pp.
252-53, 255-56; Gaudemet, "Le débat," p. 66.
340
Thus Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 2: 244-45, 264-65, 273.
341
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 14. c. 1, d. 19. c. 1.3, 2: 315-16, 365-66. Alister E.
McGrath, Iustitia dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1: 93 is thus incorrect in stating that Peter
Lombard's definition of penance excludes a physical element.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 601

joins the Sententiae divinitatis and Abelard in reprising the Augustin-

ian and Gregorian definition of contrition as sorrow for sin and a
sincere purpose of amendment. He thus agrees, at the outset, that
contrition is of the essence in penance, by definition; but the idea of
calling penance a virtue of the mind is not found in any current
canonist or scholastic theologian. It bears a closer affinity to the
treatment of this question by monastic authors such as Bernard of
Clairvaux, who is interested in the subjective disposition involved
in the state of compunction which he seeks to inflame in his
audience in his writings on this subject.342
This understanding of contrition sets the stage for Peter's treat-
ment of the reviviscence of sins and the repeatability of penance.
He agrees with Hugh of St. Victor's clarification of the topic of
reviviscence. When the same type of sin is committed again, this is
not the identical sin which was committed on another occasion.
The fact that the earlier sin may have been remitted in penance
does not obviate the need, and the desirability, of returning to this
remedy, if circumstances should require it subsequently. One
should not, he warmly agrees, cut off access to the channels of grace
which God in His mercy has made available. Peter also concurs
with Hugh, and with everyone else, that for a repeated reception of
penance to be fruitful, or for any reception of penance to fruitful, for
that matter, a proper attitude is required, which includes the
willingness to admit and to repent of all one's sins, holding nothing
back, except for sins already remitted in penance, unless they have
been repeated. The only stipulation he adds to this common
teaching is that a penance will not be fruitful if the penitent,
knowing that he can have future recourse to the sacrament, fails to
bring to his reception of penance a truly sincere purpose of amend-
ment. Peter also seconds wholeheartedly Gratian's argument on
the repeatability of penance, making use of his dossier of author-
ities. Noting that the pro-repeatability authorities can offer cogent
pastoral and moral reasons in defense of their position, while those
who would limit penance to the single, solemn, public penance can
offer no rationale at all for this restriction, he likewise caps his
conclusion by citing the anti-Donatist Augustine, observing that
the doctrine of nonrepeatability gives lefthanded support to a
Donatist, sectarian view of the church. His argument is an effective

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 14. c. 1-c. 3.1, 2: 315-18; Jean Leclerq, "S.
Bernard et la confession des péchés," Collectanea Cistercensia 46 (1984): 122-30;
Schmoll, Die Busslehre, pp. 23-24.
602 CHAPTER EIGHT

synthesis of the pastoral considerations put forth by the school of

Laon, the moral analysis of Hugh, and the broad-gauged grasp of
tradition afforded by Gratian, not to mention Gratian's elegant use
of the anti-Donatist argument. He is, however, more interested in
invoking reason than historical criticism in rejecting ancient tradi-
tion and does not follow Gratian in urging that the old rules should
remain on the books but that Christians should be systematically
dispensed from observing them. Rather, he argues for the repeat-
ability of penance tout court, and the abandonment of any restric-
tions on that principle. Peter rejects the efforts to hedge the idea of
the single, solemn penance by introducing the possibility of using
private penance repeatedly for certain kinds of sins, introduced by
less independent-minded masters. He boldly sweeps away their
distinctions. Since we should not spurn the grace provided in
penance for our spiritual healing and spiritual growth, Peter con-
cludes, we can retain the single, solemn penance if we wish to. But,
in his hands, this rite has become fundamentally irrelevant. Re-
peated private penance replaces it as the norm. It is to be used as
often as it is needed, and for all kinds of sins.343 This solution had the
decided effect of clearing the air, paving the way to the dropping of the
single, solemn, public penance altogether as a practice in the western
church, one that is optional, and one that is essentially marginal to
the way in which penance is normally administered and received.
Here, while certainly confirming the contemporary consensus posi-
tion on the repeatability of penance, Peter pushes beyond the
boundaries set on this subject by his compeers. He succeeds in
placing the discussion of this aspect of the sacrament in a new state
of equilibrium. By anchoring his solution in the positive pastoral
and moral rationale that supports it, and by urging that the author-
ities who defend the ancient practice be rejected out of hand
because of their inability to adduce any coherent reasons for the
rule they advocate, Peter effectively raises the ante to the point
where his opponents are forced to leave the game.
On the matter of confessionism versus contritionism, as we have
seen, there was no consensus in this period, either on the particular
point in the penitential process when sins are remitted or, for the
contritionists, on the way to support the idea that confession and
satisfaction are desirable practices even though they are held to
take place after the remission is granted and therefore to have no
effect on it. In this area Peter emerges as a staunch contritionist,

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 14. c. 3.2-d. 15. c. 7, d. 22. c. 1, 2: 318-36, 386-88.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 603

and as the only supporter of that side of the debate in the mid-
twelfth century who refuses to shrink from the logic of its claims,
who goes on to develop a coherent and non-contradictory theory of
the relations between contrition and the other two traditional ele-
ments in the penitential rite.344 In taking his stand on this con-
troversy, Peter adheres consistently to the principles he advocates,
and does not hesitate to offer arguments that are relatively extreme
in their defense. Peter's opening salvo is a quotation from John
Ghrysostom, actually the Pseudo-Chrysostom, cited as well by the
Laon masters and by Peter himself in his treatment of sin, in
general, under the heading of ethics, a point making it clear that he
intends to consider the remission of sins in penance in a parallel
manner. When we sin, says the authority, we sin in thought, word,
and deed. And so, perfect penance involves compunction of heart,
oral confession, and satisfaction. Both inner and outer penance
must be sincere, an idea on which he amplifies by noting that we
should not confess one sin to one priest and another to another.345
Moving at once to the heart of the matter, he next introduces a trio
of related questions. Can sins be remitted without confession and
without satisfaction? Can one confess just to God, purely by one's
contrition of heart, without a priest as accessory? Can one confess
to a lay person?
Peter plans to answer each of these questions with a resounding
"yes." He recognizes the fact that, in order to do so successfully, he
needs to take account of the authorities and arguments on the other
side of the debate and to de-fang them convincingly. In dealing
with the first two of these questions, he borrows not only from
Gratian's dossier but also takes a leaf from his book, methodologi-
cally speaking. Peter's own chosen solution is that the remission of
sin is a gift of God that is given in the contrition stage of penance.
The gift is given and received within the penitent's heart. If the
penitent has time, he should also confess to a priest, although the
sin has already been remitted. Peter presents this issue as if peni-
tents are people with such busy schedules that, for perfectly legiti-
mate reasons, they may be unable to go to confession. And, just as
Gratian "adjusts" the contritionist authorities he cites to make

344
Good accounts of Peter's stance in the confessionist-contritionist debate are
provided by Anciaux, La théologie du sacrement de la pénitence, pp. 223-31, 329-35;
Schmoll, Die Busslehre, pp. 67-74; and Spitzig, Sacramental Penance, pp. 67-85.
Briefer but also useful accounts are Carpino, "Consensi e critiche," pp. 321-25;
Gaudemet, "Le débat," pp. 56-57; Longère, Oeuvres oratoires, 1: 257-58.
345
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 16. c. 1-c. 3, 2: 336-40.
604 CHAPTER EIGHT

them read as if they were supporting the idea of contrition as a

necessary first step, but not as the point when the sin is remitted, so
Peter likewise "adjusts" the confessionist authorities, interpreting
them to mean that confession is not required but only recom-
mended, as a desirable event taking place after the sin has been
remitted in contrition, and also as taking place if time permits.346
We may say, in surveying this line of attack, that if the fudging of
authorities comes into play here, alongside of the exposure of their
relevance or irrelevance or their possession or lack of a cogent
rationale, this process occurs on both the contritionist and the
confessionist side of the debate.
Moving to the question of confession to a lay person, Peter
appropriates the argument of the Sententiae divinitatis derived from
the De vera et falsa poenitentia, yokes it with the analysis of the power
of the keys found in Abelard's Ethics, and goes both authors one
better. To the point that a lay person may be a substitute for a
priest if a priest is not available Peter adds the idea that this
substitution may also be made if priests are thick on the ground but
if none can be found who possess wisdom and discretion, that is to
say, who possess sound judgment, and not just authority. In such a
case, he recommends, one should confess to a friend who possesses
the requisite mental and moral attributes (Quaerendus est enim sacer-
dos sapiens et discretus, qui cum potestate simul habeat iudicium; qui si forte
defuerit, confiteri debet socio).347 In any event, Peter emphasizes, while
it is a good idea, confession is not necessary, "since the sin has
already been forgiven in contrition" (cum in contritione iam deletum sit
peccatum). Confession and satisfaction, that is to say, may be helpful
in increasing caution and humility in the penitent's moral life, but
they are not strictly necessary.348 In explaining this point, Peter
observes that we need to understand what role this non-requisite
confession plays in penance. He begins by emphasizing here, as he
does in the case of the other sacraments, that the confessor plays a
purely instrumental role. It is God Who remits the sin; and He does
so before the penitent goes to confession. If the confessor is a priest,
then, in what sense does he exercise the power of the keys in the
sacrament of penance? Since God has lifted the penitent's eternal
punishment, in what sense does the priest loose and bind? In

346
Ibid., d. 17. c. 1-c. 2.3, 2: 342-50.
347
Ibid., c. 4, 2: 351-55. The quotation is at c. 4.6, p. 352. A good analysis of
Peter's handling of this point is given by Teetaert, La confession aux laïques, pp.
137-42.
348
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 17. c. 5, 2: 355.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 605

Peter's estimation, and here he takes the point farther even than
Abelard does, the key of loosing and binding is exercized by priests
only in the acts of excommunication and readmission to commun-
ion. This authority is given to all priests ex officio^ irrespective of
their personal qualifications. The other key, the key of discretion, is
given only to some priests. These individuals are men who already
possess this quality. If they lack it naturally, holy orders, unfortu-
nately, does not supply them with it. If that is the case, as Peter has
already observed, they cannot display a soundness of judgment
which they personally lack in the counsel they may give or in the
satisfaction they may impose on a penitent. This is why a discreet
and intelligent lay confessor should be substituted in that event. If
a priest does possess discretion, Peter concedes, then he does indeed
manifest it ex officio in the conduct of these pastoral functions. But,
and this is the critical point, for Peter, in pronouncing the words of
absolution, priests are not loosing or binding. They do not loose
and bind in confession. What they do, and all that they do, is to
announce the forgiveness that God has already granted, and to
impose, for better or for worse, such satisfaction as they deem
appropriate. Essentially, the role of the priest is declaratory only.
For, not only does God alone forgive the sin; it is God alone Who
purges the sinner, and it is God alone Who has the authority to
waive satisfaction, partially or altogether, if, in His judgment, the
situation and the penitent's state of mind warrant it.349
As a concrete example of a circumstance which might incline
God to make this kind of judgment, Peter brings up penance when
the sinner is in danger of death. That such a person could always
repent, up to the end, and that penance should not be denied him,
was a consensus view, as was the idea that his contrition would be
acceptable to God even if he died before being able to complete his
satisfaction. Hugh of St. Victor adds the qualification that this
arrangement would not work with a person who hedged his bets,
looking forward to a deathbed conversion, since that attitude is
entirely incompatible with sincere contrition.350 Peter, using the

349
Ibid., d. l&-d. 19, 2: 355-71. For Peter on the power of the keys, see Ludwig
Hödl, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Literatur und der Theologie der Schlüsselgewalt,
Beiträge, 37:4 (Münster: Aschendorff, I960), pp. 193-96; Knoch, Die Einsetzung,
pp. 235-36; Longère, Oeuvres oratoires, 1: 260-61. These authors correct François
Kusso, "Pénitence et excommunication: Étude historique sur les rapports entre la
théologie et la droit canonique dans le domaine pénitentiel du XII e et XIII e
siècles," Recherches de science religieuse 33 (1946): 274-75, 441, who fails to observe
the distinctions that Peter draws.
350
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.14.5, PL 176: 559D-560C.
606 CHAPTER EIGHT

issue of penance in articulo mortis to illustrate his doctrine of penance

more generally, agrees with the consensus position and expands on
it in a manner rather different from Hugh. To begin with, and here
he narrows the rule of admissible motivations, in comparison with
his own handling of the four kinds of fear in the moral life more
generally, repentance is acceptable only for penitents who seek it
out of the love of God. Aligning himself with the Abelardians here,
he redefines the nature of the evening sacrifice that rises gratefully
to God in Psalm 140. In contrast with Hugh, he sees it not as the
penitent's satisfaction but as his contrition. In Peter's view, perfect
contrition, the contrition arising from the love of God alone, suffices
to waive not only the penitent's eternal punishment but also his
temporal punishment for sin. Granted, if his contrition is less than
perfect, and if he dies before completing his satisfaction, the fires of
Purgatory will make up the difference. But, if his contrition is
perfect, no punishment at all will follow.351 Likewise, the penitent
will not be punished if his confessor has been indiscreet or foolish
and has imposed an inappropriate satisfaction. For, in that event as
well, the penitent's interior sorrow for sin will right the balance. No
minister of the church, Peter emphasizes, can judge the quality of
another man's contrition. The state of his soul can only be known
to the God Who alone scrutinizes hearts. And God will not reject
perfect contrition, even if the satisfaction performed under these
conditions is insufficient.352 In any event, since a person about to
die will not be likely to be able to perform satisfaction himself, Peter
urges that priests called to minister to the moribund should require
prayers and almsgiving from the penitent's kinsmen and friends
instead. But, most importantly, in times of necessity, penance and
reconciliation are not to be withheld. Necessity cancels many re-
quirements, Peter insists, including episcopal permission for the
reconciliation of excommunicates and of certain other classes of
penitents that would otherwise obtain. Throughout this passage in
his treatise on penance, Peter uses the concept of necessity to relax
the strictures of the authorities he cites who are speaking to non-
emergency situations. Similarly, he insists that the intention to

351
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 20. c. 1-c. 2, 2: 371-74. He gives a more extended
comment on Purgatory, forecasting his remarks on that subject to be made under
the heading of Last Things, at d. 21. c. 1-c. 6, 2: 379-83. On fear as a motive in
penance in this period, see Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 4 part 1: 277-99 who,
however, does not note Peter's departure from his more general ethical analysis in
this context.
352
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 20. c. 3, 2: 375-76.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 607

confess will be taken as confession if a person is overtaken by death

enroute to his confessor.353 All of this is perfectly consistent with
Peter's strong defense of contritionism and his emphasis on the
importance of intention over outward acts in the moral life more
generally.
In moving to the close of his discussion of penance, Peter takes
up a few additional questions, which are of interest not only be-
cause of the answers he gives but also because, reflecting his use of
Gratian, they are issues rarely addressed by contemporary theolo-
gians. What if someone makes a general confession and inadvert-
ently omits a sin because he has honestly forgotten about it? Here,
distinguishing between the event as described and the willful omis-
sion of a sin that one remembers perfectly well, Peter rules that the
confession is valid, even if the sin forgotten is a mortal one. Another
case he raises, admittedly more difficult to envision, is that of a
person who accuses himself of a sin he has not committed. Without
exploring whether the person holds himself guilty out of a genuine
misapprehension or because he is in a delusional state, Peter agrees
with his canonical source in accounting his confession a lie, and
hence as a sin.354 Finally, he agrees with Gratian that priests have a
solemn obligation to respect the confidentiality of confession, and
that they should be deposed if they fail in this responsibility.355
Having presented this thoroughly, and consistently, contritionist
analysis of penance, which lays the foundation for the doctrine of
repeatability, the stress on private penance as normal in all cases,
the suspension of the necessity of confession and satisfaction, not
only in times of emergency but also in the standard observance of
the sacrament, reducing them to desirable and recommended prac-
tices whose importance is a function of how they help the penitent
grow in virtue and not how they reinforce the authority of the
clergy, Peter now turns, at the end of his treatise on penance, to the
definition of the sacramentum and res sacramenti, definitions which
have certainly functioned as governing principles in the foregoing
analysis. Some say, he notes, that the exterior penance is the
sacrament, signifying the interior penance, or the contrition in the
penitent's heart. This Hugonian position he rejects, and on Victor-
ine grounds. A sacrament of the New Law, he reminds the reader,
"effects what it signifies" {efficit quodfigurât).This is not the case,

Ibid., c. 4-c. 7, 2: 376-79.

Ibid., d. 21. c. 7-c. 8, 2: 384-86.
Ibid., c. 9, 2: 385-86.
608 CHAPTER EIGHT

however, with exterior penance, since it is the contrition that is

efficacious, not the external manifestation or declaration of the fact,
which follows it. Others say, he continues, that both the interior
and the exterior penance are the sacrament, the exterior acts being
the sacramentum tantum while the interior contrition is both sac-
ramentum and res. Peter agrees with this view, with a qualification of
his own, and one in which he reminds the reader that penance is a
virtue. The res sacramenti in penance, strictly speaking, is the grace
of God that forgives sins. This forgiveness occurs in the contrition
stage and it is a divine response to the virtue of contrition which the
penitent offers to God. Like all virtues, the virtue of contrition can
also be seen as the human response to the grace of God that enables
the penitent to acknowledge his sins as sins, and to turn away from
them and seek reconciliation. In this sense, Peter concludes, the
contrition stage of penance is both the res and the sacramentum.
Contrition is both the remission of sins and a sign of the remission
of sins. For its part, thus, exterior penance is not an efficacious sign
but a visible manifestation of the fact that the efficacious sign has
been received and internalized by the penitent.356
Of all the masters on the contritionist side of the debate, the
Lombard is the only one who is truly and wholly faithful to the
logic ofthat position, to the point of being willing to regard confes-
sion and satisfaction as optional, to abridge dramatically the power
of the keys in penance, and to exempt penitents, whose spiritual
welfare comes first, for this is the reason why the sacrament was
instituted, from having to subject themselves to the ministrations of
indiscreet priests, encouraging them instead to seek the counsel
they need wherever they may find it. While his views on the
reviviscence of sins and the repeatability of penance help substan-
tially in strengthening the argument for the consensus position that
emerged in his century, Peter's systematic and consistent defense of
contritionism, along with the corollaries of that stance, which he
does not hesitate to draw, put Peter in a rather more exposed
position. It was one that lay well within the orthodox consensus of
his own day, to be sure, but it came close to locating itself on the
radical fringe just inside the limits of that orthodox consensus.
Peter Lombard is the only contemporary contritionist able to offer
as strong, as well-reasoned, and as well-documented a case on
behalf of its cause as Gratian was able to offer on behalf of confes-
sionism. Neither side achieved a salient victory over the other in the

Ibid., d. 22. c. 2.2-c. 5, 2: 389-90.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 609

twelfth century. When a new balance was struck and a new consen-
sus was formed in the thirteenth century, it was one that accepted
many of the exceptions and exemptions promoted by Peter, under
the heading of removing obstacles between the penitent Christian
and the grace available in the sacrament of penance. But it was also
a consensus that could appreciate the values for which Gratian's
position had stood, in locating the moment when forgiveness is
given in the moment when God acts through the words of priestly
absolution. The motive for making that choice, in the sequel,
combined a more Aristotelian way of framing the notion of sac-
ramental causality with an ongoing and increasingly felt need to
guard the dignity of the priestly office from the attacks of anti-
clerical and anti-sacramental heretics. Peter Lombard's position on
penance thus stands not so much as the occasion for the emergence
of a new consensus on all features of penance as it stands as an
index of his combative, principled, and systematic spirit.

Unction

In the case of penance, as we have seen, the debates and argu-

ments of the canonists and theologians were, to a large extent,
sparked by the desire to defend changes in the practice of penance
which they were eager to promote and support. The existence of
changing attitudes between the early church and the twelfth-
century present, visible in liturgical rites, saints' lives, and canoni-
cal and theological texts alike, can also be documented in the case
of unction. This fact, however, is not always registered faithfully in
the sacramental theology of our period. While differences of opinion
on unction certainly do occur, the masters do not pursue them with
dedication and zeal. Nor do they give the impression that a great
deal hangs on their resolution. Comparatively little effort is made to
integrate unction coherently into whatever general theory of the
sacraments a master may propose, and themes normally treated in
the case of the other sacraments, such as the ordinary minister and
the proper disposition of the recipient, are frequently omitted.
Unction had been a popular practice in the early church.357 At
that time, it was seen as a sacrament instituted for the healing of
the sick and was widely administered, by lay people as well as by

357
Excellent background is supplied by Antoine Ghavasse, Etude sur l'onction des
infirmes dans l'église latine du UT au ΧΓ siècle, vol. 1 (Lyon, 1942); Placid Murray,
"The Liturgical History of Extreme Unction," in Studies in Pastoral Liturgy, ed.
Vincent Ryan (Dublin: Gill & Son, 1963), 2: 18-38.
610 CHAPTER EIGHT

the clergy. By the sixth century, the idea that unction also remits
sin had emerged, although the corporal effects it was believed to
convey received more attention. It was only in the Carolingian
period that unction started to be seen as a viaticum, or extreme
unction, the last opportunity of a moribund person to receive
sacramental grace, which often occurred in conjunction with death-
bed penance. This development enhanced the tendency to view a
cleric as the only suitable minister. Despite this shift in practice,
which had become quite general in the western church by the end
of the eighth century, the theologians of the first half of the twelfth
century do not always take note of the change. While a number of
them, including Honorius Augustodunensis, the Abelardians, and
the author of the Summa sententiarum define unction as extreme
unction,358 Anselm of Laon and the Porretans retain the older
definition of unction as the annointing of the sick.359 Another tack is
taken, most influentially by Hugh of St. Victor, who is followed by
Master Simon and Roland of Bologna, in defining unction as
serving both as the annointing of the sick and as viaticum}60
While the masters therefore do not agree on what unction is, in
terms of the class of persons for whose needs it has been instituted,
there are a number of points on which a consensus, or a virtual
consensus on unction, does exist. All who raise the point agree that
unction is not a sacrament of necessity but that it should not be
neglected out of contempt for the institutions of the church. Gilbert
of Poitiers appears to be alone in rejecting the sacramentality of
unction, giving the opinion that it is no more a sacrament than the
washing of feet on Maundy Thursday; he gives no grounds for this
exclusion. Gilbert's own disciples criticize him for departing from
orthodoxy on this point;361 and every other master at the time sees
unction as a sacrament, including Hermannus, even though he
states that it does not effect what it signifies.362 There is also

358
Honorius, Elue. 2.94, p. 439; Hermannus, Sent., pp. 132-33; Sent. Parisiensis I,
p. 47; Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 199; Summa sent. 6.15, PL 176: 153A. This definition
of unction at the time is ignored by Henry S. Kryger, The Doctrine of the Effects of
Extreme Unction in Its Historical Development (Washington: Catholic University of
America Press, 1949), pp. 1-11. On Hermannus, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp.
151-52.
359
Sentences of Anselm of Loon, no. 57, 5: 53; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 9.1, p. 154. On
Anselm, see Knoch, Die Einsetzung, p. 62.
360
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.15.2, PL 176: 577D-578B; Master Simon, De
sac., pp. 42-43; Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 261-62. On Hugh, see Knoch, Die
Einsetzung, pp. 107-09.
361
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 9.6, p. 155; Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 9.5, p. 75.
362
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 132-33.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 611

widespread agreement on the point that unction was instituted by

the apostles, on the authority of the Epistle of James.363 Hardly
anyone discusses the question of the ordinary minister, but of those
who do, the Porretans say it should be a priest while Roland of
Bologna states that it may a priest or a bishop.364
The two areas where the masters rise from their extremely
lethargic and laconic treatment of unction and seek to coordinate it
with the other sacraments they treat are the repeatability of unction
and its effects on the recipient. In handling penance, as we have
seen, there was a concerted effort on the part of theologians in this
period to repudiate the early church rule that the sacrament could
not be repeated. In the case of unction, on the other hand, the early
church view of unction as a sacrament designed to heal the sick led
to the principle, supported in theory as well as practice, that it is a
repeatable sacrament. Even with the development of the shift in
perception that led unction to be seen as a viaticum, there was no
reason, in theory, to refuse to administer it more than once, if a
person happened to find himself in danger of death more than once.
The general interest in keeping open the channels of sacramental
grace to Christians and in removing obstacles to their reception of
it, so richly documentable elsewhere in the sacramental theology of
this period, suggested to a number of mid-century masters that
unction should be repeatable as well, on the analogy of the other
repeatable sacraments. Hugh of St. Victor compares unction with
penance here, while the Porretans draw a parallel with the
Eucharist.365 Hugh's warrant for his position is common sense and
the lack of any countervailing authorities, or, at least, any that he
chooses to acknowledge. For the Porretans and for the other mas­
ters who agree on repeatability, no arguments at all are given.366
Yet, the alternative view is maintained by Hermannus and Master
Simon. The former offers no reasons; but Simon's basis for his
opinion is a garbled citation from Augustine, coupled with the idea

363
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 9.1, p. 154; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.15.2, PL 176:
577D; Summa sent. 6.15, PL 17ο: 153A; Master Simon, De sac., p. 42; Roland of
Bologna, Sent., pp. 161-62.
364
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 9.2, p. 154; Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 163.
365
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.15.3, PL 176: 578B-580B; Sent. mag. Gisleberti I
9.4-5, pp. 154-55.
366
Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 48; Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 200; Roland of Bologna, Sent.,
p. 164; Summa sent. 6.15, PL 176: 154C. On this debate, see Heinrich Weisweiler,
Das Sakrament der Letzten Ölung in den systematischen Werken der ersten
Frühscholastik,,, Scholastik 7 (1932): 321-53, 524-60, although he is not entirely
reliable on all the members of the Abelardian school, the Summa sententiarum, or
Roland of Bologna.
612 CHAPTER EIGHT

that a married person should abstain from sexual relations after

receiving unction, which would suggest a once-and-for-all ap-
proach to this sacrament, confining it to the extremely elderly or
to persons whose recovery from serious illness is given a highly
negative prognosis.367
To a large extent, the decision as to whether to regard unction as
repeatable or not is tied to the master's understanding of what it
accomplishes, at least in the case of authors capable of following the
logic of their own arguments. Hermannus, for instance, thinks that
unction remits sin, although, as noted, he does not regard it as
efficacious, a manifest self-contradiction. If unction does remit sin
despite the latter claim, it is also difficult to see why he thinks it
should not be repeated; it has to be said that his exposition does
nothing to clarify why he thinks this is the case. Simon also thinks
that unction remits sin, as an exit sacrament parallel with bap-
tism;368 but it is the marital conditions he imposes on recipients
that account for its non-repeatability in his eyes, not the baptismal
analogy. On the other hand, those masters who accept the repeat-
ability of unction connect this point with the remission of sin,
whether or not, like Hugh of St. Victor, they compare unction with
penance. Typically, they expand the effects of unction beyond the
remission of sin to include the restoration of health, if God wills it,
and to the strengthening of the recipient's soul if God wills that he
should now pass into the next life. They may also add the purgation
of vice as an effect of unction.369 Anselm of Laon, who has no
position on the repeatability of unction, stands alone in confining
its effects to the stimulation of devotion.370
In his own extremely terse discussion of unction, Peter Lombard
is clearly influenced by Hugh of St. Victor, and, to a lesser extent,
by the author of the Summa sententiarum.371 From the latter master he
takes the idea that the sacramentum is the oil used in unction and that
the res sacramenti is the remission of sins.372 But he yokes this point to

367
Hermannus, Sent., p. 134; Master Simon, De sac., pp. 43-44.
368
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 132-33; Master Simon, De sac., pp. 42-43.
369
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.15.2, PL 176: 577D-578B; Roland of Bologna,
Sent., pp. 262-63; Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 47-48 join the remission of sin to the gifts of
the Holy Spirit in all their plenitude. Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 9.2, p. 154 adds the
purgation of vice. On the other hand, Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 200 and the Summa
sent. 6.15, PL 176: 153A-B confine themselves to the remission of sin.
370
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 57, 5: 53.
371
This point is developed well by Knoch, Die Einsetzung, p. 237; Weisweiler,
"Das Sakrament der Letzten Ölung," pp. 324, 329, 341-42, 525-31, 555.
372
Summa sent. 6.15, PL 176: 153A-B; Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 22. c. 3.3, 2:
391.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 613

the wider, Hugonian understanding of the effects of the sacrament

as curing the sick, if God wills it, and as increasing virtue in the
recipient. For him, the spiritual benefit extends both to the unction
of the sick and to the moribund in need of viaticum, while the
corporal benefit extends only to the sick person who does, indeed,
recover. It was for all these purposes that the apostles instituted the
sacrament.373 Peter also agreed with Hugh about the repeatability
of unction and sees Simon as the main thinker he needs to refute.
He does so by going back to the Augustinian text that Simon had
garbled, the Contra epistolam Parmeniani, and by showing that what
Augustine was really placing under the heading of unrepeatable
sacraments were baptism and holy orders, not unction. Further, he
notes, we should not confuse the reconsecration of the oil used in
unction, which is to be avoided, with the repetition of unction itself,
which he supports, in order to make the grace of the sacrament
available whenever it is needed.374 Peter takes a harder line than
most of his compeers in saying that it is damnable to omit unction
out of neglect or contempt; and he certainly stands alone in insist-
ing that this sacrament must be administered by a bishop.375 But,
in most respects, his teaching on unction is a reprise at Hugh's,
with the amplifications noted. He retains the balance between
unction as the sacrament of the sick and unction as viaticum despite
the historical shift in practice to the latter understanding, in his
time. He retains a combination of physical and spiritual benefits in
the sacrament, although he views the latter as constant and the
former as contingent. He insists on the repeatability of unction, as
part of his consistently applied general rule on the availability of
sacramental grace. There is, however, one respect in which Peter
fails to integrate his theology of unction into his sacramental theo-
logy as such. Despite his firm insistence on intentionality and the
proper disposition as conditioning the recipient's appropriation of
sacramental grace in his account of other sacraments, Peter re-
mains as silent on the question of the disposition of the recipient of
unction as does every other contemporary master. The one, and the
only, idiosyncratic note in his treatment of unction is his require-
ment of episcopal administration.

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 22. c. 1-c. 3.1-3, 2: 390-91.

Ibid., c. 4, 2: 391-93.
Ibid., c. 1, c. 3.3, 2: 390, 391.
614 CHAPTER EIGHT

Holy Orders

The one sacrament that is taken for granted, to such an extent

that it is frequently passed over in silence or given a very scanty
treatment even by masters seeking to promote its dignity and its
necessity elsewhere in their sacramental theology, is holy orders.
This tendency can be found in canonists and theologians alike.
Alger of Liège displays only one preoccupation in treating this
topic, the problem of unworthy priests and the validity of the
sacraments they may administer. The intentions of such unworthy
ministers are of interest to him in relation to the efficacy of the
sacrament of holy orders in itself as guaranteed by the proper
formula and ritual in the administration of holy orders. He never
goes into the matter of what makes holy orders a sacrament in the
first place and how it operates in the ministry and in the inner life of
priests whose status and behavior are not problematic.376 Honorius
Augustodunensis is also preoccupied with the problem of bad
priests; but, consistent with the interests of the ultimate audience
for which he writes the Elucidarium, he is more concerned with how
lay people should respond to them and whether the laity should
accept their directives. Other than that, he confines his analysis of
their ministry to the consecration of the Eucharist. He joins those
who argue that excommunication, but not moral weakness, invalid-
ates this priestly function.377 Roland of Bologna confines himself
to the priestly power of the keys in his treatise on holy orders, even
though he clearly thinks that priests play a wider role than merely
excommunicating and readmitting to communion, hearing confes-
sions, and imposing satisfaction. On the one point he raises, he
follows the standard canonical line in viewing the power to loose
and bind as embracing the forgiveness of sins in penance as well as
the excluding and readmitting of persons to communion with the
church. As for the key of discretion, he admits that people who are
not priests sometimes have this quality and that not all priests
display it. Still, he maintains, discretion is granted to priests ex
officio thanks to their ordination; they have the capacity to use it
whether they do so or not.378

376
Kretzschmar, intro, to his ed. of De misericordia, pp. 31-57; Le Bras, "Le
Liber de misericordia etjnslicia" pp. 92-94, 115; Friedrich Merzbacher, "Alger von
Lüttich und das kanonische Recht," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungßir Rechtsgeschich-
te, kanonistische Abteilung 66 (1980): 233-34, 246-50.
377
Honorius, Elue. 2.185-92, 2.198-202, pp. 395-403.
378
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 265-68.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 615

Roland does not manifest any interest in the technical or admin-

istrative side of holy orders that is the typical preserve of the
canonists and that is, indeed, often the only aspect of the subject
that concerns them. In this respect, Gratian is prototypical. He is
concerned, and concerned only, with the rights and duties of
priests, the correctness of their ordination, the age limits, qualifica-
tions, and other norms to be enforced in admitting men to this or
that grade of orders, and the impediments and disqualifications
that should prevent ordination or give rise to disciplinary action,
suspension, or deposition. Insofar as he distinguishes the functions
of one grade of ordination from another, he presents them as a job
description, not as a mode of sacramental grace, which will enable
the individual's superior to ascertain whether or not he is perform-
ing appropriately. The only mild debate into which Gratian enters,
and it is an echo of a controversy to which Honorius had alluded
earlier in the century, is whether there is any difference between a
secular priest and one living under a monastic rule. Given his
emphasis on the juridical aspects of the question, Gratian's solu-
tion, predictably, is that all priests, whether they are monks or not,
have the same rights and duties.379
Some theologians adopt this canonical perspective as well.
Robert Pullen shows a similar concern for the qualifications, rights,
and duties of clerics, accenting in particular their right to receive
tithes and their duty to avoid simony or the acceptance of payment
for their services. While he ignores the question of what makes holy
orders a sacrament, he deals primarily with the priesthood as a
calling in the church, and one that has certain ethical requirements
attached to it. His chief effort is to outline the moral responsibilities
of priests, such as celibacy, detachment from military, political,
and commercial affairs, hospitality, generosity to the poor, stu-
diousness, honesty, purity of faith, mercy, soundness of judgment,
and freedom from the abuse of the authority entrusted to them by
their office.380 Aside from listing the ways in which clerics are
expected to give good moral example, he has one and only one
point to make about holy orders as a sacrament. Ordination, he
notes, imparts a permanent character to a priest. And so, if a priest
is suspended for disciplinary reasons and then restored to his

379
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 16. q. I.e. 40. dictum, c. 69. dictum, col. 773,
781.
380
Robert Pullen, Sent. 7.6, 7.10-11, 7.13, 7.16-17, PL 186: 913A-914B, 922B-
924A, 927A-B, 928B-930C.
616 CHAPTER EIGHT

sacerdotal duties, he is not to be reordained.381

The two quarters from which we first see the effort truly to
develop a sacramental theology of holy orders, and a theology in
which the way sacramental grace is seen to operate is differentiated
according to the clerical rank involved, are Ivo of Chartres and the
school of Laon.382 Ivo spells out seven grades of holy orders. More
than merely being a division of labor, these grades, as he sees them,
are designed to signify the church and the various forms of grace
that its ministers are given in order to empower them to perform
the different ecclesiastical functions of their offices. The ranks of the
ministry signify, as well, the moral qualities that these ministers
should possess. In treating minor orders, Ivo accents the ecclesiolo-
gical dimension or significance of each rank, while in discussing
subdeacons, deacons, and priests, he focuses on the personal moral
qualities required in ministers at these ranks. For Ivo, the porter
signifies the church's role in distinguishing good from evil. The
lector performs the church's function of announcing the prophesies
of the Old Testament and the good news of the New. In the office of
exorcist the church casts out evil spirits, both in catechumens and
in its people more generally, for which the exorcist needs to have
purity of spirit. In the office of acolyte, the church sheds light into
the darkness and conveys Christ as the light of the world. The
subdeacon's role is to carry the liturgical vessels in which the
Eucharist is contained, and the aquafer used in the priest's ablution
in that rite. This function both signifies and requires the virtue of
continence and imparts the grace that helps the subdeacon to
preserve it. Noting that seven deacons were ordained by each of the
apostles, Ivo explores the symbolism ofthat number, signifying the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven-branched candelabrum of which
the Bible speaks, and other septiform allegories. In ordination to
this rank, the deacon receives the charge, and the grace, to evange-
lize and to dispense the sacraments, to elevate the host and carry the
chalice in the celebration of the Eucharist. For this, he must be
chaste in mind and body and free from greed and lust. Priests,
finally, are the successors of the original apostles. Ivo points out
that the word presbyter, in Greek, refers to the elders, which suggests
the ethical and behavioral maturity that must be brought to this
grade of holy orders. The role of the priest is fourfold, for Ivo. He

381
Ibid., 7.15, PL 186: 927C-D.
382
Cf. Knoch, Die Einsetzung, p. 237, who claims that the Lombard was the first
to give a sacramental definition of holy orders.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 617

mediates between man and God; he forgives sins; he prays for his
people; and he offers the Eucharist. Ivo observes in passing that
some of the other functions exercised by priests in the early church
were later transferred to bishops. But the chief point he wants to
make about the priesthood is that, in all four respects, priests
provide an extension in time of Christ's saving work. The grace
they are given enables them to serve as channels of God's power, to
that end. The moral corollary of this fact is that the entire life of
priests should be an imitation of Christ.383
This theme of the imitation of Christ is given a much more
sustained development in the school of Laon.384 As the Laon mas-
ters see it, the life of Christ is a model for each and every grade in
holy orders. This, in turn, is the inner spiritual meaning of the
sacrament for the men who receive it. As with the porter, Christ
served as a gatekeeper when He ejected the money-changers from
the temple. Christ functioned as a lector when He interpreted the
prophesy of Isaiah. He was an exorcist when He cast out demons.
He was an acolyte when He described Himself as the light of the
world and when He illuminated the minds of those who accepted
Him in faith. Christ acted as a subdeacon when He turned water
into wine at the marriage of Cana. He was a deacon when He
washed the feet of His disciples at the Last Supper and when He
preached the coming of the kingdom of God. Christ, also, was a
priest when He celebrated the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The
Laon masters add to this list of seven grades of orders the rank of
bishop. This office Christ exercised as well, when He ordained and
commissioned His disciples to preach the gospel and to baptize in
His name, and to loose and to bind, and when He raised people
from the dead.385 It is true that the members of this school go on to
discuss, in some detail, the canonical regulations validating or
invalidating ordination or the exercise of priestly functions, taking
a rather more generous line here than most masters do on the
capacities of excommunicate and heretic priests, unless they have
been unfrocked by their bishops, but also urging that, if a priest has
been unfrocked for a grave crime, such as murder or adultery, he

383
Ivo of Chartres, Sermo 2, PL 162: 514B-519D.
384
This point is ignored by Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 54—57, in his account of
the Laon masters on holy orders.
385
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 359, 5: 271. This interest in discussing the
sacramental functions of bishops is comparatively unusual in the first half of the
twelfth century. See Landgraf, Dogmengeschichte, 3 part 2: 277-96.
618 CHAPTER EIGHT

should not be readmitted to the ministry.386 Still, they clearly

understand holy orders as a sacrament, in which the res sacramentiy
the grace that imparts discretion, power, and knowledge (discretio et
potentia et säentia) is transmitted by the rite of ordination, if the
ordinand is moved by the appropriate intention in receiving it. If he
is not suitably motivated, he receives the sacramentum tantum and not
the res.387 And, as we have seen above, the grace which the clergy-
man receives not only imparts authority, enabling him to perform
his public sacerdotal functions. It also is a grace that strengthens
him inwardly and assists him in developing the virtues needed for
the imitatio Christi which is the meaning of ordination in his own
spiritual life.
The school of Laon plays a critical role in the development of the
sacramental understanding of the priesthood in the twelfth century.
Subsequent masters who contributed to that development, within
our period, are heavily influenced by the position of the Laon
masters although they expand on it, introducing additional consid-
erations. Hugh of St. Victor strengthens the point that the grace
imparted to the clergy in holy orders has the double role of
empowering them to serve as the sacramental channels of grace to
other members of the Christian community in the ecclesiastical
dispensation and of enriching their own spiritual lives. To the
imitation of Christ in the grades of holy orders from porter to priest
as given by the Laon masters he adds both Old Testament parallels
and insights drawn from the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of the Pseudo-
Dionysius, thus imparting a somewhat more participatory and
Neoplatonic cast to the notion that clerics are associated with
Christ's own ministry in performing their own and in achieving
personal sanctification thereby.388 Hugh goes on to explore the
parallels, in the lay and clerical estates, between groups arranged
in hierarchical order with a single ruler at the top, the king and
pope respectively, adding that the clerical order precedes the secu-
lar power in honor and dignity and that it has the right to judge its

386
For the rules and regulations in general, Sentences of the School of Laon, no.
393-97, 400, 5: 283-84, 285-86; for the points about unfrocked priests and their
ineligibility for reinstitution, no. 376, 380, 390-92, 399, 479, 5: 279, 280, 283, 285,
313.
387
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 391, 5: 283.
388
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.2.1-2, 2.3.6-19, PL 176: 415B-417D, 423A-
43ID. This point is brought out well by Paolo M. Pession, "L'ordine sacro e i suoi
gradi nel pensiero di Ugo di S. Vittore," La Scuola Cattolica 64 (1936): 133-49,
although he sees the influence of Ivo of Chartres here and not that of the school of
Laon. See also Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 98-103; Mignon, £*r ongines, 2: 221-33.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 619

exercise, a mild pass at church-state relations atypical in theologi-

cal summae of this period.389 Also, in considering the seven clerical
grades, Hugh observes that some of them, such as deacon and
priest, are distinguished from each other in that they have different
faculties, while others, such as deacon and archdeacon, are distin-
guished from each other as having the same faculties but a different
range of powers. Still other grades, such as priest and bishop, have
both different faculties and a different range of powers.390 Like the
Laon masters, Hugh includes the rules and regulations governing
ordinands, material which he derives from the canonists and which
he explores in rather more detail than is typical of theologians at
this time.391 Unlike the school of Laon, he appends a discussion of
liturgical vessels and vestments as used by the clergy, how to
deploy them, and their symbolism.392 He also picks up a point
made by Gratian while responding to it differently. Monks, he
agrees, can validly exercise the priestly ministry; and, of course, it
is appropriate for them to do so within their own monastic com-
munities. Beyond that, however, this faculty should be seen as an
indulgence, not as an intrinsic part of their calling, which, for
Hugh, is prayer, penitence, and contemplation.393 But, while
adding to the Laon masters in these respects, he preserves faithfully
their sense of the double effect of the grace of holy orders on
clergymen, both authorizing them to serve the church and sanc-
tifying them in their inner lives, and he retains their understanding
of how clergymen participate in and manifest the life of Christ at all
levels of the ministry.
Master Simon is another theologian strongly influenced by the
school of Laon on holy orders, whether directly or by way of Hugh,
although he amplifies the Laon analysis in a different way. Simon is
less interested than either Hugh or the Laon masters in the juridi-
cal dimensions of this subject. He does discuss the power of the keys,
which he takes up here rather than in his treatise on penance. He
agrees with the view that this power includes loosing and binding
in confession as well as in excommunication and readmission to
communion. He acknowledges the fact that not all priests have
discretion and fails to deal with the problem. Aside from making the
standard observation that bishops are responsible for performing

Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.2.4, PL 176: 417D-418D.

Ibid., 2.2.5, PL 176: 418D-419B.
Ibid., 2.3.20-24, PL 176: 431D-434A.
Ibid., 2.4.1-7, 2.5.1-3, PL 176: 433C-438D, 439A-442C.
Ibid., 2.3.4, PL 176: 422D-423A.
620 CHAPTER EIGHT

ordinations,394 he leaves rules, regulations, and jurisdictional

matters to the side and concentrates his attention on the sac-
ramental quality of holy orders, giving much more attention than
his sources to the effects of sacramental grace on the recipient.
Simon agrees with Robert Pullen that ordination imparts an indeli-
ble character. For him, this means that even an excommunicated
priest can validly consecrate the Eucharist as well as validly bap-
tize, a permission which, as we have seen, was not so freely granted
by all contemporary masters.395 Even more important than the
permanent faculty to minister in the sacramental lives of others
which a priest acquires through the grace of holy orders, for Simon,
is the effect which this grace has in the cleric's spiritual life. Simon
gives more sustained attention to this aspect of the sacrament than
do the Laon masters and Hugh of St. Victor. He agrees firmly that
each grade of holy orders manifests the life and ministry of Christ:
"Each of these, in itself, shows forth our Lord and savior" (Hos ipse
Dominus et Salvator noster in se ostendit) ,396 But, what Simon does in
developing this theme is to use some of Ivo of Chartres' definitions
of the grades of orders, and some of his own, as descriptions of
aspects of Christ's ministry, side by side with other definitions
inherited from the Laon masters and Hugh. He also expands this
topic by exploring how the grace of ordination is manifested in the
gifts of the Holy Spirit as associated with the grades of ministry.
Thus, for Simon, the porter suggests Christ's ejection of the money-
changers from the temple; the lector represents Christ's teaching
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; the exorcist reflects Christ's
casting out of demons. The acolyte, as Simon presents him, shows
forth Christ's healing miracles that opened the eyes of the blind, a note
not found either in Ivo or in the Laon tradition. The subdeacon,
Simon agrees, imitates Christ in washing the feet of the disciples, the
deacon in administering the Eucharist, and the priest in consecrating
the bread and wine. As with the Laon masters, he sees the ministry of
these last two orders in a rather more narrowly Eucharistie light than
is the case with Ivo. With the former, he also adds the episcopate as a
grade of holy orders. Bishops imitate Christ by instructing and conse-
crating others. And, whether bishops, archbishops, or popes, they are
successors of the apostles as well as participants in and conveyors of
the ministry of Christ.397

Master Simon, De sac., pp. 66-67, 70-81.

Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid., p. 65.
Ibid., pp. 65-66.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 621

To this account Simon attaches an analysis of how the grades of

holy orders are informed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The porter
manifests fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom. Here, Simon
reprises the four modes of fear and concludes that it is filial fear
which is involved in the porter's case, not initial fear. The lector
manifests piety. His desire to read expresses his desire to teach
others. The exorcist is informed by knowledge, the discretion or
discernment of spirits that enables him to help others come to grips
with and to purge themselves of the moral problems that may be
troubling them—a notable interiorization of the idea of exorcism,
we may observe. The acolyte, for Simon, manifests fortitude, in
that he holds up the candelabra that light liturgical ceremonies.
The subdeacon reflects counsel. He reads the Epistle during the
mass; he mixes water and wine in the chalice; and he thereby
enlightens his hearers and inspires the love of God in them. The
deacon is granted the gift of intelligence, to be used in his preaching
and in his distribution of the Eucharist. The priest, finally, shows
forth the gift of wisdom. His truest office, according to Simon, is the
consecration of the Eucharist. Other sacerdotal functions which
priests may exercise he lumps together under the vague phrase et
cetera. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, he concludes, enrich the inner
lives of clerics and assist them in developing the virtues needed for
these different grades of ministry. Having himself occupied each
step along this clerical cursus honorum, the priest will have acquired
all of these virtues as he completes what, for Simon, is better
understood as a cursus gratiarum et virtutum.398
In placing Peter Lombard's theology of holy orders in the con-
text of the treatments of this topic current in his day, it can be said
that he stands in the tradition of the school of Laon both in
emphasizing, and in defining clearly, the sacramentality of holy
orders. In outlining the grades of holy orders he draws on Hugh
and Simon, as well as Ivo of Chartres, while adding some ideas of
his own. In one important respect he departs from the Laon mas-
ters, Hugh, and Simon alike. He removes bishops and other pre-
lates from the grades of holy orders and considers them, instead, as
occupying different ranks within the priesthood but not as differ-
ent orders. Another notable difference between Peter and the other
masters, whether canonists or theologians, is that he eliminates a
number of topics which they discuss under this heading. He does
not concern himself with what qualifies a man to enter the

Ibid., pp. 67-69.

622 CHAPTER EIGHT

priesthood or what disqualifies him. Nor is he interested in the

circumstances under which a priest may be deposed, disciplined, or
restored to service. The regulations governing the supervision of
clerics, once ordained, by their superiors are not, in his view, to the
point here. The only juridical considerations that he imports into
his theology from the canonists have to do with the conditions
validating or invalidating the administration and reception of the
sacrament of holy orders itself.399
Peter begins by seconding Hugh, in placing the doctrine of holy
orders within the context of a brief ecclesiology, in which Christ is
the head and church members are the parts of His mystical body.
He agrees that the seven grades of holy orders all exemplify aspects
of Christ's own ministry, participating in it when the incumbents
accede to ecclesiastical office with a worthy intention. Leaving
aside Hugh's mini-treatise on hierarchy and on the two-swords
theory, he agrees with Simon that the seven grades of holy orders
manifest the gifts of the Holy Spirit as well and that ordination
imparts not only an office in the church, with the power and
authority needed for its exercise, but also provides a means through
which clerics can unite themselves with Christ in both their inner
and their public lives. Peter places more emphasis than either of
these masters on the importance of quality control, citing Pope
Clement to the effect that it is better to have fewer priests who are
truly worthy of the dignity to which they are called than to have
many useless ones not capable of rising to the demands of their
office or of internalizing its graces.400 While Peter refers to the gifts
of the Holy Spirit in these opening remarks, he does not schematize
them, as Simon does, in conjunction with the different grades of
orders. In handling that topic, Hugh is his model, especially for the
Old Testament parallels and for his frank interest in the symbolism
of the roles of Christian clerics. At the same time, he often borrows
Ivo's definitions and substitutes them for those of Hugh and the
Laon masters, sometimes but not always in the way that Simon

399
Cf. Joseph de Ghellinck, "Le traité de Pierre Lombard sur les sept ordres
ecclésiastiques: Ses sources, ses copistes," RHE 10 (1909): 290-302, 720-28; 11
(1910): 29^-46, who presents the doctrine as one of mere sterile and servile
imitation. Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 237-39, while he credits Peter with more
originality than he in fact displays, gives an accurate description of many if not all
features of his teaching on holy orders.
400
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 24. c. 1-c. 3.1, 2: 393-94. The particular Clement
is not indicated. As Brady notes, ad loc, p. 394, Peter's citation of Clement is
derived from Gratian.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 623

does; and he appends to the definitions he chooses some further

reflections of his own.
All clerics receive the tonsure. With Hugh, Peter takes up its
symbolism. Like a king's crown, he observes, the tonsure is a mark
of office. It bares the head because the head is where the mind,
man's highest faculty, is located. Baring the head signifies the
opening of the mind to revelation. The tonsure is cut in a small
round shape because this, according to Peter and Hugh, signifies
the removal of obstructions from the senses, which have to do their
part in informing the cleric. Completing this introduction to the
grades of orders with tonsorial types and parallels of clerical com-
mitment from the Old Testament, Peter commences his itinerary
through the seven grades of orders, noting both the Old Testament
analogies, the ways in which the grades of orders participate in
Christ's ministry, and the ways in which they manifest a moral
imitation of Christ. Christ accepted the office of porter, he agrees,
when He drove the money-changers out of the temple. He Himself
is the gate, the way, as well as controlling access to it. The janitors
guarding the entrance to the temple of Jerusalem are the fore-
runners. And, porters must possess the judgment that Christ dis-
played, in carrying out their functions. The lector reads and
preaches. For these duties, Peter adds, he must be literate and have
a clear and carrying voice, and eloquence. Christ manifested these
qualities when He debated the book of Isaiah among the elders in
the temple. The Old Testament prophets are the forerunners of the
lectors. Exorcists, for Peter, have the traditional role of casting evil
spirits out of catechumens, as Old Testament exorcists did more
generally and as Christ did in the New Testament. Peter does not
pick up on Master Simon's more psychological reading of this
function. Exorcists must have purity of spirit. The acolyte holds up
the candelabra that shed light when the Gospel is read and the
Eucharist is offered and he helps prepare the Eucharistie elements
on the altar. Candelabra were also used in the Old Testament
temple services and their keepers are the earlier analogies of Chris-
tian acolytes. The acolyte needs a specific acquaintance with his
duties, as Christ did, in being the light of the world.401
Moving to the three higher grades of orders, Peter offers an
expanded description of their roles, in comparison with his sources.
The subdeacon receives the offerings of the people, arranges the
materials used in liturgical rites on the altar, such as the paten,

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 24. c. 5-c. 8, 2: 396-99.

624 CHAPTER EIGHT

chalice, and other vessels used in celebrating the Eucharist. The

sacrifices that took place in the temple service in Old Testament
times, and the ministers who coordinated them, are the types here.
Christ manifested this mode of ministry when He washed the feet of
the disciples at the Last Supper. Peter assigns this role to the
subdeacon, not to the deacon, as the Laon masters do. Continence
is the virtue required of subdeacons. The deacon is analogous to the
Old Testament Lévites. These functionaries carried the ark and
tabernacle, and, like the Christian deacons whom they prefigure,
they must have reached a mature age. Peter here shifts the note of
maturity from the office of priest, where Ivo had located it, to the
office of deacon. Deacons minister by distributing communion and
by assisting in baptism and in other sacramental rites. Deacons
also preach and carry the cross in processions. In comparison with
his sources, Peter widens the scope of the deacon's activities. He
also observes that they wear a stole as a sign of office. To fulfill that
office they must have the capacity to announce and to warn. Christ
performed the ministry of the deacon both when He distributed the
Eucharist at the Last Supper and when He enjoined His disciples
to watch and to pray on the night before His passion. While Peter
enlarges the office of the deacon well beyond the Eucharistie minis-
try, or that ministry combined with preaching, he narrows the
office of priest to an essentially Eucharistie one, unlike Simon and
Ivo. The priest, for Peter and for the Loan masters, consecrates the
Eucharist. His role is paralleled by that of Aaron and other Old
Testament priests who offered sacrifices. Priests, like deacons, need
maturity. They also require the virtue of prudence. Here, Peter
combines the gift of wisdom prescribed by Simon with the lexical
understanding of presbyter offered by Ivo. Christ fills this particular
clerical office, and to perfection, by offering Himself as a sacrifice on
the cross, according to Peter; he replaces Christ's institution and
first celebration of the Eucharist with the act that gives it its
ongoing sacramental efficacy.402 Throughout this discussion of the
seven grades of holy orders, then, Peter preserves the overall sche-
ma of the Laon masters and Hugh, while at the same time he feels
perfectly free to incorporate ideas from Simon and from Ivo, to
rearrange the material when he feels moved to do so, and to add his
own insights and perspectives.
Peter asserts much more independence in dealing with bishops
and prelates of a still higher level of authority. As we have seen,

Ibid., c. 9-c. 11, 2: 400-05.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 625

both the Laon masters, Hugh, and Simon treat the episcopacy as a
grade of holy orders. Peter does not. He draws a sharp distinction
between ranks within the clergy that are dignities, and ranks that
are orders. Bishops and those above them fall clearly into the first
category. The bishop, be he a bishop alone or a metropolitan,
archbishop, or patriarch as well, has a specific office, along with a
specific dignity. The dignity refers to the scope of his jurisdiction
and whether it embraces a diocese or a province, or some larger
unit of church governance. The office refers to those sacramental
functions which are reserved to bishops. These include confirma-
tion and ordination, and, in Peter's eyes at least, unction as well.
The Lombard also accords two brief lines to the papacy. He
remarks, rather laconically, that the pope is the supreme priest in
the church and that he disposes all other ecclesiastical orders. Peter
shows no interest in explaining how the pope exercises these func-
tions or in his juridical relationship with other church leaders or
with the secular power.403 His lack of interest in these subjects is
quite typical of systematic theologians in the middle of the twelfth
century; Hugh of St. Victor and Robert Pullen, who do take up
jurisdictional matters and the relation between regnum and sacerdo-
tium, are the exceptions who prove the rule. Still, by making men-
tion of the papacy at this juncture, however vague and abbreviated
his remarks may be, Peter offers a location in the Sentences where
later theologians, if inclined to discuss these matters at greater
length in this kind of setting, could find a natural home for the
subject. To round out his consideration of dignities in the church
that convey rank, but not a new degree of orders, and in some cases
do not involve, necessarily, any degree of orders at all, Peter
mentions seers (votes), who may be priests, prophets, or poets.404
His inclusion of poets under this heading, as holding rank within
the church, is a remarkable expression of belief in the inspirational
power of art when it is turned to the service of edification and the
glorification of God. Literary art is not the only kind of art of which
Peter takes cognizance, for he includes, as a final example of a rank
within the church that is not necessarily associated with ordination,
the office of cantor. The cantor may be the praecentor, the singer who
leads the choir, or the succentor, his deputy.405 Either way, the art of
the musician gives him an office in the church since he embellishes

Ibid., c. 14-c. 16, 2: 405-07.

Ibid., c. 18, 2: 407.
Ibid., c. 19.1,2:407.
626 CHAPTER EIGHT

divine worship and uplifts the spirit of the Christian people. Peter
appears to have been unique among scholastic theologians in this
period for the official rank in the church which he accords to
literary and musical artists, in recognition of the services they
perform for the faithful.
These addenda or exceptions to the seven grades of holy orders
having been duly noted, Peter concentrates his attention in the rest
of his treatise on holy orders on defining what it is, as a sacrament,
and on outlining the conditions required for its valid administra-
tion and reception. Here, he applies his standard distinction be-
tween the sacramentum and the res sacramenti. The ceremony of
ordination, and, specifically, the laying on of hands by the minister-
ing bishop, constitute the sacrament. By means of it, the ordinand
receives a permanent spiritual character. With it he also receives
the grace empowering him to perform those actions which only the
clergy can perform with efficacy and the grace enabling him to
develop the virtues he needs in order to show forth the ministry and
the sanctity of Christ in his own ministry. As with the school of
Laon, Hugh, and Simon, and especially the latter two masters,
Peter sees a double effect of sacramental grace in holy orders. On
the one hand, this grace assists in the recipient's personal and
internal sanctification, and, on the other, it also enables him to
function as a channel of grace for others in his public sacramental
ministry.406 Peter agrees with Simon and with Robert Pullen on the
imparting of an indelible and permanent sacramental character to
the priest in his reception of ordination, a fact which entrenches
this doctrine firmly in the understanding of the priesthood after
his time.
Yet, more is required to convey this res sacramenti to the ordinand
than the correct celebration of the ceremony of ordination. The
intentions of both the minister and the recipient also play a critical
role. This is the heading under which Peter takes up the question of
whether bishops in a state of heresy or schism can validly ordain.
He gives a thorough review of the opinions offered on this subject
by the canonists and by his fellow theologians and he takes a hard
line, and one that is perfectly consistent with the position that he
takes on the valid consecration of the Eucharist in his treatise on
that sacrament. Heresy and schism alike, in Peter's eyes, deprive a
bishop of the capacity to ordain validly. A heretic will not have the
requisite faith and intention, and a minister not himself in corn-

Ibid., c. 13, c. 19.2, 2: 405, 407.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 627

munion with the church cannot induct other men into its sacerdotal
ministry.407 The situation is a bit more complicated, in his estima-
tion, in the case of ordination by simoniacs. This is the only aspect
of clerical morality which Peter raises in connection with ordina-
tion. Simony may be brought to the rite by would-be ordinands as
well as by bishops who have themselves obtained preferment in this
vicious manner. Here, Peter argues that the state of knowledge of
the parties involved is a relevant factor in the equation. If the
ordinand is not himself trying to purchase ordination, and if he is
honestly unaware of the fact that his bishop is a simoniac, his
ordination should be accepted as valid. On the other hand, if the
ordinand knowingly seeks ordination from a simoniac bishop, his
ordination should be rejected. In general, if ignorance is not a
facter, Peter thinks that three circumstances should be taken into
account in making a ruling. If both bishop and ordinand are
simoniacs, both should be deprived of office. If a simoniac is
ordained by a non-simoniac, the simoniac should be deprived of
office. Finally, if a non-simoniac is ordained by a simoniac, he
should be allowed to remain in office on the condition that the loss
of his services would be a serious deprivation to the faithful, a
proviso Peter derives from Pope Nicholas II along with the above-
mentioned condition that the ordinand is unaware of his bishop's
simoniac state. Another dispensation which Peter accepts is the
validity of an ordination in which the candidate has been forced by
violence to receive ordination at the hands of a schismatic or
heretic.408 In all these cases, it is clear that proper intentionality,
and free will, on both sides of the transaction, are vital determi-
nants of sacramental efficacy. And, while in the case of other
sacraments, where the moral unworthiness of the minister is not
seen as capable of impeding the workings of grace through the
sacramental medium, the deep horror of simony, and the recogni-
tion that it remains a serious and ongoing problem in the middle of
the twelfth century, inform the massive exception to that rule that
Peter makes in the case of holy orders. Also, while he does pay brief
and passing attention to the rules and regulations attached to
ordination, as with the age requirements for advancing to different
grades of orders,409 it is also clear that this matter of the status, and
morality, of both minister and recipient is the only major aspect of

Ibid., d. 25. c. 1, 2: 408-13.

Ibid., c. 2-c. 6, 2: 413-15.
Ibid., c. 7, 2: 415-16.
628 CHAPTER EIGHT

the canonical approach to ordination that Peter is truly concerned

with, and it is a concern which he reformulates so as to align it with
intentionality as it applies both to the objective efficacy of the
sacramental ministry and to the efficacy of the recipient's appro-
priation of sacramental grace subjectively.

Marriage

The sacrament that received the fullest discussion on the part of

canonists and theologians alike in the first half of the twelfth
century, and the one that has inspired the most research on the part
of modern scholars is, indubitably, marriage.410 In contrast with
the situation that affected sacraments such as the Eucharist, this
chorus of concern does not mirror a change in the practice of
marriage on the part of twelfth-century Christians at large, a
change which the masters of the day might seek to oppose or to
rationalize. On the other hand, in line with other branches of
sacramental theology at this time, marriage was strongly affected
by the felt need of orthodox thinkers to defend it against the attacks
of heretics, such as the Cathars, who rejected it. The central fact
that most differentiates marriage as a sacrament from other sacra-
ments in the writings of canonists and theologians in the first half of
the twelfth century is that marriage existed as a social and legal
institution, and always had, regardless of what Christian thinkers
might say about it. It had a life of its own, apart from Christianity,
a circumstance which was not the case with the other Christian
rites treated under the heading of sacramental theology. The mas-

410
For helpful overall surveys, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian
Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 182-
245; Jean Dauvillier, Le mariage dans le droit classique de l'église depuis de Décret de
Gratiën (1140) jusqu'au la mort de Clément V (1314) (Paris: Sirey, 1933), pp. 5-32,
183-94, 279-92, 310-18, 473-79; Gérard Fransen, "La formation du lien matrimo-
nial au moyen âge," Revue de droit canonique 21 (1971): 106-26; Heaney, The
Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage, pp. 7-14, 75-79, 82-83; T. P.
McLaughlin, "The Formation of the Marriage Bond according to the Summa
Parisiensù" MS 15 (1953): 208-12; Hans Zeimentz, Ehe nach der Lehre der Frühscho-
lastik: Eine moralgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Anthropologie und Theologie der Ehe in der
Schule Anselms von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux, bei Hugo von St. Viktor, Walter von
Mortagne und Petrus Lombardus (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1973). Briefer over-
views are provided by Longère, Oeuvres oratoires, 1: 251; Michael M. Sheehan,
"Choice of Marriage Partner in the Middle Ages," Studies in Medieval and Renais-
sance History, n.s. 1 (1978): 1-33; Rudolf Weigand, "Kanonistische Ehetraktate aus
dem 12. Jahrhundert," in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Medieval
Canon Law, ed. Stephan Kuttner (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
1971), pp. 59-67.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 629

ters writing on this subject in our period are not always very
successful in coming to grips with this basic fact. Their debates on
marriage, for this reason, often have a curiously airless quality
about them; they read as if the masters were talking only to each
other in some empyrean realm, without acknowledging the practi-
cal realities attached either to marriage itself, as it operated in real
life, or even to the workability of the rules, principles, and proce-
dures which they themselves advocate. There are, to be sure, major
aspects of marriage on which a solid contemporary theological
consensus existed. All masters at this time, for instance, agree with
the Augustinian view that marriage was instituted in Eden before
the fall, as an index of the creator's ordinance that sexual inter-
course was to be the means for the propagation of the human race;
after the fall, they agree, as well, marriage was designed to serve as
a remedy for sin.411 This consensus position was expounded both to
refute Origen's views on human nature and the Catharist position
on human sexuality. On another level, under the heading of the
status of a marriage once made, all the masters hold that, once a
valid marriage has come into being, it is indissoluble. Indissolubil-
ity, indeed, is part of what the agreement to marry involves, in their
view, and it is seen as one of its goods, remaining in effect even if the
couple are physically separated or if one puts aside the other on
account of infidelity.412 Another consensus position relates to im-
pediments to marriage, or grounds for the nullification of a mar-
riage. All agree that prior vows, especially those involved in entry
into the monastic life or the priesthood, spiritual affinity, such as
that created between a godparent and a godchild, or ignorance as
to the identity or status of the other contracting party, constitute
such impediments. There are many other areas where a principle at
stake, such as consanguinity as an impediment, may receive gener-
al approval, but where the masters disagree as to the precise.
understanding of the principle in practice. There are also aspects of
marriage on which the debates reveal sharp differences of opinion
on questions of fundamental substance, as well as divergences of
opinion on procedure as well as substance that reflect regional rules
and not merely personal preferences. But the single debate on
marriage that generated the most discussion was the question of

411
Michael Müller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe und ihre
Auswirking in der Sexualethik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas von Aquin (Regens-
burg: Friedrich Pustet, 1954), pp. 19-103.
4I
* Heaney, The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage, pp. 154-56.
630 CHAPTER EIGHT

what makes the association of two people a marriage that can be

regarded as a sacrament of the New Law.
In the field of marriage formation, the battle lines were drawn
between those who argued that consummation makes the union a
marriage and those who argued that it was consent that makes the
marriage. This dispute was a bitter one, not only because of the
serried ranks of authorities who could be, and were, marshalled in
support of both of these positions but also because of the need to
counter objections, both practical and theoretical, that could be
leveled against each of them. On the consummationist side, for
instance, it was hard to explain the difference between marriage
and concubinage, recognizing that the latter institution, legitimate
in Roman law and most forms of medieval secular law in the
twelfth century, remained in existence, however much Christian
moralists might deplore the fact. There was also the difficulty of
proving non-consummation of a marriage, for the purpose of ad-
judicating it as a cause of nullification, without violating personal
and conjugal privacy and without admitting the evidence of witness-
es who were likely to be partisan. Most serious of all, in the light of
twelfth-century religious sensibilities, if a valid marriage required
consummation to bring it into existence, then the consummationist
position made it difficult to see how the marriage of the Virgin
Mary and St. Joseph could have been a valid, sacramental marriage,
given the fact that it was recognized to have been a celibate union.
For its part, the consent theory presented difficulties of its own. If
consent to a common life, without the necessity of sexual commu-
nity, were sufficient to make a marriage, how is marriage different
from arrangements in which two relatives share a common house-
hold? If consent alone is sufficient, can the exchange of vows on the
part of two persons legally capable of marriage and lacking in
impediments constitute a valid marriage in the absence of wit-
nesses, a priestly blessing, the permission of the parents, and the
standard provision of a dowry? If clandestine marriage is admitted,
is this permission not a disservice to the legitimate interests of the
state, the family, the church, and even the principals themselves? If
consent makes a marriage, can consent unmake it, as was the case
in Roman law, a logical and symmetrical conclusion even though it
flies in the face of the Christian principle of indissolubility? All
these questions and difficulties, and more, proved to be extremely
intractable. Defenders of both the consummationist and the con-
sent positions found their ingenuity taxed to the utmost in finding
responses to the opposition while supporting their own positive
solutions in the authorities and dealing with the authorities who
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 631

supported the other side of the debate. We find both canonists and
theologians in the consummationist camp, or Italian school, with
Gratian emerging as its leading champion. The consensus, or
French, school is also populated with both canonists and theolo-
gians, Hugh of St. Victor providing it with its most powerful
insights and arguments and Peter Lombard articulating this posi-
tion in its fullest and most sharply honed form. He also goes farther
than anyone else in the debate in taking seriously the argument on
the other side of it, borrowing from its perspectives, while at the same
time staunchly refusing to compromise the principles he defends.
Although the members of the school of Laon are, generally,
supporters of consent, one Laon master, the author of Decretum dei
foit, gives an early inkling of the position to be articulated much
more powerfully by Gratian later in the century. The master sees
the centrality of consummation, in marriage formation, as a corol-
lary of the institution of marriage in Eden for the purpose of
procreation and its later reinstitution as a remedy for fornication
after the fall. Therefore, what marriage is all about, in his view, is
sexual relations. Marriage is, simply, the carnal union of the
spouses. This is the sacrament, the external physical sign. What it
signifies is the union of Christ and the church. This author writes
before, or outside of, Hugh of St. Victor's important expansion of
the definition of a sacrament as a sign that effects what it signifies,
as well as bearing a physical resemblance to it, and so he does not
take up the question of whether, or how, the sacramentum conveys or
effects this res sacramenti. He regards the intentions which the
spouses bring to their marriage as important, and defines them,
purely, as the hope of offspring. He does not raise the question of
whether the validity and sacramentality of their marriage would be
jeopardized were they to bring other intentions to it, or if they omit
this one. The one item he adds to the point that consummation
makes the marriage is that marriage also requires public celebra-
tion before witnesses. He does not specify whether one of those
witnesses must be a priest. The master makes no direct mention of
consent, whether of the spouses themselves or their parents, as in
any way required. To the extent that consent, in an implicit sense,
can be read into their intention, or wish, to have children, it would
be a consent to carnal relations only. The master makes no refer-
ence to the problem of Mary and Joseph or to the difference
between marriage and concubinage.413

4,3
Decretum deißiit, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in Das Schnfitum der Schule Anselms
632 CHAPTER EIGHT

In turning from this Laon master to Gratian, we can clearly see

that, while the latter has profited from the reflections of the theolo-
gians, he is determined to place the topic of marriage formation on
a far wider canvas and to handle it in a much more circumspect
way. Gratian's treatment of marriage has typically been studied in
isolation, as a subject in its own right, by historians of canon law.414
Much can be gained, however, by comparing his analysis of this
subject with his discussion of penance. Marriage and penance are
given parallel treatment by Gratian in two respects. In both cases,
he agrees that an initial stage is necessary in which the correct
intention is manifested by the recipient of the sacrament, but that
the sacrament itself cannot be held to have been received in fact
unless and until a second stage occurs that is public and institutional
and presided over by a priest. It is in this second stage that the
alteration in the recipient's status imparted by the sacrament takes
place. The second clear parallel is that, in the case of both sacra-
ments, Gratian collects and discusses thoroughly a large dossier of
authorities who say that the first, or consensual, stage is the point
at which that change of status occurs. Several of these authorities
are as weighty as they are unequivocal. They include Pope Nicho-
las II, who locates marriage formation in consent not coitus, John
Chrysostom, who says that consent, and not the marriage cere-
mony, the formal handing over of the bride to the groom, or their
sexual union makes the marriage, and Ambrose, who states crisply
that it is not the defloration of the virgin but the conjugal pact that
makes the marriage. To be sure, Gratian is concerned with showing
that consent is necessary and that it cannot be omitted. He is also
willing to recognize that, while the public celebration of weddings
is required and appropriate, it is not the ceremony itself but the
consummation of the marriage following it that is the critical
determinant of the status of the spouses. As with his handling of the

von Laon und Wilhelms von Champeaux in deutschen Bibliotheken, Beiträge, 33:1-2
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1936), pp. 371-73. Heinrich J. F. Reinhardt, Die Ehelehre
der Schule des Anselms von Laon: Ein theologie- und kirchenrechtsgeschichtliche Untersuchung
zu den Ehetexte derfrühen Pariser Schule des 12. Jahrhundert, Bieträge, n.F. 14 (Münster:
Aschendorff, 1974) is unaware of this text and its departure from the support of
consent by other Laon masters. His study is otherwise the best guide to their
position. Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 62-73, omits marriage formation in his
account of the school of Laon on marriage.
414
See, in particular, Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 235-45;
Raymond G. Decker, "Institutional Authority versus Personal Responsibility in
the Marriage Section of Gratian's A Concordance of Discordant Canons, The Jurist 32
(1972): 51-65; Fransen, "La formation," pp. 119-26; Fournier and Le Bras,
Histoire, 2: 314-52; John T. Noonan, "Power to Choose," Viator 4 (1973): 419-34.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 633

authorities supporting confess ion ism, whom he reads as deeming

the critical act of confession and absolution as having been inspired
by a rightly motivated spirit of contrition, whether or not this is
what they actually argue, so he reads the consummationist author-
ities as saying that the consent of the spouses is also required,
whether the authorities in fact make this point or not. As for the
pro-consent authorities, whatever the literal sense of their opinions
may be, he reads them as speaking only to a consent that is
necessary but not sufficient, in a manner directly parallel with his
handling of the contritionist authorities in his treatment of pen-
ance. In Gratian's own solution, he presents marriage, like pen-
ance, as a two-part process. In the case of marriage, a truly
sacramental, and hence indissoluble, bond is not forged until the
second part has been completed. Marriage begins, as he sees it, at
the time of the betrothal of the couple, when consent to the mar-
riage is given. But it does not become truly binding until it is
consummated. As he puts the point: "It must be known that
marriage is begun by betrothal and completed by [sexual] mixing.
Hence between the betrothed there is a marriage, but only a
beginning; between the couple there is a ratified marriage" (Sed
sciendum est, quod coniugum desponsatione initiator, con mixtione perficitur:
Unde inter sponsum et sponsam coniugum est, sed initiatum; inter copulatos est
coniugum ratum).AXb
Consistent with this clear distinction between matrimonium in-
itiatum and matrimonium ratum which he draws, Gratian states, at one
point, that, since the marriage does not become indissoluble until it
is consummated, engaged persons may break their engagements if
they prefer different marital partners or in order to undertake
religious vows, although elsewhere he gives the opposite view. 416
Where does this leave the marriage of Mary and Joseph? Gratian's
first sally is to argue that their union includes the three Augustinian
goods of marriage, faith, offspring, and sacrament. It manifests
faith in their fidelity to each other. It manifests sacramentality in
the permanence of their union. And, it manifests offspring in their
rearing and education of Jesus. Still, when push come to shove,
Gratian is an honest man. He recognizes the fact that the goods of
marriage are not the same thing as marriage itself. Marriages can

415
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 27. q. 34, col. 1073. The translation is that of
John T. Noonan, Marriage Canons from the Decretum (Berkeley: School of Law,
1967), p. 12. For the argument in this paragraph more generally, see Decretum pars
2. c. 27. q. 34-c. 30. q. 5, col. 1073-1108.
416
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 27. q. 50-q. 51, col. 1077-78.
634 CHAPTER EIGHT

and do exist which lack these goods. And, given the fact that there
was no matrimonium ratum in the case of Mary and Joseph, their
marriage was not truly sacramental, and could have been
dissolved.417 A marriage that is ratum, for Gratian, requires con-
summation, even if this is the one and only time that the spouses
come together in the flesh.418 If the condition is met, the marriage is
indissoluble.
As noted, notwithstanding his firm consummationism, Gratian
thinks that consent, involving an appropriate intention, is also a
required if not a. per se constitutive part of marriage. In comparison
with the author of the Decretum dei fuit, he widens appreciably his
understanding of what marital consent includes. More is at issue
here, for Gratian, than merely the consent to sexual relations. For,
that would not make it possible to distinguish between marriage
and concubinage. In his terms, consent that is specifically marital
consent requires marital affection.419 This idea, which goes back to
Roman law, means, neither for the civilians nor for Gratian him-
self, romantic or erotic love. Indeed, the civilians contrast the two
attitudinal states. Rather, marital affection involves according to
one's spouse the respect, the honor, the moral standing and regard,
and the acknowledgement consistent with one's recognition of the
spouse as one's partner in an upright, lawful union. This is not the
kind of attitude one would display toward a partner whom one
would not or could not marry, toward whom one felt no enduring
commitment, and whose offspring would not be part of one's legiti-
mate lineage. Gratian's incorporation of the idea of marital affec-
tion guarantees the continuing availability of this principle in both
canonical and theological treatments of marriage in the sequel.
Important as it is, he none the less makes it plain that, while the
couple's inner intention, in the form of marital affection, is neces-
sary, the consent reflecting it is matrimonium initiatum only, not
matrimonium ratum.
Gratian's earliest commentators tend to confirm his position,
although they do not always use his exact language and while they
may subtract from, add to, or amplify on his teaching. Paucapalea

417
Ibid., pars 2. c. 27, col. 1062-78.
418
Ibid., pars 2. c. 27. q. 29, col. 1071.
419
Ibid., pars 2. c. 28. q. I.e. 17, col. 1089. On marital affection, see John T.
Noonan, "Marital Affection in the Canonists," Studia Gratiana 12 (1967): 479-509;
"Power to Choose," pp. 419-34; Rudolf Weigand, "Liebe und Ehe bei Dekretisten
des 12. Jahrhunderts," in Love and Marriage in the Twelfth Century, ed. Willy Van
Hoeke and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1981), pp.
41-58.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 635

agrees that, while consent is necessary, it is consummation that

makes the marriage. He thinks that the consent involved must
include that of the parents as well as the principals, and makes a
point of insisting on the spouses' taking of their vows in person,
ruling out the acceptability of proxies. He disallows clandestine
marriage although, inconsistently, he says that it is licit and
indissoluble.420 Roland of Bologna who, like his canonical associ-
ates, is far more interested in impediments, grounds for nullifica-
tion or separation, and other actionable matters than he is in the
sacramental character of marriage, takes a somewhat different line
in his Summa and in his Sentences. In the former work, which is more
a commentary on Gratian, he reprises that master's view that
consent, expressed at the time of the betrothal, supplies only matri-
monium initiatum, while it is consummation that makes the union an
indissoluble matrimonium ratum. He presents marriage as having
three aspects, or parts: consent, the conjugal pact or engagement,
and the absence of obstacles to a legal union. This analysis associ-
ates the consent with the engagement. But Roland contradicts
himself by introducing a distinction which he finds in contempo-
rary theologians on the opposing side of the debate, the distinction
between present and future consent. The engagement embodies
future consent. It is the present consent voiced at the wedding itself
that conveys the consent needed for the matrimonium initiatum phase
of the event. While the husband and wife may be called spouses
from the time of their engagement, they are not actually married
until the union is consummated sexually. Roland follows Gratian's
first line of the defense of the marriage of Mary and Joseph as a true
marriage by stating that the raising of Jesus enabled them to fulfill
the marital good of children. But he does not acknowledge the logic
of Gratian's conclusion that their marriage was, technically, no
marriage at all according to the consummationist theory.421 In his
Sentences, Roland omits the distinction between future and present
consent and does not consider whether the consent required is
given at the betrothal or at the wedding. He cites the pro-consent
authorities in discussing this point, without using Gratian's crea-
tive reinterpretation of their views so as to make them compatible
with a consummationist position which they plainly reject. This
gives a rather inconclusive tone to Roland's defense of that posi-
tion. One thing he does that is not found in Gratian is to discuss the

420
421
Paucapalea, Summa c. 27, c. 28. q. 5, pp. 110-11, 112, 115, 123.
Roland of Bologna, Summa c. 20. q. 3, c. 27 prologus, c. 27. q. 2. pp. 72-73,
113-14,126-30.
636 CHAPTER EIGHT

sacramental character of marriage, in line with his treatment of the

other sacraments. The sacramentum in any such rite must be the
physical, perceptible sign. In the case of marriage, this is the sexual
union of the spouses. Roland adds this theological rationale to
Gratian's argument in favor of consummationism. The sexual
union of the spouses signifies the union of Christ and the church,
which is the res sacramenti. Roland does not discuss whether this
sacramentum serves as a channel of grace as well.422 But his emphasis
on the sexual union as the sacramentum is associated with a view of
marriage that limits it to its sexual purposes only and that omits
Gratian's idea of marital affection.
Canonists no less than theologians are to be found supporting the
consent position as well. Indeed, one of the earliest of twelfth-
century canonists to devote attention to this topic, Ivo of Chartres,
gives a strong statement of the position that marriage is made by
consent. Unlike other canonists writing on this subject in the
period, and unlike the theologians, Ivo was a bishop. As an eccle-
siastical statesman, he needed not only to rule on delicts occurring
within his own sphere of jurisdiction; he was also called upon by
other bishops to give advice concerning cases on which they had to
render judgment. Many of these marriage cases, starting with the
flagrant and protracted affair between King Philip I and Bertrada
de Montfort, countess of Anjou, both of whose spouses were still
alive when they decided to live together openly, involved mighty
personages who regarded themselves as the makers of manners and
whose behavior demanded correction, not only on general princi-
ples but also because of their high social profile and rich capacity to
give scandal. While Ivo, in his letters no less than in his more
systematic decretals, was a man of principle, fully capable of main-
taining strict and rigorous opinions, the political necessities sur-
rounding particular cases sometimes lead him to accept a com-
promise position for the sake of resolving practical problems. For
the same reasons, he is willing to take seriously the practices which
the civil law condemns or permits, whether he approves of them or
not, and his emphasis often has more to say about the frequency
and urgency of the problems that he confronts as a sitting bishop
than it does about their importance to him in the abstract. In this

422
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 116, 157, 270-72. On Roland here, see Gietl,
intro, to his ed., pp. lxii-lxvii; Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society p. 263; Jean
Gaudemet, "Sur Trois 'Dicta Gratiani' relatifs au 'matrimonium ratum'," in
Etudes de droit et d'histoire: Mélanges Mgr. H. Wagnon (Louvain: Faculté Interna-
tionale de Droit Canonique, 1976), pp. 550-54.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 637

respect, Ivo's position on marriage formation can be read as much

as a reflection of the ways in which northern French aristocrats
understood marriage in actuality as it is an effort on his part,
however successful or unsuccessful, to impose Christian values on
this group and to persuade them to regard marriage as a sacrament
and not merely as a matter of political and dynastic policy or of
personal convenience.423
Ivo launches his discussion of marriage formation with a forth-
right assertion that consent, not consummation, makes the mar-
riage, citing Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Nicholas, the standard
authorities who support this view. He does not seek to disarm the
authorities on the other side of the debate, but simply anchors his
own position with the pro-consent authorities and goes on to elabo-
rate on its implications.424 This position undergirds his own ruling
that physical separation, of the sort that might occur thanks to
pilgrimage, crusading, or long-distance trading, does not terminate
a marriage, since the physical union of the spouses is not what
created the marriage in the first place.425 In addition to being a
logical application of the consent principle, these examples are also
a sign of the times; it is difficult to envision any writer on the subject
before Ivo who would refer so casually to these indices of early
twelfth-century behavior. Ivo's stress on the consent principle also
informs his insistence on the point that underage children, too
young to give informed consent, cannot be married off by their
parents; nor should they be betrothed by their parents before the
age of seven. The attention that Ivo gives to this issue reflects three
things: the fact that the consent of the principals was frequently
ignored in actuality, the need for the principals themselves to
consent knowingly and of their own free will, and the idea that the
principle of consent extends in some sense to the parents as well as
to the spouses.426 The same point of view can be seen in Ivo's
judgment concerning rape as the basis for establishing a marital

423
Good assessments of Ivo which take his circumstances into account include
Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet, "Le mariage d'après la correspondance d'Yves de
Chartres," Revue historique de droit française et étranger 61 (1983): 195-215; A.
Foucault, Essai sur Ives de Chartres d'après sa correspondance (Chartres: Petrot-Garnier,
1883), pp. 140-77; Paul Fournier, Yves de Chartres et le droit canonique (Paris: Bureau
de la Revue, 1898), pp. 1-10, 36, 39-47, 57-62.
424
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 2-c. 3, c. 16-c. 17, c. 20, c. 35, PL 161:
583D-584D, 587B-588A, 588B, 591C; Epistolae 99, 134, 168, 243, 246, PL 162:
118D-119A, 143C-144C, 153B-154D, 251A, 253B-C.
425
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 9, c. 12-c. 14, c. 189-c. 193, c. 244-c. 245, PL
161: 586A-D, 623D-624D, 637D-638C.
426
Ibid., 8. c. 21-c. 22, c. 169, PL 161: 588C-D, 620A.
638 CHAPTER EIGHT

claim on an unmarried woman. As we will see below, this topic

tends to surface frequently in the list of impediments to marriage at
this time, and the masters reflect a general inclination to reject this
claim, in contrast to their Carolingian predecessors. In handling
this point, Ivo states that the rapist can be refused but sees this
decision as requiring the consent of both the victim and her
parents.427
These efforts to accommodate the principle of consent to the
social realities of the day can be seen in other areas of Ivo's
treatment of marriage formation. He draws no distinction between
the consent given at the time of the betrothal and the consent given
at the time of the wedding, and does not consider the question of
which of these moments is the time when the union becomes
indissoluble. Given his admission of the age of seven as an accept-
able age at which a child may be betrothed, he does not, in
practice, offer much protection to the consensual rights of young
spouses, although he seeks to defend them. Similarly, he adds other
conditions which propose that more than consent is required to
initiate a marriage. A marriage is valid, Ivo says, if the vows are
sworn in church (in oratorio) in a public ceremony, even if there is no
written document attesting the event and no dowry; although he
contradicts himself concerning the dowry and elsewhere says that
there can be no wedding without one.428 Ivo clearly opposes clan-
destine marriage, but declines to rule on its validity.429 As for the
intentions that spouses ought to bring to marital consent, he takes
the same broad-gauged line later followed by Gratian. He does not
confine himself to the consent to sexual relations alone, but invokes
the principle of marital affection, and defines it in the same way as
Gratian does later in the century, as the dignity, courtesy, and
standing as an honorably wedded spouse which it accords. In
making this point, however, Ivo is not interested in reflecting on
what makes Christian marriage a sacrament, a question which,
indeed, he never raises. Rather it comes up in the context of his
effort to distinguish marriage from concubinage, not in defense of
consummationism but as a critique of the relationship between
Philip and Bertrada. Despite the fact that Philip had browbeaten
several French prelates into witnessing a fictitious wedding cere-

427
Ibid., 8. c. 23, c. 40-c. 41, c. 170-c. 177, PL 161: 588D-589A, 593A-B,
620A-621C.
428
Ibid., 8. c. 44, PL 161: 594A. For his retraction of this position on the dowry,
see 8. c. 144, PL 161: 616C.
429
Ibid., 8. c. 141, PL 161: 616B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 639

mony between himself and Bertrada, an event loudly deplored and

denounced by Ivo, the lovers were not, he insists, married. Rather,
they were living in a state of adulterous concubinage, which Ivo
certainly disapproves of although he is constrained to recognize
that it is a licit relationship, according to the secular law. So, he
does what he can to explain why concubinage is not marriage.430
The theologians on the pro-consent side of the debate feel, on the
whole, less constrained than Ivo to take the realities of life as it was
lived in their time into account, however much they may have
agreed with him. The influence of Ivo can be marked in the
treatment of marriage typical in the school of Laon, whose mem­
bers also amplify considerably on his position.431 As one Laon
master forthrightly states, "where there is no mutual consent, there
is no marriage" (ubi non est consensus utriusque non est coniugum) .432
And, two other Laon masters, evidently the earliest source for this
critical distinction, specify that the consent required to make a
marriage is the present consent given at the wedding, not the future
consent given at the betrothal.433 The author of the Sententie Anselmi
goes on to indicate three aspects of this present consent. It must
involve the manifest, not tacit, consent of persons who are
present—no proxies are allowed—who have the legal capacity to
marry, and who lack impediments to marriage. The spouses must
also bring to their marriage vows two intentions, the desire for
children and the commitment to welcome their arrival whether it is
convenient or not, and the commitment of mutual fidelity until
death.434 Another author in this group treats the production of
offspring, and the sexual relations required for it, and the consum-
mationist authorities who stress this aspect of marriage, as speak­
ing merely of what happens in a typical marriage after it has come
into being, although this sequel is not of the essence in making the
union a marriage. Others agree that the three Augustinian goods of
marriage do not constitute the marriage, since marriages continue
to remain in force in their absence.435 Masters in this school are

430
Ibid., 8. c. 32, c. 36, c. 60, c. 153, PL 161: 591 Α-B, 591C-D, 597A, 617C-D.
431
For Ivo's influence on the Laon masters, see Reinhardt, Die Ehelehre, pp.
86-98, 132, 184. This book as a whole gives a good account of the pro-consent
arguments of the school.
*32 Sentences of Plausible Authenticity, no. 206, 5: 135. See also no. 405, 5: 287.
433
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 527, 5: 365-66; Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 146-47.
Cf. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 237, who attributes this distinction,
in the first instance, to Abelard.
434
Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 112-13, 13£-40, 141, 149.
435
Deus de cuius principio etfinetacetur, ed. Heinrich Weisweiler in "Le recueil des
640 CHAPTER EIGHT

sensitive to the problem of Mary and Joseph, and harness it to their

cause. The author of De coniugo uses this point to hammer home his
conclusion that sexual relations, although usually present, are not
required to make a marriage. The content of consent which accom-
plishes the end of marriage formation is, rather, the spouses' com-
mitment to a common life, their common will to live together under
the laws of the church. He is willing to push the principle of
consent, so defined, with nothing added, to its ultimate logical
conclusions, by admitting that a clandestine marriage is valid,
so long as consent is present and the parties are legally
marriageable.436
Also on the pro-consent side of the controversy stands Robert
Pullen, although he is less interested in the question of marriage
formation than he is in marriage as a calling within the church, and
one that has special ethical notes attached to it. While his basic
concern in his treatise on marriage is sexual ethics within marriage,
and not marriage as a sacrament, and while he omits many stand-
ard topics relating to this subject, he agrees that consent is of the
essence. He does so without profiting from the Laon masters'
distinction between present and future consent. Marital consent, in
his eyes, should embody an appropriately religious intention. Only
God's reasons for marrying, the procreation of offspring as given by
His first institution of marriage in Eden and the avoidance of
fornication attached to its reinstitution after the fall, are acceptable.
Robert objects to worldly reasons, such as the enjoyment of the
beauty, desirability, wealth, or social position of one's spouse,
although he does not go so far as to say that such defective inten-
tions invalidate a marriage. In any event, he holds that a marriage
that is validated by consent remains in force irrespective of whether
it leads to mutual fidelity, offspring, or permanence.437
It is striking that neither the Laon masters, nor Robert Pullen,
nor Ivo of Chartres has much to say about the sacramentality of
marriage. This is by no means invariably the case among the
defenders of consent. Much more of an effort to see how, or if,
marriage can be brought into accord with their general definitions
of sacrament is found in other masters in this group. Peter Abelard

sentences 'Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur' et son remaniement," RTAM 5

(1933): 270-72; Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 527, 5: 365; Sent. Anselmi 5, p. 112;
De coniugo, ed. Franz Bliemetzrieder in "Theologie et théologiens de l'école
episcopale de Paris avant Pierre Lombard," RTAM 3 (1931): 274-75.
436
De coniugo, pp. 274, 283.
437
Robert Pullen, Sent. 6.4, 7.35, 7.39, PL 186: 867B, 952A, 956D-960B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 641

and his followers wrestle with this problem rather inconclusively,

and also inconsistently in some respects. To be sure, Abelard
himself bring up marriage only indirectly, in discussing the crea­
tion of Eve in his Hexaemeron and as a gloss on Paul's remarks on the
subject in his Romans commentary. Elsewhere, he treats marriage
in a hortatory vein in addressing a monastic audience, Heloise
especially, who must put aside thoughts about marriage. The cir­
cumstances and contexts in which marriage comes up in Abelard's
writings help to account, in part, for the line he takes on it. In his
view, marriage is purely a concession to the regrettable fact of
human carnality. It exists as a remedy for sin, only, and it is
burdened with worldly cares, sorrow, and luxury. The wise man,
he argues, here invoking Jerome and the anti-matrimonial argu­
ment of his Adversus Jovinianum, will avoid marriage and spare
himself its aggravations. At the same time, Abelard asserts that
marriage is a sacrament and, presumably, as such, it ought to be
viewed as something holy. Yet, he can find nothing in the relations
between spouses that signifies a divine grace, his general definition
of sacrament.438
The fullest exposition of marriage within the Abelardian school
is provided by Hermannus, who faithfully perpetuates Abelard's
negative appraisal of it and his logical inconsistency regarding its
sacramentality. Hermannus is a firm proponent of consent as what
makes the marriage and accepts the distinction between present
and future consent. Indeed,this distinction is of use to him because
he sees the content of marital consent as extending specifically and
only to the agreement of spouses to exclusive sexual rights to each
other, which rights come into being only at the wedding. "It is this
pact that initiates the marriage" (Et hoc federatio ad primum facit
coniugum), he asserts.439 Marital vows make licit and blameless the
sexual relations which are the sole point of marriage, and which
exist purely as a concession to human weakness. The wise man,
Hermannus agrees, citing Theophrastus as well as Jerome, does
not marry. In other areas one can try before one buys. Not so with
marriage. A wife is either chaste or unchaste. If chaste, she is

438
Peter Abelard, Hex., pp. 133-35; In Ep. Pauli ad Romanos 4:18-19, CCCM 11 :
148. Good treatments of Abelard on marriage are provided by Weingart,
"Abailard's Contribution," pp. 172-73; The Logic of Divine Love, pp. 195-%;
Philippe Delhaye, "Le Dossier anti-matrimoniale de ΓAdversus Jovinianum et son
influence sur quelques écrits latins du XII e siècle," MS 13 (1951): 65-86.
Hermannus, Sent., p. 135. For Hermannus on marriage, see Κ noch, Die
Einsetzung, pp. 152-53.
642 CHAPTER EIGHT

proud; if unchaste, she embroils her husband in a life of never-

ending suspicion and embarrassment. Marriage, in short, is a yoke,
an obstacle to a man's freedom.440 At the same time, Hermannus
states that marriage is a sacrament. He gives the standard Augustin-
ian definition of a sacrament as a visible sign of invisible grace or
as the sign of a holy thing. As for marriage, however, it conveys no
merit in the sanctification or salvation of those who enter it; it
stands for nothing sacred; and it confers no donum, no gift of
grace.441
Precisely the same position is taken by the author of Sententiae
Parisiensis I. Although sex is what marriage is all about, in his eyes,
he agrees that consent to it, and not its actual exercise, is what
makes the marriage. The concession of exclusive sexual rights to
each other is all that the spouses promise. Marriage itself is a
purely negative, remedial, concession. It is, he states, a sacrament,
although, illogically, "it conveys no gift of grace" (non confert
donum).442 On the other hand, this master does think that marriage
signifies something sacred, the union of Christ and the church.443
But, given his treatment of marriage in general, it is understand-
ably difficult for him to explain why and how this is the case. He
makes no effort to do so. The same can be said for the authors of
Sententiae Parisiensis II and the Ysagoge in theologiam.444 The latter
master also makes the mistake of mentioning the marriage of Mary
and Joseph, although it does not help his argument. Since he has a
purely sexual understanding of the content of marital consent, he
has as much difficulty accounting for that marriage as the consum-
mationists do.445
Most of the masters on the pro-consent side of the debate show
far more sensitivity to the usefulness of the Mary and Joseph case to
the defense of their position. This fact has already emerged in our
consideration of the school of Laon. But the contemporary master
who, more than any other, capitalizes on this theme, and uses it to
promote a generous and expanded understanding of marriage, both
in itself and as a sacrament, is Hugh of St. Victor.446 Hugh first

440
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 137-38.
441
Ibid., pp. 120, 135, 136.
442
Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 44.
443
Ibid., p. 46.
444
Sent. Parisiensis II, p. 150; Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 196, 199.
445
Ysagoge in theologiam, pp. 196-99.
446
The best treatment of Hugh's contribution to the understanding of marriage
is provided by Henri A.J. Allard, Die eheliche ^ens- und Liebesgemeinschaft nach Hugo
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 643

develops his position in his Epistola de beatae Mariae virginitate, not

initially in the context of sacramental theology. He then reprises
what he says in that work in his De sacramentis. This fact accounts
for the way he approaches the nature of marriage in the first
instance. The question he poses at the beginning of the Epistola is
whether, as a woman already betrothed at the time of the annun­
ciation, Mary changed the nature of her marital consent when she
married Joseph so as to retain her virginity, and, if so, whether she
was marrying him under false pretenses. This issue leads Hugh to a
consideration of the essential content of marital consent, and
whether it must include consent to sexual relations. Repeating the
position of the ancient pro-consent authorities without expressly
citing them by name, he insists that "marriage is not made by
sexual union, but by consent" (matrimonium non facit coitus, sed
consensus).447 This consent, he continues, must be mutual. In it the
spouses promise fidelity and permanence. The agreement to sexual
relations is not required to make a marriage. But, when sexual
relations are included in a vow that also contains the other and the
essential ingredients, their exercise is a duty flowing from the vow,
and not the bond itself (officium et non vinculum).44* In Hugh's eyes,
the bond itself is a bond of charity, not one forged by sexual
intercourse. A true marriage is marked by its spiritual and affective
character. In it, the spouses are one in heart (duo in corde uno). This
union of hearts signifies the union of God and the individual human
soul. The relationship of spouses that Hugh envisions is marked by
constancy, sincerity, solicitude in all things, affection, piety, con­
solation, devotion, care, and compassion. They mutually support
each others as companions and partners, bearing tribulation and
suffering in undivided unity (semper in omni sinceritate dilectionis, in
omni cum sollicitudinis, in omni affectu pietatis, in omni studio compassionis,

von St. Viktor (Rome: Analecta Dehoniana, 1963). See also Fransen, "La forma­
tion," pp. 114-17; Coirado Gneo, "La dottrina del matrimonio nel 'De Β. Mariae
vireinitate' di Ugo di S. Vittore," Divinitas 17 (1973): 374-95; Penny S. Gold,
"The Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Twelfth-Century Ideology of Mar­
riage," in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern L. Bullogh and James
Brundage (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1982), pp. 102-17; W. E. Gössman, "Die
Bedeutung der Liebe in der Eheauffassung Hugos von St. Viktor und Wolfram
von Eschenbach," Münchener theologische Zeitschrift 5 (1954): 205-08, 213; Heaney,
The Development of the Sacramentology of Marriage, pp. 14-16; Knoch, Die Einsetzung,
pp. 110-13; Ott, Untersuchung, pp. 404-15; Christian Schütz, Deus absconditus, Deus
manifestus: Die Lehre Hugos von St. Viktor über die Offenbarung Gottes (Rome: Herder,
1967), pp. 121-24; Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 136-40.
447
Hugh of St. Victor, Epistola de beatae Mariae virginitaU, PL 176: 858A.
448
Ibid., PL 176:859D.
644 CHAPTER EIGHT

in omni virtute consolationis, et fide devotionis . . . in bonis et in malts

omnibus, sicut consolationis socium ac participem, ita et tribulationis et
sufferentiae indivisum exhibeat) ,449 Hugh certainly agrees that God
intended spouses to reproduce sexually from the very beginning.
This activity, however, does not constitute the bond of love that
makes the marriage. Also, it is a duty that not all couples are
required to perform. When it is included in their marriage, it
signifies the union of Christ and the church. This physical union is
sacramental, for Hugh, just as the spiritual and affective union of
spouses is sacramental. But, in his view, the union of hearts is the
greater sacrament of the two, and it is per se constitutive of marriage
and sufficient.450 The marital union of hearts, he adds, here address-
ing an objection raised by the consummationists, is not the same
thing as a common household shared by relatives who may also be
bound by affection. For, the former union signifies the union of the
soul and God, which the latter does not. Pointing out that the
consummationists, if they are honest, are forced to admit that the
marriage of Mary and Joseph was not a real marriage, he returns to
the question he had posed at the beginning of the Epistola and
concludes that Mary and Joseph had already agreed on a celibate
union before the annunciation, so that neither of them changed
what they intended in their actual marriage vows.451
Hugh repeats the essentials of this doctrine in the De sacramentis
and adds to it, drawing not only on ideas found in other contempo-
rary thinkers but also on his own general theory of the sacraments.
He reiterates the point about the double sacramentality of mar-
riage, with the spouses' pure love of the mind (pura mentis dilectione)
standing for the union of God and the soul and their sexual associa-
tion, if any, standing for the union of Christ and the church. He
agrees that it is the spiritual society that is of the essence, although
he does not give the effusive description of it that he provides in the
Epistola. To the double institution of marriage, before and after the
fall, he adds that, in addition to being a remedy for sin in the latter
case, marriage, like the other sacraments, is given for our instruc-
tion and for our growth in virtue; he thus adds a positive moral
dimension to this state of life.452 Reaching out to include points
made by other masters, whether pro-consent or not, and whether

449
450
Ibid., PL 176:860A-D.
451
Ibid., PL 176:864A-B.
452
Ibid., PL 176: 858C, 865C-867D, 873B-876C.
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 1.8.13, PL 176: 314C-318A. The quotation is at
316B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 645

canonists or theologians, he observes that, along with mutual con-

sent, the spouses must both possess the legal right to marry. The
content of their consent, moreover, must include consent to marital
affection and honor, in the sense that Ivo and Gratian give to this
term, as well as being a compact of love and a spiritual society. It is
a commitment, as well, to mutual fidelity in spirit, and not just to
mutual fidelity and reciprocity in their sexual relations, when the
latter are included.453 Hugh also concerns himself with the question
of when the marriage comes into being.454 He agrees with the
distinction between present and future consent and sides with the
Laon masters and those influenced by them in asserting that it is
the present consent given at the wedding, not the future consent
given at the betrothal, and not the consummation, if any, that
follows the wedding that initiates the bond. He would like to see
this consent confirmed before witnesses; but, like the author of the
De coniugo, he recognizes that the logic of his position forces him to
recognize the validity of clandestine marriages, the other necessary
conditions being present. Hugh accepts the distinction drawn be-
tween the goods of marriage and marriage itself, and maintains
that the latter remains in force in the absence of the former.455
There is no question of the fact that Hugh offers the most solidly
grounded defense of the principle of consent in marriage formation
of any master up through his time. He also widens considerably the
range of issues pertinent to the understanding of marriage as a
sacrament. Consistent with the emphasis on consent, he provides a
detailed and broad analysis of the kind of intentionality that
spouses need to bring to the reception of this sacrament, including
the marital affection of the canonists and going beyond it to
embrace a spiritual, moral, and affective bonding, seen as symbo-
lizing the intimate union of God and the soul. His description of
this state, especially in the Epistola de beatae Mariae virginitate, offers a
richer and more positive assessment and account of what marriage
means, or should mean, to those persons who commit themselves to
this state of life. Hugh also moves well beyond the remedial in his
consideration of the help which marriage can give to Christians in
becoming better, wiser, and more virtuous people. Yet, there are
two salient areas where he does not integrate marriage fully into the
general theory of sacrament that undergirds his innovations in

Ibid., 2.11.4, PL 176: 483A-485D.

Ibid., 2.11.5-6, PL 176: 485D-494A.
Ibid., 2.11.7-9, PL 494A-496D.
646 CHAPTER EIGHT

these other respects. While in the case of other sacraments, he is

deeply concerned with the intention which the recipient brings to
the sacrament as conditioning his ability to profit from its recep-
tion, Hugh does not deal with the question of whether people who
marry for purely worldly reasons, and not for the exalted and idealistic
reasons which he imputes to spouses, are therefore not validly married
in the eyes of God and Christian society, whatever the civil law and
civil society may think. And, mindful of the fact that Hugh's definition
of sacrament in general is a sign that is a medium of grace, a sign that
effects what it signifies, it is odd to note that he never raises the
question of how the spiritual union of spouses can be thought of either
as a physical sign or as a sign that effects as well as symbolizes the
union of God and the soul, or how the sexual union of the spouses,
when present, although it certainly is a physical transaction, can be
thought of as effecting as well as symbolizing the union of Christ and
the church. Nor does he explain in what sense either of these sacramenta
functions as a container or medium of grace. None the less, the
contribution of Hugh of St. Victor proved to be quite important in the
sequel. His definition of marriage and his defense of present consent as
the point when it comes into being, informed as they are by his ardent
Mariology, provide the framework within which supporters of consent
in marriage formation came to view the subject during and after his
time.
A good index of Hugh's wide influence, coming as it does from a
perhaps unexpected quarter, is the treatment of marriage forma-
tion by the early Porre tans. The goal of these masters is to try to
mediate between the consent and the consummation schools by
arguing that both consent and carnal union are required, without
specifying when in the course of events the spouses' change in
status occurs and when the union becomes an indissoluble one.
There is, to be sure, an inclination on their part to favor the consent
position, reflected in their acknowledgement of the point that future
consent is not binding. None the less, they bypass the issue of
whether it is the exchange of wedding vows or the subsequent
consummation of the marriage that is determinative. This unwill-
ingness to take a stand on a matter that was quite clear cut for all
other masters at the time, including Hugh, does not prevent the
Porretans from viewing marriage as a double sacrament, just as he
does. Agreeing that marriage is both a union of a man and woman
for the purpose of leading a common life and a union, by consent, of
two persons legally capable of marrying, they view the consent as
the consent to establish a conjugal society in a spiritual sense,
which symbolizes the union of God and the soul, as well as a carnal
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 647

union, which symbolizes the union of Christ and the church. Con-
sistent with this position, they do not condemn clandestine mar-
riages outright, although they note their disadvantages.456 On their
own account, they add a point not found in Hugh, the idea that
sexual relations were ordained both before and after the fall, apart
from the other reasons God had in mind, in order to engender a
human genealogy for Christ.457 At the same time, they agree that
lack of offspring, like lack of fidelity and permanence, does not
invalidate a marriage.458
Another master who shows the ability to combine Hugonian
insights with ideas on marriage that Hugh does not countenance is
Master Simon. Although he introduces his remarks on marriage in
a manner similar to that of Robert Pullen, by describing marriage
as a calling, indeed, as the only calling for the laity in this sphere of
personal life, Simon rapidly moves to the sacramentality of mar-
riage and its formation. Given the reasons why marriage was
instituted both before and after the fall, that is, the propagation of
offspring and the remedy for incontinence, marriage must require
sexual union, in his estimation. Although he agrees with all the
other pro-consent masters that it is consent that makes the mar-
riage, he agrees with the Abelardians that the consent itself is
consent to sexual relations (Nam et per consensum ejfficiter et propter
carnalem copulam celebratur) ,459 Yet, at the same time, what is required
and reflected in this consent is not just a commitment to the
exclusivity of sexual rights between the spouses but a union of wills
and mutual love (voluntatis unionemy mutuam dilectionem) ,460 which,
according to Simon, is manifested by the husband in his protection
of his wife and by the wife in her submission to her husband. This
combination of love, protection, and subjection signifies the spir-
itual union of Christ and the church, for Simon, just as the carnal
union of the spouses signifies the union of Christ and the church
viewed institutionally. With Hugh, Simon holds that it is in the
spiritual rather than in the physical bond that the sacramentum is
truly and essentially located. He brings in Mary and Joseph and
the pro-consent authorities to buttress this conclusion, which is
where he rests his case.461 It has to be said that Simon emerges with

456
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 11.30-33, pp. 160-61; Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 11.5-6,
11.8-9, pp. 86-87, 89.
457
Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 11.1-4, p. 86.
458
Ibid., 11.8-9, p. 89.
459
Master Simon, De sac., p. 47.
460
Ibid.
461
Ibid., pp. 45-49.
648 CHAPTER EIGHT

a rather inconsistent position, because his insistence on the priority

and efficacy of the spiritual union undercuts his point about sexual
relations being required to fulfill the purposes for which marriage
was instituted. Further, the model of protection and subjection as
descriptions of the mutual love of the spouses is rather a travesty of
Hugh's extended vision of true mutuality in their relations. Still,
the appeal of Hugh's conception of marriage is so strong, for
Simon, that he incorporates the Victorine understanding into his
account despite the inconsistencies that result.
A much more faithful follower of Hugh on the consent side of the
debate is the author of the Summa sententiarum, although he does not
hesitate to disagree with Hugh at times or to amplify on points that
Hugh ignores or to which Hugh, in the master's opinion, gives
short shrift. With respect to the intentions informing the decision to
marry, he asserts that the procreation of offspring and the avoid-
ance of fornication are the only theologically acceptable reasons.
Other possibilities advanced by some authorities, such as the re-
conciliation of enemies, he rejects as not found in Holy Scripture.
The less upright, or worldly reasons, such as sexual pleasure,
riches, and connections, he deplores; but he affirms that they do not
invalidate a marriage so long as the spouses are bound by mutual
consent. Consent is of the essence; and it provides the master with a
way of addressing the ail-too evident gap between marriage, as it
exists in the real world, and marriage, as theologians would like it
to be.462 When it comes to marriage formation and the relation of
marriage to the goods of marriage, he follows Hugh in observing
that, when a valid marriage exists, the absence of the goods does
not alter that fact. With Hugh, he holds that the requirements for a
valid marriage are the absence of legal impediments and consent.
While citing the standard pro-consent authorities, he is particularly
concerned with enlarging the dossier used by Hugh to include those
who condemn parents who interfere with or undermine their chil-
dren's liberty of choice, especially in the case of their daughters. He
emphasizes as well that spouses must be of age, so that they can
render informed consent. For the same reason, he rejects future
consent as determinative, given the fact that children can be be-
trothed at an early age. With Hugh, he brings the marriage of
Mary and Joseph to bear on the defense of consent, and acknowl-
edges that his position admits the validity of clandestine marriage.
Although he does not stop to consider, and to refute, the authorities

Summa sent. 7.1, PL 176: 153D-155B.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 649

on the other side of the debate, he comes down firmly on the

conclusion that consent is sufficient, even in the absence of a dowry,
a solemn, public wedding ceremony, and a priesdy blessing, and
that this is the case whether or not the marriage is consummated.463
The master adds to this analysis of marriage formation a paean of
praise to marriage itself, not so much as a way by which man assists
in the continuing work of creation, as Hugh would have it, but as a
means of refuting heretics who impugn its goodness. For, as he
says, marriage "is a good thing and in no way evil" (rem esse bonam et
nullo modo malam), and this is so both because of its double divine
institution and because of the honor with which Christ endowed it
by performing His first miracle at the marriage of Cana, a point
also made by the author of the Sententie Anselmi.*** This is a senti-
ment which Hugh would certainly have endorsed although he
himself does not put such an expressly antiheretical construction on
the point. But there is also an area in which the author moves away
from Hugh. He does not speak about the inner quality of mutual
love that describes a sacramental marriage, and he does not see the
friendship of the spouses that proceeds from their spiritual conjugal
society as essential. He puts this condition in the same category as
the goods of marriage, which may flow from marital consent, but
which do not obviate it if they are absent. Likewise, the union of
minds and hearts may be absent, both as an intentionality flowing
into consent or out of the spouses' common life. Consistent with his
initial point, it is the consent to a permanent common life that
counts, with or without these desiderata.465 In this respect, the
author shows himself to be less interested in the quality of the
commitment made by the spouses and the ways in which marriage
may help them to grow as persons than he is in the unimpeded,
conscious, and deliberate character of the consent which initiates
the marriage.
In positioning Peter Lombard's view of marriage as a sacrament
and marriage formation in the contemporary context, three main
features of his account stand out: his solid support for the principle
of consent, coupled with an appreciation of the values and realities
to which his consummationist opponents speak, rare for a defender
of consent; a generous use of the work of his predecessors, with the
guiding spirits being Gratian, Hugh of St. Victor, and the Summa
sententiarum; and his ability, notwithstanding his appeal to these

Ibid., 7.4, 7.6-7, PL 176: 157B-C, 158C-160C.

Ibid., 7.2, PL 176: 155C; Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 129-30.
Summa sent. 7.4, PL 176: 176B-C.
650 CHAPTER EIGHT

masters and to many well-worn themes and opinions, to impart to

these topics a quality that is Lombardian in its own right, and that
moves reflection on marriage forward.466 Peter begins with the
double institution of marriage before and after the fall, for the
purpose of procreation and the avoidance of fornication. He im-
mediately tips his hand on how he plans to present sex in marriage
by remarking that the postlapsarian institution was for the protec-
tion of nature, and not merely for the repression of vice. In explain-
ing this point, he adds that, while marriage was a precept in Eden,
and again after the flood when the repopulation of the world was
required, it is now an indulgence. An indulgence can be regarded
as a concession, or for remission, or as a permission. Marriage, he
states, is conceded. What this means is that it is granted for a good
purpose, and not just merely allowed as a dispensation from a rule
that would otherwise be binding or as a mere permission. The
goodness of marriage after the fall is a notion which Peter, like the
author of the Summa sententiarum, wants to stress specifically against
the heretics who condemn marriage. No names are named but the
Cathars are clearly in the dock. The fact that marriage is a good
thing (res bona), he agrees, is shown not only by its divine institution
in Eden, but also by the fact that Christ chose to perform His first
miracle at the marriage of Cana. For, he concludes, were marriage
not good, it would not be a sacrament. As the sign of a sacred thing,
a sacrament must resemble what it signifies, he reminds the reader;
and Christ, in turning water into wine at the marriage of Cana,
indicates how, through the blessing He thus imparts to marriage, it
can be transformed from a purely human institution into one
drawing spouses to the holy thing it signifies.467
This holy thing, the res sacramenti of which marriage is a sign is,
for Peter, who here departs from Hugh and follows Master Simon,
the union of Christ and the church. There is a single res sacramenti,

466
Helpful treatments include Gold, "The Marriage of Mary and Joseph," pp.
102-17; Orio Giacchi, "Voluntà e unione coniugale nella dottrina matrimoniale di
Pier Lombardo," in Misc. Lomb., pp. 341-43; Heaney, The Development of the
Sacramentality of'Marriage\ pp. 28-31; Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 239-41; Zeimentz,
Ehe, pp. 118-23, 136-40. Mignon, Us origines, 2: 241-42, 24&-49 makes the
unsupported claim that Peter rejects Hugh in favor of Abelard, while Ludwig Ott,
"Walter von Mortagne und Petrus Lom bard us in ihrem Verhältnis zueinander,"
in Melanges Joseph de Ghellinck S.J., 2 vols. (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1951), 2: 656,
666 n. 35, 669 claims that Walter of Mortagne was his source for ideas found in all
the defenders of the principle of consent.
467
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 26. c. 1-c. 5, 2: 417-19. The quotation is at c. 5.2,
p. 419. Peter makes the same point about the marriage of Cana in Sermo 13, PL
171: 402B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 651

he holds, but marriage signifies it in two ways, since Christ is

united to the church in two ways. Christ associates Himself to the
church both in will and in nature (voluntate et natura). His intention
and desire to make His love and His salvation available to the
believers who make up His mystical body is made efficacious
through the church as a visible institution. Its existence as an
institution is a manifestation and expression of the loving inten-
tionality of Christ which is its inspiration and source. So, as Peter
sees it, marriage is a bond "according to the consent of souls and
according to the union of bodies" (secundum consensum animorum et
secundum permixtione corporum). Consent signifies the bond of charity
joining Christ and the church by will, while the sexual union of the
spouses signifies Christ's union with the church by nature, in that
He Himself took on the nature of man and continues to make
Himself available to man in modes that can be appropriated physi-
cally in the ecclesiastical dispensation. And, just as the visible
church expresses the invisible bond of love which created it and
which informs it, so the physical union of the spouses expresses and
reinforces the union of souls which animates it.468
It is clear from his posing of the definition of marriage in this way
that Peter is planning to adhere forcefully to the principle that a
marriage comes into being when the spouses give their consent,
while at the same time acknowledging that their life together in the
flesh is not an irrelevancy or a mere option in the vast majority of
cases. Rather, he wants to present the sexual relations of spouses as
something that can, and should, be joined meaningfully to their
union of souls, in such a way as to express and to strengthen that
spiritual bonding. This being the case, he has a clear idea of how to
handle the authorities on both the consent and the consummation
side of the controversy. He borrows Gratian's dossier here and also
his tactic of relativizing the judgments of those authors whose
statements are made without the qualifications that he himself
wants to impose on them. Peter also has a way of dealing effectively
with the marriage of Mary and Joseph, without having to urge or
even to imply that a mariage blanc is normative or desirable for
most couples. He begins by citing the authorities who say that the
consummation is the point at which a true and indissoluble mar-
riage comes into being. This position is flatly in error, he asserts. A
marriage can be perfect, valid, sacramental, and indissoluble with-
out sexual union. Such was the case with Mary and Joseph. Since

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 26. c. 6, 2: 419-21.

652 CHAPTER EIGHT

the union of souls signifies a sacred thing, the bond of charity

between Christ and the church, it is a sacrament, although it is not
a visible one. A standard marriage, on the other hand, is sac-
ramental in a twofold sense, since both the union of souls and the
union of bodies stand for a res sacramenti. Further, and this is the
way the consummationist authorities should be understood, he
argues, while in a standard marriage the sexual union is just as
sacramental as the union of souls, the former is a manifestation of
the latter. The spiritual communion of love comes first and is the
ground; "for marriage is the sign of spiritual bonding and of the
love uniting souls, and, on this account spouses ought to come
together in the flesh" (Est etiam coniugum signum spirituals coniunctionis
et dilectionis animorum, qua inter se coniuges uniri debent).469
In one stroke, by means of this argument, Peter has managed to
accomplish three things at once, which move forward the under-
standing of marriage in his time. He has retained the notion of
deliberate and loving consent as the essential basis of marriage and
of marriage formation as put forth by Hugh of St. Victor, but
without Hugh's asceticism. He has acknowledged, with the con-
summationists, that life in the body is natural and commensurate
with the purposes for which marriage was instituted. But, rather
than seeing the sexual union as what perfects a consensual union
that serves only as the incomplete beginning of a marriage, he
regards the sexual union as sacramental in that it expresses the
union of minds and hearts that is constitutive of the marriage. This
perspective dignifies the sexual relations of spouses, in seeing them
as more than merely remedial, and provides the foundation for
Peter's treatment of sexual ethics in marriage later in his treatise on
this subject.
But before he gets to that point, and to the other topics pertinent
to marriage that he intends to treat, he offers a more specific and
more institutionally framed definition of marriage which includes a
consideration of when it begins, which he discusses under the
heading of the efficient cause of marriage; of the intentions which
the spouses bring to it in rendering their consent, which he does not
label a cause but which might well be called the formal cause; and
of the ends of marriage, understood as its final cause. His handling
of these themes reflects his familiarity with Gratian's terminology
and concerns, even if his own conclusions are not always substan-
tively the same as Gratian's. Peter agrees with the canonical notion

Ibid. The quotation is at c. 6.5, p. 421.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 653

that marriage is a union of a man and woman who are legitimate

persons (légitimas personas), that is, legally able to contract a mar-
riage, who come together to live a common life under a common
custom (individuam vitae consuetudinem retinens). This means that the
spouses recognize that they have a common, and, Peter stresses, a
mutual, set of rights and obligations. Aside from the standard point
about the rendering of the marriage debt and the requirement that
spouses may not withdraw into continence without their spouses'
consent, he adds their common agreement to a permanent union
and a union in which there is no double standard; each spouse
commits himself or herself to the same conjugal chastity and fidel-
ity that he or she requires of his or her partner.470
As to the efficient cause of this union, it is clearly, in Peter's eyes,
the consent of the spouses verbally and freely given, a present not a
future consent (Efficiens autem causa matrimonii est consensus, non
quilibety sed per verba expressus; nee de futuro, sed de praesenti). If the
principals are unable to speak, they may substitute some other
perceptible sign indicating that they are aware of the commitment
that they are undertaking and that they bring to it the requisite
intentions. This stress on the articulate word or sensible sign in the
taking of marriage vows reflects Peter's desire to make the marriage
ceremony symmetrical with the rites in which the other sacraments
are administered, which involve a visible or sensible sacramental
medium, with the possible exception of penance, in his case. For
the same reason, he rules here as well that vows taken fraudulently
or under coercion are invalid.471 Having disposed of the consumma-
tionist authorities as he does above, he does not debate with them
here, but concentrates on presenting the main pro-consent cita-
tions, with which he plainly agrees. Also, having already laid to
rest, to his own satisfaction, the claim that the marriage is not valid
until it is consummated, he focuses his attention rather on the claim
that the marriage begins at the time of the betrothal. The way to
read those authorities who support the latter position, he argues, is
with a lexicographical clarification. A couple can be called spouses
(sponsus, sponsa)) as a courtesy title, from the time of their engage-
ment (desponsatio), just as they can properly address their in-laws-
to-be with the titles of relatives. But they are not actually husband
and wife (coniuges) until they render their present consent at their
wedding. This distinction, Peter shows, can be reinforced by the

Ibid., d. 27. c. 2, 2: 422.

Ibid., c. 3.1, 2: 422-23. The quotation is on p. 422.
654 CHAPTER EIGHT

fact that an engaged person may choose a monastic vocation uni-

laterally, while coniuges cannot withdraw into monastic life except
with the express consent of their husbands or wives. It is only at the
point of the exchange of marriage vows that the union becomes
indissoluble. There is no hesitation in Peter's mind as to whether
an engagement can be broken. Engagements manifestly can be
broken, since they are merely promises to do something in the
future and not the doing of the thing itself. He points not only to the
rule regarding entrance into monastic life, and other canonical
rules pertaining to engaged persons to buttress this position, but
also to the civil law. If a woman's fiancé should die prior to the
marriage, he points out, she does not gain the legal status of a
widow vis-à-vis his estate. Likewise, if it is the fiancée who dies, the
man in question is not held to have been married, insofar as that
might be a bar to his ordination.472 Through arguments of this type,
Peter seeks to show that those authorities who collapse present
consent into future consent or who ignore present consent
altogether are both erroneous and self-contradictory, just as he has
sought to show that those who argue for consummationism, or who
require a dowry, confuse the marriage itself with events that come
later and which are consequences of the marriage and not its point
of inception.
In turn, this argument leads Peter to assert that we must distin-
guish what is necessary to initiate a marriage from what is decorous
in conjunction with it. As in the case of other sacraments, he notes,
there are ceremonies surrounding marriage which are and should
be observed. But the marriage remains a valid marriage if they are
omitted. It is under this heading that he places parental consent,
along with the formal handing over of the bride to the groom, and
priestly blessing. Peter is as frank as Hugh of St. Victor, the author
of the Summa sententiarum, and the school of Laon in recognizing that
the logic of this position means the acceptance of clandestine mar-
riage. Peter does not shrink from drawing this conclusion. He
admits the validity of such marriages, the other necessary condi-
tions obtaining, although he does not seek to encourage them. Like
the Porretans, his tactic for handling this admittedly uncomfortable
corollary of the pro-consent view is to discourage people contem-
plating a clandestine marriage by pointing out that it is not to their
enlightened self-interest to enter into such a union. If problems
should arise later on and the principals should need to have to

Ibid., c. 3-d. 28. c. 1, 2: 422-32.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 655

prove that they are really married, the ability to produce witnesses
will be to their advantage. Still, when push comes to shove, Peter's
desire to defend the principle of consent is unyielding, and he rules
that such couples must be received as truly married on their own
testimony.473
Peter also discusses the intentions brought to a marriage under
the heading of the content of the present consent of the spouses.
Here, he addresses a number of debated points by the way he
defines his terms. This consent, he notes, is more than the commit-
ment to share a common life. For, if this were all that were re-
quired, brothers and sisters and other relatives sharing a common
household would be considered married, and they are not. Nor is
the sole content of marital consent the consent to sexual relations,
he states, herewith rejecting the position of the Abelardians. If this
were the case, the marriage of Mary and Joseph would be no
marriage, a weapon that can be used against this group of pro-
consent theologians as handily as it can be deployed against the
consummationists. While marriage, for Peter, typically does in-
clude both consent to a common life and consent to sexual rela-
tions, it is exhausted by neither of these ingredients nor by both of
them together. What is of the essence, for Peter, is the agreement to
form an association that is, specifically, a conjugal one (consensus
coniugalis societatis), an association constituted and guided by mari-
tal affection (coniugali affectu).*74 In his discussion of these conditions,
which inform both the intentions of spouses as they render present
consent and which serve as the final causes of their union, Peter
reveals his familiarity with the canonists' understanding of the term
maritalis affectio, although he does not use their precise language. He
also reveals his familiarity with the substitution of this canonical
notion by the author of the Summa sententiarum for the more effusive
and idealistic view of marital intentionality proposed by Hugh of
St. Victor. Peter accepts the canonists' idea that marital affection
means the honor, dignity, and respect which people recognize that
they owe to their spouses as such, and that the concept does not
refer to erotic or romantic love, although he does not manifest their
interest in endorsing this principle as a means of distinguishing
marriage from concubinage. He joins the Summa sententiarum in
advancing marital affection as a more workable and reasonable
norm than the counsels of perfection advocated by Hugh; few

Ibid., d. 28. c. 2, 2: 433-34.

Ibid., c. 3.2, d. 31. c. 2.5, 2: 435, 444.
656 CHAPTER EIGHT

validly married couples can be expected to approximate the exalted

example of Mary and Joseph, who, in any case, were granted
special charisms because of their unique role in the Christian story.
The aspect of marital affection and conjugal society that Peter
emphasizes is found neither in the canonists, Hugh, nor the Summa
sententiarum. Here, he reintroduces the observation he had made
about the creation of Eve in Book 2 of the Sentences, an idea which he
shares with Hugh and with many other masters of the time, as a
means of reinforcing his point. Eve was taken from Adam's side, he
reminds the reader, and not from his head or his feet, to indicate
that the wife is neither the ruler nor the servant of her husband but
rather his equal associate in a common life. This equality and
mutuality extend to the moral relationship of spouses and not only
to their sexual relationship. In making this point, what Peter omits
is as striking as what he says. While he is certainly willing to put
forth the idea in his Pauline glosses, he does not refer here to the
subjection of wives to husbands as a punishment for sin or to the
principle of hierarchy within the family as a foregone conclusion
both socially and theologically. Unlike Master Simon, the union of
souls he has in mind is not based on the model of protection and
subjection but on the model of spiritual and sexual equality.475
While putting this egalitarian construction on the principle of
marital affection, Peter joins the author of the Summa sententiarum in
applying it to what he calls the final causes of marriage, from a
sexual point of view. Recognizing that there are spiritual values
that marriage confirms and promotes, he agrees fully with the idea
that there are two proper and honest sexual causes at work in
marriage, the propagation of offspring and the avoidance of fornica-
tion. He acknowledges that people in fact often marry for less
unselfish reasons. Unlike the author of the Summa sententiarum, he
reimports the sealing of peace and the reconciliation of enemies into
the question, under the heading of lesser but still worthy reasons for
marrying. These motives may not have Scriptural foundations but
he finds them eminently reasonable none the less. Motives still less
worthy, and, in this case, not honest either, include marriage for
the sake of wealth, social position, or the gratification of erotic
desire. Confronted with the problem of whether marriages under-
taken for essentially worldly and selfish reasons are truly sac-
ramental unions, Peter recognizes fully that the intentions which

475
Ibid., d. 28. c. 4, 2: 435. This point has been emphasized correctly by
Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 220-21.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 657

spouses bring to such unions are defective. In the case of other

sacraments, as we have seen, defective intentionality on the part of
either the recipient or the administrator is enough to rule out the
validity of the sacrament and its fruitful appropriation by the
recipient, for Peter. On this point, apparently recognizing the
limited force which sacramental theology can have with respect to
legal and social institutions such as marriage, fully capable of
existing independent of the sacramental understanding which
theologians may seek to impose on them, he bows to the perceived
need to depart from his otherwise symmetrical treatment of sac-
ramental intentionality in the case of marriage. He agrees, with the
Summa sententiarum, that if a couple give their mutual and unforced
present consent, they are validly married, even if the marriage
serves ends which he holds to be dishonest and inappropriate, from
a Christian perspective. The goodness of the sacrament, he reluc-
tantly concludes, is not contaminated by the less than good ends
that it serves in such marriages.476 Agreeing as well with the host of
contemporaries who distinguish the Augustinian goods of marriage
from marriage itself, the only category of spousal intentionality
which he thinks pollutes the sacrament to such an extent that it
warrants the withdrawal of the title of married from those who
engage in the practices it informs has to do with contraception and
abortion. Those spouses who procure poisons seeking to prevent
conception or induce abortion are in a class with simoniac clergy-
men, in his estimation. But, in stating that they should no longer be
considered married, Peter acknowledges tacidy that he is making a
hortatory and rhetorical point only, for there is no way of stripping
such people of their marital status on this account analogous to the
canonical procedures for unfrocking a simoniac priest or invalidat-
ing his ordination.477
In practice, then, as well as in theory, Peter adheres to the
principle of consent in marriage formation, whether the intentions
spouses bring to present consent are truly in keeping with the
sacramental character of marriage or not. Without falling into
inconsistency, what he manages to do, better than any of the other
defenders of consent, and, indeed, better than any of the defenders
of consummation, is to find a way of integrating, positively, the
importance of sexual relations between spouses into the position
that marital consent, not consummation, is of the essence in mar-

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 30. c. 3, 2: 440-41

Ibid., d. 31. c. 1-c. 4, 2: 442-46.
658 CHAPTER EIGHT

riage formation. In the immediate sequel, his doctrine of marriage

formation proved to be decisive for both theologians and canonists.
It was adopted officially in the decretals of Pope Alexander III in
the next generation.478 This is not to say that the victory of the
consent position, with the particular emphasis Peter gives to it, was
able to come to grips with the many ways in which it fails to square
with marriage as practiced in medieval societies and as regulated
by medieval codes of secular law in and after Peter's time. Parents
continued to force children into unwanted marriages; dowries re-
mained essential requirements for marriage; breach of promise
remained a cause of action; the notary, rather than the priest,
continued to be the official personage of choice in nuptial agree-
ments; the high and the mighty continued to ignore or to manipu-
late the principle of marital indissolubility when it suited their
convenience; and the dependent, the poor, and the semi-free found
that their status and circumstances stood in the way of making
their own free choice of marriage partners. In all these respects,
while Peter's definition of marriage and of marriage formation
proved determinative for the masters in the schools of theology and
canon law, and for the leaders of the church, it neither responded to
the perceived needs of married Christians nor informed their
understanding of marriage in practice.
The definition of marriage and of marriage formation was the
single biggest debated question raised with respect to this sacra-
ment in the first half of the twelfth century. There were, however,
other controversies into which some if not all of the contemporary
masters entered. The two remaining topics, sexual relations in
marriage and impediments to marriage, are subjects which a con-
siderable numbers of masters felt a need to address and on which
they expressed a range of opinions. In the case of the first of these
topics, the terms of the debate were set by the position articulated

478
For Peter's influence, see Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp.
268-70. Brundage writes as if there were an automatic trickle-down process and as
if the views of the theologians and canonists actually informed the attitudes of high
medieval Christians concerning marriage. The same kind of over-simplification,
but one which treats ecclesiastical authorities and theologians as having a mono-
lithic position, is found in Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two ModeL· from
Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1978); and The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage
in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983). A
more realistic appraisal is given by Jean Gaudemet, L· mariage en occident: Les moeurs
et le droit (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987) and Michael M. Sheehan, "Theory and
Practice: Marriage of the Unfree and the Poor in Medieval Society," MS 50
(1988): 457-87.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 659

by Augustine. As a pendant to his view that the sexual relations of

Adam and Eve in Eden, had they not fallen, could have taken place
entirely under the direction of reason and will, exclusively for the
procreation of offspring, and devoid of sexual desire or sexual
pleasure, he argued that, in man's fallen state, they could not be
engaged in, even in pursuit of the legitimate goods of marriage,
without lust, and hence without at least venial sin. This position
continued to receive support from some twelfth-century masters,
such as the author of the Sententie Anselmi.479 But, wherever they
stood regarding consummation versus consent in marriage forma-
tion, and regardless of whether they saw the content of marital
consent as sexual only or as broader than that, a number of masters
expressly reject the Augustinian position. Indeed, within the same
school of Laon in which the Sententie Anselmi was produced, the
majority opinion is that sex in marriage is a good thing, or at least
that it is excused when applied to the ends of marriage.480 Hugh of
St. Victor agrees that the sexual relations of spouses can take place
without sin,481 and so does Master Simon, who, however, adds a
distinction taken from Gregory the Great: if the spouses are acting
with a procreative intention, they act 'Tor a conjugal good, . . . so
that sin in no way attaches to them" (per bonum coniugale, . . .ut nullo
modo peccatum reputetur). But, if the couple are acting in order to
avoid fornication, venial sin does attach to their behavior, while
serious sin is imputed to them if they unite merely for the sake of
pleasure.482 Both the author of the Summa sententiarum and Robert
Pullen take a much more generous line, distancing themselves still
more sharply from Augustine. For the author of the Summa senten-
tiarum, sex in marriage is exempted from all vice when it is intended
to minister to the physical needs of the couple as well as to their
wish to produce offspring (absque omni vitio et sola intentione guerandi).
It only becomes venially sinful if neither of these intentions is
present and if the couple come together for erotic pleasure alone.
But, even in that event, he holds the fault to be quite mild. His
accent is on the fact that sexual relations are required for the
bearing of offspring and for the rendering of the marriage debt, and
that this situation is approved by God. The pleasure necessarily
attending the use of sex for the ends of marriage, he adds, is no

479
Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 131-34.
480
De coniugOy p. 386; Decretum dei fuit, p. 364; Sentences of the School of Laon, no.
401. 403, 527, 5: 286, 365; Deus de cuius pnndpio etfinetacetur, p. 270.
Wl
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.11.4, PL 176: 481R-482D.
482
Master Simon, De sac. pp. 53-54. The quotation is on p. 53.
660 CHAPTER EIGHT

more evil per se than the pleasure attending eating, so long as

moderation is observed.483 Robert Pullen is equally interested in
accentuating the positive. At the very worst, he holds, any sins
found in marital sex will be slight (levia peccata). But, in those who
are baptized and married sacramentally, this sin, if any, is excused
in virtue of the sacrament. Since spouses commit no sin in the
married use of sex, sin should not be imputed to them. Robert
agrees with the Summa sententiarum in observing that sexual rela-
tions, like eating and sleeping, are natural acts that have nothing
intrinsically evil in them, although, like these other functions, our
use of them may be virtuous or depraved. He adds that there are
also some virtuous acts that are inspired by, or are concomitant
with, certain emotions, to which they are appropriate. Righteous
indignation is a case in point. The same is true of sexual pleasure in
marital relations. No blame attaches to it when sex in marriage is
used for the sake of offspring, to render the marriage debt, and to
avoid fornication.484
While the effort to moderate, or to reject, the rigors of Augustin-
ianism on sex in marriage attracts support from a large number of
masters in the mid-twelfth century, we can also find evidence of a
more ascetic approach to this issue. Consistent with their narrow,
negative, and purely concessive treatment of marriage itself, the
Abelardians elevate celibacy above marriage and see nothing posi-
tive in married sex.485 The only thing that marriage does in this
connection, in their view, is to make legitimate a form of activity
which the wise man should rise above, and which is not licit except
for married persons. Given the fact that all the masters just discuss-
ed, whether Abelardians or not, are proponents of consent in
marriage formation, it is hard to agree with the claim of James A.
Brundage that defenders of consent took that position in order to
elevate the spirit above the flesh, out of ascetic inclinations.486 That
view would seem to describe the Abelardians primarily, and not
most of their scholastic compeers.
In the context of contemporary opinions on sexual ethics in
marriage, the Lombard comes closest to the Summa sententiarum and
Robert Pullen, similarly repudiating Augustine, and dignifying sex

483
Summa sent. 7.3, PL 176: 156A-157A. The quotation is at 156A.
484
Robert Pullen, Sent. 6.4, 7.28, 7.30, PL 186: 867B, 945C-D, 948C-949C. The
quotation is at 6.4, 867B.
485
Hermannus, Sent., pp. 120, 137-38; Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 44, 46; Ysagoge in
theologiam, p. 196.
486
Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 237, 268.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 661

in marriage still farther. Because it is required in order to attain the

goods of marriage, Peter agrees, the sexual union of spouses is freed
from blame (excusetur coitus carnalis). Having noted that some people
marry for purely worldly reasons and that they are considered to
have a valid sacramental marriage none the less, he extends that
same reasoning to the good of offspring as one of the three Augustin-
ian goods of marriage. To be sure, Augustine was referring to the
bearing and rearing of children in the faith, as good citizens of the
church. Peter observes that many couples pursue this good not for
religious reasons and not because they see the family as a cellular
unit within the church, but for the sake of maintaining and expand-
ing the importance of their own lineage, for the sake of self-
perpetuation through children, or for other selfish reasons. Never-
theless, a procreative intention that is defective, from a theological
or moral standpoint, does not remove the freedom from sin
attaching to the sexual relations of such couples. The only point at
which Peter draws the line is the case of sexual relations engaged in
by spouses purely out of the desire for pleasure. This activity he
sees as no better than fornication. But, in developing a sliding scale
that places the rightly motivated desire for children at the top and
the pleasure principle at the bottom of the hierarchy of ethical
motivations and ethical evaluations of sex in marriage, what is
striking is the way he describes the term in between. While all his
contemporaries see the avoidance of fornication as one of the
reasons for the institution of marriage, and while most of them see
sexual relations undertaken for this purpose either as totally blame-
less, as with the Summa sententiarum and Robert Pullen, or as
blameworthy but only to a slight degree, as with Master Simon,
they still put the matter negatively. Peter sides here with Simon on
the venial character of sin attached to this type of sexual activity,
but he puts the point positively. The reason for the acceptability of
this motive for sexual relations is that it serves the fidelity of the
spouses. It is a positive motive, not a negative one springing from
the view that it obviates the need for the spouses to seek satisfaction
with other partners, in illicit relations. Peter presents this type of
sex in marriage not as a means of preventing sin but as a means of
strengthening the couple's mutual commitment. In concluding that
sexual behavior that exceeds the norms he outlines, behavior that
ends in incontinence that is selfish and immoderate is hence
blameworthy, the point that Peter wants to stress is not that
marital sex is restricted in its virtuous use but that sexual pleasure
in marriage is no more evil than the satisfactions accompanying
other natural functions and activities, such as rest and recreation
662 CHAPTER EIGHT

after work and eating when one is hungry. As for the more ascetic
and concessive authorities, Peter holds that they should be read in
the light of the principle that human sexuality is a good when
exercised in the service of the ends of marriage. Also, while in
certain legal contexts the husband is the head of the wife, in their
sexual relations they have equal rights and obligations. Peter ac-
knowledges the idea that there are certain time in the church year
when the canonists think spouses should abstain from sexual rela-
tions. But he is far more permissive than they are. He asserts that
the payment of the marriage debt for the sake of preserving marital
fidelity must always be seen as a higher priority. This willingness to
recognize that sexual relations play a positive role in the lives of
married couples, joined, as it is in Peter's eyes, to the mutuality of
the spouses' rights and duties, is a teaching that Peter presents in
the light of his understanding of sexual relations in marriage as
expressing and as reinforcing the union of minds and hearts in
mutual consent, on which the sacrament is based and which is its
fundamental definition.487 And, while agreeing with Hugh of St.
Victor and with other proponents of consent that Mary and Joseph
were joined in a holy and sacramental marriage, entered into
without false pretenses concerning its celibate nature, and reflective
of the good of offspring in their rearing of Jesus as well as in the
goods of fidelity and permanence, he reminds his reader that this
marriage is not the norm of Christian marriage in that it lacks the
full sacramental significance of the union of Christ and the church
that the standard marriage possesses in its combination of the
union of souls with the union of bodies.488
A final set of issues confronting theologians and canonists who
wrote on marriage in the first half of the twelfth century has to do
with impediments to marriage, the conditions that nullify a mar-
riage, and grounds for separation, coupled with the question of
when and if either or both parties have the right to take another
spouse in the event that their marriage has been dissolved. There
are certain points on which there is general agreement here. All
concede that the only grounds for separation is infidelity and that,
if a spouse is dismissed on that account, the marriage remains in
effect and neither party can remarry. Those masters who take up
the question also agree that physical separation, as might be

487
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 27. c. 1, d. 31. c. l^c. 2.4, c. 5-d. 32. c. 4, 2:
421-22, 442-45, 446-56. Zeimentz, Ehe, pp. 226-28, 237^5 gives a sensitive
appreciation of these points.
488
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 30. c. 2, 2: 439-41.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 663

brought about by pilgrimage, crusade, long-distance trade, or cap-

ture by an enemy, does not dissolve a marriage either; and, if a new
union has been made by either or both parties, it is not valid, and
the original partners must return to each other if the absent spouse
reappears. It is also a consensus position that consanguinity to the
sixth or seventh degree, depending on whether one counts the
parent-child relationship or not, and spiritual affinity, of the type
created by godparenting or serving as a sponsor at a person's
confirmation, are a bar to marriage. Likewise, holy orders at the
rank of subdeacon or above, vows of celibacy whether public or
private, in association with a monastic profession or not, are gener-
ally accepted as impediments to marriage or as grounds for nul-
lification if they were not known at the time of the marriage and are
subsequently discovered. These views are shared by canonists and
theologians alike, although, faithful to their own guild mentality,
the canonists revel in the discussion of consanguinity, giving it
protracted and enthusiastic attention; and in considering impedi-
ments and decrees of nullity they are deeply interested in the
identification and prosecution of delicts and the procedures to be
followed in these kinds of cases, themes that do not appeal very
much to the theologians.
There are also a number of topics in this same general category
where a range of opinions can be detected, both in areas where
masters take opposing views on the same questions and areas
where they agree on the substance of the issue but disagree on the
rationale supporting their common conclusions. A good example of
the latter is the observation that the rules and regulations affecting
marriage have changed over time, to a greater extent than those
affecting other sacraments. In Old Testament times, polygamy and
concubinage were acceptable; the rules on consanguinity were
drastically different from those obtaining later on; and divorce and
remarriage were permitted. Some masters merely register these
changes without much comment, or content themselves with the
observation that these are disciplinary regulations, which are
changeable by nature, as opposed to the sacramental character and
purposes of marriage, which are not.469 One Laon master, however,
dissents, arguing that polygamy was and always is wrong, but that
God tolerated it among the Old Testament patriarchs on a lesser of

489
Honorius, Elue. 2.51, p. 426; Sent. Anselmi 5, p. 112; Sentences of the School of
Loon, no. 402, 404, 5: 286-87; Deus de cuius prinäpio et fine tacetur, pp. 272-73;
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 32. q. 3, col. 1127-30; Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 44-55;
Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 196; Master Simon, De sac., p. 54.
664 CHAPTER EIGHT

the two evils basis.490 Robert Pullen sees the change in marriage
customs as an index of the moral weakness of mankind in earlier
times and the hardness of heart and selfishness of pre-Christian
family life.491 On the other hand, Hugh of St. Victor, Hermannus,
and the author of the Summa sententiarum explain the change in
customs on historical grounds. In the earliest chapters of Old
Testament history, they observe, as well as after the flood, poly-
gamy and concubinage were permitted in order to populate or
repopulate the world; and the small number of people available for
that purpose made it necessary to marry relatives who would now
be ruled out as too closely connected. Hugh is anxious to make the
point, following Augustine, that the patriarchs took multiple wives
out of piety and public spirit, not lust. The author of the Summa
sententiarum adds that these necessities and constraints have now
been superseded, and Christian marriage can operate according to
rules that are better (honestior) .492
Concerning impediments to marriage and grounds for nullifica-
tion, the topics on which we see substantive disagreement do not
agitate all masters to the same extent. Sometimes their positions
are related to their theory of marriage formation and sometimes
not. Thus, while all agree that being underage is an impediment,
Gratian sets the age limit at seven, reflecting his position that the
matrimonium initiatum begins with the betrothal. Although Roland of
Bologna supports Gratian on the point that the union is not a
matrimonium ratum until it is consummated, he insists on the age
requirement of twelve, for a girl, and thirteen, for a boy, or ade-
quate physical maturity, both because this is necessary for con-
summation and because he thinks that persons below these ages are
not likely to know their own minds or to be capable of rendering the
informed consent required before the consummation. For his part,
the author of the Summa sententiarum, as a defender of consent, sees
the latter ages, which he gives as twelve and fourteen, as needed
from the sole perspective of the capacity of spouses to consent
intelligently.493 Although members of the school of Laon are gener-
ally on the side of consent, one Laon master discusses the status of a
marriage in which one partner is above the age of consent and the
other is below it. He rules, unhelpfully, that the marriage is valid

490
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 527, 5: 366.
491
Robert Pullen, Sent. 7.28-29, PL 186: 946A-947D.
492
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.11.10, PL 176: 496D-497C; Hermannus, Sent.,
p. 136; Summa sent. 7.5, PL 176: 157C-158C.
493
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 30. q. 2, col. 1099-1100; Roland of Bologna,
Sent., pp. 279-80; Summa sent. 7.15, PL 176: 166C.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 665

for the first party but not for the second.494 Another impediment
which is usually, although not always, related to the master's
theory of marriage formation is insanity. While it is generally
agreed that insanity, as with any other malady that may strike a
married person after he is married, has to be seen, like sterility, as a
misfortune that does not alter the valid status of his marriage and
that gives his spouse no grounds for dismissing him, insanity is seen
as an impediment to the creation of a marriage by Gratian, the
Porretans, and the Summa sententiarum.*95 Gratian's argument is
linked to the requirement of informed consent in the first phase of
marriage formation, the betrothal that initiates but does not perfect
the marriage, while the other masters connect it to their view that
consent alone suffices to make the marriage. Despite their strong
support for the principle of consent, however, Hugh of St. Victor
and Master Simon omit this question altogether, notwithstanding
its pertinence, and Ivo of Chartres, although a defender of consent
as well, oddly enough treats insanity as not being an impediment to
marriage.496 All involved, wherever they come down on insanity as
a bar to informed consent, and not always consistently with the
position they take on that matter, agree that insanity does not
prevent people from carrying out the duties of marriage, even if
they see marriage as involving a union of souls, and one that
requires a self-discipline in the use of sex that is difficult to envision
in a relationship in which one or both partners are deranged or not
fully responsible for their actions. The principal argument the
masters make in support of their position is that spouses who are
insane should not be required to separate lest the benefits of mar-
riage be lost to them.
Another debated topic under the heading of impediments to
marriage and grounds for nullification, which also may or may not
be related to a master's views on marriage formation, has to do
with the religious beliefs of the spouses. On this topic, as well,
conflicting legal and Scriptural injunctions and concessions collide.
Noticing the fact that, unlike the other sacraments, marriage was
not invented in the dispensation of Christ, Hermannus and the
author of the Sententiae Parisiensis I see no reason to object to the

494
Sentences of the School of Loon, no, 528, 5: 368.
495
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 32. q. 26, col. 1147; Sent. mag. Gisleberti. II 11.20,
p. 90; Summa sent. 7.15, PL 176: 166C.
496
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 168, PL 161: 619D. Ivo's Panormia 6-7, PL 161:
1244D-1304A gives a summary of his position on impediments both on this and on
other points.
666 CHAPTER EIGHT

validity of marriages between infidels. Master Simon agrees, point-

ing out that these marriages conform to the Roman law definition
of marriage, which he cites by way of Isidore of Seville, the union of
a man and woman possessing the right to marry, for the purpose of
living a common life.497 On the other hand, the members of the
school of Laon raise a plausible objection, to which none of the
abovementioned masters responds. The marriages of infidels can-
not be valid, the Laon masters assert, because the union of spouses
signifies the union of Christ and the church, which simply cannot
apply in the case of infidels. Also, marital consent includes the
consent to live together under the laws of the church, which simi-
larly is not the case with infidels.498 Gratian attempts to mediate in
this dispute by ruling that marriages between infidels are valid in
civil law, but not in canon law, while Hugh of St. Victor seeks to
bring the topic into line with his sacramental theology in general by
observing that such marriages are legally valid but that they are
not sacramental. He agrees with Gratian that they could be dis-
solved, according to the civil law, and that, were this to occur, the
former partners could remarry. But, unlike Gratian, he mentions
this point only to dispose of it as irrelevant to the positive exposi-
tion of the doctrine of sacramental marriage that is his subject.499
In a related area, the question of disparity of faith as an impedi-
ment and as a basis for dissolving a marriage receives lively atten-
tion in this period. The treatment which the masters give to this
topic reflects, on the one hand, an emerging consensus that seeks to
restrict the biblical and patristic permission of mixed marriages
while, on the other, it manifests disagreement as to the best argu-
ments to offer in support of that departure from the practice of the
early church. There are, to be sure, some sturdy defenders of the
Pauline principle that such marriages should be allowed, in that
the believing spouse sanctifies the unbelieving one, and can assist
him or her in moving from unbelief to faith. Hermannus and the
author of Sententiae Parisiensis I give an affirmative ruling, citing this
biblical reason.500 Both Hugh of St. Victor and Master Simon
expand on the point, urging that the Christian spouse take an
active role in working for the conversion of his or her spouse, seeing

497
Hermannus, Sent., p. 139; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 44; Master Simon, De sac., p.
59.
498
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 406, 5: 287; Sent. Anselmi 5, p. 137; Dens de
cuius prinäpio etfinetacetur, pp. 272-73.
499
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 28. q. 1, col. 1078-89; Hugh of St. Victor, De sac.
2.11.7-9, PL 176: 494A-496D.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 667

in such marriages a missionary opportunity. Since it is apposite to

his case, Simon adds that this practice is supported by the earliest
authorities, starting with St. Paul, and that it follows the guidelines
laid down by the ecclesia primitiva. He also adds that Christian
spouses should not invoke the Pauline privilege on the other side of
this issue, by dismissing unbelieving partners merely on that
account; he suggests that some spouses who do so invoke it for
frivolous or self-serving reasons.501 Ivo of Chartres looks at both
sides of the question. He agrees that mixed marriages are licit, and
also that the unbelieving spouse may be dismissed if he or she is
interfering in the Christian spouse's practice of the faith. His main
goal is to try to iron out marital dissension in such cases and to help
spouses make their marriages work.502 One member of the school of
Laon agrees with this view, although he omits Ivo's concern with
marriage counseling and is more forthright in extending permission
to the Christian spouse to dismiss the unbelieving partner.503
Another member of the school offers the unworkable ruling that the
marriage is valid for the believing spouse but not for the unbeliev-
ing one.504 The most exhaustive defender of the legitimacy, and
even of the desirability, of mixed marriages, the master who rules
out disparity of cult as an impediment to marriage most vigorously,
is Paucapalea. This is, perhaps, surprisingly so. As a commentator
on Gratian, he refers to the very full dossier of citations, pro and
con, that Gratian brings forward, from St. Paul on up, and he
overturns the conclusions of his master.505
It is the same Gratian who occupies a pivotal role in turning the
twelfth-century consensus away from the idea that mixed mar-
riages are acceptable. Gratian offers the most solidly based argu-
ments in favor of disparity of cult as an impediment to marriage
and as a basis for nullifying a marriage of anyone in this period. In
so doing, he also manifests a distinctly canonical approach to the
question. Gratian is well aware of the fact that Paul both permits
mixed marriages and that he permits the dismissal of the non-
believing spouse. He is also aware of the fact that the church fathers
and early decretals emphasize the first of these permissions. His

500
Hermannus, Sent., p. 139; Sent. Parisiensis I, p. 47.
501
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.11.9, PL 176: 504D-510C, Master Simon, De
sac., p. 59.
502
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 147, c. 195-c. 197, c. 246-c. 253, PL 161:
617A, 625B-C, 638C-639C.
503
Decretum dei fuit, pp. 368-70.
504
Deus de cuius principio etfinetacetur, p. 272.
505
Paucapalea, Summa c. 28, p. 117.
668 CHAPTER EIGHT

reason for rejecting that tradition is not, ultimately, based either on

a "creative" reading of the authorities he rejects or on the historical
criticism that might have been used to relativize early church
practice in the light of the missionary posture of the church at that
time. Rather, Gratian's argument comes down upon a lawyer's
point. The notion of two spouses living within the same household
being governed by two different legal systems with respect to mar-
riage is intellectually indigestible. It is also an administrative night-
mare, in the event that it should prove necessary to adjudicate a
marital dispute. And so, he rules that disparity of cult is an
impediment.506
Support for Gratian's position was not slow in coming. Roland of
Bologna follows his analysis, although he confines himself to citing
the authorities who favor this conclusion, departing from his mas-
ter by ignoring those who permit mixed marriages.507 There are
also other masters who agree with Gratian's solution, but who offer
quite different, and less legalistic, reasons for defending it. Some
members of the school of Laon see disparity of cult as an impedi-
ment because they think it is very likely that the Christian spouse
will be obstructed in the practice of his or her religion.508 The
Porretans and Robert Pullen agree with that idea but put the
question more under the heading of the grounds for the dissolution
of a marriage. The situation they envisage is not one in which a
Christian and a non-Christian seek to marry but one in which both
spouses start out as pagans and one converts to Christianity or one
in which two Christians marry and one of the spouses subsequently
falls into heresy or embraces another religion. They thus yoke this
issue to the principle that a spouse may be dismissed for fornica-
tion. Since they see the union of spouses as a spiritual as well as a
physical one, they view the commission of spiritual fornication that
is involved in renouncing the Christian faith as an extension of this
same principle. But, because these masters have linked disparity of
cult with fornication, they see the separation to which it should lead
as just that, a separation and not a nullification of the marriage that
would allow either or both partners to remarry.509 For his part, the
author of the Summa sententiarum agrees with this notion of spiritual
fornication and links it to a defense of disparity of cult as an

506
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 28. q. 1-q. 2, col. 1078-90.
507
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 275.
508
Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 137-38; De coniugo, p. 282.
509
Sent.mag. Gislebertill 11.15, 11.22, 11.34—35, pp. 89, 158, 161; Robert Pullen,
Sent. 7.33, 7.35, PL 186: 950B-952A.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 669

impediment that is as religiously motivated as it is ungallant.

Dismissing cavalierly the Pauline concession, he argues that dis-
parity of cult is an impediment to marriage because Christian
marriages must be chaste. In his opinion, the marital attitudes and
practices of non-Christians are, ipso facto, unchaste. A Christian
would thus be put into an impossible situation morally if he or she
were united to a partner whose sexual rights over him or her would
force the Christian to traduce Christian values.510
Certain kinds of sexual relations, or the lack of them, give rise to
another set of disputed questions concerning impediments to mar-
riage. One topic that is of interest, on which the masters invoke
earlier principles derived from Roman law over more recent Caro-
lingian rulings that reflect Germanic attitudes and practices now
seen as unacceptable, has to do with rape as an impediment. For
the Roman lawyers and the church fathers whom they influenced,
the heinous crime of rape, far from giving the perpetrator any
status as a claimant for the hand of his victim, made him liable to
prosecution for a crime seen as a capital offense. In Germanic
custom, on the other hand, cultural norms made it acceptable for
men to raid other tribes of their women and to marry them by
forcibly reducing them to their own power. Canonists such as Ivo of
Chartres, Gratian, and Roland of Bologna seek to resurrect the
older Roman principle in the case of the rape of an unmarried girl.
In so doing, they also take note of the fact that a Roman girl was
married by the consent of her paterfamilias, not by her own consent.
They are not always clear on whose consent is required in this
particular connection. Gratian views rape as an impediment,
although he allows that it is one that can be waived if the principals
consent to marriage. But, who are the principals? On the question
of whether it is the woman's consent, or her father's, that binds her,
he contradicts himself, although he asserts that compulsion itself is
an impediment to marriage.511 Ivo of Chartres agrees that rape
establishes no claim on an unmarried girl and sees it necessary for
both the girl and her parents to assert her right to view rape as an
impediment.512 Like Gratian, Roland is more forthright in treating
rape as an impediment tout court and not as a possible way of
initiating a marriage unless it is specifically rejected as such. He

510
Summa sent. 7.8 PL 176: 160C-161B.
511
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 31. q. 2. c. 2.13-c. 16, c. 36. q. 2. c. 7-c. 11, col.
1112-14, 1124-25, 1291-92.
512
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 23, c. 40-c. 41, c. 170-c. 177, PL 161:
588D-589A, 593A-B, 620A-621B.
670 CHAPTER EIGHT

concedes that, as an impediment to marriage, rape may not be

automatic or intrinsic. He also observes that the girl and her
parents may not agree on this point. If that is the case, he rules that
it is the consent of the victim that is determinative, although he is
not entirely clear on whether he means the consent to the illicit
sexual activity represented by the rape itself or to the subsequent
marriage, if any.513 On the other hand, the author of the Decretum dei
fuit shows both an inclination to adhere to the Carolingian author-
ities and a disinclination to consider the opinion of the victim that
ill accords with the school of Laon's general support for the princi-
ple of consent. He flatly asserts that rape is not an impediment to
marriage.514
Another form of sexual misbehavior discussed as a bar to mar-
riage is a prior adulterous affair between the principals, their
having lived together in concubinage, the wife-to-be having been a
prostitute with her intended husband as one of her former clients,
or the more general issue of prior unchastity. The handling of this
range of topics is conditioned by the context in which a given
master places it and also by the fact that there was a standard pair
of opposing authorities on this issue, Pope Leo I and Augustine,
whose reasoning the master might or might not bring to bear on his
solution. Leo had ruled that a prior adulterous affair was an im-
pediment to marriage. The situation he envisages is one in which a
married woman commits adultery and she and her lover conspire
to murder her husband, in order to clear the way for their own
marriage. This type of behavior, of course, he seeks to discourage;
and so he bans their subsequent union. Augustine has in mind a
different kind of situation, in which adulterers or two people living
together illicitly come to see the error of their ways and seek to
regularize their relationship when events make this possible. He
applauds such a conversion of heart and and the intention of
reparation, and permits the marriage for the spiritual healing of the
couple.
This question is the only one on marriage raised by Anselm of
Laon. Reviewing the arguments on both sides and the rationales
of Augustine as well as Leo, he comes down squarely in support of
Leo. In his estimation, Leo's point of view is entirely cogent.
Murder should not be encouraged or countenanced. Criminals
should not be allowed to profit from their crimes, and thereby to
imply that the church sanctions, or turns a blind eye to, their

513
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 308-10.
514
Decretum dei fuit, p. 377.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 671

scandalous behavior. On his own account, he adds that inheritance

rights may become confused in the event that the lovers are allowed
to marry. The disciples of Anselm follow his lead.515 Roland of
Bologna seeks to split the difference. If the lovers have committed
murder, he agrees that Leo's ruling should be applied. But, if their
only crime is adultery, they should be permitted to marry, follow-
ing Augustine, assuming that they have first done penance for that
sin.516 The author of the Summa sententiarum is also supportive of
Leo's position and seeks to vaporize the authority of Augustine in
the alembic of historical criticism. As he argues the case, Augustine
was referring to an earlier time, the age of David and Bathsheba,
when such unions were allowed, not excluding the de facto elimina-
tion of Bathsheba's husband by David's ordering him to the front
lines of the army, where he was dispatched by the enemy. On the
other hand, according to this master, Leo was addressing a later
age, in which such unions were forbidden. In his view, we are still
living in the age to which Leo spoke and for which he was legislat-
ing. Leo's ruling thus still holds, and, pending any more recent
dispensations, it should be followed.517 In this reading of the ques-
tion, the reasons why Leo and Augustine take the positions they
take are set aside and the matter is treated simply in the light of one
set of customs succeeding another, with the idea that it is fitting to
observe the conventions in place. The master sees Leo not so much
as legislating new rulings for his own age as he is making a
declaratory statement about current norms. It is quite possible that
the master takes this tack because he cannot produce a satisfying
refutation of Augustine's position. For his part, one of the Porretan
masters carefully reviews the position of both Leo and Augustine
and the concerns that animate them. We are, unfortunately left in
suspense concerning his solution, because there is a lacuna in his
sentence collection and the text breaks offjust at the point where he
would have rendered his verdict.518
Ivo of Chartres' whole focus on sexual misconduct as a bar to
marriage is informed by his desire to come to grips with the affair
between Philip I and Bertrada de Montfort. There actually was a
point during this affair when the adulterers could have married, the
spouses of both parties having died. In his effort to terminate the
515
Sentences of Anselm ofLaon. no. 66-67; Sentences of the School ofLaon, no. 409; 5:
57-58, 288; De coniugo, p. 283; Sent. Anselmi 5, pp. 146, 148-49. See above, chapter
2, pp. 47, 87.
5lè
Roland of Bologna, Summa c. 31. q. 1, pp. 154-56.
517
Summa sent. 7.13, PL 176: 165A-B.
518
Sent, mag. Gisleberti I 11.39, pp. 161-62.
672 CHAPTER EIGHT

scandal, which had also brought a decree of excommunication

upon the head of the king, a situation impeding the resolution of the
investiture controversy in France, Ivo sees much to be said in favor
of Augustine's position. He rules that it is acceptable for a man to
marry a woman who has been his concubine, providing that no
impediments of any other kind exist.519 Ivo writes, clearly, before
Bertrada herself had resolved the problem by acquiring a monastic
calling and retiring to a nunnery. Since the Philip-Bertrada affair is
the only context in which Ivo takes up this matter, it is difficult to
know how much the felt need to lay the scandal to rest influenced
his thinking. For his part, Gratian associates prior adultery with a
range of other illicit or problematic forms of sexual behavior. He
recognizes the general difficulty that Leo wants to address, but
thinks that his prohibition is far too sweeping. The couple, in his
estimation, ought to be allowed to marry provided that they do
penance first, so long as they have not committed murder. On the
other hand, he rules out as acceptable a marriage between a rapist
of a matron and his victim if she is later widowed, a position
consistent with his view of rape as an impediment. In Gratian's
opinion, Augustine is not entirely to the point here, because he was
talking about marriage to one's concubine or to a mistress who had
been repudiated by her husband because of her infidelity. Marriage
to the latter sort of woman might have been permitted under the
divorce laws of the Old Testament, he notes, but in the New
Testament such a woman would not be considered marriageable.
Gratian thus criticizes both Augustine and Leo, although he turns
Leo's prohibition into a legitimate if qualified opportunity. A pro­
pos of marriage to one's concubine, he yokes this problem to the
larger question of marriage to a woman who has been unchaste or
who was a prostitute whom her intended husband had patronized.
Gratian feels distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of permitting
such marriages. In his view, the moral horizon of such women, and
of the men who resort to them, is so low that they will be inclined to
import the sexual ethics governing their past lives into their nuptial
relations as Christian spouses, thereby debasing Christian mar­
riage. They will engage in sexual relations immoderately, and for
pleasure only, and not in accordance with the ends of marriage.
They will be much more likely to succumb to the temptation of
aborting unwanted offspring than will other people. Gratian views

519
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 32, c. 34, c. 38, PL 161: 591 Α-B. 591B, 592A;
Epistola 16, ed., and trans. Jean Leclercq in Ivo of Chartres, Correspondence (Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1949), 1: 64—71.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 673

with the deepest misgivings the capacity of sexual sinners genuinely

to abandon their past lives and to enter into Christian marriage
with a firm purpose of amendment. Yet, much as he dislikes the
idea, he agrees that such unions are licit.520 Paucapalea puts the
subject in the same context as Gratian and rules as well that
the wife's status as a former concubine or prostitute is not an
impediment to marriage. But he is far less grudging than Gratian
and far less worried about the sexual temptations likely to be
present in such marriages.521
Leo I also looms as a standard authority in an even stickier
debate concerning another impediment and basis for dissolving a
marriage, sexual dysfunction. During the first half of the twelfth
century, this problem went by the name of frigiditas; and it was,
almost universally, held to be an affliction of the male sex only.
Another contemporary assumption, also almost universal, was that
frigiditas comes in two forms. There is natural impotence, as a
congenital disability, whether structural or functional in character,
or as a disability brought about by accident, illness, or injury.
And, there is impotence that is a consequence of witchcraft
{maleficium).522 This distinction in turn reflects a more basic as-
sumption, the idea that any two members of the opposite sex will,
automatically, desire and be able to have sexual relations with each
other under any circumstances. This belief that the sex drive is no
respecter of persons, times, and conditions and that it is always
translatable into coitus unless malevolent supernatural forces inter-
vene is what informs the view that temporary sexual dysfunction or
impotence with a particular partner whom one finds sexually un-
attractive or with whom one is a bad physical match must be
caused by maleficium These beliefs are brought to the discussion of
frigiditas as an impediment and as grounds for nullification of a

520
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 31. q. 1, c. 32. q. 1-q. 2, col. 1106-12, 1115-22.
521
Paucapalea, Summa c. 32. q. 1, p. 125.
522
Good overviews are provided by James A. Brundage, "Impotence, Frigidity,
and Marital Nullity in the Decretists and Early Decretalists,', in Proceedings of the
Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Peter Linehan (Vatican
City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1988), pp. 407-23 and Josef Löffler, Die
Störungen des geschlechtlichen Vermögens in der Literatur der autoritativen Theologie des
Mittelalters: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Impotenz und des medizinischen Sachverstän-
digensbeweises im kanonischen Impotenzprocess, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der
Literatur in Mainz, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klas-
se, 6 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1958), pp. 9-10, 14-15, 17,
6S-91. As Löffler, himself a historian of medicine, shows, the progressive refine-
ments on these concepts in later medieval theology and canon law can be read as
an index of the reception of Greco-Arabic medical science and its accessibility to
thinkers outside of medical circles.
674 CHAPTER EIGHT

marriage by all contemporary masters and cause them to labor

under the same liabilities in the effort to resolve this question. And,
despite what one might be inclined to think, the pressure to address
frigiditas, the inclination to regard it as an impediment or as a cause
for nullification, and the recognition that this view requires a
means of verifying the claims of the aggrieved spouse were not
confined to those masters who judged that consummation makes
the marriage or even to those who deemed that sexual relations are
all that marriage involves.
A good index of that lack of symmetry, and even of logical
inconsistency, can be found in the treatment offrigiditas among the
Abelardians. Since they agree that marriage was conceded only as
a remedy for human concupiscence and they argue that the consent
to exclusive sexual relations is the sole content of marital consent,
one would expect them to rule that marriages are null in which
sexual relations are impossible. But, instead of following this, the
Leonine ruling, such is their ascetic distaste for the sexual relations
whose legitimization is the only rationale for marriage that they
agree with the authority who undergirds the other side of the
debate, Gregory the Great. They join him in ruling that, in cases
where a marriage cannot be consummated, the spouses cannot file
for an annulment but should live together as brother and sister.
The fact that such an arrangement would defeat the primary, and
indeed, the only, purpose of marriage as they see it give them no
qualms at all.523 Roland of Bologna, in his Summa, also agrees that
frigiditas affords no grounds for dissolving a marriage.524
The Laon master who wrote the De coniugo suggests that the
preference for the Gregorian over the Leonine position may be
regionally, if not rationally, induced, and that it is also a function of
whether one distinguishes between natural frigiditas and frigiditas
caused by witchcraft. Like other members of the school and like the
majority of theologians and canonists in this period, he sides with
Leo. In the case of natural frigiditas, which he thinks must be
proved by the testimony of seven witnesses (septima manu), the
marriage can be nullified and the wife may remarry. If the husband
loses his disability later, the wife must set her new husband aside
and return to her original husband. If witchcraft is involved, the
master prescribes a regime of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving for a
period of five years. After that time, the Gallican church permits

Hermannus, Sent., p. 136; Sent. Parisiensis I, pp. 45-46; Ysagoge in theologiam,

pp. 197-99.
524
Roland of Bologna, Summa c. 33. q. 1, pp. 188-89.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 675

the dissolution of the marriage and the marriage of the wife to

another partner, but not the remarriage of the husband. The Ro-
man church, he notes, withholds that permission and requires the
dysfunctional marriage to remain in force. This master does not
discuss how the witnesses in the first case come by their evidence
and whether the testimony of interested parties, such as relatives of
the wife, will be admitted. He offers no advice on how natural
frigiditas which later disappears can be distinguished from tempo-
rary dysfunction brought about by malefidum?25 Another member of
the school tries to address the intractable problem of proving the
non-consummation of a marriage, in an area where, admittedly,
empirical verification of the facts is impossible to obtain without
violating personal modesty and connubial privacy. In order to
avoid selfish or frivolous claims against husbands, he says, the
evidence must be given under oath. This still leaves to the side the
question of how the evidence is to be obtained in the first place.
Leaving that problem unresolved, he rules that, if a man whose
marriage has been annulled on account oi his frigiditas finds himself
capable of having sexual relations with another woman, he must
return to his wife. The possibility that the wife may have been the
problem in the first place is never considered. Regarding maleficium,
he prescribes the same five-year regime as the author of the De
coniugo and, siding with the Gallicans, admits not only the remar-
riage of the aggrieved spouse but also, if the spell passes, of the
formerly dysfunctional one as well. He does not require the original
partners to reunite, a view not widely shared in this period. Other
members of the school are in basic agreement, except for that last
point, although they display even less interest in how allegations in
this area can be proved.526
The distinction between natural impotence and impotence
caused by witchcraft is not always so clearly marked in the teaching
of other masters, even though many of them who join the members
of the school of Laon in viewing frigiditas as grounds for nullifica-
tion and for the prohibition of a marriage also join them in regard-
ing consent, not consummation, as the essence of the marriage. In
strict logic, their doctrine of marriage formation would seem to
make it a moot point whether or not a marriage had been consum-
mated. The attention they give to this point and their support of

525
De coniugo, pp. 279-80.
526
Decretum dei fuit, pp. 371-73. See also Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 528, 5:
367, where the regime for malefidum is reduced to two years; Deus de cuiusprincipio et
fine tacetur, p. 273.
676 CHAPTER EIGHT

Leo suggest that their awareness of what most people expect in a

marriage takes pride of place over their view of what makes a
marriage valid and sacramental, even in the case of masters who
have a broader understanding of marriage than do the Abelar-
dians. The Porretans treat frigiditas as grounds for annulment, but
only if it is a permanent, congenital disability. They are unique, up
to their time, in observing that this disability may afflict women as
well as men. That consideration aside, the author of the Summa
sententiarum agrees with the Porretans' narrow definition of the
problem and thinks that the permanence of the dysfunction can be
assumed after a trial period of two years. He notes that the couple
are not required to separate but that, if they do, the dowry is to be
returned by the husband. He offers no recommendation of his
own.527 Master Simon and Robert Pullen also see frigiditas as
grounds for annulment and make no distinction as to its type.
Simon offers some vague remarks about oaths and witnesses but
provides no real understanding as to how a claim of non-
consummmation can be proved.528
This murkiness on how to test allegations of impotence in the
authors just noted is not just a function of the fact that they are
theologians a bit out of their depth in handling forensic matters.
For it is found, to an equally bemusing degree, among the canonists
as well. Ivo of Chartres demands that proof must be obtained,
whether one is dealing with maleficium or with natural frigiditas. He
is not at all clear on how one gathers it. If one has the proof, he
states that a wife can repudiate an impotent husband after two
years, and, her marriage having been nullified, she may remarry.
But, if the wife lays a charge and the husband denies it, the
husband's word is to be taken, even if they both give their word
under oath, for the husband is the head of the wife in legal matters.
This ruling gives the wife no legal remedy for the non-payment of
the conjugal debt which Ivo elsewhere agrees is just as much the
wife's right as the husband's. Ivo does not appear to recognize that
his opinion here is inconsistent and unfair. However, consistent
with his emphasis on consent, he states that if a man who, knowing
that he is impotent, marries, he has committed perjury, which
invalidates his marital consent. Ivo grants that, when witchcraft is
at work, and if the prayers, tears, and almsgiving prove ineffective,

527
Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 11.15, p. 89; Summa sent. 7.15-17, 7.20, PL 176:
165B-166B, 170C-D.
528
Master Simon, De sac., pp. 50-51, 54-58; Robert Pullen, Sent. 7.36, PL 186:
956A-D.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 677

the marriage may be dissolved and the aggrieved partner may

remarry. If the remedy is effective, the spouses should remain with
each other. One finds in Ivo's imprecision about evidence and in
his dismissive treatment of the testimony of wives almost a wish,
unspoken, that spouses in unconsummated marriages should not
air their problems in public but rather should suffer in silence.529
Gratian does no better in providing a real remedy for the wife
when her husband contradicts her, a fact which also stands at odds
with his guarantee of the equality of spouses in rendering the
marriage debt and his firmly evenhanded treatment of the right to
dismiss a spouse on grounds of fornication.530 He agrees that frigidi-
tas is a cause for nullification. He also agrees that the husband is to
be believed if the spouses are not in agreement on the facts. He
offers no suggestions on how the authorities who sit in judgment
can or should substantiate the allegations or disclaimers of the
spouses. As for the impotence caused by maleficium. Gratian joins
other masters of the day in offering no insight on how to prove that
witchcraft is, indeed, afoot, and no remedy for the new husband of
a woman freed from a marriage on this account, if her first husband
recovers.531 Nor do Gratian's earliest commentators offer much
further help. Paucapalea ignores natural impotence altogether, as
well as how one would go about proving it. He confines himself to
maleficium and agrees with Gratian on that subject.532 Roland of
Bologna, taking a totally different position in his Sentences from the
one he offers in his Summa, states that natural frigiditas both impedes
and dissolves a marriage, so long as it is not pretended or falsely
and maliciously charged. In treating maleficium as a cause of impo-
tence, he is the one and only master in this period to recognize the
fact that a man may be sexually functional with one partner and
not with another. Without pausing to notice that this conceptual
breakthrough places the whole idea of maleficium on a very shaky
foundation indeed, and without indicating what the regime for
exorcism should be, he takes the unpopular line, along with the
author of Decretum dei fuit that, if a man dysfunctional because of

529
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 79-c. 80, c. 178-c. 180, c. 182, c. 194, PL 161:
600C-D, 621C-622A, 622B-C, 624D-625A.
530
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 32. q. &-q. 7, q. 25, col. 1136-44, 1146-47. See
James A. Brundage, "Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law," in Medieval
Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 68-78. I am indebted to Professor Brun-
dage for the latter reference.
531
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 33. a. 1, col. 1148-50.
532
Paucapalea, Summa c. 33, pp. 130-31.
678 CHAPTER EIGHT

witchcraft should recover, he should be allowed to take a new wife,

in contrast with the naturally impotent man, who is not permitted
to do so after his first marriage is annulled. On the vexed question
of proving non-consummation, or proving which kind of impotence
is at issue, Roland waffles. He dislikes the idea of witnesses, think-
ing that anyone close enough to a married couple to be able to
claim certitude about their intimate relations is likely to be pre-
judiced. He prefers adverting to the oaths of the plaintiff and
defendant, but offers no advice on what to do if they disagree.533
There is one other major debate over an impediment to mar-
riage, this one focusing on status and not on sexual conduct or its
absence. The problem in part derives from the ambiguous meaning
of the term servus in medieval Latin. It can have the same sense of
the word as classical Latin gives it and refer to a slave, who, by
definition, in Roman law, is a thing and not a person and who lacks
connubium, or the legal right to marry. But servus can also mean serf,
a person of semi-free legal status and one who did have assorted
private and public rights in law and custom, rights that could be
quite diverse depending on the part of Europe in which he lived
and on his relative degree of semi-freedom and semi-servitude.
Slavery, to be sure, was far less in evidence in the twelfth century
than it had been in the Roman world, but it was still to be found,
although to a different extent in different parts of Europe. Now, the
ancient authorities who had ruled on the question of whether
servile status was an impediment to marriage had done so in the
late Roman period, when the institution of slavery was normal, for
Christians and non-Christians alike. It is true that, in the later
centuries of Roman history, the crystal-clear distinction between
slavery and free status found in Roman jurisprudence grew blurred,
as a sizable group of upgraded slaves and downgraded freemen
replaced, as the labor force, the slaves who had now become an
insupportable drain on the capital resources of their masters. But
the servi, or partially free former slaves in this category, while they
bore the same name as the Roman slave and as the later medieval
serf, had fewer legal rights than the serf did, rights which, in the
latter case, were difficult to generalize about in the twelfth century
given the profusion of local variations of law and custom.
Faced with these institutional and regional discrepancies and

533
Roland of Bologna, Sent., pp. 280-82.
534
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 8. c. 51-c. 55, c. 139, c. 156-c. 157, c. 164-c. 165, c.
167, PL 161: 594-D-595D, 615C, 618B-C, 619B-C, 619C-D.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 679

terminological imprécisions, it is perhaps no surprise that theolo-

gians and canonists in the first half of the twelfth century reached
no consensus on the question of whether servile status, however
defined, was an impediment to marriage. The confusion is reg-
istered by Ivo of Chartres, who flounders about inconclusively on
the question of whether marriage partners need to be of equal legal
status and whether persons of servile status can marry.534 Most
other masters take a more definite stand. The Porre tans and the
Abelardian authors of the Ysagoge in theologiam and the Sententiae
Parisiensis I assert that servile status is an impediment.533 Gratian
and Roland of Bologna take the opposing position and draw some
distinctions. Disparity of status, or unfree status, they agree, are
not impediments or grounds for nullifying a marriage. Error as to
the identity of the person one is marrying or as to his legal status
would, they think, impede or nullify a marriage, in contrast with
inaccurate information as to his wealth and condition, the latter
term embracing his moral character as well as his health.536 The
theme of error, or misinformation, or even disinformation, is picked
up by Hugh of St. Victor, Hermannus, and Master Simon, who
concur that servile status is not an impediment or a cause of
nullification, so long as the servus has not tried to pass himself off as
a liber, or free man, in order to marry a free woman; Simon adds the
stipulation that a servus must obtain his master's consent.537 The
author of the Summa sententiarum agrees with that proviso and offers
a historical and geographical gloss on this point. He notes that in
some local churches, in places where Roman law is followed, per-
sons of servile status are denied the right to marry. This is not the
case in the Gallican church, where people of unequal status do have
the right to marry, each person retaining his or her original status
thereby. He supports this latter rule because he is a member of the
Gallican church and because he advocates the following of local
custom, and not necessarily because he thinks that it is the correct
and fair position. The observance of the rules in force where one
lives is a sufficient justification, in his eyes, for this conclusion.
Thus, he makes no effort to plead for an extension to other parts of
the church of the Gallican practice; within the Gallican jurisdic-
tion, at any rate, it is fitting for a servus to marry another servus or

535
Sent. mag. Gisleberti II 11.10, p. 88; Ysagoge in theologiam, p. 196; Sent. Parisiensis
I, p. 45.
536
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 19, col. 1091-95; Roland of Bologna, Sent.,
p. 275.
537
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.11-19, PL 176: 497D-520C; Hermannus, Sent.,
p. 136; Master Simon, De sac., pp. 60-61.
680 CHAPTER EIGHT

for a servus to marry a liber, so long as the consent of the master of

any servus involved is obtained.538
The debates just discussed, whether they involve substantive
disagreements among the masters or areas where they draw the
same, or similar, conclusions but for different reasons, constitute
the principle controversies concerning impediments to marriage or
grounds for dissolution on which contemporaries of Peter Lombard
took a stand. Before positioning his own handling of this aspect of
marriage doctrine in relation to the ideas of other masters, we
might mention three other issues, topics much more restricted in
the interest they elicited. Under this heading, several masters place
monstrous crime as an impediment to marriage. Roland of Bologna
gives this opinion without indicating what sort of crimes he has in
mind.539 Gratian specifies uxoricide. He displays no concern with
women who may murder their husbands, but appears to think that
a man who has murdered one wife is likely to be a serial killer
whose right to remarry should be withdrawn.540 The author of the
Summa sententiarum also thinks that punitive action should be taken
against serious criminals in the matrimonial forum but is more
interested in the status of the marriage of such a person once his
crime is discovered In this master's view, the criminal should be
separated from his spouse. This would mean that neither of them
would have the right to remarry, and it would thereby punish the
innocent wife as well as the guilty husband—for this master, along
with Gratian, envisions the criminal as being the husband—but it
would at least mean that she was not forced to live with a horrible
felon.541
The other two mini-debates are triggered by the departure of the
Porretans from views standard at this time. Under the heading of
the point that misfortunes or vicissitudes in the areas of health,
wealth, or the discovery of sterility in a spouse do not provide
grounds for an annulment or separation, the defenders of the
consensus position, citing Augustine as their authority, urge that
not even leprosy, should it supervene, offers an exception from this
rule. Leprosy is singled out, among misfortunes, both for its loath-
some manifestations and for its alleged contagiousness, in the eyes
of Augustine and his followers. One of the Porretan masters objects
specifically to this Augustinian notion. In his view, leprosy does

8
Summa sent. 7.14, PL 176: 165B-W6B.
9
Roland of Bologna, Sent., p. 280.
0
Gratian, Decretum pars 2. c. 33. q. 2. c. 9. dictum, col. 1154.
1
Summa sent. 7.20, PL 176: 170B.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 681

offer grounds for dismissing a spouse.542 Another area in which the

same master finds himself swimming against the current has to do
with the horror of incest that informs the elaborate consanguinity
rules of this period In order to dramatize how seriously this princi-
ple has to be taken, the Laon master who wrote the Deus de cuius
principio etfinetacetur, reflecting the contemporary consensus in so
doing, poses a hypothetical case whose plot has all the trappings of
a Hellenistic romance. Imagine that a brother and sister are sepa-
rated in childhood, he suggests. The brother is stolen and taken to a
faraway land, there to be raised in ignorance of his true homeland
and identity. After he grows up, he finds his way back to his native
land, and chances to meet his sister. The two young people fall in
love and marry. But then, evidence of their close blood relationship
comes to light. What to do? The master is quite unequivocal in his
ruling. He states the standard opinion that the marriage must be
annulled forthwith.543 Now, the Porretan master tells the same
gripping tale by way of example. He pointedly fails to agree with
the consensus position. If, and only if, legitimate witnesses can be
found, in sufficient number, to testify to the sibling status of the
spouses, should the couple be parted. But if not, they should be
allowed to stay together, for they married in perfectly good faith.
And, in any event, he reminds the reader, in this unsuccessful sally
against the serried ranks of ancient and contemporary opinion, the
purpose of theologizing about impediments to marriage and
grounds for nullification is not to obstruct people from seeking the
solace of marriage, whenever possible, but to try to find as many
ways as possible of keeping marriages together and of enabling
spouses to work out their difficulties within its embrace.544
This last sentiment, if not the Porretan master's position on
incest, is one warmly shared by Peter Lombard. It certainly colors
the way he addresses the whole subject of marital impediments.
Irrespective of the alignment of his position, or not, with this or
that contemporary master on particular impediments, he does
something that no other scholastic theologian of the time does, in
his generous incorporation into his account of material drawn from
the canonists and in his effort to rationalize the treatment of the
entire subject. When one reads the discussion of matrimonial im-
pediments provided by other theologians and canonists in this
period, one is struck by the randomness of their attack on the

Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 11.29, p. 160.

Deus de cuius principio et fine tacetur, pp. 273-74.
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 11.37, p. 161.
682 CHAPTER EIGHT

subject. There seems to be no individually or generally understood

reason for the sequence in which impediments are presented; and
the ordering of this material differs considerably from one author to
another. From the very outset, the Lombard gives his own treat-
ment of impediments a look that sets it apart from the marriage
treatises of his compeers. He offers a clear and cogent principle of
organization. He first presents conditions that may interfere with
the consent that is constitutive of the marriage. Next, he considers
who has a legitimate right to marry. His way of posing this question
is of interest. Instead of presenting impediments in negative terms,
as obviating legitimate marriages, he accents the positive qualities
possessed by marriageable persons as rights that they have, insofar
as they have not ceded them by their own free will or as a result of
forces beyond their control. In handling other impediments, Peter
organizes them in two categories, those that are intrinsic, natural,
and unchangeable and those that are accidental, existing because
of human choices or contingencies that are not graven in stone, or
because of disciplinary rulings that can and do change. This mode
of organization gives the whole subject of impediments a much
more coherent and comprehensible shape in Peter's Sentences than it
finds anywhere else in this period.543
Under the heading of circumstances that impede the consent
which is of the essence in marriage formation, Peter lists coercion,
fraud, and error. He is in full agreement with the consensus posi-
tion, which invalidates marriages in which defective consent of
these kinds is present. His own concern, notwithstanding his vigor-
ous defense of the need for free and informed consent, is to ask
whether there is any basis for accepting as valid marriages in which
these defects are present. With respect to coercion, he cites an
oft-mentioned case of a crusader baron who forced his daughter
into a political marriage that was initially repugnant to her. But, as
time went on, she grew to appreciate her husband or at least to
make her peace with her situation. Peter concedes that such a
marriage is, initially, invalid. But he thinks it can become valid if,
in the sequel, the dissenting spouse changes her opinion to one of
assent. Peter's position on this case can be understood two ways. It
can be seen as a rare concession on his part to the realities of
545
Peter outlines this organizational scheme at Sent. 4. d. 27. c. 1,2: 421-22.
None of these points are noted by the only general study of Peter Lombard on
marital impediments to date, Leon M. Smisniewicz, Die Lehre von den Ehehindernis-
sen bei Petrus Lombardus und bei seinen Kommentaren (Posen: Druckarnia Katolicka,
1917), which is very sketchy and not to be recommended. The author treats the
subject as a mere curtain-raiser for Peter's thirteenth-century commentators.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 683

marriage as it was actually practiced in the twelfth-century world.

It can also be read in another light. Peter is as interested in the
possibility that the experience of conjugal life can engender, over
time, the true consent needed to make the marriage sacramental as
he is interested in objecting to coercion. In this instance, his view of
marriage as a means of moral education emerges strongly. On the
other hand, on the question of fraud, error, or bonafide ignorance as
impediments, he follows Gratian very closely. Not all error, he
agrees, vitiates consent. If there is error, deliberate or otherwise, as
to a person's identity or legal status, this error is an impediment.
But error, and even disinformation, as to a person's fortune, condi-
tion, and moral qualities, or as to his past history, is not an
impediment. Along with Gratian, Peter argues this case on both
rational and legal grounds. Error as to person and status is decep-
tion, and is hence wrong. It may also infringe on the legal rights of
the spouse who marries such an individual and thereby suffers
disparagement. Deception may also be present in the case of error
as to fortune and condition. This, he concedes, is also immoral.
But, no infringement on the spouse's legal rights results. And so,
error as to fortune and condition is not an impediment or grounds
for the dissolution of a marriage.546 To this common doctrine which
he shares with Gratian Peter adds a theological problem not of such
concern to the canonists, the question of whether the father of
Leah, who passed her off as Rachel in marrying her to Jacob,
committed a sin or refuted the principle that error as to person is an
impediment to a valid marriage. His opinion is that this event was
designed to state a mystery and not to lay down a legal or theologi-
cal precedent.547
Peter opens his discussion of who is legally entitled to marry by
remarking on the point that some of the rules relative to this
question, and to other regulations governing marriage, have
changed over time. Agreeing that the deity has altered these rules
in accordance with His estimate of human needs and capacities in
various times and places, he adds to the stand taken on this matter
by Hugh of St. Victor, the author of the Summa sententiarum, and
Hermannus by noting that, aside from population statistics as a
controlling consideration, the deity, in His successive dispensations

546
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. c. 29, 2: 436-37. Teodoro Ruiz Josué, "Los efectos
juridicos de la ignorancia en la doctrina matrimonial de Hugo de San Victor y
Roberto Pulleyn," Revis ta espanola de derecho canónico 8 (1948): 63, 65, 68-105 sees
Hugh, whether directly or indirectly by way of Robert Pullen, as Peter's chief
source for the doctrine of error, ignoring Gratian.
547
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 30. c. 1, 2: 437-38.
684 CHAPTER EIGHT

on this subject, moved from a covenant in which religion was held

to be passed on by hereditary succession to a covenant potentially
embracing all mankind, by faith. God also moved from a sexual
ethic in which marriage alone was valued to one in which celibacy
as well was esteemed. Peter places the differences between the Old
Testament and New Testament rules on marriage on a trajectory
that includes the rules changed by men in the ecclesiastical dis-
pensation, including the enforcement of clerical celibacy, suggest-
ing the understanding that some of the impediments to marriage to
be discussed later on are of man-made invention and that others
are not.548 Thus, with respect to who a legitimate person is, one has
to take account not only of the changes in marriage before the law,
under the law, and in the time of grace but also the changes
between the rules obtaining in the ecclesia primitiva and those obtain-
ing in the present day, an observation designed to suggest that
historical criticism may need to be invoked in disallowing earlier
rules which Peter means to reject. In addition, even regarding those
regulations that are currently in force, some are fully legitimate,
others are fully illegitimate, and still others, in an intermediate
group, are neither fully legitimate nor fully illegitimate. In the first
category Peter places unions that do not violate vows of continence,
holy orders, cognation, legal status, disparity of cult, or natural
frigiditas. In the second category he places unions that include
persons with prior vows, ordination, cognation, and disparity of
cult. In the intermediate category are unions made problematic by
impotence or by the legal status of one or both spouses. The
principle underlying this distinction is whether the marriage is
indissoluble, as it is in fully legitimate unions, whether marriage
must be prevented or annulled, as in the case of the fully illegiti-
mate unions, or whether the marriage presents a range of options in
this connection, as in the case of the intermediate type of union,
especially if the marriage has been contracted in ignorance.549
These distinctions having been clearly laid down, Peter now
proceeds to group impediments under the headings of natural and
permanent impediments and impediments conditioned by will,
circumstance, or changeable disciplinary rulings. The first of the
natural impediments are frigiditas and insanity, because these de-
fects speak to the natural capacities needed to express the two
aspects of marital sacramentality that Peter sees in a valid union.
Peter sides firmly with the majority of contemporary masters who

Ibid., d. 33. c. 1-c. 4, 2: 456-62.

Ibid, d. 34. c. 1,2:462-63.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 685

follow Leo in supporting the dissolution of marriages that cannot

be consummated on the basis of natural frigiditas. In line with his
egalitarian treatment of the sexual rights of spouses, he departs
from the contemporary consensus and agrees with the Porretans
that this rule applies to husbands and wives alike. He considers the
problem of obtaining proof and mentions both the swearing of
oaths, on relics, by the contending parties, and the use of witnesses.
Peter is not particularly interested in these procedural issues, but
appears to think that the inclusion of relics will deter litigants from
bringing frivolous or malicious charges or from lying about the
facts under oath. Peter rejects the idea, found in Ivo of Chartres
and Gratian, that the wife's testimony is to be disallowed if it
conflicts with her husband's. Peter recognizes the contemporary
distinction between natural frigiditas ana frigiditas caused by witch-
craft. He includes the latter in his discussion here because,
although it is not congenital, it is a result of forces beyond the
control of the couple in question. He agrees with the generally held
notion that a regime of prayer, fasting, and alsmgiving should be
undertaken and that, if exorcism fails, the marriage should be
dissolved. Just as in the case of natural frigiditas the functional
partner may remarry. In the case of a person whose marriage has
been annulled because of his own dysfunction and whose former
spouse has remarried, who subsequently finds himself able to have
sexual relations with another partner, Peter attacks the consensus
position as being too harsh and too lacking in equity. He joins
Roland of Bologna and the author of the De coniugo in ruling that
the new marriage or marriages should not be broken up and the
original spouses should not be forced to reunite. As he points out, it
was by the judgment of the church that the original marriage was
annulled, because it could not be consummated. But now, both of
the original partners find themselves in new, and functional, mar-
riages. They both originally entered the state of marriage in recog-
nition that they were called to this state and that they need its
consolations. Thus, the forced reconciliation of the original
spouses, in despite of the rights of their new spouses, should not be
automatic and rigidly enforced. Rather, the range of personal cir-
cumstances involved and the demands of fairness should be taken
into account, a perspective which, in Peter's eyes, is likely to favor
the new, and functional union or unions over the original, and
dysfunctional, one.550
Just as sexual relations in a marriage are a sacrament, in that

Ibid., c. 3, 2: 465.
686 CHAPTER EIGHT

they signify the physical and institutional union of Christ and the
church, and their impossibility renders the sacrament null, so,
a fortiori, insanity must be viewed as a natural impediment to
marriage in that it makes impossible the consent and the union of
minds and hearts that signify the bond of love between Christ and
the church. It is this aspect of the sacrament, as we have seen, that,
for Peter, initiates a marriage and that animates, or should ani-
mate, its external expression in sexual relations. The reason why
Peter considers insanity under the heading of natural impediments
and not under the heading of error, ignorance, fraud, or compul-
sion is that these latter obstacles are products of the exercise of
human free will. On the other hand, insanity is a congenital defect.
People who are mentally ill (furiosi) or who are mentally incapaci-
tated (in amentia), should not be allowed to marry, in Peter's view,
because they are persons of diminished responsibility who are not
capable of giving informed consent. If it is not entirely self-
consistent, Peter's position on this point, along with his view that
insane persons already married should be allowed to stay together
and that, when insanity, like physical illness or deformity, super-
venes, it is not grounds for dismissing a spouse, is consistent with
the consensus on that subject.551 As with his contemporaries, his
treatment of insanity is not symmetrical, either with itself or with
his treatment of frigiditas, even though in both cases he draws a
distinction between a disability that is inborn and a disability that
is acquired later. For, although he sees the union of minds and
hearts involved in marital consent as essential, he does not permit
the annulment of marriages in which the mental condition of one or
both spouses makes that union of minds and hearts problematic, or
even impossible, after the marriage has come into being, even
though he sees the impossibilities involved as an obstacle to the
creation of a marriage in the first place. It is not entirely clear why
he admits this discrepancy. He offers no grounds for his ruling,
except the idea that marriage requires a commitment, for better or
for worse.
All the other conditions to be considered as impediments to
marriage, and grounds for dissolution, or not, fall under Peter's
second heading, since they are subject to human will, circum-
stance, or changeable convention. The first item on his agenda here
is sexual misconduct. He agrees with the consensus position that
fornication is a basis for separation but that it does not dissolve a
marriage and permit the remarriage of either the guilty or the
351
Ibid., c. 4-c. 6, 2: 465-67.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 687

innocent party. The particular accent which the Lombard gives to

this standard opinion is derived, in part, from Gratian, and, in
part, from his own pastoral outlook on marriage. With Gratian, he
argues that a spouse who himself or herself has been unfaithful has
no business seeking to dismiss his or her spouse for the same
offense; a single standard of marital chastity must apply to both
husbands and wives. And, since, even if a spouse is legitimately
dismissed for this reason, neither party can remarry, it is a better
idea to aim at forgiveness and reconciliation than to activate the
permission to separate.552 The second kind of sexual misconduct to
which Peter adverts is the prior adulterous affair as a bar to
marriage in the first place, on which there was no contemporary
agreement. Here, Peter comes the closest to the position taken by
Gratian and Roland of Bologna, although, again, with an emphasis
on how the church can best minister to the spiritual needs of the
parties involved. In comparing the analyses of Leo and Augustine,
Peter prefers Augustine's concern with penance, reparation, and
the regularization of the couple's relationship when events make
this possible over Leo's more legalistic and punitive approach. He
also agrees with Gratian and Roland that, if the couple have indeed
succumbed to the temptation to murder the obstructive spouse,
they should not be allowed to profit from their crime. In that event,
he thinks that Augustine would join Leo in forbidding the mar-
riage, as he would himself. But, if this condition does not obtain,
the spiritual healing of the couple takes priority, and is the reason
why Augustine should be supported.553 This is as far as Peter takes
the subject of sexual misconduct, before or outside of marriage, as
an impediment to marriage. By his omission of the range of worries
on this score ventilated by Gratian and Paucapalea, he suggests, at
least by implication, that marriage creates a new status, morally
and sacramentally. Sincere commitment to its values is what
counts, rather than the past history of the partners before they
accepted its rights and duties.
Like the decision to commit fornication or adultery, the decision
to take vows of celibacy, to enter into holy orders, and to commit a
serious crime are matters deriving from the exercise of free will,
which Peter logically includes under the heading of impediments to
marriage that are not part of the natural givens of a person's life.
He agrees entirely with the consensus position on ordination at the
rank of subdeacon or above as an impediment to marriage. With

Ibid., d. 35. c. 1-c. 3, 2: 467-71.

Ibid., c. 4, 2: 471-72.
688 CHAPTER EIGHT

Gratian, he withdraws from uxoricides the right to remarry. Peter

also adds his own insights to these topics. In handling holy orders,
he is less concerned than are the canonists in showing that author-
ities in the early church support clerical celibacy. With respect to
the murder of a spouse, he shares the assumption that this form of
felony is to be conceived of as a crime on the husband's side, not the
wife's. The evenhanded treatment of wives and husbands more
typical of Peter's theology of marriage deserts him on this subject.
The chief point that he wants to make in this connection is that,
even if the provocation of a husband's uxoricide was his wife's
adultery, a motive that might be excused in the civil courts, he
should be punished by the spiritual penalties of the church.554 On
the subject of vows, Peter is somewhat more lenient than is typical
in this period. He is also deft in turning a legalistic point against a
ruling of the canonists. While he agrees with the canonists, and
with everyone else, that vows of celibacy are an impediment to
marriage and a cause of nullification if they are discovered later on,
whether the vows involve a monastic commitment or a calling to
virginity, celibacy, or widowhood in a non-monastic context, he
draws a distinction between vows taken in public and vows taken in
private, one not found in contemporary masters. According to
Peter, if a person takes a private vow of celibacy and later marries,
the marriage should not be dissolved. While Peter acknowledges
that such conduct is morally wrong, especially if the individual
passes himself off as someone who has not taken such a vow, he
notes that, in the absence of witnesses, there is no way of proving
that the vow was ever taken.555
There are other impediments that Peter addresses under this
same heading. While they may not be volitional, they reflect condi-
tions that are conventional, accidental, and subject to change. One
such circumstance is servile status. Peter places it here because he
regards it as accidental and not as built into the nature of things.
On this subject, while his dossier of sources is derived from Gra-
tian, his solution has more in common with that of Hugh of St.
Victor, Hermannus, and Master Simon. With them, he agrees that
servile status is not an impediment to marriage and it is not a cause
of nullification unless a person of servile status has defrauded his
spouse by pretending to be free. If there is disparity of legal status
in a marriage, and if both partners have entered into the marriage

Ibid., d. 37. c. 1-c. 2, 2: 475-77.

Ibid., d. 38. c. 1-c. 2.7, 2: 478-80.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 689

with their eyes wide open, the union is not to be dissolved. Peter
further agrees that the permission of the lord is required in the
marriage of a person of servile status, whether to another serous or to
a person of higher status. Peter does add a legalistic touch, found in
the canonists and not in the theologians on whom he draws. As he
observes, a free man who is already married to a wife of free status
cannot accept a servile status for himself that would also disparage
his wife, without the wife's consent. He should neither dismiss her
on this account nor force her to accept servile status. Peter's recom-
mendation, in situations of this kind, is that the husband should
gain his wife's consent, or else he should not accept servile status
for himself.556 One thing curiously absent from this analysis, deriv-
ing as it does from patristic authorities familiar with the downgrad-
ing of the Roman free farmer into a semi-free colonus during their
own time, is the fact that neither Peter nor the canonical sources
from whom he derives this question ask whether it has any real
pertinence to mid-twelfth-century society.
Unfree status may be an accident of birth, or a condition
accepted voluntarily, but it is a condition that can be changed. A
circumstance that is totally accidental is captivity, the extreme
form of a range of conditions that impose a physical separation
between spouses. Without considering the other cases that can be
grouped together with captivity, such as pilgrimage, crusading,
and long-distance trade, Peter agrees wholeheartedly with Ivo of
Chartres and Gratian that this circumstance does not terminate a
marriage and that it does not allow either of the spouses to take a
new partner. He is, however, somewhat more lenient than the
canonists in addressing this topic. If the captive or absent spouse is
honestly believed to be dead and his partner remarries, in all
ignorance of his continued existence, the partner commits no sin,
Peter allows. And, if the absent spouse should return, he thinks, the
spouse left behind should return to him and renounce a new
marriage that may have been made, but only if this can be accom-
plished without bad will. These conditions soften the rigor of the
canonical position notably.557
There are four other impediments which Peter considers as
serious obstacles to marriage but which he sees as impediments
deriving from convention and from the disciplinary and legal rules
which, although currently in force, have not always been in force,

Ibid., d. 36. c. 1-c. 3, 2: 473-75.

Ibid., d. 38. c. 3, 2: 482-83.
690 CHAPTER EIGHT

and which, in principle, are subject to change. Under this heading

he places disparity of cult, age, cognation, and affinity, impedi-
ments which other contemporary masters are more inclined to view
as natural or voluntary. To be sure, a person's age and his blood
relationships can be viewed as natural and his religion is a matter
of choice. But Peter treats these four impediments as conventional
because he wants to focus on the point that the rules governing
them, or the rules that he thinks should govern them, are man-
made and have not always been the same. Peter joins Gratian's
sturdy defense of the growing contemporary sense that mixed mar-
riages should not be allowed. He holds as well that disparity of cult
is a basis for dismissing a spouse. Rather than presenting religious
commitment as a matter of choice, Peter treats this whole topic of
the two Pauline concessions, and which should be followed, from a
historical standpoint. He takes this tack so as to undermine the
permission to marry a non-Christian given by Paul and supported
by the early church. But, rather than seeking to relativize the
practice of the ecclesia primitiva directly, as irrelevant to the histori-
cal conditions of the twelfth-century church, he makes use of a more
roundabout historical argument, which appeals at the same time to
the perceived contradictions of the authorities who permit mixed
marriages, starting with Paul himself. Here, the Lombard cites the
Pauline permission to dismiss the unbelieving spouse in 2 Corin-
thians 5:14 as proof that Paul was in error in allowing mixed
marriages in 1 Corinthians 7:12-13. He admits that the Christian
partner is not required to dismiss the unbelieving spouse and that
Paul was correct in stating that the Christian spouse may win over
the unbelieving spouse. But, still, on what grounds can it be argued
that the Paul of 2 Corinthians is more to be believed than the Paul
of 1 Corinthians? Peter's main argument rests on the claim that
Paul's permission of mixed marriages, which was seconded by the
early church, was a mistaken departure from a still earlier rule
which continued then, and continues now, to remain in effect. This
is the Old Testament prohibition of mixed marriages This earlier
historical precedent, according to Peter, remained in effect in the
new Christian dispensation. It was not one of the Mosaic laws that
was abrogated or superseded by the New Law. To be sure, this
argument from historical priority is offered not because Peter thinks
that antiquity, in and of itself, is normative, but rather because, in
this instance, the Old Testament rule conforms to the rule he wants
to advocate. At the same time, his handling of this topic is a good
index of the fact that Peter does not hesitate to criticize St. Paul, in
this case for having made what he holds to have been an erroneous
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 691

and unwarranted departure from a law still binding, an error then

compounded by the church fathers which Peter intends to reject.
While his conclusion is certainly in line with that of many masters
of his day, who join him in viewing disparity of cult as a marital
impediment, his argument here is all his own. Peter shares with
Hugh of St. Victor and thinkers influenced by him the idea that
disparity of cult, in the case when a Christian spouse falls into
heresy, non-belief, or another religion, is an index of spiritual
fornication that permits dismissal of the apostate. In line with that
theological appraisal of the problem, his most telling reason for
banning mixed marriages is one that stands at antipodes from
Gratian's, notwithstanding their strong and substantive agreement
on that policy. For Gratian, as we have seen, it is both intellectually
unthinkable and administratively prohibitive for two spouses in a
single household to live under two different legal systems pertaining
to marriage. For Peter, disparity of cult is to be disallowed because
the union of minds and hearts essential to marital consent cannot,
in his estimation, exist if the two spouses have different religious
beliefs and values concerning marriage.558
Peter also confronts the question of whether, having dismissed an
unbelieving spouse, the Christian partner can marry again. Here,
he contrasts the position of Ambrose, who allows remarriage, with
that of Augustine, who does not. Peter basically sides with Augus-
tine, not in the interests of harshness, but in the hope that, since
such a remarriage is forbidden, the Christian spouse will be moti-
vated to work for the conversion of the unbelieving spouse whom he
has dismissed, with an eye to achieving a marital reconciliation and
reunion. His strategy here is to try to show that Ambrose contra-
dicts himself, just as St. Paul does. But the argument is in line with
Peter's more general interest in keeping couples together, or reunit-
ing them if they have been separated, and encouraging them to be
reconciled and to work out their differences.559 This kind of propos-
al he sees as reflecting the educational value of marriage as a
sacrament. With respect to the marriages between infidels, he joins
Hugh of St. Victor in ruling that they are legitimate, but not
sacramental, and that they are important to mention only to show
that they are irrelevant to sacramental theology.560
Peter's handling of the other three impediments, age, consanguinity,

Ibid., d. 39. c. 1-c. 4, 2: 483-88.

Ibid., c. 5, 2: 488-90.
Ibid., c. 6-c. 7, 2: 490-91.
692 CHAPTER EIGHT

and affinity, is of a piece in that he does not treat these condi-

tions as natural but as conventional. In accepting the ages of
twelve, for girls, and fourteen, for boys, for present consent, norms
derived from Roman law, and the age of seven, for engagement, he
observes that these regulations are in force and that they make
sense although he is able to see that different age limits have
applied and do apply in other legal systems.561 His source is the
Digest of Justinian which, he knows, is not the law of the land
everywhere. The affinities set up by spiritual relationships are, to
be sure, created by regulations imposed by the church for the
administration of the sacraments, regulations that can, and do,
change. While Peter agrees entirely with the consensus view on
affinity, here, following Gratian in all details, including the point
that parents who baptize their own child in a case of neccessity, and
who therefore become the child's godparents as well as his parents,
are exempt from the rule that affinity annuls a marriage, he pre-
sents this impediment as based on disciplinary regulations that are
essentially mutable.562 What is perhaps more surprising is that
Peter treats consanguinity in exactly the same way, although blood
relationships would appear to be natural givens. Consanguinity is a
matter which he dispatches with signal brevity and with a good
deal of impatience. He agrees that consanguinity to the sixth or
seventh degree is an impediment, and a cause for nullification, and
that one arrives at the seventh or the sixth degree depending on
whether one begins with the parent-child or the brother-sister
relationship. On the problem of a consanguineous relationship, if
subsequently discovered in spouses innocent of the knowledge
when they married, he sides with the mainstream view by briskly
stating that the couple cannot be allowed to stay together since no
legitimate marriage between them ever existed. The only point he
finds debatable is whether the witnesses in such a case should be
relatives or informed neighbors, which he leaves open. But, Peter's
whole attitude to the issue of blood relationships, and, a fortiori, to
relationships with in-laws, as an impediment to marriage is that the
rules are conventional. They have changed over time, just as the
rules governing polygamy and monogamy. They are not rules for
the ages. And, in practice, and in the last analysis, people are so
frequently dispensed from them that it is a waste of time to belabor
the point.563

Ibid., d. 36. c. 4, 2: 475.

Ibid., d. 42. c. 1-c. 6, 2: 501-08.
Ibid., d. 40-d. 41. c. 4, d. 42. c. 3, 2: 491-99, 505.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 693

There is one sexual delicit, rape, that is treated by many other

masters as an impediment to marriage, or not, which Peter handles
in a different way. Instead, he discusses it under the heading of
crimes or sins against marriage, so defined because they involve the
illicit use of sex when sex is legitimate only for the married. Here,
he distinguishes five types of illicit sexual behavior. There is for-
nication, which can refer to illegal sexual activity in general, but
which also refers specifically to this activity in persons who are not
married, such as widows, concubines, and prostitutes. There is
dishonor (stuprum), which is the illicit defloration of a virgin. There
is adultery, or sexual relation with someone's else's spouse. There is
incest, or the sexual relations between relatives. And there is rape.
Peter offers a definition of rape that blends Roman law with later
Germanic practice. He sees it as the stealing of a girl by violence
from her father's house in order to take her as a wife corruptly. His
response to this behavior is exactly the same as Gratian's and that
of the other canonists. Rape establishes no marital claim whatever,
in his eyes, but rather makes the rapist liable to criminal indict-
ment, which bears the penalty of death if he is convicted. Peter
offers one qualification on this judgment. It is not one relating to
the victim's consent to marriage with her rapist, a possibility which
he finds hard to countenance, since she has been taken violently
and against her will. Nor does this act, ipso facto, reflect or augur
well for the union of minds and hearts needed for the consent that
makes a marriage. The one exception to the dire and richly de-
served punishment that awaits the rapist if he is apprehended and
convicted is, rather, the immunity that he can gain if he seeks and
finds sanctuary in a church or consecrated place.564
This disquisition on crimes against marriage aside, the point of
these remarks is to emphasize that no one should be forced into
marriage, or into sexual relations, and that freely rendered consent
is of the essence. Marriage should not be denied to people, except in
the cases where real obstacles exist, whether natural, circumstan-
tial, freely willed, or conventional. Even in these cases, Peter is
rather more generous in allowing exceptions, with regard to remar-
riage, than are most of his contemporaries, in the interest of not
condemning people, especially innocent, people, to a celibate life to
which they are not called and for which they have not received the
necessary charisms, whether as single people or as spouses in a

Ibid., d. 41. c. 5-c. 9, 2: 500.

694 CHAPTER EIGHT

dysfunctional marriage. By the same token, drawing on his own

commentary on 2 Corinthians, he dismisses the authorities who
restrict second and third marriages, or even more. Since marriage
itself is good, and since it is a school for virtue in a positive and not
merely a remedial sense,the remarriage of widowed persons called
to this state of life and needing its consolations is desirable, "for the
virtue of the sacrament" {pro sacramenti virtute).565
If the sacrament helps spouses to grow in virtue and contributes
to their salvation thereby, there are still major respects in which the
Lombard's theology of marriage falls short of being fully symmet-
rical with the rest of his sacramental theology. Two aspects of his
treatment of marriage stand out here, which can be highlighted by
a comparison of the Lombard on holy orders and penance with the
Lombard on marriage. The insistence on an upright intention and
on a blameless motive for receiving the sacrament, which informs
his analysis of the valid and fruitful reception of the sacrament in
the case of these other rites, is not found in Peter's theology of
marriage. In this case, and in agreement with the Summa senten-
tiarum, he holds that free, unfeigned, and unforced consent is all
that is required, even if the couple bring essentially worldly or
selfish reasons into play in their decision to marry and to seek the
goods of marriage, rather than the union of souls, the wish to help
each other to grow in virtue, a commitment to fidelity, and the wish
to bear and to rear children for the love of God and the Christian
community and not out of dynastic self-interest and the egotistical
desire for self-perpetuation. The criticism he extends to priests who
abuse their office can be paralleled by his objection to the immoder-
ate or selfish use of sex in marriage and to worldly philoprogentive-
ness; but a defective intention of this sort brought to marriage does
not in itself disqualify the recipients as it does in the case of holy
orders, or as inadequate and less than sincere and exhaustive
sorrow for sin does in the case of penance.
The lack of symmetry noted above may derive from an inclina-
tion, on Peter's part, to accommodate marriage as he would like it
to be to marriage as it exists in the real world, in an unequal contest
in which realism achieves one of its rare victories over theological
principle in his handling of marriage. The second major discrepan-
cy between Peter's sacramental theology in general and his theolo-
gy of marriage is one he shares with Hugh of St. Victor, who is far
less willing to make concessions to real life on the matter of marital

Ibid., d. 42. c. 7, 2: 508-09. The quotation is at c. 7.4, p. 509.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 695

intentionality. Although Peter joins Hugh in advancing the under-

standing of sacrament in general as involving more than the visible
sign of invisible grace, moving, with Hugh, beyond the Augustinian
definition of sacrament to the notion that the sacramental sign is a
medium of grace which effects what it signifies, he also joins Hugh
in failing to extend this understanding of sacramentality to
marriage.566 It would not have been difficult for Peter to have done
so, treating marriage on the analogy of holy orders or on the
analogy of penance. On the analogy with holy orders, the vows
articulated at the wedding could have been viewed as the sensible
sign of the consent that constitutes the spiritual union of the couple,
the point at which they are given the grace to model their union on
the bond of love joining Christ and the church. As with penance,
their physical union could likewise have been envisioned as the
external expression of the grace already received through their
union of minds and hearts as mediated through their articulation of
their vows. As with holy orders, their physical union could have
been seen as an occasion of grace that enables the couple to model
their common life on the physical and institutional union of Christ
and the church, an occasion of grace that empowers them fitly to
exercise their unique office in the church, in the proper use of
human sexuality, and that gives them the strength to do so without
selfishness and for the sake of the Christian community. All these
pieces are in place. The Lombard could have extended his theology
of marriage in these directions, advancing the concept of its sac-
ramentality farther than he does and bringing marriage into full
accord with his treatment of the other sacraments. But this he does
not do. As a sacrament, marriage, for him, remains a mere Augustin-
ian sign, not a sign that effects what it signifies, or a spiritual or
physical medium of grace. The inconsistency between Peter's theo-
logy of marriage and his sacramental theology as a whole can also
be charged to Hugh of St. Victor's account. Still, for the Lombard,
it is a missed opportunity. Dependent as he is on Hugh, he does not
hesitate to move the Victorine project forward in other respects. It
has to be said, therefore, that, significant as his contribution to the
theology of marriage may have been in his day, Peter's conception
of marriage as a sacrament remains, in the end, sub-sacramental in
comparison with his understanding of the other sacraments and of
sacraments as such.

566
Both Heaney, The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage, pp. 26-28 and
Knoch, Die Einsetzung, pp. 239-41 overinterpret Peter on this score. Ghellinck,
"Pierre Lombard," col. 1999-2002 is correct in noting his inconsistency here.
696 CHAPTER EIGHT

At the same time, Peter does make some notable contributions to

the development of the doctrine of marriage. While maintaining an
unwavering commitment to the principle of consent in marriage
formation, his understanding of marriage as having a double sac-
ramentality gives strong support to the goodness and naturalness of
the sexual relations of spouses. His approach to this aspect of
marriage has none of the praise of asceticism and none of the
grudging and concessive distaste for human sexuality, and the
pleasure it bears with it, found in much of the previous Christian
tradition and in some of the masters of his own day. To be sure, he
thinks, as they do, that sexual relations in marriage have been
authorized, and blessed, so that they can be used for the ends of
marriage. He does not regard them as ends in themselves. But he
makes a generous and positive appraisal of what those ends are,
viewing them as more than merely procreative and as more than
merely making a preemptive strike against the illicit satisfaction of
sexual needs outside of the bonds of marriage. He sees the render-
ing of the marriage debt not in negative, remedial terms, but as a
way in which spouses can strengthen their bond of fidelity while at
the same time growing in virtue by replacing egotism with un-
selfishness, mutuality, and egalitarianism. Peter's stress on the
equality of spouses in their sexual relations is enriched by his use of
Gratian on that point, but he goes farther than the canonists, both
by extending the single standard to the equality of the wife in
marriage litigation, where her sworn testimony is to be taken just as
seriously as her husband's, and also by recasting this theme, not as
a statement about legal rights alone but as an index of how Chris-
tian marriage can be not merely a school for virtue but a sign of
contradiction in a society where patriarchy is the rule. In contrast
with his handling of intentionality, and how it informs marital
consent, while he feels constrained to admit that one cannot with-
hold the sacrament from spouses who bring sub-Christian inten-
tions to it, in this area Peter does not hesitate to preach counsels of
perfection and to rule that they are normative.
In treating the impediments to marriage and the grounds for
nullification or separation, Peter states the consensus position of his
day to a large extent, enlarging the theological outlook on it thanks
to his borrowings from Gratian. There are points on which he
modifies and softens rulings that he thinks are too harsh or inequi-
table, as with the remarriage of a person whose spouse has been
absent for a long time and who is honestly presumed to be dead
Another notable area in which he takes a minority view in relaxing
the rigor of a rule is the case of a man whose first marriage he was
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 697

unable to consummate, leading to its dissolution, but who finds

himself able to function with a new partner. Peter does not require
him and his first wife to return to a dysfunctional union but allows
them to remain with their new spouses. Thus, while Peter generally
supports the consensus position, he is certainly willing to nuance it
and also to challenge it, in the interests of fairness and charity as
opposed to the rigid and mechanical enforcement of norms. In this
area he also takes a stand on disputed matters where there was no
contemporary consensus, such as the prior adulterous affair as an
impediment to marriage. In such cases, his solutions consistently
reflect the appreciation of the principle that spiritual growth, re-
pentence, reconciliation, forgiveness, and associated values are
what the church should be promoting, in making marriage as
accessible as possible and by concentrating more on the quality of
life it affords for spouses and less on the occasions, especially the
man-made ones, that prevent a union, that require its nullification,
or that afford opportunities for separation or litigation.
Another major achievement of the Lombard's theology of mar-
riage lies in his handling of impediments to marriage, which im-
poses a clear and logical order on this topic for the first time.
According to his scheme, impediments to free, honest, and un-
forced consent come first, since such consent is of the essence in
making a marriage in the first place. This category is swiftly
followed by impediments built into the nature of things, regardless
of human will or convention, such as mental and physical incapac-
ity. The two parts of the theme of incapacity which he takes up here
reflect not only the fact that both of these kinds of incapacity exist,
but also his own notion of the double sacramentality of marriage.
There is both the union of minds and hearts, for which sufficient
mental health is needed, and the union of bodies, in the vast
majority of marriages, which expresses that union of souls and
which requires the capacity to consummate the marriage. While his
treatment of mental and physical incapacity as impediments to
marriage is perfectly symmetrical, Peter shares an inconsistency
found as well in the contemporary consensus by failing to treat
them in a parallel way as a cause for nullification. In any event, all
other impediments he relegates to the category of those affected by
choice, circumstance, and human legislation, and, hence, as subject
to change. While, as noted above, Peter does not see insanity as a
basis for ending a marriage, however incapable its victims may be
of carrying out their marital responsibilities, he supports the
emerging consensus view on disparity of cult as an impediment to
marriage and as authorizing the dismissal of the non-Christian
698 CHAPTER EIGHT

spouse, seeing as critical the inability of the unbelieving partner to

play his or her necessary role in the union of minds and hearts that
is of the essence in the sacrament of marriage. Peter places this
solution to the problem of disparity of cult on a thoroughly theolo-
gical and psychological foundation, not on a legal or administrative
one. He does not seize upon the opportunity to promote the Pauline
permission to dismiss an unbelieving spouse over the Pauline per-
mission to take a non-Christian spouse as an example to be sup-
ported on the historical grounds that it speaks more realistically to
the situation of the present church, one no longer in the missionary
position of the early church. Had he done so, Peter could have
integrated the topic of disparity of cult more smoothly into his
exposition of the other impediments to marriage which he addres-
ses in his third and final subdivision of this subject, since he treats
age limits and the definitions of cognation and affinity as man-
made conventions that have changed over time, along with other
rules attached to marriage which can change and which have
changed over time.
In adopting the doctrine of consent in marriage formation, as
taught by Peter, in his marriage decretals later in the century, Pope
Alexander III gave recognition to one of the principal areas in
which the Lombard's theology of marriage could be seen as supe-
rior to that of his contemporaries. Advances there indubitably were,
however much this theory managed to impress itself on the con-
sciousness and practice of medieval Christians. Yet, as this conclu-
sion to Peter's doctrine of marriage and to his sacramental theology
more generally suggests, he left soft spots and inconsistencies for his
followers to puzzle over in the sequel. And, irrespective of his
concessions to the world in which he lived at some points, there
remains an air of unreality about his theology of marriage, an air of
trying to turn the hortatory into the normative, that is just as
apparent in Peter's work as it is in the treatments of marriage
offered by his compeers.

LAST THINGS

The subject of Last Things is a field in which we can detect a real

difference between authors who write in the light of popular belief
and the exegesis of the Book of Revelation, on the one hand, and the
systematic theologians, on the other. The period during which the
Lombard lived and worked was marked, on the part of the former
group, by a rash of apocalyptic thinking, mostly in the ranks of the
monastic authors. Their works are marked by a highly speculative
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 699

reading of Revelation, which anxiously seeks to answer questions

arising from the worries of people concerned with what is going to
happen to their own souls, and the souls of others, at every step of
the way during the coming last days. It also reflects a tendency to
politicize the idea of Antichrist, in the context of the current papal-
imperial feud, sometimes connecting this theme with the tradition
of Nero as Antichrist. At times, Last Things is a subject linked by
these monastic authors with liturgical reflection, or is treated as an
agency for, or an expression of, visionary experience. At the very
least, it affords an opportunity for meditation, and exhortation, in
helping individuals in the writer's audience to contemplate their
own moral state in preparation for their own impending deaths.567
On the other hand, the scholastics take a different tack on Last
Things altogether. They have no hortatory or visionary concerns
and they take a dim view of apocalyptic speculation. They distance
themselves from the effort to attach the doctrine of Antichrist to any
particular political events or personalities, or to an allegorical view
of human history. As a group, they seek to base what they have to
say on the authorities who, they hold, are the most reliable. They
draw heavily on Gregory the Great's Moralia and, even more so, on
the final chapters of Augustine's City of God. Above all, since they
are systematic theologians, they seek to show the connection be-
tween their doctrine of Last Things and the main themes that
animate their summae and sentence collections, at least in the case of
those scholastic theologians who address the subject at all. Since
the mainstream effort draws essentially on the same sources, from
the school of Laon through Hugh of St. Victor, Robert Pullen, and
Robert of Melun, there is a high degree of consensus on the main
outlines of the end-of-time scenario among scholastics in the first
half of the twelfth century. Disagreements tend to be on matters of
detail. Peter Lombard reflects the attitude of his fellow scholastics.
He helps to crystallize the consensus treatment of Last Things on
the part of scholastic theology, while at the same time imparting his
own highly individual coloration to a number of the standard topics
which his contemporaries treat. As well, both in his manner of
handling those themes relevant to Last Things which he takes up,

567
Good general background is supplied by Richard Kenneth Emmerson,
Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism in Art and Literature
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), pp. 78, 11-33, 37-57, 63-67,
74—107, 158, 166-72; Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in
the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), pp. 94-121; Horst
Dieter Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius zum deutschen Symbolis-
mus, Beiträge, n.F. 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1973), pp. 1-18, 165-365, 416-540.
700 CHAPTER EIGHT

in addition to those he pointedly ignores, he conveys his own

opinion as to what is knowable, suitable and proper to discuss, and
important in this area of theology, suggesting the desire to take a
stand on the broader range of treatments of this topic found outside
the schools as well as within them.

The Non-Scholastic Challenge

That the non-scholastic theology of Last Things presented a de-

cided challenge to the more sober leanings of Peter and his colleagues
can be appreciated by a consideration of the way Honorius Augusto-
dunensis handles this assignment. Honorius straddles the divide that
can be seen between the monastic and scholastic authors here. He is a
systematic theologian, who makes a clear connection between the
doctrine of Last Things and the rest of his exposition, presenting it as
the conclusion of the ecclesiastical dispensation in which Christians
will be rewarded or punished eternally according to their practice of
the ethical and sacramental life as members of the church. This highly
coherent integration of the subject into the fabric of his theological
system is combined, however, with a wild-eyed fascination with the
last days and the state of souls in the life to come that reflects both
Honorius's own interests and those of the lay people for whose
ultimate consumption his Elucidarium was written. His exposition of
Last Things is extremely lengthy. Freighted with much detail, it
reflects his eagerness to describe the events he relates in vivid and
concrete terms, an eagerness so great that it inspires him to go
beyond the standard patristic authorities and to appeal to other
sources less reputable and more inventive. The most important of
these is the Prognosticon futuri saeculi of Julian of Toledo (d. 690).
Indeed, much of the flamboyant and circumstantial material in
Honorius's account, material for which there is no Scriptural war-
rant whatever, is drawn from Julian.
From its very outset, Honorius's treatment of Last Things speaks
to the questions that worry ordinary people, starting with death.
Death, he somberly notes, comes in many forms, including the
premature death of children, the cruel death of people in the prime
of life, and the natural death of the aged. Yet, even God's elect need
to die. He offers the consoling thought that however they die, their
death is precious in the sight of God, whether or not they can be
interred in consecrated ground.568 Honorius is keenly interested in

Honorius, Elue. 2. 96-97, 2.101-04, pp. 440, 441-42.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 701

how the souls of the departed occupy themselves between their

death and the end of time. Before the last judgment, he avers, the
souls of the damned know both the souls of other people who are
damned, as well as those of the saved, and suffer on that account.
The souls of the saved know other just souls, as well as what is
happening on earth. They take an interest in earthly affairs,
praying for their friends and relatives as well as for each other and
for the souls undergoing purgation. The latter, who, he thinks,
sometimes begin their purgation while they are still alive, suffer,
but they are assisted by the prayers of the saints even as they are
helped by the prayers, masses, and good works of their fellow
Christians on earth. Those souls who will be damned in the last
judgment are housed in an upper part of Hell, envisioned by
Honorius, following Gregory, as a kind of holding tank where they
are not yet punished except by their separation from God.569
Next comes the reign of Antichrist, which Honorius describes in
extremely elaborate detail. According to him, Antichrist is the
offspring of the devil and a prostitute from the tribe of Dan. He will
govern the world with terror and cruelty, deluding even clerics and
monks by his eloquence and false miracles. Readers, he implies,
should take this as a warning, although he allows that those who
succumb to the deceptions and threats of Antichrist will be granted
forty years in which to repent. On the authority of Julian, who,
apparently, invented the idea, Honorius claims that the human
body during the time of Antichrist will be smaller than it is now.
The only mitigating feature of his reign will be that it will witness
the conversion of the Jews to Christianity, a point which, however,
Honorius ignores later in the scenario.570
The general resurrection, Honorius affirms, will occur instan-
taneously. It will be a double resurrection of the body and the soul,
paralleling the double death of the body and the soul. The instant
in which the resurrection occurs will be the same time of day as
Christ's resurrection. Following Augustine, Honorius explains that
everyone will be resurrected with a perfect body, at the perfect age
of thirty, the age when Christ died, whatever his physical condition
at the time of his own death. Those with deformities or disabilities
will lack them, in the next life. Infants who died in the womb, if
ensouled at the time, will be resurrected as adults; if not, they will
be raised as part of their mothers' bodies. In the case of fetuses

Ibid., 3.1-11, 3.19-32, pp. 443-46, 449-52.

Ibid., 3.33-37, pp. 452-54.
702 CHAPTER EIGHT

miscarried or aborted, the cells belonging to their father and their

mother will be restored to each parent, to be raised as part of him
or her. As to the troubling issue of people who were eaten by wild
animals, Honorius counsels his readers not to worry. The God Who
created the universe ex nihilo will see to it that they are resurrected,
none the less.571
The last judgment, too, will occur in the twinkling of an eye,
according to Honorius, following Augustine. In the second coming,
Christ will appear in the glorified body which He manifested to His
disciples in His transfiguration. Ushered in by an elaborate angelic
procession, as the book of Revelation foretells, He will judge man-
kind seated in the midst of His twelve apostles. Following Gregory,
Honorius states that the angels will go among the people and sort
them out into four groups, those who are perfect and who do not
need to be judged, but who judge along with Christ; the just who
are both judged and saved; the impious who are judged and con-
demned; and the damned who have already been judged and con-
demned. Unlike Gregory, his source for this distinction, he extends
the system of classification to people in certain callings or states of
life, irrespective of how they conducted themselves therein. In the
first category he places the apostles, martyrs, monks, and virgins.
In the second he places married people, those who have done good
works, and who have done penance for their sins. In the third
group are non-Christians who, whether they were there at the time
or not, are held to have consented to the death of Christ because of
their non-belief in Him. In the category of the damned, Honorius
places not only those Christians who have sinned, unrepentant,
under the new dispensation but also the Jews who sinned, before
Christ's coming, according to their own law. The books that are
opened during the last judgment, according to Honorius, are to be
understood allegorically as the books of the Bible and the examples
of the saints, held up as a model to which the judged are compared,
for the purpose of assigning them to one or another of these four
groups.572
After the judgment, the damned will be dragged to Hell by the

571
Ibid., 3.38-49, pp. 454-57. This Augustinian account of the resurrection
shapes the contemporary consensus position, as is noted by Richard Heinzmann,
Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele und die Auferstehung des täbes: Eine problemgeschictliche
Untersuchung der frühscholastischen Sentenzen- und Summenliteratur von Anselm von Laon bis
Wilhelm von Auxerre, Beiträge, 40:3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1956), pp. 148-67;
Colleen McDannell and Berhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1988), pp. 54-66.
572
Honorius, Elue. 3.50-78, pp. 457-63.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 703

devil and his minions, the saved ushered to Heaven by their guar-
dian angels, and those undergoing purgation returned to the place
of purgation, which Honorius envisions as a less obnoxious zone of
Hell, in which suffering is temporal and marked by both heat and
cold. The damned will be consigned to a Hell with two general
subdivisions, one involving physical torments and the other, more
loathesome, involving torment specifically by fire, a distinction he
derives from Gregory. From Julian he reprises a more specific
distinction of the grades of punishment in Hell, designed to parallel
the nine orders of angels.
In vivid, and lurid, sensory detail, he describes these punish-
ments as fire, cold, serpents and dragons, disgusting stench, the
blows of demons, palpable darkness, hatred, the fearsome sight of
demons and dragons, and the cacophonous cries of the victims and
their torturers alike. This infernal arrangement is also an antithesis
of the varieties of bliss enjoyed by the saints in Heaven, which will
include beauty, joy, health, swiftness, freedom, concord, comfort,
power, and honor. Honorius is deeply interested in what the resur-
rected bodies of the damned and the saved will look like. He allays
his own curiosity, and that of his intended audience, with an appeal
to Julian. On this rather dubious foundation, he affirms that the
new body will be not only incorruptible but also translucent as
glass. Moreover, it will be color-coded. The resurrected bodies of
the damned will be of somber hue. But the glorified bodies of the
saints will come in an assortment of bright colors—blue, green, red,
and the like, each assigned to a particular type of saint. Thus, their
fellow-citizens in Heaven will be able to see, at a glance, whether
they are united in happy concord with a virgin, a martyr, or what-
ever.573 Once the souls, truly visible saints or visible reprobates,
have taken their places, the world will be destroyed. Honorius
offers an elaborate description of the celestial fireworks accompany-
ing that event. Time will cease, and the heavenly bodies will stop
moving, as the alternation of night and day is replaced by eternal
light. Then, he concludes, the world will be recreated, as a locus
amoenus just like the original paradise, without suffering and pain.574
Having brought his story to an end, symmetrical with the creation
of the universe at the beginning of time, Honorius thankfully lays
down his pen.

573
Ibid., 3.1-18, 3.79-121, pp. 443-49, 463-77.
574
Ibid., 3.78, p. 463. This elaborate description of Heaven, Hell, and the new
earth follows the monastic approach to Last Things, as noted by McDannell and
Lang, Heaven, pp. 72-73, 78-79, 107-10.
704 CHAPTER EIGHT

The Scholastic Response

Faced by the competition represented by this extremely circum-

stantial, not to say fanciful, account of Last Things, the systematic
theologians of a scholastic persuasion responded in a number of
ways. Some, like the Abelardians and the authors of the Summa
sententiarum and Sententiae divinitatis, simply react to Honorius and
his ilk by omitting the topic of Last Things altogether. Other
masters view the tactic of strategic omission as irresponsible. The
Porretans grasp the nettle, and indicate by their extremely abbrevi-
ated and repressive treatment of the subject that it needs to be
reduced, radically, to what can be established by reference to
Scripture and the more reliable authorities, especially Gregory. In
the leanest discussion of Last Things found among the scholastics
in the first half of the twelfth century, an account which they place
not at the end of their sentence collections but as a pendant to the
devil's temptation of Adam and Eve, they raise the question of
where Hell is located, and what it is like. This question is intro-
duced, in the first instance, to permit the masters to disclaim our
ability to know very much about Hell. They note that Gregory says
that Hell has two sections. In the superior part are the souls of
those awaiting judgment; in the inferior part are the souls of the
damned. On the other hand, others say that Hell does not have two
compartments, but that it is a single zone in which the damned and
the just undergoing purgation by fire are mingled, led there, respec-
tively, by demons and angels. Offering no comment on Heaven,
they observe that it is the destination of souls who have completed
their penance. But, as to where the purgatorial fire is located, they
remark, in such a way as to dismiss the whole question of Last
Things, "we say that we do not know" (dicimus quod nescimus).575
In the eyes of most other scholastic theologians, and Ivo of
Chartres as well, a better plan was to state what could be known
more fully and to acknowledge that the Bible and the reliable
authorities permitted a rather larger number of positive statements
to be made than the Porretans allow. Ivo, for example, relies
heavily on Gregory here. In effect, he gives a swift reprise of the
Moralia on Last Things, adverting to the City of God only for

575
Sent. mag. Gisleberti I 13.75-76, p. 174. The quotation is at 13.76. Even in this
most repressive account of Purgatory in the period, it is clear that the doctrine of
Purgatory exists; the claim ofJacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 135: "Purgatory
did not exist before 1170 at the earliest," cannot be sustained.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 705

Augustine's descriptions of Heaven and Hell. Ivo clearly sees the

next life as divided into Heaven and Hell, representing permanent
states of being, and Purgatory, as a transitional state in which souls
are purged by the refining fire and aided by the prayers and masses
offered by the living on their behalf. He declines to speculate on
where Purgatory may be located, just as he indicates that we have
no clear information on where the souls of the departed are to be
found before the general resurrection. He thinks that the damned
and the saved will be aware of each other's condition in the next life
and will suffer and rejoice the more, accordingly. Souls in both
Heaven and Hell will dwell in different mansions. It is unavailing
for the saints to pray for the souls of the damned, and the saints
recognize that this is the case, because their status is unalterable.
This last observation is one that Ivo adds in acknowledgment of the
contemporary felt need to refute Origen's doctrine of the perma-
nent capacity of souls to reform, or to fall, in the next life, up to and
including the salvation of Satan. The saved must endure death, Ivo
agrees, because it is a consequence of original sin affecting every-
one, even God's elect. The joy of the blessed will be an intellectual
joy, the vision of God and a knowledge greater than any that can be
had on earth. For their part, the damned will suffer physical as well
as mental pain, the former in the torments afflicting their bodies
and the latter in the sorrow of mind which includes the knowledge
that they will never experience consolation, light, or joy.576 Having
outlined this Gregorian description of the next life, Ivo concludes
with an account of what will happen before souls arrive there. After
a trimmed-down description of the reign of Antichrist taken from
Gregory, he ends with Augustine's views on the general resurrec-
tion, the last judgment, and a reprise of his earlier remarks on
Heaven and Hell.577
Ivo, to be sure, does not present this doctrine as the finale of a
systematic theology. He includes it merely because of its general
interest, a choice in which he is not seconded by the other canonists
in this period. The members of the school of Laon, likewise, do not
propose their views on Last Things in the context of a systematic
sentence collection. While they advert to Gregory at some points,
they mainly follow the City of God, while bringing in some other
issues and authorities. These masters appear to be more interested
in the state of the blessed in Heaven than in any other aspect of

Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 17. c. 67-c. 103, PL 161: 993A-1009A.

Ibid., 17. c. 104-c. 120, PL 161: 1009A-1015B.
706 CHAPTER EIGHT

Last Things. Anselm of Laon agrees with Gregory that the souls
and bodies of the saved are not beatified in the same way. Only the
souls receive complete brightness, incorruptibility, and glory (cla-
ritas, incorruptio, glorificatio) .578 But other members of the school dwell
on the resurrected body and its qualities. It will have no physical
needs—although there is some inconclusiveness here about eating
—and it will be subtler and lighter than the earthly body, and not
dependent on the senses for knowledge.579 One Laon master, citing
Gregory Nazianzus by way of Eriugena, argues that, in the next
life, the senses will be converted into reason, reason into intellect,
and intellect into God. The resurrected saints, he holds, will enjoy
the direct apperception of non-sensible objects of knowledge. This
perfect, intuitive knowledge will constitute the joy of the saints; the
exclusion from it of the damned constitutes their punishment.580
Anselm worries about how the souls of the departed will recognize
the bodies to which they were attached in this life, given the
changed nature of these bodies in the resurrection. He proposes
that a nexus of some sort will remain between the soul and the body
after death enabling the soul to claim the correct body in the
resurrection.581 Mostly, the members of the school are interested in
following up on Augustine's account of the resurrection. They
agree that all will be raised at the age of thirty in a perfect physical
state, lacking in any defects which they may have had in life.
Miscarried fetuses are included in this rule. The only exception to it
is the scars of the martyrs, which they will retain in Heaven and
wear as badges of honor. With respect to the foodstuffs men have
eaten in this life, the masters agree, they are not a problem in the
resurrection because they were assimilated and have become part
of the human bodies of the people who ate them. As for fingernail
clippings and hair that has been cut off in this life, they suggest,
with Augustine, that we should not worry about what becomes of
them. They support his view that people will be resurrected in the
male and female sexes, although there is no marriage in Heaven,
and affirm that hermaphrodites will receive the physical attributes
of whichever of the two sexes was preponderant in their earthly
constitution.582 The saints, the Laon masters agree, will all enjoy
beatitude but in different degrees, just as the damned will suffer

Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 93, 5: 79.

Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 500, 530, 5: 322, 395.
Sent. Anselmi 11, pp. 152-53.
Sentences of Anselm of Laon, no. 91, 5: 78.
Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 498-500, 530, 5: 320-22, 396-97.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 707

different degrees and modes of punishment. They will hear the

prayers of the living, and of those in purgatory who need their
assistance, and, if God has decided to save them, these suppliants
will be aided by the prayers of the saints.583 The Laon masters also
refer to the identification of Antichrist with Nero in 2 Thessalo-
nians, seeking but failing to explain it.584 They think that Purgatory
is a fiery place located in the air.585 But their treatment of the end of
time is less a treatise on Last Things in general than a discussion of
the resurrection and the beatitude of the saints.
The first scholastic theologian to attempt a more systematic
treatment of Last Things, and one that he seeks to correlate with
the overarching themes of his theology in general, is Hugh of St.
Victor. He follows in the Laon tradition, in that his account is
largely a reprise and abridgement of the last three chapters of the
City of God. But he presents a more connected story as well as
raising a wider variety of questions than do the Laon masters. The
fact that he raises questions, however, is not always an index of his
ability or desire to answer them. In some instances, like the Porre-
tans, his queries are introduced as a means of pinpointing issues on
which he thinks speculation should be discouraged. The latter is
the case with the question with which he opens his treatise on Last
Things, the whereabouts of the souls of the departed in between
their separation from their bodies in death and the general resur-
rection. Hugh thinks, with some pertinence, that this is a question
mal posée. Pointing out that the soul is spiritual, he concludes that
souls do not need, and indeed, they cannot have, a local habitation
once detached from their bodies. In any event, he warns, this is a
subject on which there is little secure information. Of greater
interest to him, and an area in which he is not disinclined to
speculate, is the question of whether such souls can return to earth
as ghosts in visible form, a possibility which he by no means rules
out.586
Since Hugh follows a generally historical model in his De sac-
ramenthy this is the way he approaches Last Things as well. Repris-
ing Augustine throughout, he states that we cannot know the day
or the hour when the Antichrist will arrive and trigger the rest of
the end-of-time scenario, an observation perhaps also aimed at the
too-enthusiastic monastic exegetes of Revelation in this period.

Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 501-02, 504-05, 5: 322-23.

Sentences of the School of Laon, no. 530, 5: 397.
Ibid., p. 394.
Hugh of St. Victor, De sac. 2.16.2, PL 176: 580C-584C.
708 CHAPTER EIGHT

After the Antichrist has completed his reign of three years and six
months, the general resurrection and last judgment will occur, each
in the twinkling of an eye.587 Hugh reports Augustine's views on the
perfection of the resurrected body faithfully, except for the fact that
he disclaims knowledge of when, in the gestation process, the fetus
becomes a person and will be resurrected as himself and not as part
of his mother's body. He admits that the resurrected body will have
physical needs and desires, but not those that can aggravate the
soul.588 In treating the punishments of the damned, Hugh agrees
that they will be afflicted by corporeal fire and finds this doctrine
problematic, since it is a punishment they start to receive as soon as
they die and before their resurrected bodies have been joined to
their souls. Hugh can find no explanation either in authority or in
reason for the claim that a soul not attached to a body can suffer
physical punishment. He states that this teaching should be held by
faith alone. The punishment by fire, which he takes from Gregory
as well as Augustine, can also be understood, metaphorically, as
spiritual torment. Hugh does not think that the damned can see
the blessings of the saved. He does think that the punishments of
the damned in Hell are graduated. He holds that Hell is located in
the nether regions, somewhere in the bowels of the earth; but, in his
view, its exact location cannot be ascertained.389
Hugh also takes exception to those authors who think they can
give a precise location for Purgatory. He reviews the principal
opinions on this issue. Some say that people begin their purgatorial
punishment on earth while they are still alive, in the same places
where their sins were committed. Others say that Purgatory is in or
near Hell. The most likely opinion, in Hugh's estimation, is that
of Gregory, who locates it underground in an upper, and less
loathesome, part of Hell. Still, the best course of action, Hugh
advises, is to acknowledge that we do not know for certain where
Purgatory is. What is more important, in Hugh's eyes, is what
happens in Purgatory It is a zone, he agrees, where people predes-
tined to salvation, who died still possessing faults on their conscien-
ces which they need to eliminate, undergo purgation temporarily.
He adds that these souls are aided by the prayers, masses, and
almsgiving offered on their behalf by the living.590
As for the saved in Heaven, Hugh confirms Augustine's view

Ibid., 2.17.5-8, PL 176: 598B-600C.

Ibid., 2.17.13-20, PL 176: 601C-606A.
Ibid., 2.16.3-5, 2.18.1-2, 2.18.5-6, PL 176: 584C-593C, 609B-C, 610R-C.
Ibid., 2.16.4-10, PL 176: 586C-596A.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 709

that part of their edification consists of their ability to witness the

torments of the damned. They do not pity the damned or pray for
them, since they know that the fate of the damned is sealed and that
it is just.591 For Hugh, the bliss of Heaven can be defined primarily
and essentially as the vision of God. As with the Laon masters, he
treats beatitude as a cognitive state, in which perfect knowledge
and perfect sight replace the partial knowledge available to man by
faith in this life. At the same time as he seconds this Augustinian
theme, he puts his own Victorine construction on it. At the opening
of the De sacramentis, he had outlined the modes of human knowl-
edge and had placed systematic theological investigation on a
trajectory starting from the knowledge of God one gains through
reason, the knowledge of God one gains through revelation, and the
knowledge of God one gains through contemplation. This quest for
knowledge, in Hugh's understanding of Heaven, is consummated
in the vision of God enjoyed by the saints. While they possess other
kinds of beatitude as well, including immortality, love without
offense, the forgetting of all past sufferings and the memory and
reexperiencing of all past joys, it is ultimately the perfection of
knowledge, and not only the knowledge of lesser things without
error, but first and foremost, the knowledge of the creator and
redeemer Himself, that brings Hugh of St. Victor's envisioned work
of institution and restitution to its close.592
This Victorine focus on knowledge aside, Hugh sets the agenda
for succeeding accounts of Last Things on the part of the systematic
theologians in this period. This fact is visible in the slender glean-
ings that have been found of Robert of Melun's teaching on this
subject.593 It is also the case with Robert Pullen. Like Hugh, Robert
Pullen draws heavily on Augustine and Gregory and emphasizes
the events that will take place between the official end of this world
and the final assignment of souls to their ultimate places of punish-
ment and reward. The coming of Antichrist, his reign, the general
resurrection of all into perfect bodily form, and the last judgment
claim Robert's primary attention. He discusses all these processes
in considerable detail.594 He acknowledges that some of the saints
will be brighter than others, as there are many mansions in
Heaven. But he is far less interested than Hugh or, for that matter,
Augustine, in what the existence of the blessed and the damned will
591
Ibid., 2.18.5-6, 2.18.13, 2.18.15, PL 176: 610B-C, 612A, 612C.
592
Ibid., 2.18.16-19, 2.18.21-22, PL 176: 613A-616D, 617R-618B.
593
Raymond-M. Martin, ed., "Un texte intéressant de Robert de Melun (Sen-
tentiae, libr. II, part 2, cap. cxcvii-ccxiii)," RHE 28 (1932): 322-26, 32&-39.
594
Robert Pullen, Sent. 8.15-17, 8.26-32, PL 186: 982D-988B, 1003A-1010B.
710 CHAPTER EIGHT

be like in Heaven and Hell. All he has to offer on that subject is the
observation that the mental and moral attitudes (habitus mentis)
which they had at the time of their death will be intensified, and
that Hell involves extremes of cold as well as heat.595 Robert largely
omits Purgatory from Last Things. He takes it up primarily as a
pendant to his discussion of penance. He follows Gregory's teaching
on that subject, locating Purgatory somewhere underground,
and in the upper portion of Hell, where repentant souls complete
any satisfaction still owing, the length of their stay depending on
the needs of the individual. He omits the idea that the prayers and
masses of the living may speed up their purgation, but concentrates
on the sufferings they undergo, which, he says, will be worse than
the sufferings they endured in this life but far lighter than the
punishments of the damned. Robert also thinks that this purgatorial
upper zone of Hell was where the Old Testament worthies awaited
Christ's harrowing of Hell,596 another context in which he brings up
the subject. But, aside from the elaboration of the stages through
which souls will pass before attaining these habitations, Robert's
chief concern is to combat Origen's teaching on the possibility that
souls in the next life may undergo repeated backsliding, or conver-
sion, ad infinitum and even that the devil may be saved.597 The
finality of God's judgment is the principal reality he wants to stress.

Peter Lombard on Last Things

In placing Peter Lombard's doctrine of Last Things in the con-

text of contemporary accounts, modern scholars, while noticing the
range of his sources, including the same Julian of Toledo used by
Honorius to such cinematic effect, see his contribution largely as
the amplification of Hugh of St. Victor.598 There is certainly strong
evidence indicating that Peter has drawn on Hugh, and on Augus-
tine, Hugh's own major source. Yet, in comparison with both of
595
Ibid., 4.14-24, 8.32, PL 186: 823B-828A, 1008B-1010B.
596
Ibid., 1.14, 4.17-18, 8.21, PL 186: 705A, 823B-824D, 994A-D.
597
Ibid., 8.25, PL 186: 999C-D.
598
Ghellinck, "Pierre Lombard," col. 2002; Coloman Viola, "Jugements de
Dieu et jugement dernier: Saint Augustine et la scolastique naissante (fin XI e -
milieu XIII e siècles)," in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, ed.
Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven: Leuven
University Press, 1988), pp. 242-98; Nikolaus Wicki, "Das Trognosticon futuri
saeculi' Julians von Toledo als Quellenwerk der Sentenzen des Petrus Lombar-
dus," Divus Thomas 31 (1953): 349-60; Die täre von der himmlischen Seligkeit in der
mittelalterlichen Scholastik von Petrus Lombardus bis Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg in der
Schweiz: Universitätsverlag, 1954), pp. 4—17, 62-63, 175-76, 186, 239-40, 280,
319.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 711

these authors, and, indeed, with most other early twelfth-century

treatments of Last Things, what is striking in the Lombard's
account is his sobriety and his accent on positions that can be
documented in Holy Scripture. At the same time, and by the same
token, he ruthlessly suppresses anything smacking of fanciful or
wild-eyed speculation. His principal tactic for enforcing his views
concerning what can be known about Last Things with certitude and
what cannot is his appeal to St. Paul and to the strategy of selective
omission, which he uses not only against Hugh and Augustine but
against Paul himself. Another major feature of Peter's treatment of
Last Things is that he, like Hugh, is interested in harnessing this
subject to the overall themes animating his systematic theology as a
whole; but the themes, in his case, are different ones.
Peter largely follows the scenario laid out by Paul in 1 Thessalo-
nians in describing the events leading to the permanent assignment
of souls to the two cities of Augustine, although he reverses the
emphasis in such authors as Robert Pullen by giving this part of his
assignment a rather streamlined treatment, reserving more space
for the actual state of being of the damned and the saved. He draws
as well on his own biblical exegesis here. The story begins with the
descent of Christ from Heaven in the voice of the archangel and in
the trumpet's blast, the sound of the trumpet being the cause that
triggers the general resurrection (causa . . . resurrectionis) in the sense
of being the efficient cause of what happens next. The second
coming of Christ will occur at an unexpected moment, he stresses.
Peter is just as unsympathetic as Hugh toward efforts to spell out
the day and the hour; the middle of the night to which the apostle
refers points to no specific time, he observes. The books that will be
opened are the consciences of the individuals now to be judged.599
Peter declines to speculate on some of the matters of interest to
other theologians, including his patristic and post-patristic sources,
in connection with the resurrection. He thinks it likely that the elect
will remember the troubles they endured, and overcame, in this
life, but not in such a way as to interfere with their present happi-
ness. There is no forgetting of all past suffering, as in Hugh's
account. But he points out that there is no evidence in Scripture as
to whether people who are not members of the elect will remember
their past sins. The most he is willing to concede is that facts that
occurred openly will be known openly in the next life. Peter dismiss-
es the question of whether people still alive when the trumpet

599
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 43. c. 2-c. 4, 2: 511-12. The quotation is at c. 2.1,
p. 511.
712 CHAPTER EIGHT

blows will be taken immediately into immortality, their bodies

swiftly changed from living, earthly ones to resurrected ones, or
whether they will have to die before they can be resurrected, like
everyone else. We have no basis for answering this question, he
observes. Likewise, the idea that Christ judges the living and the
dead may be taken literally, in the sense that those people still alive
at the time of the second coming will be judged, along with the
departed. It may also be understood figuratively, in the sense that
the living stand for the saved and the dead stand for the damned.
No precise or preclusive determination can be given here, in Peter's
view. Furthermore, none is required. Likewise, while Peter follows
the standard Augustinian account of the perfection of the bodies of
the resurrected saints, pointedly declining to appeal to the tech-
nicolor version of this theme provided by Julian of Toledo and
Honorius, he argues that we have less evidence about the nature of
the resurrected bodies of the damned. The most we can say is that
their bodies will be able to burn without being consumed and that
their souls will be able to suffer along with their bodies.600
Peter moves immediately to the last judgment, and, in so doing,
he draws on the doctrine of Gregory the Great, which he had also
developed in his Psalms commentary, and to which Honorius refers
as well. The saints, he affirms, will participate in the last judgment
along with Christ, starting with the twelve apostles in whose midst
He conducts the proceedings. Four categories of souls will emerge
in this judgment. There are those who are not judged and who are
condemned to perdition. It is not necessary to judge them in the
hereafter, because they have openly condemned themselves to
damnation as unrepentant sinners in this life. Then, there are those
who will be judged and condemned. These are people who profess-
ed the faith but did not manifest it in good deeds. There are,
thirdly, those who are judged and who will rule. These are the souls
who died with unexpiated but repented sins on their consciences.
They will be admitted to glory, but only after their purgation.
Finally, there are those who are not judged and who rule. These
souls, like those in the first category, do not need to be judged. For
them, this is the case because they have already shown their true
character in this life, having manifested their perfect virtue through
works of supererogation. They are the saints who will assist Christ
and His apostles in the last judgment. 601 This description of the

0
Ibid., c. 5-d. 44, 2: 513-22.
1
Ibid., d. 47. c. 2-c. 3, 2: 537-40. See above, chapter 4, pp. 176-77.
 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 713

four categories of souls departs from Honorius's account of them, as

referring to different callings, belief systems, or states of life, and
restores to them the authentic Gregorian note of moral choice and
moral action.
In the judgment itself, Christ, with His angelic and saintly
assistants, will gather the saved from the four corners of the earth,
leaving the damned behind to be dragged to their punishment by
demons. Peter gives passing attention to the issue of where the last
judgment will take place, and agrees with the authorities who say
that it will occur in the firmament somewhere, and not on earth. He
dismisses as irrelevant and as unknowable the matter of why the
heavenly bodies will remain in existence after time stops and is
replaced by perpetual day. The points he really wants to accent
about the last judgment are two other ones. First, the form in which
Christ will preside over the last judgment is the form of His
resurrected body. This, says Peter, is eminently fitting, since
Christ's resurrection is the earnest of our own. Further, since this is
the form in which He communicates Himself to believers sac-
ramentally in the Eucharist, Christ's resurrection is also the cause
of our own salvation.602 The other major teaching Peter wants to
emphasize concerning the last judgment, before going on to the
condition of souls in their posthumous states, is, in effect, the
Leitmotiv of his entire account of Last Things. The judgment of
Christ is just. And, the judgment of Christ is merciful. True, for
those who are condemned, this judgment means eternal and un-
changing punishment. This point, developed by Robert Pullen as
an argument against Origen, is focused on a different objective by
Peter. The punishment of the damned is not in conflict with God's
mercy, he observes, because God punishes them less than they
actually deserve. In any event, he reminds the reader, the justice
and mercy of God are one and the same. Therefore, nothing in the
judgment of God is lacking in mercy, since these attributes are
identical in, and with, the divine essence itself. Here. Peter refers
his readers to the extended account of the radical unity of the divine
essence and of how divine attributes are to be understood in con-
nection with it that he had provided in the first book of the
Sentences.603
In surveying the steps that lead to the manifestation of this
justice and mercy of God in the states of souls in the next life, on

602
Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 47. c. 4-d. 48. c. 5, 2: 540-47.
603
Ibid., d. 46. c. 1-c. 5, 2: 529-37. On this point, see Landgraf, Dogmenge-
schichte, 4 part 2: 268-70.
714 CHAPTER EIGHT

which he plans to lavish much attention, we may say that Peter has
been pointedly concerned with pruning the florid display of fantasy
found in many of his sources and with dismissing as inappropriate
or as unanswerable many of the questions that they are willing to
consider. His tactic of strategic omission can be seen most strik-
ingly in the fact that he begins his own end-of-time scenario with
the second coming of Christ and the general resurrection, not with
the reign of Antichrist. Indeed, the single most original feature of
Peter's treatment of Last Things is that, unlike all of his predeces-
sors, ancient and modern, he ignores the Antichrist altogether.
This decision is fully conscious. As we have seen above, in his
exegesis of 2 Thessalonians, he develops a thoroughgoing and a
quite innovative interpretation of the meaning of Antichrist, one
that unshackles it completely not only from the Emperor Nero, the
initial problem in that epistle, which he sets out to correct, but
also from any kind of institutional manifestation or historical
phenomenon.604 Peter relies on St. Paul for much of his account of
Last Things, but it is noteworthy that the Paul he relies on is only
the Paul of 1 Thessalonians, and his own gloss on that epistle, and
not the Paul of 2 Thessalonians, and his gloss on the latter text. A
more sharply pointed rejection of the tendency of some contempo-
raries to speculate on the apocalypse and to cater to the fears,
worries, and yearnings for certitude to which the chiliastic imagina-
tion gave free rein would be difficult to envision. While Peter is
ready and willing to offer his own interpretation of Antichrist, as an
exegete, in order to bring the Paul of 2 Thessalonians into line with
the Paul of 1 Thessalonians and with Pauline theology more gener-
ally, when it comes to the systematic theology of Last Things, his
goal is to excise this topic from the syllabus altogether. It is not a
subject on which responsible theological research can be done, in
his estimation. It is not a field in which certitude is available. Thus,
it should not be allowed to obstruct the logical and theological
passage of the student from the ethical and sacramental lives of
Christians on earth to their posthumous outcomes.
This point having been made by the radical surgery he performs
on the theme of Antichrist, in the Sentences, Peter turns to those
posthumous conditions, presented as expressions of divine justice
and mercy. With respect to Purgatory, he declines to raise the
question of whether it can be localized and, if so, where it is. But he
has a perfectly clear understanding of its nature. For Peter, this

See above, chapters 4 and 6, pp. 196, 204, 205-07, 350.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 715

state is one that souls requiring purgation enter immediately after

their deaths, although their condition therein is altered following
the general resurrection. The third category of person who is
judged in the last judgment, and who will attain to glory, is the
population found in Purgatory. The inhabitants of this state of
being are assisted, according to Peter, by the prayers of the saints.
They are also helped by the prayers, masses, and almsgiving which
the living offer on their behalf, before the end of time. What is
striking about Peter's handling of Purgatory under the heading of
Last Things, a point also visible when he discusses it as a corollary
of the sacrament of penance, is that he is not interested in expatiat-
ing on the nature of purgatorial punishments. Rather, what he
wants to emphasize, along with Gregory, is the doctrine of the
communion of the saints and the connections uniting all Christians,
living and dead, in the bond of love that is the church. He has an
ecclesiological point to make here, as well as a piece of earnest
advice to his contemporaries. The aids that living Christians can
offer to the souls in Purgatory are efficacious, he observes, and it is
much more important to spend one's time and money on them than
on elaborate and expensive funerals or funerary monuments.605
Equally basic, he agrees with Gregory, is the justice and mercy God
expresses in providing this transitory realm for people who died in
a contrite state of mind, so that the continuing grace of forgiveness
of sins acknowledged and repented can be made available to them
in the hereafter.
Turning to the souls permanently damned and saved, Peter
appeals largely to Augustine, and to his own personal appropria-
tion of Augustine in his orchestration of the idea of use and enjoy-
ment as the main theme of his Sentences. There are two conditions
which the saints and sinners will share, he agrees, outside of the
eternalization of the prevailing state of their love in the city of God
or the city of man, respectively. They will be disposed in differing
degrees of punishment and bliss in Hell and Heaven, all equal in
the sense that the damned will all have what they deserve and the
blessed will all have what they want. Just as the blessed will enjoy
the incapacity to sin (non posse peccare), so the damned will be
confirmed in their possession of a bad will. Even though they will
not be able to engage in all their earlier earthly modes of sin, they
will still be incapable of not sinning by intention. Hence, Peter
observes, they will continue to merit their punishments, to all

Peter Lombard, Sent. 4. d. 45. c. 1-c. 6, 2: 523-29.

716 CHAPTER EIGHT

eternity, since they will continue to add to their own viciousness

and demerit. Therefore, their eternal punishment is just. The outer
darkness into which the damned are cast is their separation from
God, which they earn thanks to the inner darkness of soul that led
them into sin. Their inability to see, and to see God, is a terminal
case, for Peter, of the dissimilitude to God and to their true selves
which they have created for themselves; Hell, as he sees it, is the
ultimate, and permanent, regio dünmilitudinis. So greatly does citizen-
ship in this anti-city blind its inhabitants that they cannot recognize
God or even remember Him. The only tiny glimmer of humanity that
Peter, following Augustine, is willing to grant to the damned is the
capacity to feel sorrow or empathy with other people's punishments.
On the model of the dives et Lazarus story, it would seem that they do
care about the fates of their living relatives. Other than that, bad will
and total moral blindness characterize their condition.606 Unlike Au-
gustine, Peter focuses on the spiritual horrors of Hell, and ignores the
idea of physical punishment.
The blindness of the damned, according to Peter, will make it
impossible for them to see the bliss of the saints. This condition,
too, is an act of divine mercy and justice; for the damned are spared
a vision of joy that is totally closed to them. For the blessed, on the
other hand, faith will be replaced by sight. They not only see God
face to face, and all things in Him, but, confirmed in their rectitude,
they understand His justice. They grasp the fact that the punish-
ment of the damned is just, and unalterable, and their capacity to
observe it does not diminish their own beatitude. The question of
their praying for the damned does not arise. For Peter, the beati-
tude of the saints will consist largely of knowledge and joy. Peter
acknowledges his debt to Hugh of St. Victor here and goes beyond
him. Despite the different mansions they inhabit, the saints will all
see God, although in different ways. Each will possess all the
knowledge and joy of which he is capable; each will attain every-
thing for which he has hoped and yearned. This gift, for each of the
saints, is the consummation of God's power, mercy, and justice as it
is displayed to man. In the grand finale Peter orchestrates, before
laying down his pen, the bliss of heaven consists in the confirmation
of the saints' recovery of the image of God in themselves. Indeed, it
consists in their acquisition of a condition better than the one in
which man was created. For they have now moved beyond signs to
the possession of the things signified. They have moved beyond use

Ibid., d. 49-ni. 50. c. 1-c. 4, 2: 547-57.

 ETHICS, SACRAMENTS, AND LAST THINGS 717

to the enjoyment of God, the supreme good Who can now be loved,
fully, and without impediment, for Himself alone.607 And, even
more than that, they have now transcended the mutabilities of their
condition as creatures, the limits of their earthly modes of interac-
tion with the God Who manifests Himself to man within the
temporal and physical boundaries of the order of creation and
redemption. They now share in an eternal communion with the
deity Who transcends time. Peter, thus, unites his treatment of Last
Things, with which he concludes his Sentences, with his own rework-
ing of the Augustinian motifs which he recasts as the framework,
and the agenda, of his own systematic theology, as an enterprise
uniting intellect and will in the final attainment, through God's
mercy, of that God Himself, the deity Who transcends His own
manifestation of Himself to man in time, as the highest object of
knowledge and love, and the highest good.

Ibid., d. 49, d. 50. c. 4-c. 7, 2: 547-53, 557-61.

 CONCLUSION

In the foregoing pages, care has been taken to present the con-
temporary state of play in western theology, among Peter Lom-
bard's scholastic compeers, when he entered the field, in order to
locate his own teachings in the environment in which he worked.
As we have seen, his relationship to his coevals is not a simple one.
Sometimes, the Lombard's role is essentially that of strengthening,
restating, or confirming the current consensus position. Sometimes
he draws together, in his own eclectic mix, ideas derived from other
masters, canonists and theologians alike. Sometimes his concern is
to criticize and to demolish the teachings of some one master, or
group of masters. Sometimes his contribution is to find a fresh way
of conceptualizing issues that other thinkers had raised and had
failed to resolve. Sometimes he takes a decidedly polemical
approach in areas keenly debated at the time, areas in which there
was no consensus. In so doing, he often contributes a clear articula-
tion of one side of a controversy that was not settled in the mid-
twelfth century. In other areas, his reasoning, as a partisan, plays
a decisive role in defeating the opposition and in contributing to
the emergence of a new consensus. In addition to positioning the
Lombard's theology in these several ways, we have also, in the
body of this book, sought to explore Peter's sources, and his use of
them. His address to the inheritance of the Christian tradition,
whether ancient or more recent, is, as we have seen, both thorough-
going and independent. The same can be said for his attitude
toward the artes and to the philosophy available in the schools of his
day. In the conclusion which now follows, we plan to set aside these
questions of context and comparison in order to draw together the
strands of the Lombard's teaching in their own right, in order to set
forth the main outlines of Lombardian theology as such.
We begin, as Peter himself does, with the single most important
subject with which he thought theologians should be concerned,
and the subdivision of theology in which he thought western
Christian thought in his own day most needed a massive overhaul,
the doctrine of God. The supremacy, and centrality, of the deity as
a subject of attention is one that Peter signals not only by the
notable amount of space he devotes to this topic, but also by the
place he assigns it in the reformulation of the Augustinian idea of
signs and things, use and enjoyment, which is the guiding theme he
 CONCLUSION 719

announces at the beginning of his Sentences, and which is to govern

his doctrinal priorities throughout. God alone is to be enjoyed in
and for Himself. He is the supreme being and the supreme good, to
which everything else points and in relation to which everything
else, and not least, systematic theology itself, is to be used. Peter
states a positive doctrine of man's knowledge of God that displays
no interest whatever in the claims of negative theology. He is quite
confident in man's ability to prove God's existence by the use of
natural reason, and launches his doctrine of God by doing so.
This foundation laid, he proceeds to tackle the two most impor-
tant aspects of the doctrine of God which he regards as needing
clarification and rigorous enforcement. The first is the doctrine of
the Trinity. In Peter's eyes, it is mandatory to make a clear and
intelligible distinction between the divine nature and the divine
persons in the Trinity, one that neither collapses the personal
determinations of the Trinity into the common essence which the
Trinitarian persons share, nor confuses each person with a particu-
lar divine attribute or a particular divine mission ad extra, in such a
way as to produce tritheism or subordinationism in the Trinity.
This first task was, initially, complicated for Peter by the absence in
his day of a common, a speculatively adequate, and a generally
understood vocabulary of the terms needed to discuss the distinc-
tion between nature and person in the Trinity. Not the least of the
Lombard's contributions here, and a prior condition on which it
depends, is his circumspect treatment of the problem of theological
language as it applies to the Trinity. Peter's theological agenda,
with respect to the Trinity, is of a piece with his agenda for the
second major concern he addresses in treating the doctrine of God,
the stress on God's transcendence. With respect to the Trinity, he
emphasizes this principle by insisting that the determinations dis-
tinguishing the Trinitarian persons from each other are, and only
can be, the relationships They bear to each other in se, in the eternal
and unmanifested Trinity, and not in anything They do ad extra,
When he turns to the divine nature as such, shared by the persons
of the Trinity quite apart from any outward manifestation of it that
They may make, Peter strongly emphasizes the idea that God is
absolute being, utterly one and simple, infinite and unbounded in
all His attributes, immutable and incommutable despite the differ-
ing ways in which He can be understood or be seen to act in
relation to His creation. For Peter this principle has two critical
and irrefragible corollaries. God acts not by emanation or by
immanence in the world. His workings in man and nature are His
effects and are not participations in the divine being. Above all,
720 CONCLUSION

they are not responses to any internal necessities of His own nature.
Secondly, and consequently, the divine being is always greater than
any expression of it that God may make in the creation. God is
never limited, exhausted, or circumscribed by anything He does ad
extra. He acts, to be sure, to create, to sustain, to govern, and to
empower man and nature; but His role as a God of agency in these
respects does not override or subsume His transcendent reality as a
God of essence.
With the reinforcement of this doctrine of God in mind, over
against a purely or primarily economic understanding of the deity,
Peter launches forthwith into his proofs of God's existence, on the
basis of natural reason. His lead-in is the invisibilia dei passage from
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. But, although he certainly starts
with evidence that can be found in the visible creation, whose
causes inductive reason can infer, Peter also imparts a metaphysi-
cal look to this topic as well. In this area he is confident and
unhesitating about the powers of reason and about the corrobora-
tion of the proofs he bases on it in pagan philosophy. He offers four
proofs. The first is an a posteriori proof from effects to causes and
from causes to a first cause, and from design and order in the
creation to the notion that this first cause is also an intelligent
supreme orderer. The second is an a posteriori proof from motion to
a ground of being that is itself immutable. Here we see the begin-
ning of Peter's shift from physical to metaphysical analysis. It is not
how the deity acts, as a cause, that is the crux of this proof, but
what He is. Peter seeks to show how a structure of being in
creatures that involves change is metaphysically grounded in a
being that has a different kind of nature. The analysis of being
offered in the second proof undergirds the third and fourth proofs.
In the third proof, Peter notes that the universe yields evidence of
hierarchy, a favorite theme of his. There are degrees of being and
degrees of excellence. A supreme being is required as a cause of this
phenomenon. And, it cannot be one that is merely the highest term
in the hierarchy. It must be a being that transcends the hierarchy.
In the fourth proof, Peter observes that the universe contains
beings marked by compositeness as well as by changeability. Thus,
the supreme ground of the being of such creatures must be simple
as well as unchanging.
Four general observations may be made about these proofs.
First, in each case, the cause of the phenomena induced by the
proofs is not merely a cause that is like those phenomena, but one
that is merely greater than they are. Rather, for Peter, it is a cause
that utterly transcends them. Secondly, and therefore, what the ea
 CONCLUSION 721

quae f acta sunt show forth is not how the creation resembles the
creator, but, rather, how the creator differs from the creation. The
ontological dependence of the world upon God as its ground of
being reflects both the world's connection with God and His radical
independence from the world. Thirdly, the prime attribute of God
accented in the demonstration of God's otherness is God's immuta-
bility, which attribute plays a key role in two out of the four proofs.
It is adverted to more frequently than the divine notes of primacy,
intelligence, unity, and simplicity. Finally, while these are a pos-
teriori proofs, Peter is concerned not merely with what causes the
phenomena and events that occur in time. He understands priority
and posteriority primarily in the order of being, not in the order of
time. The proofs, in short, offer grist for the mills of the metaphysi-
cians as well as for those of the natural theologians.
For Peter, natural reason is an epistemic reality that can certain-
ly prove the existence of God and elicit some extremely basic
aspects of His nature; but it cannot prove that God is three and
one. With respect to the Trinity, the most reason can do is to offer
similitudes and analogies, with the clear-eyed recognition of the
fact that, as analogies, they always fall short of what they resemble.
This is a form of the knowledge of God that requires revelation and
faith, in Peter's eyes. Any apparent parallels to the doctrine of the
Trinity found in pagan philosophers are the shadow, not the real-
ity. They stop short well before they can attain to the doctrine of
the Trinity held by Christians. Peter's consideration of man's natu-
ral knowledge of the Trinity is also a concerted effort to banish the
idea that this knowledge is found in economic descriptions or
similitudes of the Trinitarian persons, especially when they refer to
attributes shared equally by those persons. The Trinity of which
man can have knowledge by analogy is, for Peter, first, last, and
always the unmanifested Trinity. The analogies must speak to the
interactions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit among Them-
selves.
This being the case, Peter focuses on two such analogies, be-
queathed by Augustine, that are found in human psychology. The
fact of threeness in oneness in the human soul can be seen in its
simultaneous possession of memory, intellect, and will and in the
simultaneous presence of the mind, its knowledge of itself and its
love of itself. Critical to either of these analogies, and to Peter's
stress on the intratrinitarian interaction of the divine persons as the
only basis for the denomination of those persons, is his handling of
the concept of relation, an idea he also borrows from Augustine and
nuances. Relation, he stresses, must, in this context, be purged of
722 CONCLUSION

its Aristotelian acceptation as an accident, one of the predicables

that may, or may not, be attributed to a substance susceptible of
modification by accidents. Rather, relation here should be under-
stood in the light of relative nouns, such as right and left or light
and dark. So understood, a relative, comprehensible in connection
with its correlative, provides a means of describing the association
and the distinction among the Trinitarian persons, whose deter-
minations as unique individuals vis-à-vis each other, the deter-
minations of unbegottenness, filiation, and procession, have always
been structured into the eternal Trinitarian family. In comparing
the two Augustinian analogies that he cites, Peter sees the analogy
of memoria-intellectus-voluntas as having more limitations than that of
mens-notitia-amor, although Augustine places them in the reverse
order of priority. Also, Peter is less interested in the light these
analogies may shed on human psychology than in the structure of
being that they display. In any case, and this is another advantage
of these analogies in Peter's eyes, they make relatedness in the
deity, and not splendid isolation, the supreme reality.
With this discussion of what can be known and proved about the
deity as such and about the Trinity in place, Peter proceeds logical-
ly to explore the distinction between person and nature in the
Trinity. In his own vocabulary, substance can be used in this
connection, as indeed it must be used, for it is in the creed.
Deliberately refraining from associating this term with any particu-
lar philosophical definition of it in this context, he treats substance
as the intrinsic qualities that make a being itself, whatever kind of
being it happens to be. With this understanding of substance in
mind, Peter consistently yokes substance to nature, as denoting the
divine essence shared equally and in the same way by the Trinitar-
ian persons. One can, properly, attribute the terms substance and
nature to the Trinitarian persons only when one is referring to the
divine essence which They share. In sharing it, They do not do so
numerically, as parts that make up a whole, or as species within the
same genus. The Godhead is not a level of being metaphysically
prior to the Trinitarian persons. Rather, the divine nature is wholly
possessed by each of Them; there is not "more God" present when
two or three of the persons are considered together than when one
person is considered by Himself. These are the respects in which
the persons of the unmanifested Trinity are one in nature and
being. The respects in which they are three, and distinct, are the
respects in which they are both bonded to and distinguishable from
each other, also in that unmanifested state, as unbegotten, begot-
ten, and proceeding. In these particular relations, and only there, is
 CONCLUSION 723

each Trinitarian person a specific individual whose personal prop-

erties are unique to Him. The same simply cannot be said of any of
the other denominations that the Trinitarian persons may be given.
For, in their role ad extra, what They manifest and exercise is the
divine nature, not Their divine personhood. The divine persons are
fully coactive in anything They do ad extra, including missions
which may be delegated to one or another Trinitarian person in
particular.
Thus, for Peter, it is the Godhead Who interacts with the world
and man, and not some one of the Trinitarian persons, in an array
of cosmological and charismatic activities limited to any one of
those persons. And, while God is engaged in His various modes of
activity ad extra, He remains utterly immutable, incommutable,
incomparable, simple and transcendent over His creation, never
identical with or consumed by His effects in the orders of nature
and grace. Given the infinite store of being that God possesses, or,
better put, is, Peter stresses very heavily the point that God always
has, or is, more than He does or chooses in actuality. In general
terms, in handling the issues that arise under the heading of the
divine nature in this connection, Peter resolutely emphasizes the
metaphysics ofthat subject. He dislikes, and criticizes, the tenden-
cy found in some quarters, ancient and modern, to collapse
metaphysical questions concerning the deity into logical questions,
especially if the logic used is a propositional logic which, on its own
accounting, disclaims the ability of logic to verify conclusions that
lie outside its own formal bailiwick. This basic outlook informs
Peter's handling of the three most important issues he raises in
discussing the divine nature in relation to the universe, God's
ubiquity; the compatibility of God's providence, predestination,
and foreknowledge with contingency and free will; and the vexed
question of whether God can do different, and better, than He does.
In treating God's ubiquity, Peter rejects a substantialist or im-
manentalist understanding of God's presence in the universe, for
such a mode of presence would blur the difference between divine
and created being. The only created being in which God is present
substantially is the man Jesus. But, He is the exception Who proves
the rule. In every other case, God is present in creatures ontologi-
cally, as their ground of being, not as their essence or as their form,
but as the source that creates and sustains them and that gives
them the capacity to carry out their natural functions. Likewise, in
the order of grace, a theme Peter plans to develop more fully in his
ethics and sacramental theology, what God communicates, except
in the case of the Eucharist, is not Himself but a virtus or power that
724 CONCLUSION

leaves intact the creaturely status of the human beings to whom He

grants it. They must, and can, cooperate with it, in developing their
own virtues and merits, and they can reject it. In this sense, God is
less ubiquitous in the charismatic order than He is in the order of
nature, in that not all people receive and act on His grace, and not
all of those who do receive and act on it do so to the same degree or
in the same way. Nevertheless, in both cases, God's presence in the
world and man is a presence by way of ontological grounding and
by way of enabling power, not by way of participation.
In comparison with thinkers who viewed God's relation to the
world in terms of the logical or physical relations between necessi-
ty, possibility, and contingency, Peter recasts the question into a
metaphysical investigation into God's foreknowledge, providence,
and predestination in relation to contingency and free will. In so
doing he seeks to make two basic points. In the first place, the
function of this inquiry is to shed light on the divine nature, not on
the creation or on human logic. Secondly, and in particular, the
aspect of the divine nature which is at issue here is God's omni-
science. God's exercise of this attribute is the focus. And, like God's
exercise of any of His attributes ad extra, it is not exhausted by the
ways in which He actually chooses to exercise it. Although we can
think of God's knowledge in relation to the world in terms of
foreknowledge, disposition, predestination, and wisdom, God's
knowledge is, intrinsically, as one and as simple as it is eternal and
complete. As Peter defines these terms, foreknowledge is God's
knowledge of everything that will happen from all eternity,
irrespective of who or what the causes of those events will be.
Disposition is God's governance of the universe, including His
foreknowledge of the natural laws He will create, before He puts
them in place. Predestination is the grace of preparation, which
God grants to His elect, His salvation of them in the next life, and
His knowledge from all eternity of who they will be, before they
have a chance to acquire merit. Wisdom is God's knowledge of all
things, past, present, and future. The dimension of time included
by Peter in this definition of wisdom refers not to God's knowledge
as such, but to that knowledge as applied, in a relative sense, to a
universe that exists in time. This application in no sense diminishes
or conditions the intrinsic eternity and infinity of divine omni-
science, for God's knowledge is of His essence.
On the other hand, the things that are in God's knowledge are
not God Himself. This is true of His predestination, which is
causative, but which does not mean that the elect share the divine
nature or that they do not have to cooperate with the grace of
 CONCLUSION 725

predestination in order to profit from it. For its part, divine fore-
knowledge is not per se causative. Some of the things God foreknows
He also causes. But He also foreknows things that will occur
contingently. The fact that God does not cause events that stem
from contingency or from free will in the case of rational creatures
is not an imperfection or a limitation on God's knowledge or on
God's role as a cause, for He freely chose to create beings capable of
acting as secondary causes and as agents possessing free will. The
fact that God knows contingent events, and events that have not yet
occurred, does not mean, moreover, that He knows them better
when they do eventuate. For, His knowledge has always been
exhaustive. The events in question are conditioned by time; God is
not. Also, God's knowledge cannot increase because it is, and
always has been, total. This same principle also means that God
does not alter His immutable decree as to the people He predes-
tines. His omniscience in this regard is immutable although the
grace of predestination is not irresistible. Peter, therefore, creates a
clear zone for the existence of contingency and free will, one just as
well garrisoned as those provided by his confrères from the side of
natural philosophy or formal logic. He shows the compatibility of
these possibilities both with divine foreknowledge and disposition,
and with the existence of direct divine causation in some areas. Yet,
the whole topic, in his hands, is firmly guided back to his own
metaphysical point of departure, the principle that the omniscience
of the immutable and transcendent God is not limited by or defin-
able as the way His cosmological and charismatic order works its
way out in time.
In addressing the question of whether God can do different, and
better, than He does, Peter develops an argument parallel to the
one just noted, this time placing the issue under the heading of
God's omnipotence. His analysis here is likewise designed to re-
place a purely logical argument or an argument from theodicy with
one whose first concern is to illustrate this particular divine attrib-
ute. Similarly, he seeks to show that God's actual arrangements in
the temporal world do not exhaust His power and that God acts
freely and not in response to any internal necessity of His own
being. Peter grounds his argument on the distinction between
God's power and God's will. God's omnipotence, he notes, is not
God's power to do everything. For "everything" includes the doing
of evil, and the doing of things that require a body, things which, in
God's case, would be imperfections and antithetical to His nature.
Rather, God's omnipotence is God's power to do whatever He
wills. Peter agrees that what God does do is just and good. But,
726 CONCLUSION

God is not constrained by His justice and goodness in the exercise

of His power; and, the choices that He in fact does make in this
connection do not limit what He might have done otherwise. God's
omniscience, further, includes His knowledge of the range of op-
tions out of which He selects the ones He chooses to perform. Not
only can God do whatever He wills; He always remains, in princi-
ple, capable of doing more than He actually decides to do.
What Peter is really stating here, and it is a principle that
animates his discussion of the divine nature more generally, is the
distinction between God's absolute and ordained power, although
he does not use this express terminology. Beyond that, Peter rejects
the idea that the world we have is the best possible world that God
could have created because the world is not perfect. Only God is
perfect. Created beings are capable of improvement. The life they
lead, under the natural law He created, could have been an easier
one, had God chosen to dispose things differently, just as He could
have ordained a different mode of human redemption than He did
ordain. Peter presses this argument to the point of saying that, just
because Christ was born, crucified, and resurrected once for all,
this does not mean that God lacks the power to do all these things
again, should He choose to do so. This example is Peter's most
extreme and rigorous application of the principle that God's power
always transcends His actual use of it. To man, God, manifests His
will in His precept, prohibition, permission, operation, and coun-
sel. These manifestations, Peter points out, are all signs of the
divine will, signs of the way an unchanging will is shown forth ad
extra. Signs are not to be confused or equated with their significata,
Peter notes, adverting to the Augustinian analysis of signs and
things with which he begins the Sentences. Likewise, the unchanging
and simple will of God cannot be collapsed into the ways He
chooses to signify it to man. By the same token, man's exercise of
his God-given free will in contravention of God's precepts or pro-
hibitions does not circumscribe God's power. Here, in a manner
analogous to his handling of divine foreknowledge and related
matters in connection with contingency and free will, Peter guaran-
tees a zone of independence for creatures, even as he underscores
the inexhaustibility of God's transcendent omnipotence.
This analysis of the divine nature and its manifestations ad extra,
in addition to accomplishing Peter's objectives for the doctrine of
God, thus sets the stage for his intended treatment of the creation,
angels, man, and the fall. While these topics are all related to the
doctrine of God, Peter conveys much less of a sense, in the second
book of the Sentences, that these individual subjects are themselves
 CONCLUSION 727

tied together as organically as are those in Book 1. Also, in treating

the questions he takes up in Book 2, especially on the creation,
Peter departs from his usual practice of citing authorities by name
and title, quoting or paraphrasing them in extenso, and evaluating
their reasoning as well as the conclusions to which it leads before
rendering his own opinion. He thus appears, uncharacteristically,
to have relied on catenae or other intermediary sources, which report
merely the conclusions of the authorities, for this part of his work.
This fact may either be a cause or an effect of Peter's comparative
lack of interest in cosmological speculation in its own right as a
suitable focus for theologians.
With respect to creation, this perspective is notable in Peter's
deep lack of sympathy with the project of considering how or
whether the account of cosmogenesis in Plato's Timaeus squares
with the Book of Genesis. Peter marshals both philosophical and
theological weapons against both the plausibility of that enterprise
and the particular conclusions reached by some of its partisans. His
own solutions on creation are grounded in the exegetical and
patristic traditions. He is, typically, less interested in the specula-
tive side of the subject than are many thinkers in that heritage.
Peter's own contribution to the doctrine of creation is a threefold
one. He discovers a cogent way of including the creation of the
angels within a primarily hexaemeral account of creation. He also
finds a way of combining the six-day account in Genesis with a
modified doctrine of creation simuL And, he also finds a way of
acknowledging the pertinence of presenting creatures in an order
reflecting their relative metaphysical status, even while retaining
the standard six-day model which does not order creation in that
manner.
According to Peter, God and God alone is the cause of creation ex
nihilo. He rejects the idea of exemplary causes, however understood,
along with préexistent matter. Further, he sees God as such as
doing the whole work of creation, and not as delegating different
aspects of it to this or that Trinitarian person, a notion consistent
with his conception of the unity of God's actions ad extra. Likewise
compatible with his doctrine of God are the principle that God
cannot be equated with the forces of nature He creates and the
principle that He does not create in response to any necessity of His
own nature, but freely. In all these respects, God transcends the
world He creates. Since, as Peter sees it, God clearly did not need to
create the universe, why did He do so? In response to that question,
Peter asserts that He creates rational creatures, such as angels and
men, out of His benevolence, so that they can come to a knowledge
728 CONCLUSION

and love of God and hence possess beatitude. Following the princi-
ple of use and enjoyment, everything else in the creation was
brought into being for the utility of rational creatures in attaining
that end. With respect to human beings, this also means that Peter
has a positive reason for their creation that allows him to dismiss
the claim that they were created to make up the numbers of the
fallen angels. It also means that man's possession of a body can be
given a solid and generous foundation. God gave human bodies to
human souls, according to Peter, so that man could serve as a
microcosm of creation. Thus, in loving and serving God in body
and soul and in attaining beatitude both in body and soul, man
brings the whole of creation back to God; and it is metaphorically
redeemed and glorified in him. Peter does not expressly use the
term "microcosm;" but is it is clearly what he intends here. This
notion also lays the foundation for the doctrine of human nature
which he develops later in Book 2 of the Sentences. He firmly rejects a
Platonizing anthropology in which man is equated with his soul, a
soul merely using or even trapped in a body seen as the source of
his problems. He favors a more Aristotelian view of man as a
hylemorphic unit, both aspects of which are integrally human.
From this perspective, God created man with a body and a soul in
order to redeem and glorify man in both body and soul, a process in
which body and soul are interdependent.
Having explained why God created what He created in meta-
physical order, Peter turns to the timetable of the creation. In the
scenario he presents, angels and primordial matter are created
simul and before anything else. Then, the other creatures are pro-
duced according to the biblical six-day plan. Peter rounds out the
Genesis account by including God's creation of seminal reasons
during the hexaemeron to account for developments that occur
later. Peter thinks that it is possible to grasp the idea of unformed
matter conceptually by analogy with our use of negative or priva-
tive language that refers not to species but to the absence of species.
In his view, God creates directly and immediately the specific
forms which He unites with unformed matter in making actual
creatures. Both unformed matter and the forms are created ex nihilo.
When He creates individual creatures, God inserts seminal reasons
into them, which will enable them to carry out their natural func-
tions as well as accounting for any new beings that may arise. Peter
presents a literal, straightforward, and streamlined treatment of
creation. He shows no interest in extrapolating moral and allegori-
cal meanings from the Genesis account of creation, and no concern
for the scientific anomalies it contains. Here, as in his handling of
 CONCLUSION 729

cosmogenesis itself, he shows no desire to wear the hat of the

natural philosopher.
While Peter disagrees with some theologians as to when the
angels were created, he states the consensus view on their nature,
disposition, and attributes and on why they constitute a subject
important for theologians to consider in the first place. For Peter,
angels are spiritual beings who possess intelligence and free will.
They are sempiternal once created; and they are arranged in nine
hierarchical ranks, headed by the seraphim, as Gregory the Great
and the Pseudo-Dionysius propose. They function as divine mes-
sengers and guardians of men in this life, as well as having certain
ceremonial roles to play in the last judgment. All of this is standard.
So is Peter's chief concern in the field of angelology, the fall of the
angels. This interest in how the fall occurred, the moral states and
capacities of the good angels confirmed in their goodness and of the
fallen angels confirmed in their fall, is an agenda framed largely by
the felt need to refute Origen's teaching on the eternal capacity of
souls, including those of angels, to backslide or to be converted, not
excluding the possibility of the salvation of Satan. Peter keeps this
agenda firmly before his own and the reader's eyes. He omits
question that have nothing to do with it, or which he thinks are
frivolous or unanswerable, such as the metaphysical status of the
bodies that angels may take on in performing their missions to men,
or the status ofincubi and the offspring they allegedly may engender
in union with human partners. Peter's discussion of the angelic
attribute of free will, defined as the capacity to choose good or evil
without violence or constraint, affords him the first opportunity to
consider free will. The definition of it he gives here is one he extends
to free will in prelapsarian man as well. He is less interested in how
angels know what they know. With respect to the angelic hierarchy,
Peter expands on it to embrace not only gradations of function but
also gradations in the angelic nature itself. While he holds that all
angels are equal in possessing personhood, immortality, and a
simple and immaterial nature, he thinks that they also possess
different grades of tenuousness and different degrees of wisdom and
will.
In exercising the latter faculties in their decision to fall or not to
fall, the angels, for Peter, are dependent on divine grace. The good
angels remain loyal to God thanks to their cooperation with the
grace God gives them. The fallen angels fall, not only because they
choose to be malicious and disobedient, but also because God
subtracts or withdraws His grace from them. This subtraction
of grace from the fallen angels then becomes a permanent and
730 CONCLUSION

unalterable consequence of their fall. Lacking grace, their only option

is to continue to make vicious choices, and thus to continue to merit
their expulsion from Heaven. They are incapable of repenting or
improving. On the other hand, the good angels are confirmed in
goodness, and continue to receive grace. They do not have the non
posse peccare as possessed by God. But they continue to choose to
cooperate with grace and to grow in virtue. The fact that these two
sets of angels now consistently will only evil and good, respectively,
does not mean, for Peter, that their free will has been abrogated.
Rather, it has been intensified. The angels of either sort now
experience no conflicting desires. Thus, they will entirely what they
want, without violence or constraint. Other than that, there is a
basic lack of symmetry between them. The fallen angels cannot
improve. The good angels do grow in virtue. Also, since they live in
time, they continue to grow in knowledge as well, knowledge of the
events that unfold in time. Peter draws a distinction here, with
respect to the good angels. Their orientation toward the good,
being confirmed in them, does not change. Likewise, in their con-
templation of God, their knowledge does not change. The quality of
of their merit does not change. But the quantity of their cognition of
temporal affairs, and the number of opportunities they have to
express their virtue, do increase over the course of time. By means
of this distinction Peter accomplishes two objectives at the same
time. His distinction between the quality and quantity of virtue in
the good angels sets up the terms in which he is going to discuss the
human Christ as a moral agent in Book 3 of the Sentences, And, his
argument that the angels continue to grow in virtue and knowl-
edge, despite their confirmation in the good and their possession of
a pure and simple spiritual nature, enables him to distinguish
between these exponents of the highest and best of the spiritual
creation and the creator, a God Who is eternally omniscient, good,
and immutable. Despite their nature and their excellence, angels,
as creatures, lack these divine attributes. Thus, in addition to his
fidelity to the concerns agitating contemporaries on this subject,
Peter's angelology is connected organically to his doctrine of God,
just as it has links to his Christology and to his understanding of
free will and grace and their ultimate outcomes in Last Things, in
the case of men.
The theological agenda concerning man before the fall was a less
clear one, in Peter's day. His own handling of this subject offers a
striking reorientation of it, dominated by his desire to de-Platonize
anthropology and to consider human nature as such, as an impor-
tant topic in its own right. This interest leads Peter to reflect at
 CONCLUSION 731

length on human nature before the fall, in a manner that is often

quite speculative, given the leanness of the biblical data and the
fact that fallen man is now the only kind of man available for
empirical study.
Most of the theologians of Peter's time give pride of place to the
soul of prelapsarian man, its faculties and attributes. They have far
less to say about the human body before the fall. In this connection,
they focus primarily on human sexuality. In treating human nature
they typically distinguish between male and female nature, regard-
ing Eve as inferior to Adam in mind, in body, or in both. Peter's
own handling of this subject reflects a distaste for these extremes of
subordinationism, both of woman to man and of the body to the
soul. He holds that creation in God's image and likeness applies to
all human beings regardless of their sex. All human souls resemble
God in their possession of reason, will, immortality, and indivisibil-
ity; in their natural capacity for virtue; and in their possession of
the Trinitarian analogy of memory, intellect, and will. He sees the
similarities between the human soul and God as operational as well
as structural. The differing modes by which Adam and Eve were
created do not imply or entail an intrinsic hierarchy between man
and woman. Rather, these differences speak to their consubstantial-
ity and equality in the bond of marital love that unites them. It is
primarily the physical and metaphysical implications of Eve's crea-
tion, rather than the moral or matrimonial, that interest Peter.
Dismissing the claim that the investigation of human nature
before the fall is a matter of vain curiosity, he concurs with the idea
that human sexuality is the chief topic to be considered under the
heading of man's physical nature. Agreeing that prelapsarian man
had the capacity to die or not to die, and the ordinary functions of
life in the body, such as the need to eat and drink, he places human
sexuality in the same naturalistic perspective. He agrees with the
consensus position framed against Origen by Augustine which
states that the sexual procreation of offspring was part of God's
original plan and that, before the fall, its exercise would have been
free from lust and fully under the rational and volitional control of
Adam and Eve. Peter annexes the procreation, gestation, birth, and
growth of offspring to man's other natural processes, as goods that
are part of the creation, not punishments for sin. Likewise, growth
in knowledge and virtue are natural human aptitudes which would
have continued in Eden. In Peter's view, while man before the fall
had the rational capacity to distinguish good from evil, the capacity
to choose freely between them, a knowledge of the other creatures
and why they had been created, self-knowledge, and an awareness
732 CONCLUSION

of God's presence, these prelapsarian aptitudes were just that,

aptitudes. They were not perfections, but capacities through which
Adam and Eve could have been translated to a higher state of
wisdom and virtue. Peter describes two faculties in the human soul.
There is the sensual soul, an inferior power of the soul which man
shares with the animals, and which he uses to regulate the body
and to dispose of temporal matters. The rational soul is the super-
ior power of the soul, the intelligence which enables man to grasp
higher things, whether scientific or contemplative. Although Peter
divides reason, in its exercise, into the functions of knowledge and
wisdom, his bipartite faculty psychology is an unusual one, for his
time. As for man's will, Peter gives it the same treatment as he
accords to the angelic will. Prelapsarian man had the natural
capacity to choose good or evil without violence or constraint. A
twofold process is involved here, which basically parallels Peter's
analysis of grace and free will in the life of postlapsarian man. In
each case, an initial grace is given by God, although, in the case of
Adam, it is the grace of creation while in the case of fallen man it is
the operating grace needed to help him turn away from sin. This
distinction aside, acceptance of the initial grace, in each case,
enables man, whether before or after the fall, to go on to collaborate
with God's cooperating grace in the development of virtue and
merit. To be sure, Adam also lacked a burden borne by fallen man,
the inclination to sin. None the less, the choice of evil, for Adam as
well, was the only moral choice he could make with complete auton-
omy, purely on the basis of his natural endowment of free will.
This evil choice, Peter agrees, is the one that in fact was made by
the primal parents. The Lombard has a very definite view of the
motivations leading to that choice, the faculties through which it
was activated in Adam and Eve, the consequences they suffered as
a result, and the mode by which original sin is passed on to the rest
of mankind. His account of the fall leads Peter to propound two
inconsistencies concerning the two primal sinners. Although, as
noted above, he insists on the metaphysical, moral, and intellectual
equality of Adam and Eve, he argues that the devil tempted Eve
first because she was less rational than Adam. This external temp-
ter makes an appeal, in Eve's case, to the internal temptations of
vainglory, gluttony, and avarice and, in particular, to her immod-
erate and presumptuous desire for knowledge. Peter situates this
analysis of Eve's fall in the more general context of his psychogene-
sis of moral choice. It is not the temptation to sin itself, be it
external or internal, or the contemplation of the temptation, but the
rational consent to sin that counts. Notwithstanding his claim of
 CONCLUSION 733

Eve's rational inferiority, Peter does not think that her responsibil-
ity for capitulating to sin is any less than Adam's. Indeed, he finds
her the more culpable of the two, even thought he thinks that
original sin can be imputed to Adam more seriously. Eve may not
have been as intelligent as Adam, but she cannot be excused on
grounds of ignorance. She was intelligent enough to understand
what God required. Her state, like that of Adam, displayed neither
invincible nor vincible ignorance, a topic that Peter includes here
only for the purpose of disqualifying ignorance of any kind as a
mitigating factor in the fall. Both Adam and Eve sinned conscious-
ly. But each exercised a different aspect of the rational faculty in so
doing. Eve's sin was a function of consent made through knowl-
edge. She sought to enjoy knowledge as an end in itself. This sin is
serious; but it is not so serious as the sin of Adam, which was a
function of consent to sin made through wisdom. Now, wisdom, the
highest exercise of the rational faculty, involves more than knowl-
edge. It involves the capacity to place knowledge in the context of
man's ultimate destiny. It must hence rule over knowledge. Adam's
sin was thus more serious, even if Eve's motivation was more
reprehensible, and even though she was just as responsible for her
sin as Adam was for his. For, he failed to take the wider perspective
into account and he failed to govern Eve, thus bringing mortality
on both of them and on the entire human race. While Eve can be
reckoned the greater sinner because of her greater presumption,
Adam bears the greater guilt because he sinned more profoundly,
with a more comprehensive faculty of the mind, and with dis-
astrous results that are universal.
In considering the consequences of original sin, while Peter notes
that it brought with it physical suffering and death, the removal of
man's capacity to exercise his sexual functions without lust, con-
cupiscence understood more generally, and ignorance, the particu-
lar effect that he emphasizes above all others is the depression of the
will. Man's free will, for Peter, is partially lost in the fall; and, what
remains is weakened. While the Lombard staunchly holds that
man still possesses a conscience that inclines him to seek the good
and avoid evil and while man still remains free to reject grace, he
argues that fallen man no longer is free from necessity. The freedom
to choose good or evil without violence or constraint has gone by
the boards. Man now has an inclination to sin which undercuts his
freedom. Man continues to need grace in order to will the good. In
postlapsarian man, grace is not a substitute for free will. What it
does, in conjunction with free will, is enable the free will to be a
good will. But the choice of the good that it enables man to make is
734 CONCLUSION

not just a choice of the good; it is a choice of the good in the face of a
tidal pull drawing him toward evil, with which prelapsarian man
did not have to contend. Aside from freedom from necessity and
freedom from an existing state of sin, man before the fall had
freedom from misery. This latter freedom has been lost to all men
by the fall, since no one now can avoid suffering and death. In sum,
for Peter, the will after the fall, like the will before the fall, is
completely free and completely autonomous only in willing evil.
But, it has now lost the freedom not to incline toward evil which
man possessed before the fall. Peter stops well short of taking the
late Augustinian line that man must, necessarily, will evil unless
prevented by God, and that God's prevenient grace is irresistible.
Inclination, for Peter, is not the same thing as necessity; and man
can resist grace. Fallen man is less free in willing the good than in
willing evil, and is less free in willing the good with God's assist-
ance than he was before the fall. Man now needs operating or
prevenient grace, which helps him to turn away from sin and
prepares him for virtue, and cooperating grace, which works with
his free will thereafter. Free will is as essential a condition as grace
in both stages if this process. Peter holds that there can be no merit
where there is no liberty of will. But the human will now operates
under different, and more difficult, conditions of labor. The major
continuity between Peter's understanding of the relations between
grace and free will before and after the fall is that, in both situa-
tions, both grace and free will are required. And, in both situations,
man cannot acquire virtue and merit without both grace and free
will, virtue and merit that then become characteristics inhering in
the moral personality of the human agent. In both situations, as
well, Peter views the interaction of grace and free will synergistical-
ly. Each provides the operative conditions for its collaborator.
Grace comes first, to be sure, empowering the will to do the good.
But what it excites and heals is a natural human faculty which then
becomes the agency through which the moral subject acquires
human virtue and merit.
Peter firmly believes that when that happy outcome occurs, those
elected to respond to grace will enjoy a glory far greater than the
happiness of Adam and Eve before the fall. But the fall, and its
consequences, as they are conveyed to the rest of the human race by
the primal sinners, constitute the rocky road that the Christian
must traverse while he is still in via. How that regrettable condition
is passed on from parent to child, especially given the fact that
Peter sees the depression of the will as its main consequence, is a
highly problematic question. Peter is staunchly anti-traducianist.
 CONCLUSION 735

The parents, he holds, transmit only the body to their offspring. It

is God Who directly creates each person's soul. The soul is good as
a result of its divine creation. It contains the rational faculties, free
will included. How, then, can the parents transmit the guilt, the
punishment for sin, and the inclination to sin that spring from or
are consequences of the consent of the will to a soul that they do not
create themselves in their children?
Like everyone else in his period, Peter finds himself forced to
address this intractable problem with the weapons forged by Au-
gustine's theory of the transmission of original sin through the
sexual mode of generation ordained by God for the procreation of
offspring. After the fall, it was agreed by Augustine and his follow-
ers, however reluctantly, spouses would no longer be able to engen-
der offspring without the desire and pleasure accompanying sexual
relations. This condition might be seen as a moral problem for the
spouses themselves. But the fetus so engendered is not capable of
experiencing these sexual feelings at the point when it is engen-
dered. Peter deals with this objection by answering that what the
parents necessarily convey to their offspring is not the sexual feel-
ings that they personally may experience in the act of conception.
Rather, what they pass on is a flesh that has been corrupted as a
consequence of the fall, along the lines of the inheritance of ac-
quired characteristics. This must occur, perforce, because their
own bodies have been weakened as a result of the fall; and, geneti-
cally, their own vitiatied physical endowment is the only one they
have to pass on to their children. This vitiated body bears with it
the inclination to sin. In due course, it will make the sexuality of
their children incapable of functioning without lust. Moreover,
thanks to the intimate union between the human body and the
human soul, the vitiated body inherited from the parents will fuse
with the innocent God-given soul in the womb and corrupt that
soul as well.
For Peter, the fact that the parents are baptized Christians
themselves who have been cleansed of original sin, and spouses
united in holy matrimony who come together for the goods of
marriage and whose sexual feelings are therefore free from any
imputation of sin, does mitigate the concupiscence of the parents.
This exemption, in his estimation, is a real one. Yet, enough
concupiscence remains to inspire them to the sexual union that,
unavoidably, transmits a corrupted body to their child which, in
turn, corrupts his soul. Whether Peter has completely resolved the
problems stemming from the Augustinian account of the transmis-
sion of original sin or not, and the question remains moot, he is
736 CONCLUSION

forthright in his acceptance of that account and circumspect in

recognizing the kinds of objections that can be, and had been,
raised against it. He can see no other way to explain the transmis-
sion of original sin, and, with it, the universal necessity of baptism
for salvation. Nor can he see much reason for essaying an alterna-
tive analysis. The account that he himself offers, in his own eyes,
has, at least, the signal merit of reinforcing the major point he
makes about the nature of man. Man is an integral unit of body and
soul. It was as a unit of body and soul that man was created. It was
as a unit of body and soul that he fell. It was, also, as a unit of body
and soul that he was afflicted with the consequences of original sin.
While the fall depresses the will more than any other faculty, it also
vitiates the body. The negative side of the intimate union of body
and soul in man is that this vitiated body then afflicts the soul to
which it is joined and corrupts it as well. At the same time, it is as
an integral unit of body and soul that man will be redeemed and
glorified. This fundamental reality controls, for Peter, God's chosen
mode of redemption for man in the incarnation of Christ. It also
controls God's ordinance for the extension of Christ's saving work
in the ethical and sacramental life of the church.
There are three main areas in the field of Christology on which
the Lombard takes a clear stand, areas that are logically and
theologically interrelated in his thought, although the nature of his
contribution to western theology differs in each of the cases. The
first of these is the hypostatic union. In this area there were three
prevailing opinions at the time, the assumptus homo theory, the
subsistence theory, and the habitus theory, all inherited from the
patristic period and all finding contemporary adhérants. Peter
acknowledges that they all have support in the Christian tradition.
He also finds something to criticize in all of them. His contribution
in this field of Christology is to lay out clearly how these opinions
are to be understood and, from his own perspective, why they are
all problematic. He refuses to choose among them, concluding that
the most prudent course of action is to leave the matter open,
pending further investigation. In the second subdivision of Chris-
tology, Christ's human nature, and, in particular, His psychology,
His human knowledge, and His moral aptitudes, Peter maintains a
definite positive position. Against the tendency of some theologians
to divinize the human Christ, in effect, he seeks to stress the full
consubstantiality of the human Christ with the rest of the human
race. At the same time, and this constitutes the single most massive
inconsistency in Peter's theology as a whole, he endows the human
Christ with a psychology that is quasi-superhuman. In the third
 CONCLUSION 737

area of Ghristology, the doctrine of Christ's saving work, Peter

reflects a powerful contemporary tendency, visible in his ethics as
well, to accent the internalizing of the Christian message in the
lives of believers. This orientation leads him to join thinkers of the
time who reject both the "rights of the devil" understanding of
the redemption as well as any effort to view it from a political,
military, or forensic perspective. He emerges with a personal theo-
logy of the redemption which, while it retains an objective dimen-
sion in its view of what Christ accomplishes and what man receives,
accents the subjective side of the transaction, both in Christ's inner
disposition and in the appropriation of His saving work in man that
it makes possible.
Peter's handling of the first of these problems, the hypostatic
union, is throughly informed by the clarification, with respect to
theological language, that he had brought to bear on the doctrine of
God and on human nature. His distinction, in the Trinity, of
personhood as the relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
vis-à-vis each other, in contrast to the divine essence, substance,
and nature which They all commonly share, enables him to specify
what the divine contribution to the hypostatic union is, while his
view of human nature as involving the integral substantial union of
body and soul helps him to explain the human contribution to it as
well. These same lexical clarifications assist him not only in de-
scribing the hypostatic union looked at from a constitutional point
of view, but also serve him in dealing with the incarnate Christ's
behavior during His earthly life.
Reminding his readers that the work of any one person of the
Trinity ad extra is the work of the divine nature that inheres equally
in all of its members, even though the assignment may be delegated
to a particular Trinitarian person, he observes that the Word joins
the divine nature to human nature in the person of the Son, just as
the divine task of accomplishing the incarnation in the Virgin Mary
is delegated to the Holy Spirit. In explaining what the Word took
on, Peter stresses three points. In the first place, and seeking to
avoid Adoptionism, he emphasizes the point that the human Christ
was not a man already in existence prior to His union with the
Word, a man possessing a human person. For, this would make the
incarnate Christ an individual with two persons, an idea which, for
Peter, is a contradiction in terms. Equally unacceptable would be
the formation of a composite, semi-divine and semi-human person
out of the union of the two natures. This, too, would be impossible
because the person of the Word, being divine, is, by definition,
simple and immutable. Thus, rather than taking on a preexisting
738 CONCLUSION

human nature or human person, the Word took on a human body

and a human soul, infrasubstantial ingredients that go to make up
a human nature, which were not yet in existence and which had not
yet been joined together until they were simultaneously created and
united with each other and with the person of the Son. In this
union, the Word took on the human body through the mediation of
the human soul. Peter takes sharp exception to the idea that the
substance of the human Christ, that is, the union of a human body
and a human soul in Him, can be conflated with the idea that He
had a human person. It is the proponents of that conflation, he
points out, who make themselves vulnerable to the charge of
Christological nihilianism in rejecting the notion that Christ had a
human person.
Secondly, Peter stresses the point that the man Jesus was a
specific, historic, human being. In taking on a human nature, the
Word did not unite Himself with an abstraction. This principle is
firmly linked to Peter's soteriology. Only a God-man Who was a
specific individual could perform Christ's saving work. Thirdly,
and of equal importance to Peter for equally strong soteriological
reasons, the human nature of the individual man Jesus is the same
as that of the rest of mankind. Otherwise, the ability of this God-
man to extend the benefits of His redemption to the whole human
race would be severely compromised. Thus, Peter holds that the
Word was joined to human nature both in the sense of being joined
to a concrete human being and in the sense of being joined to
humanity in general. Both aspects of this union are critical. The
exception to Christ's identity with the rest of the human race as it
currently exists lies in His exemption from original sin. Given
Peter's understanding of the transmission of original sin, which, as
he sees it, involves the passing on of corrupted genetic materials as
well as the presence of lust in the engendering of offspring, this
exemption must also be extended to the Virgin Mary as well, and
at some unspecified time prior to the moment when she conceived
Christ. This dogmatic imperative provides an opening for pushing
back the moment when the Virgin's exemption took place. The
Lombard's theology of the hypostatic union thus has implications
for the development of western Mariology.
Peter's positive doctrine of the incarnation informs the way that
he understands the three prevailing opinions on the hypostatic
union, and explains why he finds all of them defective. As he sees it,
the assumptus homo theory, in emphasizing the intimate union be-
tween the divinity and humanity of Christ, in effect absorbs the
human nature into the divine nature in such a way as to blur the
 CONCLUSION 739

distinction between the two natures which proponents of this

theory claim to be defending. The chief problem with the subsis-
tence theory is similar, although it arises out of a different estimate
of what occurs in the hypostatic union. Proponents of that theory
maintain that this union produces a composite person, and, in
some quarters as well, a composite of three substances, divinity, a
human body, and a human soul. Given his own understanding of
human nature, Peter objects to the idea that the body and soul, the
infrasubstantial components that combine to make up a human
nature, can each be described as a substance. More problematic
still is the idea of a mixed or duplex person. This would entail the
alteration, and dilution, of the simple and immutable divine per-
sonhood of Christ. Also, were He a composite person, the incarnate
Word would introduce a fourth member into the Trinity, side by
side with, but not equal in divinity with, the Word as unman-
ifested. In any case, no person, by definition, can be understood as
made up of parts. A fortiori, this is true of the Word, Who has been
and Who remains a "whole" person from all eternity and Who does
not require the incarnation for His completion. As Peter presents
the habitus theory, according to which the Word took on human
nature like a habit, or garment, which conforms to the shape of the
person wearing it, he sees it as overemphasizing the divinity of
Christ at the expense of His humanity. As with the assumptus homo
theory, the humanity is conformed to the divinity and the human
Christ is thereby divinized. But, where the assumptus homo theory
views that process as a substantial one, the habitus theory regards is
as a purely spatial and adventitious one. From Peter's standpoint,
this conclusion is equally alarming, for it suggests that Christ's
humanity is not integrally united with His divinity once it is taken
on, and that it remains accidental and partible. Indeed, proponents
of the habitus theory did teach that the incarnate Christ laid aside
His human nature, in between His death and His resurrection, a
claim that Peter vigorously opposes.
Difficulties therefore exist, for him, in all three opinions,
although it can be said that he finds the subsistence theory the
thorniest of the three. While some readers in the twelfth century,
and even today, have failed to take seriously Peter's advice that the
matter not be foreclosed prematurely, this counsel was, to a large
extent, accepted in his own century. Further research and reflection
did, in the event, take place, permitting a consensus on the
hypostatic union to emerge in the thirteenth century in a field
where no consensus existed in the Lombard's day. This topic is the
crispest index imaginable of Peter's espousal of the generally held
740 CONCLUSION

twelfth-century view that Christian orthodoxy does not have to be

monolithic, even on very basic issues. As Peter's handling of the
hypostatic union indicates, diversi, sed non adversi is a real and
operational guideline for him, delineating the working conditions
under which he thinks theologians of good will should labor.
While, as a theologian of the hypostatic union, Peter is consis-
tent, and insistent, on the point that the divinity and humanity of
Christ were integrally united, that the union was not partible, and
not accidental, and that neither the divinity nor the humanity was
altered thereby, is has to be said that he does not push the latter
conviction to its ultimate logical conclusion in treating the nature of
the human Christ. On the one hand, Peter stresses that Christ's
body and soul were fully human, consubstantial with those of His
mother and those of all other human beings. While His conception
was miraculous, He underwent gestation, birth, physical growth
and development from infancy to adulthood, just as all other hu-
man beings do. He lived at a particular time and place in history;
He was capable, as a man, of being predestined; and He was
endowed with a sexual nature, in this case a masculine one,
although Peter sees this choice on God's part not as necessary but
as useful in the light of the mores of the community into which He
was born. In all these ways, Peter asserts the full humanity of
Christ, over against theologians who argued that His humanity was
divinized accidentally or substantially by its union with the Word.
At the same time, Peter's treatment of Christ's human knowl-
edge and His moral aptitudes endows Him with a psychology that
is more than human. To be sure, these endowments are gifts of
grace, not Christ's natural human inheritance, as he sees it; but
they exempt Christ from the intellectual and volitional processes
which other human beings undergo in acquiring knowledge and in
making ethical decisions. While he is scarcely as extreme here as
are other masters of the day, Peter assents to the proposition that
Christ, as a man, enjoyed a fullness of grace and wisdom from the
moment of His conception. His wisdom is created wisdom, and not
the uncreated wisdom possessed by the Word. But, not only did the
human Christ know everything that God knows, He never had to
undergo a learning process. The most that Peter will concede here
is that, although the quantity of knowledge possessed by the human
Christ was the same as God's, He knew what He knew less exhaus-
tively than God knows what He knows. Also, unlike God, the
human Christ could not translate everything He knew into fact.
This is certainly a knowledge far transcending the knowledge pos-
sessed, at least potentially, by Adam before the fall.
 CONCLUSION 741

The same must be said of Peter's estimate of the moral condition

and aptitudes of the human Christ. Christ was exempted from
original sin, although He voluntarily took on some of its conse-
quences, such as mortality, and the ability to feel hunger, thirst,
exhaustion, pain, affection, and fear. These consequences of sin
Christ took on because they were expedient for Him. They were
essential to His mission and did not derogate from His dignity. On
the other hand, He did not take on the major consequences of
original sin, ignorance, concupiscence, and the depression of free
will. In these respects, the human Christ as Peter presents Him was
not like the rest of mankind in all but sin. To be sure, it could be
argued that prelapsarian man was capable of making moral deci-
sions unhampered by the ignorance, concupiscence, and the con-
straints on free will under which fallen man must labor. But Peter
gives the human Christ a psychology of ethical decision-making
different from Adam's. Adam, like all men, underwent a three-step
process, involving temptation, the contemplation of temptation,
and the conscious consent that is the essence of the moral act.
According to Peter, however, Christ experienced only the contem-
plation of the temptation and the consent stages. At the same time,
and inconsistently so, Peter maintains that Christ really experi-
enced the temptations set before Him by the devil, as well as the
temptation to despair during His passion, experiences which the
Lombard regards as critical in enabling Christ to know and to
empathize with the human weaknesses that He came to heal.
Peter's human Christ lacks the defective knowledge that leads to
sin. He does not experience temptation in the psychogenesis of His
moral decisions. His flesh does not lust against His spirit. Hence, in
the exercise of His fully free will, Christ at all times chose to bring
His human will into perfect conformity with the will of God. Hence,
He always possessed perfect virtue, marked especially by the notes
of obedience and humility. The impulse to grant that the human
Christ be given worship, and not just veneration, while it reflects
Peter's awareness that, even here, a distinction must be observed
between the creature and the creator, also reflects the fact that the
human Christ he envisions is actually more than human.
If Peter's treatment of the human Christ accents His functional
differences from other men more than His constitutional similar-
ities with them, his doctrine of the atonement, one very much his
own, draws on both of these ideas. Peter takes a firm stand in
opposition to the externalist and politically or militarily envisioned
doctrine that Christ's saving work was to free mankind from the
power of the devil, whether that power is seen as just or unjust. He
742 CONCLUSION

also opposes, just as vigorously, the critique of the "rights of the

devil" position offered by Anselm of Canterbury, holding it to be
just as externalist as the "rights of the devil" account in that
Anselm sees Christ's saving work as the changing of God's mind
about man thanks to the imputation of His own merits to man,
enabling man to rectify his account with God and to repay a debt
justly owed, but without man's inner life being changed thereby.
Instead, Peter warmly embraces the countervailing tendency to
ignore the category of justice and to see Christ's redemption as
effecting a change in man himself, and adds his own personal
coloration to this teaching.
As he sees it, the atonement has both an objective and a subjec-
tive dimension. On the objective side of the account, the key point
he makes is that Christ possessed all the virtues perfectly, especially
obedience and humility. Christ's ethical merit is total. At all times
in His earthly life, His will was in accord with that of the Father, so
that nothing He did, up to and including His crucifixion, could
have improved His virtue in the Father's sight. Here the distinction
between the quality of virtue and the quantity of virtue that Peter
draws in discussing the good angels also comes into play. From this
perspective, the crucifixion of Christ merely gave Him an oppor-
tunity to display the perfect obedience and humility that He had
always had. Startling as is this claim, Peter makes it in order to
explain why God chose this particular mode of redemption,
although, as he had noted under the heading of his doctrine of God,
He was in no sense constrained to do so. While the passion and
crucifixion did not enhance the quality of Christ's merit in the eyes
of God, the drama and pathos of His heart-rending sacrifice is
critical from the standpoint of man. Christ, in offering this electrify-
ing expression of His love for man, provides an affective catalyst
that is essential for man's appropriation of the redemption subjec-
tively. Christ's saving work revolutionizes man's heart and changes
man's mind, enabling him to respond in love to God and to his
fellow man. Christ's role is to change man's inner being, his inner
moral orientation. This change empowers man to think, feel, and
act with charity, to accept God's grace and to work with it volun-
tarily. This appropriation of Christ's death justifies man, for Peter,
not by transferring unearned merits to man that clear his debt with
God and not by changing God's mind about man, but by changing
man's mind and by exciting charity in his soul.
Peter does not fail to address the "rights of the devil" debate, and
drastically subjectivizes this whole idea. As he sees it, the devil is
not an external power whom Christ defeats on the passive battle-
ground of the human soul. The devil, rather, is nothing other than
 CONCLUSION 743

man's own internal slavery to sin, from which the new power to
love inflamed in man's heart by Christ enables him to liberate
himself. The devil, Peter observes, remains a psychological reality
even after that liberation has taken place, in the form of the
temptations that continue to afflict redeemed and justified man-
kind. Once again, it is the power to love unleashed in man's soul by
Christ, in their continuing relationship, that enables the redeemed
to resist temptation. For Peter, just as the fall leads to the depres-
sion of the will, so the redemption, when subjectively appropriated,
restores a measure of the radical freedom to choose good or evil
without constraint possessed by man before the fall. While some
inclination to sin will still be present in the redeemed, the appro-
priation of Christ's saving work in man relaxes the pressure to
choose evil under which man had labored as fallen and unre-
deemed. We may note that this relaxation of the fomes peccati is an
objective consequence of Christ's saving work, and that it is effica-
cious only when that saving work is appropriated subjectively, a
relationship that will reappear in Peter's sacramental theology.
Although the inclination to sin is weakened in the redeemed, it is
still present in their lives. In this sense, the devil is not completely
vanquished by the cross, but his power is significantly reduced.
What is equally important, the devil's power is dramatically rein-
terpreted by Peter as a function of man's own internal psychology
of sin.
The merits which Christ possesses, and which He offers to man
in lifting man's guilt and punishment for sin, are real and objective.
At the same time, Christ makes this release efficacious within the
human soul by empowering an equally real inner conversion, in
which man's soul is active, and not a passive terrain on which
contending armies clash or advocates offer briefs. Christ's virtue is
exemplary for man; but it is also efficacious in inspiring the change
of heart that will enable the redeemed to develop their own virtues
and to acquire their own merits, in collaboration with divine grace.
It is through His human mortality, which Christ's virtue led Him
to offer up on the cross, that He accomplishes this aspect of man's
redemption. It is through His divine immortality that He is able to
grant eternal life and posthumous glory to man. In Peter's view,
this is why the Father ordained man's redemption by means of a
God-man, given the fact that He could have ordained it some other
way. Yet, what gives the Lombard's soteriology its own distinctive
cast is his ability to unite an objective understanding of the atone-
ment, based on Christ's nature and action both as God and as man,
with a subjective understanding of the atonement, based on a
psychological and existential reading of the moral change that
744 CONCLUSION

Christ's human love and human virtue inspire in man. Peter's

accent on Christ's humility, as His most paramount and efficacious
virtue, is consistent with his view that humility is needed to supply
the sufficient corrective to the pride that brought about the fall. So
important is this point, for Peter, that he takes the unusual step of
regarding the crucifixion as unnecessary, except for its unique
capacity to provoke an emotional response from man. The enabling
act which Christ performs within man's heart is also what allows
Peter to marginalize and to internalize the "rights of the devil"
theory and, in effect, to remove it from the agenda of scholastic
theology. This accomplishment, and the rest of his account of
Christ's saving work, are related organically to his stress on inten-
tionality in his moral teaching and to his effort to balance the
objective with the subjective in hie sacramentology, as the con-
tinuing relationship between man and God specified by Christ's
atonement works its way through the Christian life.
This point brings us next to ethics, although it has to be said that
Peter's handling of that subject is not necessarily presented as a
logical corollary of Christ's atonement. His ethical teaching is
marked by a serious organizational disjunction, and one that re-
quires a certain amount of repetition on his part, in that he treats
the vices and the psychogenesis of sin under the heading of man's
nature as created and man's fall, while he discusses the virtues
primarily under the heading of the moral capacities and achieve-
ments of the human Christ. In that latter location he considers the
theological virtues, the cardinal virtues, and the virtues understood
as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The question of ethical intentionality
in its relation to sins and virtues appears as well in connection with
his treatment pf.a number of the sacraments, while the relations
between grace and free will in man's ethical life crop up in several
contexts. Peter's decision to place virtue largely under the rubric of
the moral aptitudes of the human Christ is not without its difficul-
ties, given the fact that he endows the human Christ with a greater
than human psychology. The Lombard is sensitive to this problem
and seeks to correct for it by discussing the virtues as such before
considering Christ's possession of them. This tactic, however, is not
in the end fully responsive to the question of how Christ can be seen
as a moral exemplar for man. That problem aside, and notwith-
standing the repetition which his chosen mode of organizing his
ethical doctrine entails, there is a good deal of consistency in what
Peter has to say on this subject. If that consistency is notable,
however, it is not total. There is one major point on which he gives
with one hand and takes with the other, the question of whether
 CONCLUSION 745

natural virtue is possible. And, he leaves unexplained what connec-

tion there is between human reason as an endowment of nature and
the knowledge and wisdom that are gifts of the Holy Spirit.
On the face of it, the bulk of the evidence would suggest a clear
negative answer to the question concerning the virtuous pagan, for
one of the earmarks of Lombardian ethics is the principle that all
meritorious acts require the interaction between free will and grace.
This principle extends backwards from man as redeemed, justified,
and sanctified in the ecclesiastical dispensation to man before the
fall and even to the angels. At the same time, the second central
attribute of Peter's ethics is his stress on voluntary consent as the
essence of the ethical act and on intentionality as the critical
determinant of the moral agent's moral status. While he seeks to
provide an objective ethical norm as well, holding that some acts
are intrinsically immoral, and while he thinks that good intentions
ordinarily need to be translated into good, and appropriate, ac-
tions, he also holds that inner intentionality remains of the essence,
present or absent its external expression. He also holds that the
capacity to possess a good will is a generic human possibility.
This latter point is reinforced by Peter's agreement with the
three-part analysis of the psychogenesis of ethical decision-making
standard in his time. Whether using the language oipassio.propassio,
and consensus or that of suggestion delectatio, and consensus, he agrees
that there is temptation, internal or external, the entertaining of the
temptation, and the conscious and voluntary decision to reject it or
to succumb to it. Inner intellectual consent is where sin and virtue
lie, not in the outward manifestation of that consent. The active
exercise of volition is critical, for Peter. When it comes to sin, this
conviction leads him to dismiss the privative theory of evil and to
invoke the theme of the willed fall into the regio dissimilitudinis, in
which man deliberately rejects the image of God in himself. To be
sinful, an act must manifest an evil intention. At the same time,
intentions cannot be severed from the ends they serve. One cannot,
therefore, serve an objectively good end by wrongdoing. Peter's
strong intentionalism is thus qualified by the principle that a good
intention cannot inform a bad end or an action that is uncon-
ditionally prohibited, or one that conflicts with the moral subject's
acknowledged moral duties. As noted, Peter considers the question
of ignorance, its modes, and the degree to which it mitigates or
removes moral culpability under the heading of the fall, essentially
as a means of ruling it out as an extenuating circumstance in the
case of Adam and Eve. He does not reimport this theme into his
analysis of ethical intentionality, of the way in which a person
746 CONCLUSION

identifies ends as morally good or bad, or of the quality of his grasp

of what is categorically prohibited or required in his own case.
Peter's handling of these topics might have been enriched had he
done so. But, before he leaves this point, he acknowledges that good
deeds require good faith. Leaving aside faith here as a theological
virtue, which would require consent to specifically Christian
teachings, he agrees that good faith means the absence of hypocrisy
as well as good intentions in a positive sense, and concedes that
non-Christians are capable of expressing it, in their own virtues
and in their service to their neighbors inspired by natural piety.
The virtuous pagan rears his head here, however briefly.
While Peter agrees with other intentionalists, ancient and mod-
ern, that vice, and virtue, spring respectively from a vicious or a
virtuous intention, he does not think that all sins or virtues are
equal or that intentions or actions in either category can be col-
lapsed into each other. He grades the sins as more or less serious.
Seriousness is determined by the nature of the vice that inspires
them; by whether they are sins committed against self, neighbor, or
God; by whether they occur in thought, word, or deed, or all three;
by whether they are crimes as well as sins; and by whether they
involve the active perpetration of evil or the passive failure to do
good. The intrinsic nature of the sin, and the extent of the harm it
does, are the criteria, for Peter, rather than the degree of delibera-
tion involved. This analysis yokes the standard seven deadly sins
with the understanding of how they engender each other in the
psyche of the sinner, which was a common inheritance of the time
from Gregory the Great. In agreement with that tradition, Peter
sees pride as the most serious sin and the sins of the flesh as less
important than the sins of the intellect. Sins, of whatever type, are
entirely accountable to the people who commit them. Both Peter's
dismissal of the privative theory of evil and his disinterest in
considering how ignorance may limit moral responsibility point to
his desire to place the burden of sin squarely man's shoulders, and
to emphasize the point that the creator, Who endowed man with
the freedom to sin, is in no sense to be charged with man's evil use
of that freedom.
As we have already seen, despite the common thread of inten-
tionalism that binds vice to virtue in Peter's ethics, his treatment of
virtue, as a pendant or alternative to vice, is not and cannot be
symmetrical with his analysis of vice, in that men can and do sin
purely on their own initiative, while virtuous choices and actions
require collaboration between free will and grace, both operating
and cooperating grace since the fall. Both forms of grace can be
 CONCLUSION 747

rejected by man. When he accepts grace and works with it, man
can acquire virtue. Peter defines virtue as a good quality of the
mind, inclining it to live rightly and not to use anything badly. In
this stage of his analysis, virtue is seen not primarily as what the
moral subject acquires by means of upright moral activity but
rather as a disposition of the mind to such activity. Both grace and
free will are needed to activate this disposition. In exploring their
relations, Peter develops an agricultural analogy. Grace is like the
rain; free will is like the earth; virtue as a disposition of the mind is
like a seed. The fruit borne by the seed, the other necessary condi-
tions obtaining, is virtue in the sense of the good intentions and
actions that ornament the soul of the moral subject and that are
accounted meritorious in him.
Peter treats grace and free will as enabling conditions that work
simultaneously, and synergistically, upon man's natural moral in-
clinations, rather than from the standpoint of cause and effect. An
important consequence of his doctrine of grace and free will, which
provides the conceptual model that he also uses for the gifts of the
Holy Spirit as virtues, is that it allows him to preserve and to
develop, in his ethics, an idée maîtresse found throughout his theo-
logy, most notably in his doctrine of God: God's interaction with
His creation, whether in the order of nature or in the order of grace,
preserves the distinction between God as the transcendent supreme
being and His effects in His mission ad extra. Neither God's grace,
nor even the gifts of the Holy Spirit, afford man a participation in
the divine nature. The virtues and merits which that grace or those
gifts assist man in acquiring are, and remain, purely human attri-
butes, spiritual characteristics of the moral subject in whom they
inhere. In rewarding such a meritorious person, God rewards that
person; He does not reward Himself. The human being so trans-
formed by the acquisition of virtue is not divinized thereby. Rather,
he reacquires his full humanity, the image of God in himself lost in
his earlier state of sinful fall into the regio dissimilitudinis.
In handling the three categories of virtue that he treats specifi-
cally, Peter displays more interest in the theological virtues than in
the cardinal virtues or in the gifts of the Holy Spirit as virtues. His
handling of the cardinal virtues is quite abbreviated. It reflects no
interest in considering them from the perspective of any of the
available philosophical definitions of them, whether Platonic, Aris-
totelian, or Stoic. Nor does Peter show any interest in redefining
them in Christian terms, on either an Ambrosian, an Augustinian,
or a Gregorian basis. He does not treat them as natural virtues.
For, he states that they were possessed by Adam before the fall,
748 CONCLUSION

when all virtue required the collaboration of grace. The chief point
that Peter wants to make about these virtues concerns their perdu-
rance beyond the Christian's life in via into the patria in the next life.
In all cases, their posthumous manifestations will shift from the
negative or disciplinary to the positive. Wisdom will propose God
as the good; fortitude will cling to Him; temperance will enjoy Him
unopposed; and justice will engage in the contemplation of the
divine nature. Peter has no insight to offer about the relationship of
the cardinal virtues to the theological virtues, on the one side, or to
the gifts of the Holy Spirit, on the other, even though he places
them, in his table of organization, between those two topics. This
fact, as well as the extreme leanness of his account of the cardinal
virtues, in the light of what the philosophical and patristic tradi-
tions had to offer on this subject, suggests that this was an area of
Lombardian ethics ripe for subsequent development.
The one point of connection that Peter draws between the car-
dinal virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the idea of perdu-
rance into the next life, along with the carryover of the positive
features of the virtues in that transition. This notion informs Peter's
treatment of holy fear, knowledge, and wisdom, the only three of
these charisms which he considers in any detail. The theme of holy
fear in this context is where he orchestrates the oft-cited distinction
among servile fear, worldly fear, initial fear, and chaste or filial
fear, as ethical attitudes and motivations. Peter takes a generous
line on this subject. He treats initial fear not as fear of eternal
punishment but as an inchoate love of God, which he thus sees as
being on more of a continuum with filial fear, or reverence for God
for His own sake, than is typically the case. This initial fear, he
agrees, will no longer be needed in Heaven, where it will have been
superseded by the filial fear which, he also agrees, Christ possessed
perfectly in the via as well as the patria. Peter offers a parallel
account of knowledge and wisdom. Reprising, to some extent, the
distinction he had drawn between the different functions of the
intellectual faculty in assigning guilt to Adam and Eve in the fall,
he defines knowledge as the right ordering and administering of
temporal things, with beatitude as their end, and the turning from
evil to good things. Wisdom can be distinguished from knowledge,
and also from understanding. Like wisdom, understanding address-
es itself to invisible, spiritual realities. But it is concerned with the
grasp of these realities in this life; so it, too, along with knowledge,
will be superseded in the next life. Wisdom alone endures. To be
sure, in this life, wisdom is concerned with the knowledge of God,
and of creatures in Him, through the temporal thought processes
 CONCLUSION 749

available to man in via. But, in the patria, wisdom will be able to

contemplate these objects of knowledge without temporal con-
straints. Peter makes no effort to explain how, or if, these mental
operations seen as gifts of the Holy Spirit are related to knowledge,
understanding, and wisdom as natural functions of human reason
tout court. The question of whether charismatic intervention is
needed to activate man's mental faculties in some connections, but
not in others, is a question that he does not take up, although this
locus in Book 3 of the Sentences could provide a natural habitat for
scholastics who might want to orchestrate that theme, in one way
or another.
The major topic under the heading of the virtues that Peter is
interested in addressing is the theological virtues. To be sure, one
point of carryover we can see here between this sub-set of virtues
and the other two is the notion that some virtues perdure, in more
exalted form, while others are ordered to man's life in via and
terminate once it is over. In this case, charity endures, while faith is
replaced by sight and hope by the possession of the blessings hoped
for in this life. It is not the urge to gloss the St. Paul of 1 Corin-
thians on this subject that animates Peter's extended discussion of
the theological virtues, so much as the felt need to come to grips
with the definition of faith, and, to a lesser extent, the desire to offer
a policy statement on charity in action in this life. The definition of
faith is certainly complicated by Peter's wish to ascribe this virtue
to the human Christ, although, since He is deemed to have known
everything that the Word knows, it is difficult to make a case for
this claim. Also pressing is the need to locate faith as an epistemic
state, inspired by the contemporary misunderstanding of Abelard's
use of the term existimatio in this connection. Peter puts his stamp of
approval on the Victorine resolution of this problem by agreeing
that faith, the substance of things hoped for and the argument of
things not seen, lies below knowledge that can be empirically
proved and above opinion, owing to its certitude. He clarifies the
point that the objects of knowledge addressed by faith as a theolog-
ical virtue are religious ones, not available to the senses or the
imagination. Another major issue that Peter wants to consider is
the salvific character of faith. Here, he articulates the consensus
view by distinguishing among faith, as intellectual assent to a body
of theological propositions held to be true, faith as assent to what a
person says because one has confidence in his trustworthiness, and
the faith that saves. The latter involves adhesion to God in love and
confidence and a faith that works in love. Peter acknowledges that
the faith that saves may also be proportioned to the intellect and
750 CONCLUSION

education of the believer. But, in its content, it needs to embrace

the propositions in the creed, however imperfectly they may be
understood. Overall, the chief quality that Peter imparts to faith is
to give equal attention to its nature as an epistemic state and its
nature as a virtue, both in itself and in its informing of hope and
charity.
Peter's remarks on hope are brief, and largely uncontroversial.
He agrees that, unlike faith, the things hope addresses are all good
things, not good as well as bad, and that, like faith, hope points to
the future, to things unseen and not yet in our grasp. Thus, by
definition, like faith, hope is incomplete in this life. As well, and as
with faith, Peter grapples with the difficulties involved in arguing
that the human Christ possessed the virtue of hope, despite His
omniscience and His fullness of grace. As with faith, his proposal for
resolving this problem is to withdraw, in Christ's case, the condi-
tion of incompleteness from hope, although that is part of its very
definition. This effort is not a particularly successful one. Peter has
far less trouble arguing that the human Christ possessed the
greatest possible charity, and one that was as perfect, for Him, in
the via as it was in the patria. This claim is, of course, central to his
account of Christ's saving work and its ability to evoke the loving
response of man in man's appropriation of it.
The same definition of charity, love of God for His own sake and
love of self and neighbor for God's sake, applies to the charity that
human beings are enjoined to develop, despite their constitutional
inability to possess this virtue to the degree to which the human
Christ did. Manifesting his general propensity for hierarchy, Peter
posits four grades of charity, incipient, proficient, perfect, and most
perfect, the latter descriptive of the saints in Heaven. As a gift of
grace, charity, for Peter, remains, like all other charisms, an effect
of God in His mission ad extra and not a participation of the divine
nature in man. He resists the tendency to view those dwelling in
charity as becoming so bonded to the Holy Spirit, understood as
the love uniting the Father and the Son, that they become engrafted
into the inner life of the Trinity. The principle of hierarchy also
informs Peter's gradation of goods under the heading of charity, as
a guide to how men should order their loves. We should love God
the most, as the supreme good. We should love the souls of rational
creatures next, for they have an eternal destiny. We should love the
human body next, for it is intimately linked to the soul and it is
destined, as well, for future glory. Therefore, its health and self-
preservation in this life are legitimate goods. Finally, we should
love those things that are below us in the creation, insofar as they
 CONCLUSION 751

are conducive to the well-being of the body. This ladder of love

recapitulates, from the standpoint of man's return to God, the
metaphysical and moral hierarchy of the creation set forth by Peter
at the beginning of Book 2 of the Sentences. Finally, there is the
problem of charity understood as the practical assistance of other
men, given the finitude of means at anyone's disposal. Departing
from those who make the principle of need the only or the primary
determinant, Peter adopts the criterion of relationship, starting
with parents and moving to other relatives, members of one's
household, neighbors, and compatriots, and ending with enemies.
His inclusion of enemies is to be noted, stemming from his wish to
support the biblical injunction to love one's enemies, and from his
desire to emphasize that the sliding scale he proposes is grounded
not merely in natural ties and natural responsibilities but in charity
as a virtue expressing a commitment that transcends nature. It is
charity in this wider sense that perdures, after our natural obliga-
tions in time are no more. While Peter is clearly willing to grade the
outward expressions of charity, both by the closeness of blood ties
and social relations and by the difficulty of its exercise in the case of
enemies, and while he agrees that its effectus should be proportioned
to the recipient, he holds that its inner, intentional qffectus is the
same in all cases, as controlled by the general definition of charity
which he provides.
Peter concludes his consideration of ethics by exploring the
moral precepts of the Old Law in relation to the New, treated as a
general approach to the question of which Old Testament rules and
practices merely prefigure Christian ones and which carry over into
the new dispensation. This is also the context in which he develops
an extended analysis of lying and of perjury, under the rubric of
not bearing false witness. Peter's lengthy and extremely well
documented treatment of lying emphasizes the point that a lie
involves both objective untruth and a deceptive intention, and that
lies are never justifiable, whatever the provocation or the good end
one may be trying to serve in such a devious way. This single topic,
in short, is designed to reinforce his more general position on the
relations between ethical intentions and the ends they serve, and
the relations between the objective dimension of ethics and subjec-
tive intentionality. Peter treats perjury as a pendant to his analysis
of lying, in a parallel way, adding only the points that perjury is a
lie sealed by an oath and that there are occasions when the lesser of
the two evils is to break an oath. This topic, like that of the
abrogation of the Old Law or its continuity in force, which ends
his consideration of ethics, is placed at the end of Book 3 of the
752 CONCLUSION

Sentences, where his main subject is Christology. As has been noted,

Peter's decision to treat virtues under the heading of the moral
aptitudes of the human Christ leads to certain difficulties, in his
effort to argue that Christ possessed virtues that seem inapposite in
an individual who possessed a fullness of grace and wisdom at all
times. Even more problematic is the inclusion of the material just
referred to under the same Christological umbrella. The abrogation
of the Old Law, or not, and the analysis of lying and perjury, have
no manifest connection with the nature of Christ or the atonement
as such. They point to the fact that Peter's schematic decisions, in
the field of ethics, do not always make sense. The one, and the only,
advantage of Peter's arrangement of his material at the end of Book
3 is that it permits him to introduce the rituals of the Old Testa-
ment as a transition to the sacraments, his subject in most of Book
4, and one on which he plans to take a distinct and vigorous stand
in differentiating between these Old Testament rites and those of
the New.
Peter's most important contribution to sacramental theology is
his absorption and refinement of Hugh of St. Victor's redefinition
of sacraments in general, not merely as visible signs of invisible
grace, but as signs that resemble what they signify and, more
important, as signs that contain and serve as physical media of
divine grace and make it effective in the inner life of the recipient. It
is on the basis of this Victorine definition of sacrament that Peter
decisively rejects the Victorine claim that Old Testament rites,
which the Lombard holds to be signs and signs only, are truly
comparable with the efficacious, sanctifying, and salvific sacra-
ments of the Christian church. In general, he holds that the
sacraments were ordained as mediating an objective content of
sanctifying grace, and as sanctifying the recipient by strengthening
his soul, enhancing his moral education, and helping him to grow
in virtue. According to Peter, sacraments contain and convey di-
vine grace objectively thanks to their divinely ordained capacity to
do so, assuming that the sacrament is administered in the appropri-
ate way, by the appropriate minister, with the appropriate inten-
tion. The capacity of the recipient to receive and to make fruitful
use of the grace mediated by the sacrament, in turn, is conditioned
by the faith and intention that he brings to his reception of it. In
addition to the particular form of remedy, or sanctification, or both,
that particular sacraments impart, the sacraments promise a future
heavenly good, and one that begins to be activated in the inner life
of recipients in the here and now, by helping them to recover the
image of God in themselves. Peter associates this understanding of
 CONCLUSION 753

sacraments in general with Augustine's sign theory, a comparison

designed to show how sacraments partake of both natural and
conventional signification, and go beyond both, thanks to their
status as efficacious signs. For Peter, the Christian's journey back
from the regio dissimilitudinis of sin is concretely moved along, and
not just signposted, by the sacraments. As extensions of Christ's
saving work in time, the sacraments partake of the combination of
objectivity and subjectivity that the Lombard sees in the atone-
ment. The divine healing, cleansing, and strengthening that they
contain is objective; and it is made operational by the recipient's
subjective disposition. Another way in which he makes this point is
in noting that sacraments have two aspects. There is the res sac-
ramenti, the divine grace contained in the sacrament. There is also
the sacramentum, the physical medium. By divine ordination, the
sacramentum is endowed with its res sacramenti, in the proper adminis-
tration of the rite. A worthy recipient who brings the proper dis-
position to the sacramentum receives the res sacramenti by means of it.
On the other hand, if a person approaches a sacrament without the
proper intention, he receives the sacramentum tantum, the physical
medium alone. Even in cases where Peter is unwilling to grant that
the objective content of the sacrament goes by the boards, he insists
that the unworthy recipient cannot profit from it in his own inner
life.
Sacraments in general can be differentiated, for Peter, in terms of
whether they supply sanctification, a remedy, or both. But his
preferred scheme for presenting sacramental theology is to group
the seven rites so considered in two subdivisions. The first contains
the sacraments received by all Christians, in the order in which
they are received—baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance,
and unction. The second contains the sacraments—holy orders and
marriage—received only by some Christians. The relative necessity
and importance of each sacrament is a question which he treats in
considering each sacrament in turn. There are two salient features
of the Lombard's handling of the sacraments as a whole that stand
out clearly. In each case, while he is interested in the conditions
that validate the administration of the sacraments, leaning more
heavily here on the canonists, especially Gratian, than is typical of
contemporary theologians, his chief concern, and it is one that
differentiates him and other theologians from the canonists, is how
the sacraments work to heal and sanctify in the inner lives of
Christians. Secondly, and given that the purpose of the sacraments
is precisely that, he is interested, as are most of his contemporaries,
in removing obstacles to the reception of sacramental grace.
754 CONCLUSION

Whether this emphasis speaks to the rationalization of changes in

the liturgical and devotional practice of the church that had
already taken place, or to changes that he wants to promote, its
effect is to widen the access he grants to the sacraments, to insist on
the repeatability of all but baptism, confirmation, and holy orders,
and to view the departures from the sacramental theory and prac-
tice of the early church which this policy entails as a rational,
pastoral, and theological desideratum.
In the case of baptism, for instance, Peter agrees with the consen-
sus on the universal necessity of baptism, arguing for its objective
efficacy in the case of infants who are incapable of bringing to it the
faith required of adult baptizands. He prefers this solution to the
idea that the adults presenting the infant for baptism supply the
requisite faith. He offers a strong defense of baptism by desire and
baptism by blood; in cases where physical baptism is impossible,
the sincere intentions of the persons at issue enable them to receive
the res tantum, the grace of baptism, without the external sac-
ramentum. This exception recognizes the point that, while God has
ordained the rite of baptism as the normal way in which that grace
is to be received, His mercy cannot be limited by emergency
conditions. Nor can it be limited by the availability of a priest, the
ordinary minister of the sacrament. Given the necessity of baptism
for salvation, and given the mere instrumentality of any minister of
the sacraments, Peter agrees that, in an emergency, anyone using
the correct rite with the intention of the church to baptize can
validly administer baptism. Peter offers a still wider exception, and
one that underscores the organic connection between his sac-
ramental theology and his doctrine of God, a doctrine that consis-
tently stresses the point that God's power always transcends the
particular ordinances He imposes by means of it. Even though
baptism is normally mandatory, Peter asserts, to insist that it is
mandatory in all cases would be to constrain God's power. For God
Himself is not bound by the order of salvation that He lays down
for man, by means of the sacraments. The specific effect of baptism,
when received by a properly disposed baptizand, and when re-
ceived by any infant, is a double one, for Peter, and in two senses.
Baptism washes away all sin, and it imparts sanctifying grace. The
eternal punishment owing for original sin is remitted. Also, the
temporal punishment owing for actual sin may be relaxed as well.
And, while inclination to sin remains in baptized Christians, along
with ignorance and concupiscence, it is weakened. The grace that
baptizands receive in the sacrament makes them better able to
resist temptation, so that the inclination to sin is not as compelling,
 CONCLUSION 755

for them, as it otherwise would be. These effects are immediate, in

the case of adult recipients. In the case of infants, the effects of
baptism remain latent and potential until these baptizands are old
enough to accept and to cooperate with baptismal grace.
These are the features of baptism that are of central interest to
Peter. He relaxes rules that might prevent a baptism from being
performed, such as the inadvertent garbling of the baptismal for-
mula by the minister. He notes that the ceremonies surrounding
baptism are decorous but not of the essence. He ignores issues such
as the time of baptism, whether penance should be required before
baptism in the case of adults, and whether a person can baptize
himself, questions he dismisses as marginal or frivolous. The moral
and liturgical symbolism of triple, as versus single, immersion in
baptism appeals to him, although he does not devote major atten-
tion to it and does not seek to enforce his personal preference. His
concern lies, rather, with what makes the sacrament valid, and
largely from the perspective of the capacity of the valid sacrament,
worthily received, to serve its ordained role in liberating mankind
from original sin and in enabling recipients to make fruitful use of
that gift of grace as they grow in sanctification. He sees the change
effected in the baptizand on a personal and individual basis. The
role of baptism in incorporating a new Christian into the Christian
community is not his focus. The renewal of mind, the healing,
strengthening, and cleansing function of the sacrament, and its role
in empowering the individual Christian's first steps on the via that
leads back to the patria, is his focus.
Peter likewise streamlines his treatment of confirmation, setting
to the side such matters as the recipient's age, the time and agent of
the sacrament's institution, and whether the ministering clergyman
should be fasting or not. As with other sacraments, confirmation
involves an external rite, which is composed of the verbal formula,
the chrism placed on the confirmand's forehead, and the sign of the
cross made by the bishop in so doing. The res sacramenti so imparted
is the grace that strengthens the Christian against temptation and
that arms him in the struggle against sin. It also remits sin and
imparts the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Like baptism, confirmation
cannot be repeated. But it is less critical for the Christian's salva-
tion, although it should not be ignored out of disrespect for the rites
of the church. This stripped down account of confirmation reflects
both the general lack of controversy which this sacrament inspired
in Peter's day and his systematic and successful effort to bring his
discussion of it into conformity with his general theory of the
sacraments.
756 CONCLUSION

The theology of the Eucharist was fraught with many problems

in the middle of the twelfth century, some embedded in the need to
defend it against heretics who rejected the real presence doctrine or
the sacrament altogether, and others embedded in the difficulties
faced by orthodox theologians in explaining coherently the Eucha-
ristie doctrines on which they disagreed among themselves and even
those position on which they stood in agreement. That the Eucha-
rist is the greatest of sacraments, in that it conveys not only grace
but the giver of all graces, they all heartily and devoutly supported.
The real presence, concomitance, and the necessity of Eucharistie
reception for salvation are also consensus positions. The chief line
of subdivision that is visible in the Lombard's treatment of this
sacrament can be traced between the questions flowing from the
belief in the real presence, and the conceptual and terminological
problems deriving from the difficulty in explaining this belief, given
the speculative vocabulary available at the time, and the questions
addressed to the administration and reception of the Eucharist.
Peter is drawn above all to the first set of questions. The conditions
of labor under which he works in tackling them share the same
limits that affected other theologians writing before the reception of
Aristotle. His solutions, to the extent that he reaches them, are
thus, of necessity, provisional ones, from the standpoint of the
history of scholastic theology. There are two main topics he address-
es here. One is the question of which body Christ gave His
disciples at the Last Supper, the resurrected body which Christians
now receive in communion or the historical body which He then
possessed. Peter supports the relatively unpopular view that it was
the historical body Christ gave to His disciples. He neither lays out
nor accounts for the physical and metaphysical understanding
which this claim requires. The second is the problem of accounting
for the change undergone by the elements of bread and wine when
they are turned into the body and blood of Christ at the time of the
consecration, and the retention by the elements of the physical
attributes of bread and wine notwithstanding that change. Here,
Peter's achievement is notable if partial. It consists of his rigorous
effort to pose the problem in Aristotelian terms. The change under-
gone by the elements is thus a change of substance. The physical
attributes of the elements are seen as accidents. The difficulty, as
Peter spells it out, is that these accidents, after the consecration, no
longer have a substance subtending them and serving as a material
substratum in which they can inhere. Yet, they subsist anyway,
inhering in no substance. Peter is no more successful than anyone
else at the time in accounting for this anomaly. He does not solve
 CONCLUSION 757

the problem. But he does pose it very clearly indeed, in a philosophi-

cal vocabulary that provides a congenial setting for further essays on
this subject, to be drafted in that same vocabulary in the sequel.
As with other orthodox theologians of the day, Peter agrees that
the Eucharist is subject to differential effects in its reception, despite
its objective divine content, depending on the belief and disposition
that the recipient brings to it. The res sacramenti itself, as he sees it, is
a double one. It includes the body and blood of Christ, which
nourish and sanctify the communicant's soul by means of his body,
and which signify and help to accomplish his redemption in both
body and soul. It also includes the union of Christians in the
church, and with Christ, the head of that body, as signified in the
many grapes and grains of wheat that unite to make up the Eucha-
ristie elements. This twofold significance of the sacrament is sym-
metrical with the rule that it should be received under both species,
sequentially, although the body and blood are equally and concom-
itantly present in each of the species individually. Peter ignores the
question of the communion of infants by means of the chalice alone
sometimes attached to this last point, and the theme of spiritual
communion, or the reception of the res tantum without the sac-
ramentum in emergency cases, although the latter has a clear parallel
with his handling of baptism by desire or by blood. He is con-
cerned, rather, with how people appropriate the res sacramenti by
means of the sacramental medium in the normal course of events.
Nothing that recipients believe or intend, he argues, can change the
objective content of the Eucharist, for this would allow mere mor-
tals to frustrate God's merciful and gracious ordinance with respect
to the sacrament. What the immoral or unbelieving recipient can
do is to frustrate his own capacity to profit from communion.
Indeed, such a person receives to his condemnation. Conversely,
the upright and believing recipient appropriates a personal union
with Christ that remakes him spiritually, remits his sin, and per-
fects him, as well as bonding him with other Christians in the
church. As between the ecclesial and the subjective dimensions of
this event in the inner life of the communicant, Peter emphasizes
the personal. As between the remedial and the perfective conse-
quences of communion, he emphasizes the perfective. The same
principle which he uses to distinguish the effects of unworthy from
worthy communion could have provided Peter with an answer to a
vexed question of the day, concerning what happens if a mouse
consumes the consecrated species. But, perhaps surprisingly, and
in a response that was scarcely determinative, he dismisses this
question as pointless and irrelevant.
758 CONCLUSION

While the recipient's side of the Eucharistie transaction is of

greater interest to him, Peter also pays sustained attention to the
Eucharistie ministry and the conditions that validate it. Here,
parting company with most of his theological confrères and with his
own general disinclination to circumscribe the availability of grace
through the sacraments, he finds the strictures imposed on the
sacramental ministry by the canonists eminently convincing, and
supports them wholeheartedly. Thus, he agrees with Gratian,
priests who are heretics, excommunicates, or schismatics, however
validly ordained they may have been, are ipso facto barred from
celebrating the Eucharist. These impediments are intrinsic, be-
cause they bespeak a defective faith and a state of dissociation from
the community of faith which prevent such priests from intending
what the church intends and from officiating in and for a congrega-
tion from which they are severed. Peter also agrees with the canon-
ists' ruling that a priest's moral failings are not an impediment in
his Eucharistie ministry, but he offers a different rationale for this
conclusion. It is not the authority of the priesthood that he accents,
but its instrumentality. Once again, he stresses the point that God
will not allow His grace to be impeded by the personal failings of
His human instruments. These themes constitute Peter's main
concerns à propos of the Eucharist. Other questions, such as the
problem of a celebrant's nocturnal emission as a possible bar to his
officiating and the frequency of communion for the laity, he either
ignores or gives only passing attention. This is not because they are
philosophically intractable or incapable of principled solution. It is,
rather, because the other aspects of the Eucharist are more central
to him. Although he is less flexible in the rules he imposes on the
minister's side of the sacrament than he is in other areas of his
sacramental theology, Peter is consistent in placing more emphasis
on the sanctification that individual Christians can attain by means
of the Eucharist than on the conditions or impediments that would
deactivate or delegitimize it.
The centrality of the recipient, and of the role of the sacrament in
his inner life, come through even more forcefully in Peter's doctrine
of penance. Here, he stands foursquare with his contemporaries in
insisting on the repeatability of penance, in dismissing the single,
solemn, public penance of the early church as now marginal and
irrelevant, and in acknowledging that, if the same type of sin recurs
in a penitent's life, penance itself can and should recur, so that the
channels of divine forgiveness and reconciliation remain open. He
takes a firm and consistent stand on the controversial issue of when,
in the three-part process of contrition, confession, and satisfaction,
 CONCLUSION 759

the remission of the penitent's sin occurs, siding vigorously with the
contritionist position. He does not shrink from pressing the logic of
this position to its ultimate conclusions, even when this forces him
to espouse views that place him close to the radical fringe within
the orthodox consensus. Thus, he states that confession is optional.
If confession is made to a priest, all that the priest does is to declare
the fact that the penitent has already received divine forgiveness in
the confession of the heart that he had already made to God in his
contrition. Since Peter agrees with the definition of penance as
sincere sorrow for sin and a firm purpose of amendment, as well as
the willingness to acknowledge all of one's sins, penance is contri-
tion, by definition. While confession may be desirable, it is desir-
able only to the extent that the counseling the penitent receives
from the confessor is useful in his moral education. While priests
are authorized to loose and to bind, in excommunication and in
readmission to communion, they do not exercise this aspect of the
power of the keys in confession, as Peter sees it. The other aspect of
the power of the keys is discretion. This function can be served by
priests, according to Peter, if they happen to be discerning and
intelligent men, in advising those penitents who confess to them
and in assigning appropriate satisfactions. But, Peter resolutely
acknowledges the fact that not all priests indeed possess discretion.
A penitent who chooses to seek guidance from a confessor is thus
entitled to choose a lay person with discretion as his confessor, if a
discreet priest is not available. In any event, Peter notes that the
matter of performing satisfaction comes under the discretion of
God. He may waive it entirely, if He judges the penitent's contri-
tion to have been perfect, or if some emergency prevents him from
fulfilling it, or if his confessor has assigned an inappropriate satis-
faction. Peter does concern himself, if marginally, with the confes-
sor's duties, when he is a priest, and takes a hard line in punishing
any priest who fails to respect the confidentiality of confession. But
his account places the question of the ordinary minister to the side,
given his view that confession to a priest, indeed, confession at all,
is optional and not required, and that, in any case, it is not the
point in the sacrament when the moral status of the penitent is
altered. Penance, as he sees it, is a transaction between the penitent
and God. Insofar as there is a human minister of penance, it is the
penitent's own conscience. In this respect, in assigning to the
different aspects of penance the terms sacramentum and res sacramenti,
Peter holds that both the res sacramenti and the sacramentum are to be
found in contrition. The matter of the sacrament is God's forgiving
grace. It is a divine response to the sorrow for sin presented by the
760 CONCLUSION

penitent. This sorrow for sin, like all virtues, can be seen as a
product of the collaboration of the penitent's free will with cooper-
ating grace. It is by means of this virtue that God grants His
forgiveness to the penitent and it is by means of contrition that he
appropriates this grace. Confession, if any, is merely the outward
indication that the matter of the sacrament has already been given
and received through contrition.
As the foregoing analysis suggests, there is a lack of symmetry
between penance and the other sacraments, in the Lombard's
teaching, and in two respects. First, there is no human minister of
the sacrament other than the penitent himself. Second, there is no
physical medium that signifies and conveys grace. The penitent's
confession of the heart may be made in silence and solitude. None
the less, contrition, for Peter, is both the remission of sin and the
efficacious sign of the fact that this remission of sin has been
granted and internalized. As for exterior penance, it is neither a
sign of the remission of sin, nor does it effect it. It merely indicates
or gives formal recognition of the fact that the penitent has been
reconciled to God. The just-noted absence of a physical medium
aside, the logic and elegance of the Lombard's reasoning on pen-
ance has much to recommend it, both in itself and as a specific
application of the principles that hold pride of place in his sac-
ramental theology as a whole. The healing and sanctification of
Christians through the sacrament are absolutely primary; and
anything that interferes with this objective is to be dismissed or
drastically marginalized. In the event, this logic did not prove
powerful enough in Peter's day to eliminate the confessionists from
the game. The matter remained unsettled. And, when a new con-
sensus emerged in the next century, it was one that required sincere
contrition but that made confession, and, specifically, the state-
ment of the words of absolution by the priest, the moment when the
penitent was reconciled. This step was taken in the name of an
Aristotelian analysis of sacramental causality not available in the
Lombard's day and in the effort to heighten the importance of the
institutional side of penance. This latter consideration is one that
Peter is perfectly prepared to undercut, in giving pride of place to
the penitent's intentions and the penitent's growth in virtue. This is
not to say that he ignores, or underrates, the objectivity of God's
forgiveness. What it does say is that, in this sacrament at any rate,
the communication of divine grace can be objective and efficacious
without being physically manifested.
While, Peter can be regarded as being within the pale on pen-
ance, even if somewhat extreme in his admission of confession to a
 CONCLUSION 761

layman and in the radical surgery he is willing to perform on the

priestly power of the keys, he strikes an idiosyncratic note in his
treatment of unction as well. Unique among his compeers, he
insists that a bishop should be the ordinary minister of this sacra-
ment. Another unusual feature of his handling of unction, in rela-
tion to his own sacramental theology in general, is that he says
nothing about the disposition which the recipient needs to bring to
the sacrament in order to profit from it. In other respects, his
theology of unction, laconic though it may be, brings together the
range of opinions that existed in his day on what the sacrament had
been instituted to accomplish; and in this sense, it is as synthetic as
it is non-problematic. Peter holds the sacramentum to be the oil used
in unction and the res sacramenti to be the remission of sins. In
addition, it imparts physical healing, if God wills it, when it is the
unction administered to the sick, and the spiritual strengthening of
viaticum, when it is administered to the dying. Since a person may
be seriously ill or in danger of death more than once, unction is
repeatable. Like confirmation, it is not a sacrament of necessity.
But Peter condemns more harshly people who neglect unction out
of disrespect for the rites of the church. The very perfunctory
discussion which he allots to unction reflects the fact that, like
confirmation, it ranked very low on the list of sacraments that
inspired controversy at this time. Oddly, that same characteristic
fails to take note of the substantial changes in the understanding
and practice of unction which this sacrament had undergone since
the days of the early church, changes which neither Peter nor
his contemporaries felt strongly motivated to justify, or even to
mention.
In considering holy orders, Peter makes a decisive move away
from the canonists' tendency to view clerics merely as functionaries
with particular job descriptions, qualifications, and impediments,
and presents, instead, a broad-gauged theological understanding of
holy orders as a sacrament. Each of the seven grades of holy orders,
for Peter, signifies and makes efficacious in the ministry of its
recipient the various modes of service performed by Christ in His
own personal ministry. As this res sacramenti is internalized by the
properly disposed recipient, it empowers him to perform his own
duties vis-à-vis his fellow Christians and it also grants him the
grace that enables him to carry out this imitatio Christi in his own
inner life. In this respect, the ordinand receives the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, although Peter does not coordinate the particular gifts or
virtues in question with the different grades of orders. Peter sees the
culminating clerical office as the Eucharistie ministry of the priest.
762 CONCLUSION

He treats the ranks of bishop, archbishop, and pope not as grades

of holy orders beyond the priesthood but as dignities or ranks
within the priesthood, referring to the scope of their jurisdiction in
church governance and to the forms of sacramental ministry which
bishops alone can perform, such as confirmation, ordination, and,
for Peter, unction. He is not interested in the juridical interrela-
tionships of clerics in these various ranks, or with the relations of
regnum and sacerdotium, which he leaves to the canonists and the
publicists in his division of labor. Peter also considers other official
functions within the church that, in his view, convey rank, although
they are not new grades of holy orders and although they may be
exercised, in some cases, by people who are not ordained at all.
These include prophets, poets, and priests who have foresight.
Musicians as well as poets hold a rank within the church, for the
contribution which they make to the inspiration and edification of
the Christian people and to the embellishment of the liturgy
through the power of their art.
Peter devotes more attention here than elsewhere in his sac-
ramental theology to the conveying of the res sacramenti in ordina-
tion. In his treatment of holy orders, there is more of a balance
between this side of the sacrament and the recipient's appropria-
tion of it than is typical, for Peter. His handling of this subject is
symmetrical with the way he deals with the qualifications of the
minister of the Eucharist. In this case, as well, he is equally
supportive of the reasoning of the canonists. While he is uncon-
cerned with such matters as age qualifications, he is supremely
interested in the intentions, faith, and canonical status of the minis-
ter no less than that of the recipient of ordination. Heretics,
schismatics, and excommunicates cannot validly ordain, in his
view, for precisely the same reasons why they cannot validly conse-
crate the Eucharist. In the case of this one sacrament, Peter departs
from one of his general rules by granting that there is also a form of
immorality, namely simony, that is an impediment to valid ordina-
tion for both the minister and the recipient. In his eyes, simony is
also grounds for depriving a cleric of office after the fact. Peter
admits that ignorance as to the true state of the minister or the
ordinand, on either side, may be a mitigating factor, even as
pastoral need may be in the case of a non-simoniac ordained by a
simoniac whose deposition would be a serious deprivation to the
lay people he serves. So strong is Peter's horror of the sin of simony
that, in this single case, he allows the immorality to stand as a
barrier, obstructing God's grace from reaching the ordinand and
from enabling him to perform the clerical functions that it would
 CONCLUSION 763

otherwise authorize him to undertake in his ministry. A fortiori, for

Peter, such a state would prevent a cleric from making use of the
grace of holy orders in his personal sanctification. But, lacking such
impediments, this res sacramenti is conveyed by the bishop's laying
on of hands as the physical sacramentum, and it imparts an indelible
clerical character to the recipient.
The single sacrament that evoked the most controversy in the
twelfth century and that warranted, for Peter, the lengthiest exposi-
tion, is marriage. In some ways his approach to marriage can best
be appreciated by comparing it with penance and holy orders. As
with penance, and symmetrical to a significant extent with his
treatment of it, marriage, for Peter, involves more than one stage in
the joining of the couple. In his view, it is the stage expressing their
intentionality, and not a later, optional, and physical expression of
that intentionality, that is determinative in creating a change of
status. Thus, with respect to marriage formation, it is not the
betrothal, which promises future consent, and not the sexual con-
summation that normally follows a marriage, but the present con-
sent of marriageable parties, freely and consciously given at the
time of the wedding, that makes the marriage. Just as Peter rejects
the confessionists on penance, in arguing that confession, if any, is
strictly ex post facto, so he defends the principle of consent in
marriage formation against the argument of the consummationists
who urge that, while consent is required, it is not sufficient, and
that the marriage is ratified, perfect, and indissoluble only after it
has been consummated. In both cases, Peter develops a parallel
line of reasoning in support of consent, and contritionism; and, in
both cases, it is the consummationism and confessionism of Gratian
that is the chief challenge he wants to overcome and a major source
of the material that he uses against this opponent.
Peter's insistence on the sufficiency of the intentional stage in
marriage formation is so thoroughgoing that he acknowledges the
validity of clandestine marriages lacking in any witnesses, parental
consent, or priestly blessing, much as he would like couples ponder-
ing such a course of action not to follow it on grounds of enlight-
ened self-interest. In contrast with his defense of contritionism in
penance, however, Peter does require a sensible sign as the vehicle
of the spouses' present consent. Typically, this is an exchange of
vows expressed verbally. But, it may be a non-verbal means of
signifying their consent, so long as it is a physically perceptible
sign. Once such a marriage has been formed, it is sacramental,
even if it is never consummated. Like the marriage of the Virgin
Mary and St. Joseph, it is a union of minds and hearts, a spiritual
764 CONCLUSION

union in which the spouses pledge their fidelity and their commit-
ment to a permanent common life. This sacrament signifies the
spiritual union of Christ and the church. If this already valid and
sacramental marriage should be consummated in the sequel, as is
usually the case, the physical union of the spouses is also a sacrament.
It manifests and reinforces the spouses' spiritual union and it signifies
the institutional union of Christ and the church. Unlike penance, in
this case the external manifestation of the intentional state that is of
the essence is regarded by Peter as a sacrament as well.
As with penance, there is no consideration in Peter's discussion
of marriage formation of who the ordinary minister of the sacra-
ment is. In both cases, however, the implicit answer to this ques-
tion is that the recipient, or recipients, perform this function for
themselves or for each other. As with penance, Peter seeks to
remove obstructions that would limit its availability to Christians,
so far as possible. He is generous on the matter of remarriage, both
for widowed persons and for a number of categories of persons
whose marriages have been dissolved or placed, in effect, in limbo,
by the extended absence and presumed death of a spouse or by the
spouse's sexual dysfunction. At the same time, there is a striking
and major discrepancy between Peter's treatment of marriage and
penance, more important than the need for a physical means of
indicating consent and the sacramentality of its sexual expression,
which must be noted side by side with the many ways in which his
treatment of these two sacraments is parallel. In penance, the res
sacramenti is the grace of God's forgiveness, communicated in the
penitent's contrition. He receives sanctifying grace, as well as the
opportunity to undergo moral education and improvement. On the
other hand, while Peter certainly thinks that marriage affords an
alternative to sin and while he regards it as a school for virtue, the
union of Christ and the church, the res sacramenti signified by
marriage, is a theological and ecclesial reality already in existence
whether or not any two people marry. Moreover, the marital
consent which constitutes and initiates their union is not seen by
Peter as a medium though which divine grace is transmitted to
them. Their marital consent, and their sexual expression of it in the
standard marriage, are seen as sacraments, but as sacramental
signs only. They each signify a divine reality but neither is an
efficacious channel ofthat reality in the common life of the spouses.
For the Lombard, therefore, marriage, alone among the sacra-
ments, remains a still-Augustinian and pre-Victorine sacrament.
In the light of Peter's own doctrine of sacraments in general,
marriage is sub-sacramental.
 CONCLUSION 765

A comparison between Peter's handling of marriage and his

treatment of holy orders is also instructive in clarifying what he
does, and does not do, with his doctrine of marriage. In both cases,
these are sacraments received only by some but not by all Chris-
tians. The persons receiving these sacraments do so out of a calling
to lead a particular kind of life, with the intention of receiving its
authorizations, and embracing its responsibilities and commit-
ments, as the church intends, for the service of the Christian
community. Selfish, immoral, or manipulative abuses of the powers
that these sacraments convey are equally to be deplored in the case
of each of them. With respect to the clergy, what is granted is the
capacity to function as an instrument of Christ's own ministry and
to exercise it in their own communities. With respect to marriage,
what is granted to the spouses is the right to engage in sexual
relations, legitimately and without the imputation of sin, for the
sake of the goods of marriage. In Peter's eyes, these goods include
the propagation of offspring for the building up of the Christian
community and the rendering of the marriage debt, which he views
less as a purely remedial activity that prevents spouses from seeking
illicit sexual satisfaction than as an opportunity for spouses to strength-
en their bond of mutual fidelity and to grow in unselfishness and
equality in their life together. Just as the right to exercise clerical
faculties is unique to holders of clerical office, so the right to sexual
relations pertains, legally and morally, only to married people.
So much for the parallels. The lack of symmetry between these
two sacraments is also noteworthy. If a would-be ordinand fails to
present a proper intention, Peter holds that he receives the sac-
ramentum tantum in his ordination, and not the res sacramenti as well,
just as an unworthy or unbelieving adult baptizand receives only
physical ablution, and not the spiritual ablution of baptism. On the
other hand, Peter is well aware of the fact that many people marry
for mercenary, political, erotic, or other self-serving reasons, and
that their marital relations, even when philoprogenitive, are often
motivated by the same kinds of sub-theological considerations. Yet,
he does not deny to such spouses a valid, sacramental marriage,
despite the faulty intentionality which they may bring to marital
consent. The spouses may be united in mind and heart, but for
thoroughly worldly and unchristian reasons. Still, the marriage
stands. The marital rights of the spouses are not withdrawn from
them. Aside from a defective intention, Peter recognizes simony as
an impediment to holy orders and as a basis for deposing a cleric
who obtained his post in this way. Serious crime, notably uxoricide,
is one of the impediments to marriage that he accepts, as prevent-
766 CONCLUSION

ing a widower made such by his own crime from marrying again.
In other respects, a person's previous moral history, even if he
supplies disinformation about it to a potential spouse, is not seen by
Peter as an impediment to marriage or as grounds for nullification.
Yet, while there are a range of disciplinary actions that can be
taken to suspend or to disqualify a simoniac priest, or one abusing
the confidentiality of confession, no analogous range of disciplinary
actions exists for punishing irresponsible spouses or for terminating
their marriage on grounds of immorality. Marriages continue to
remain in force even if they lack the notes of fidelity and perma-
nence understood to be present in the marriage vows. These imbal-
ances reflect two discrepancies between holy orders and marriage,
which the Lombard's treatment of marriage does not eliminate.
One is the fact that simony, in his view, does interfere with the
efficacy of ordination, as a means of authorization and as a channel
of grace to the recipient. But, since he envisions no transmission of
grace in marriage, the immorality of spouses or their abuse of their
authority cannot be seen as obstructions, from a sacramental
standpoint, however much such behavior may place them in
jeopardy ethically speaking. Secondly, Peter is forced to recognize
the fact that, alone among the sacraments, and apart from the
church's sacramental view of it, marriage already exists as a legal
and social institution. As such, it is thought of, governed, and
practiced in ways that are not necessarily commensurate with the
theological values that he wants to impart to it. This is a fact that
he sometimes tries to accommodate, and sometimes not.
Consistent with his desire to focus on what marriage is all about,
in a positive sense, Peter devotes more of his attention to the
problem of marriage formation than to the impediments to mar-
riage, grounds for nullification, and grounds for separation. He
agrees that marriage was instituted in Eden before the fall and that
sexual reproduction was part of God's original plan; after the fall,
marriage was reinstituted for the purpose of avoiding fornication as
well. Peter takes a fairly generous line on sexual relations in mar-
riage by observing that the avoidance of fornication means the
protection of nature and the service of marital fidelity; it is not just
the repression of vice. His stress on the idea that the union of bodies
typical of most marriages, although not required, is no less sac-
ramental than the union of souls that it expresses, dignifies the
sexual relations of spouses. A procreative intention, whether
Christian or sub-Christian, removes all blame from the lust that
unavoidably accompanies these relations. Rendering the marriage
debt, a requirement that takes precedence over the counsels sug-
 CONCLUSION 767

gesting abstention during certain seasons, is, at worst, minimally

sinful. Peter draws the line only at marital relations pursued for the
sake of selfish erotic pleasure alone. His handling of the sexual
rights of the spouses is uniformly egalitarian, whether it comes to
rendering the marriage debt, conjugal chastity and fidelity, volun-
tary temporary withdrawal from marital relations, or the serious-
ness with which the sworn testimony of both spouses is to be taken
in marriage litigation. Included in the present consent that makes
the marriage is marital affection. This concept, as a marital inten-
tion, is one that Peter borrows from the canonists. He agrees with
them in defining it as the commitment to accord to one's spouse the
honor, dignity, and respect owed to a lawfully wedded spouse as
such. With this notion he sets to one side both an excessively
idealistic assessment of what most people can be expected to bring
to their intention to marry, and a purely erotic understanding of
married love, as well as the common lives that may be lived by
like-minded relatives who are not thereby married. The same idea
underlies his admission that unforced present consent creates a
sacramental marriage even when the spouses use their marriage in
the service of ends that he regards as inapropriate or even dishon-
est. The same holds true for marriages that may lack the goods of
fidelity, permanence, and offspring.
In turning from marriage formation and the morality of sex in
marriage to impediments, the single most notable feature of Peter's
treatment of this range of questions is the coherent order he im-
poses on the material, coherent not only in and of itself but also in
relation to the principle of consent as making the marriage. He
begins by considering circumstances that would impede consent or
lead to defective consent, such as coercion, fraud, and error. He
next discusses the positive attributes possessed by marriageable
persons, insofar as they have not ceded these rights freely or to
forces beyond their control. Under the heading of involuntary or
congenital impediments he takes up sexual dysfunction and insan-
ity. The former may be temporary or permanent; the latter he sees
as an unchangeable and incurable condition. All other impedi-
ments, such as servile status, vows, disparity of cult, age, cogna-
tion, and affinity, he places under the heading of impediments that
exist not in the nature of things but as a consequence of choice,
accident, or conventional regulations subject to change.
Peter is firm on the need for free consent, although he thinks
there are cases in which a union based initially on coercion, which
was therefore not sacramental when it came into being, may ripen
into true sacramentality if the dissenting spouse undergoes a
768 CONCLUSION

change of heart within the course of married life. Fraud always

obviates a valid marriage. Error does so when it is error as to an
individual's personal identity and legal status, but not if it is error
as to his fortune and condition. Noting that the rules have changed
over time as to who is marriageable, Peter observes that there are
also basic natural incapacities that impede marriage. His handling
of frigiditas, or impotence, reflects the idea that, notwithstanding
the fact that it is consent, not consummation, that makes the
marriage, marriages normally are consummated; and, the inability
to do so constituties grounds for annulment, in that impotence
makes impossible both the procreative and the remedial reasons for
the institution of marriage. Peter also adheres to the contemporary
distinction between natural impotence and impotence caused by
witchcraft. He is quite as unhelpful as anyone else at the time in
explaining how reliable proof of non-consummation can be obtained,
although he also expresses a minority viewpoint both in acknowl-
edging that sexual dysfunction can afflict females as well as males
and by granting wives as much credibility in court as husbands in
litigation on this point. He is also more generous than most in
allowing the dysfunctional partner, no less than the other spouse, to
remarry if the dysfunction vanishes after the original marriage has
been dissolved. For its part, insanity or mental incapacity renders
persons incapable of giving informed consent and of participating
in the union of minds and hearts that constitutes marriage. Yet,
and unsymmetrically with his treatment of frigiditas, Peter holds
that this condition prevents a marriage from being formed; but, if it
should supervene after a marriage has come into being, it provides
no grounds for nullification, any more than any other illness or
misfortune that may supervene, or the discovery that a spouse is
sterile.
Peter next turns to the second class of impediments, those con-
ditioned by convention, circumstance, or free will. He takes up
illicit sexual behavior before or outside of marriage, and rules that,
while fornication provides grounds for a separation in which nei-
ther partner may remarry, sexual misconduct before marriage is not
an impediment to marriage in the first place. He does not view rape
either as an impediment to marriage or as grounds for making a
marital claim, but rather as a sexual sin which, like other kinds of
illicit sexual relations, is a sin against marriage and which, in this
case, is a crime as well. As with sexual sins, the taking of vows of
celibacy, the entry into holy orders, and the commission of the
serious crime of uxoricide are matters of choice. But unlike sexual
sins, they all impede marriage; and the first two are grounds for
 CONCLUSION 769

nullification if subsequently discovered. For its part, servile status

is an accident which may occur voluntarily or not. Peter does not
regard it as an impediment to marriage, so long as a servus does not
seek to dissimulate his real status in making a marriage with a free
person whose status would be disparaged thereby, and so long as
the masters of any servi involved give their consent. In Peter's view,
a married person should obtain his spouse's consent if he seeks to
accept servile status. But he cannot force that status upon his
spouse willy nilly, nor dismiss the spouse on that account. Also
circumstantial is captivity, which does not terminate a marriage per
se. But Peter is more generous than most in leaving open to negotia-
tion the status of the relict spouse who remarries, if and when the
absent spouse returns.
The other obstacles to marriage, which include disparity of cult,
age, cognation, and affinity, are all treated under the heading of
impediments defined by convention and as subject to change, even
though one might think of age and cognation as naturally deter-
mined and of religious commitment as a matter of choice. Still,
Peter points out that the rules governing all these matters are not
the same in all times and places, and have been altered in the
course of church history. They are not graven in stone. With
respect to disparity of cult, he thinks that St. Paul's dispensation
from the rule barring mixed marriages in 2 Corinthians was unau-
thorized, and that Paul, and the patristic authorities who com-
pounded this error, should be rejected in favor of the Old Testament
rule, also stated by Paul in 1 Corinthians, in his permission to
dismiss an unbelieving spouse. Peter presents this latter rule as one
that was not abrogated in the Christian dispensation and as still in
force. The policy he prefers also makes sense, in his estimation,
since he thinks that spouses who have differing religious beliefs will
lack the union of minds and hearts that defines marriage. If such a
situation should arise in an otherwise valid marriage, Peter regards
it as spiritual fornication. As with physical fornication, it would
entitle the aggrieved spouse to dismiss the unbelieving one, but it is
not grounds for an annulment. He hopes that, if such a circum-
stance should arise, this fact will encourage the believing spouse to
work for the conversion of the unbelieving spouse, and for recon-
ciliation with him or her. Peter follows the standard Roman law
principles on age requirements, of twelve for girls and fourteen for
boys, recognizing at the same time their conventional character
and the fact that Justinian's code is not in force everywhere. His
handling of consanguinity and spiritual affinity does not depart
from consensus views on the substance of these impediments. But
770 CONCLUSION

Peter is notably impatient with these subjects, spending little time

elaborating them. He observes, in so doing, that it is pointless to
waste energy on these man-made rules, rules from which, in any
case, people are dispensed so frequently.
Altogether, impediments and grounds for nullification and
separation are less to the point, for Peter, than the positive qualities
a sacramental marriage has or should have. He sees marriage as
the state of life to which most people are called and whose consola-
tions they need. These same consolations were ordained by God in
His institution of marriage. As well as serving as a remedy for sin,
they afford couples the opportunity to grow in virtue and in an
unselfish mutual affection. This being the case, Peter generally
seeks to relax the conditions enabling people to marry, rather than
taking a harsh, legalistic, ascetic, or punitive approach. He is
consistent in centering marriage on the free and unfeigned present
consent of the spouses. The content ofthat consent always includes
marital affection and the union of minds and hearts that is constitu-
tive of the marriage. In the vast majority of cases, marital consent
also includes consent to the expression and reinforcement of that
spiritual union in the sexual union of the spouses. Peter sees both
kinds of union as sacramental. The use of sex for the ends of
marriage he frees, virtually completely, from any imputation of sin.
By the same token, although the spiritual bond is of the essence for
him, impotence can be accepted as a real and reasonable impedi-
ment to marriage. The major advance Peter makes in the theology
of marriage is his persuasive defense of the principle of consent in
marriage formation. He offers this teaching in the light of his stress
on intentionality more generally and in the effort to defend the
sacramentality of the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Yet, he pre-
sents the principle of consent in such a way as to address the values
and concerns articulated by his opponents on the consummationist
side of the debate. In his treatment of sex in marriage, he is
typically more generous and more egalitarian than they are. Peter's
second major contribution is to impose a coherent order on the
subject of impediments. While it has to be said that, in relation to
his sacramental theology as a whole, his doctrine of marriage falls
short, in that he does not see either the spiritual or the physical
union of spouses as a means of grace, he does see marriage as
assisting spouses in the acquisition of virtue and merit.
Looking at Peter's sacramental theology over all, this point is one
among several areas in which his handling of a particular sacra-
ment fails to square with his theology of sacraments in general. He
does not discuss the topic of the ordinary minister in the case of
 CONCLUSION 771

either marriage or penance. His understanding of penance as con-

trition means that a physical medium of grace is not required in
this sacrament; any subsequent external manifestation of the peni-
tent's reconciliation is a sign of the sacrament and is not a sacra-
ment itself. In the case of unction, Peter omits the issue of the
disposition or intention that the recipient needs to bring to the
sacrament in order to receive it worthily and to appropriate its
grace fruitfully. In the case of holy orders, and uniquely so, he
allows a moral failing, simony, to obstruct the efficacy of grace in
the valid administration and reception of the sacrament. This is the
one and only instance in which Peter accepts the idea that the
personal weaknesses of fallible men can block the workings of the
sacraments despite their God-given power. It is a departure from
his more general tendency to see the ministers of the sacraments
merely as instruments in their transmission of divine grace. These
anomalies aside, Peter's treatise on sacramental theology imparts a
higher level of coherence and consistency to the topic, as a field of
systematic theological inquiry, than it had yet received in western
Christian theology. Peter's sacramentology makes frequent use of
canonical insights and material, especially from Gratian, even
though Peter finds himself on the opposing side of controversies,
such as consent versus consummation and contritionism versus
confessionism, as much if not more than he agrees with Gratian.
Even when the two masters are in accord, Peter often offers a
different rationale for his conclusions. The single most important
feature of Peter's teaching on the sacraments is his acceptance and
elaboration of the Victorine view of a sacrament as a sign that
effects what it signifies. His adoption of this principle puts it at the
center of scholastic sacramental theology in the high Middle Ages.
The Lombard's treatment of the sacraments also puts sacramental
theology on a continuum with his doctrine of God and God's
relations with His creation, with his soteriology, and with his
understanding of the relations between intention and action, and
grace and free will, in the moral life. The healing, the sanctification,
and the growth in personal virtue and merit for which the sacra-
ments were instituted are likewise means by which God's power
and mercy and man's effort combine to bring the Christian through
the life in via to the patria at the end of time.
It is as the culmination of that journey that Peter views Last
Things, the subdivision of systematic theology embracing the final
set of questions included in his Sentences. In relation to that of his
scholastic confrères, Peter's eschatology is notable for its resolute
refusal to raise questions that he thinks are unanswerable and for
772 CONCLUSION

his equally firm dismissal of anything that smacks of wild-eyed

speculation. He makes no concessions whatever to the chiliastic
imagination or to creative apocalypticism. This norm is one he
applies to his appropriation of the work of his own contemporaries
and also to his patristic authorities and to the New Testament
itself. The single most striking index of Peter's outlook here is his
total omission of the Antichrist from his end-of-time scenario, even
though he had developed a cogent and independent position on
that subject in his Pauline exegesis. He leads off, instead, with, the
general resurrection and the second coming of Christ. On balance,
he is far less interested in catering to curiosity about the sequence of
events leading to the last judgment than he is in discussing its
consequences in the assignment of souls to their posthumous
habitations. He imports into the last judgment the Gregorian sub-
division of four categories of souls, evaluated in terms of how they
have lived their lives on earth and the moral state in which they
died. Both the saints who have demonstrated their merit by their
charity and their works of supererogation and the unregenerate and
unrepentant sinners who have confirmed their damnation by their
evil choices up to the end are already judged, and saved or damned
accordingly. There are other sinners, less comprehensively evil,
who will be judged and condemned, as well as repentant sinners
who died penitent but without having fully expiated the sins on
their consciences, who will be judged and saved, after a purificatory
interim in Purgatory.
In dealing with the fates of the inhabitants of Heaven and Hell,
Peter seeks to integrate this subject into the larger themes inform-
ing his systematic theology. One of these themes, orchestrated
throughout the Sentences, is his reformulation of Augustine. Here, he
sees the damned and the saved as expressing, eternally, the city of
man and the city of God. He also coordinates Last Things with the
idea of signs and things, use and enjoyment, applied to his view of
the Christian life and his doctrine of God. Peter offers a strong
defense of the principle that the judgment of God is just, and that it
is merciful. Since they are attributes of a divine essence that is
radically simple, God's justice and mercy are identical. Further,
Peter maintains, the damned have fully earned their punishment.
As with the wills of the fallen angels, moreover, their wills remain
free in the next life. Deprived, for all time, of access to the grace
that they have spurned in this life, they will continue to consent to
evil, and to evil alone. Thus, they will continue to merit their
punishment, eternally. None the less, God punishes them less than
they deserve, and He mercifully spares them from the sight of the
 CONCLUSION 773

joys of the blessed, which would only increase their suffering. The
blessed will experience God's justice and mercy with even greater
intensity. Like the angels confirmed in the good, they too will be
freed totally from any obstacle to their willing of the good. They
will have everything they have hoped for, and more. Most of all,
having completed their journey home from the regio dissimilitudinis,
they will have recovered a full humanity, indeed, a greater human-
ity than that possessed by man before the fall. Having collaborated
with grace in working out their salvation, through the good use of
earthly things, including the sacramental signs that are efficacious
means of grace as well as things, they will have moved, through and
past the mutabilities of the world in time and the time-bound
modes of human cognition and volition to the direct, unconditioned
love and knowledge of the immutable God Himself, the supreme
being and the supreme good Whom they can now enjoy eternally
and without impediment.
This conclusion to Peter's Sentences thus connects the entire enter-
prise of systematic theology with the basic doctrine of God stated at
the outset of that work and the basic principles and emphases that
govern his exposition throughout it. Peter never forgets that the
subject of subjects is the deity. Nor does he forget that this deity's
ordinances, in the order of nature and the order of grace, have been
laid down for the sake of man. They become meaningful, and
functional, in man's instruction and redemption by providing the
means, starting with Christ's saving work, by which man's latent
desire for the good can be activated and energized. Notwithstand-
ing the depression of the will in fallen man, man's will can and
must collaborate with God's grace. This collaboration grows easier
with the partial relaxation of the depression of the will when man is
redeemed and justified. Together, God's grace and man's freedom
continue to cooperate in the growth of virtue and merit in the
ethical life and in the sacramental life. With the exception of the
body and blood of Christ given in the Eucharist, the gifts of grace
given by God are His effects, not God Himself. The moral progress
made by man is his sanctification, not his divinization, the recovery
of the image of God in himself, not a participation in the divine
nature. God's transcendence over His creation, His concession of
freedom and contingency to that creation, and His simultaneous
refusal to let its limitations circumscribe His power or frustrate His
mercy and love, are notes which Peter carries clearly and system-
atically throughout his presentation of Christian theology, from his
discussion of the knowledge of God to his eschatology. The end-
point, for the blessed, in which their mutability as creatures has
774 CONCLUSION

been overcome in their eternal enjoyment of God, still preserves

Peter's vivid sense that there are two distinct kinds of beings here
who are now joined in loving communion.
The force and cohesion of this vision of systematic theology yet
bears with it occasional inconsistencies, soft spots, and areas that
could be seen as requiring further reflection or refinement, not
merely in the light of some theology or other to come but in the
context of Peter's own century. This point can be made with
respect to Peter's address to philosophy, no less than to theology
itself. Peter goes a long way toward the clarification of theological
language and toward a constructive use of philosophy, and the
other artes, as ways of posing and of settling questions. In some
quarters he reflects a propensity toward Aristotelianism. His view
of human nature as a substantial and integral unity of body and
soul is central to his anthropology, his understanding of the in-
carnation of Christ, his ethics, and his sacramentology alike. This
propensity makes these topics hospitable locations for the expan-
sion of these themes by thinkers of a still more Aristotelian bent. It
causes Peter to dismiss a Platonizing view of human nature that
would likewise influence the treatment of those related subjects. It
also inspires him to reject Boethius's definition of a person as the
individual substance of a rational nature, a definition he finds as
inapposite to human beings and to the human nature of Christ as it
is to the Trinitarian persons. None the less, in using the term
"substance" to refer to the divine nature, Peter resolutely and
deliberately avoids any particular philosophical acceptation ofthat
term. His use of it is specifically devoid of the Aristotelian sense of
substance as denoting a composite being made up of matter and
form that is susceptible to modification by accidents. In describing
the change in the Eucharistie elements, Peter formulates the prob-
lem in clearly Aristotelian language. At the same time, he is unable
to find an explanation, in that same vocabulary, for the anomaly
involved when accidents have no substance in which to inhere,
much as he thinks that this is the vocabulary that needs to be used
in that connection.
In handling issues such as God's foreknowledge, providence,
predestination and free will or contingency, Peter parries the Aris-
totelian tendency to conceive of the problem in terms of a logic
framed in the first instance to describe events in rerum natura. He is
also unsympathetic to the Boethian, and, more recently, the Abe-
lardian, effort to impart a post-Aristotelian gloss to this question by
reframing it in terms of formal logic. Here, as with the parallel issue
of whether God could do different and better than He does, Peter
 CONCLUSION 775

insists on treating the question philosophically but as a problem in

metaphysics, looked at from the standpoint of the supreme being
and His attributes, not from the perspective of natural philosophy
or the inferences that can be made from certain kinds of proposi-
tions. He dismisses the debate over universals as inapposite to
theology, and, at the same time, makes constructive use of the
nominalist analysis of the unitary signification of nouns and verbs
in defending this metaphysical address to the themes of divine
omniscience and omnipotence. In these contexts, he never forgets
that what he is talking about is God, and not the created world or
the workings of the human mind. His selective criticism of Aris-
totelianism can also be seen in his substitution of relation, under-
stood in the sense of relative nouns, for relation, understood in the
sense of an Aristotelian accident modifying created substances, in
his delineation of the distinction between person and nature in the
Trinity and in the service of his vigorous effort to restore to the
understanding of the Trinitarian persons their individual deter-
minations, as structured eternally into the connections among the
members of the unmanifested Trinitarian family, while insisting on
the notion that God's action ad extra is not an adequate index of the
differences among those persons. If he offers a criticism of Aris-
totelianism in this treatment of Trinitarian relations, Peter's doc-
trine of God more generally can be seen as a thoroughgoing effort to
de-Platonize that subject, whether from the standpoint of emana-
tionism, participationism, exemplary causation, or the via negativa.
In still another quarter, his analysis of marriage, Peter is largely
comfortable with the Aristotelian view of causation, in labeling the
consent that makes the marriage the efficient cause and the ends of
marriage the final cause. He does not expressly describe the inten-
tions of the spouses as the formal cause, although his handling of
the topic would make it amenable to that denomination.
In these several ways, the Lombard shows that he is anything
but uninterested in or hostile to philosophy. He draws on it freely;
and, when he substitutes one version of it for another, he does so as
a matter of circumspect and principled choice. As indicated, he
seeks radically to de-Platonize western theology, with respect to the
Trinity, with respect to a preclusively economic view of the deity,
with respect to human nature, and with respect to the interaction of
man and God in the charismatic order. Thinkers with a more
Platonic or Neoplatonic perspective would feel the challenge of
reclaiming the terrain from him on these points. As we have noted,
there are areas in his Sentences that provide a natural habitat for
Aristotelianism, areas where more of this philosophy could be
776 CONCLUSION

added without stretching the fabric of Lombardian theology out of

shape. There are also points at which his theology presents a
challenge to the Aristotelians as well, and also to proponents of a
post-Aristotelian logic. Indeed, it may be argued that the very fact
of Peter's philosophical eclecticism, no less than his clear prefer-
ences in this field, was what made his Sentences a useful vehicle for
budding philosophers in the later medieval centuries.
There are also inconsistencies and soft spots in Peter's theology
that are less conditioned by his philosophical inclinations and
tolerances. In our view, Christology must be put at the head of the
list here. This is not because of his refusal to take what he thought
would have been a premature stand on the three opinions concern-
ing the hypostatic union. Much as the outsiders and obscurantists
in the Lombard's time and in the following generation may have
misunderstood him, charging him erroneously with Ghristological
nihilianism or with the proposing of a quaternity in the Trinity, his
own unwillingness to rush to judgment here, and his clear analysis
of the three opinions, should be counted as an advantage of Lom-
bardian theology, and not as a disadvantage. More important, and
more problematic, is his treatment of Christ's human nature. While
arguing that the exemptions and privileges received by the human
Christ were gifts of grace, not endowments of nature, and while
asserting that the human Christ was entirely consubstantial with
other men, Peter gives to the human Christ a psychology that is
more than human, an epistemology in which Christ is virtually
omniscient and in which He never had to undergo a learning
process, and a psychogenesis of ethical decision-making in which
the temptations suffered and resisted by Christ are alleged to have
been real temptations, although He is also held never to have
experienced passio, but only propassio and consensus. In addition,
Peter's decision to treat the virtues in connection with Christology,
although he treats vice and sin in connection with human nature
and the fall, is an impediment to his resolution of this discrepancy.
Since Peter's human Christ is functionally superhuman, His role as
a moral exemplar for man and His capacity to possess virtues such
as faith and hope, which involve incompletion by definition, are put
into question. Peter does not resolve the contradiction between the
human Christ, full of grace and wisdom, as he understands Him,
and the human Christ Who is like us in all but sin.
There are a few other theological inconsistencies in Peter's work,
notable and annoying if perhaps less fundamental in doctrinal
terms, which we have flagged above and here reprise. Peter's Eve is
consubstantial with Adam and equally a bearer of God's image and
 CONCLUSION 777

likeness in her soul. Yet, according to Peter, she was less rational
than Adam and her fall can be credited to her misuse of knowledge,
the lower of the two functions of the higher intellectual faculty, as
contrasted with Adam's misuse of wisdom. Along with the angelic
nature, human nature at all times is regarded by Peter as requiring
the assistance of grace in the development of virtue. Yet, he thinks
that non-Christians, who can be presumed to lack that grace, are
capable of possessing good faith and of developing virtue out of
their natural pietas. Through his natural endowment of reason, man
possesses, for Peter, the capacity to come to a positive natural
knowledge of God and to prove God's existence. What relationship
this faculty and aptitude bears to the knowledge, understanding,
and wisdom that he sees as gifts of the Holy Spirit Peter leaves
unexplained. Finally, notwithstanding the fact that he places on a
firm foundation the new Victorine conception of sacraments as
efficacious signs, severed from the Victorine idea that they are
really on a continuum with pre-Christian rites, Peter does not
extend his theory of the sacraments in general to all the sacraments,
fully and completely. There are asymmetries with respect to inten-
tionality in unction and with respect to the capacity of human
immorality to impede the efficacy of the administration and recep-
tion of the sacrament in the case of holy orders. The question of the
ordinary minister does not arise in the case of penance and mar-
riage. Penance lack a physical medium, in his understanding of
that sacrament. And marriage, while it signifies a res sacramenti and,
indeed, does so in a double sense, is not viewed by Peter as an
efficacious channel of grace to spouses, whether in their spiritual or
their physical union.
Both the strengths of the Lombard's achievement, the questions
that he deliberately leaves open, the areas in his theology in which
he presents different philosophical options and challenges, and the
topics on which he contradicts himself or fails to press the logic of
his position to its ultimate conclusions, all provided a wealth of
problems and opportunities for later theologians. So did the many
loa in the Sentences that offered natural homes for the new materials
and the new debates that lay on the immediate intellectual horizon
of western Christendom. The tradition launched by the Lombard's
Sentences was well served by the fact that it possessed a schema and
a methodology that could accommodate these new materials, in
whatever camp a commentator might choose to plant his standard.
It must also be said that Peter was fortunate in his critics. They
were, and they were perceived to be, men who were misinformed,
poorly educated, and hostile to scholarly progress, men, in short,
778 CONCLUSION

who could be dismissed as people who had nothing to contribute to

the development of mainstream western theology. It must also be
said that Peter was fortunate in his supporters, the scholastics who
took on his mantle and who made Lombardian theology tanta-
mount to mainstream Paris theology in the generation after his
death. How they rose to the challenges and opportunities presented
by his work is the subject of another investigation. The talents and
insights and the new instruments which they brought to this task
constitute their own endowment and their own contribution. The
terrain which that they were able to cultivate thereby was the
legacy of the Lombard.
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 INDEX OF NAMES

Abel, 207 omissions in, 48, 52; theological

Abelard, Peter, ν, ix, 5, 12, 17, 18, 44, language in, 96-104, 105, 106, 108,
47-51, 52, 54-55, 66, 67, 72, 76, 109, 110, 115, 119, 120, 126, 153,
85, 88, 90 η. 95, 96-104, 105, 106, 154; doctrine of God in, 100, 122,
108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 119, 228, 229, 230, 269, 271-75, 276,
120, 122, 128, 131, 136-37, 138 η. 277, 281, 282, 290; God's
129, 139, 141, 148, 150, 153, 154, foreknowledge, predestination,
160, 189, 194-95, 198, 199, 200, and providence in relation to
201, 202, 204, 212, 213, 219, 228, contingency, free will in, 269,
230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239, 241, 271-75, 276, 277, 281, 282, 290;
245, 247, 249, 253-60, 269-75, 276, whether God can do better or different
277, 281, 282, 284, 287, 288, 289, than He does, 54-55, 85, 290-92,
290-302, 304, 311, 313, 314, 293, 294-95, 296, 297; doctrine of
323-26, 328, 339, 345, 362, 365-66, Trinity in, 100-04, 105, 106, 108,
374, 388-89, 393, 394, 397, 400, 109, 110, 113, 115, 120, 126, 131;
409, 411, 413, 431, 432, 438, 444, Hexaemeron, 48, 49 n. 33, 255, 323,
453-55, 456-57, 458, 459, 463, 466, 324, 325, 519, 641; creation in, 48,
467-68, 469, 477-78, 483-84, 487, 255, 304, 323-26; fall of man in, 48,
493-94, 495, 496, 497, 500, 505, 49, 50, 325, 374, 388-89, 393, 394,
514, 534-35, 536, 540, 549, 566, 397; opposition to astral
567, 595, 600, 601, 606, 639 η. 433, determinism in, 325, 334;
640, 649, 650 η. 466, 774; as an Christology in, 139, 400, 409-10,
avant-garde thinker, 5, 48; 411, 412; as Peter Lombard's
Aristotelianism in, 5, 48; Platonism alleged source for habitus theory of
in, 57, 212, 213, 239, 245, 254-59, hypostatic union, 431; Christ's
493; doctrine of World Soul in, 51, saving work in, 48, 219, 345, 449,
212-13, 239, 249, 253-60, 324, 493; 453-55, 456-57, 458, 459, 463, 469,
as a logician, 49, 50, 54-55, 67, 76, 519, 641; Ethics, ix, 48 n. 29, 48;
83, 96, 98-100, 270-71, 274, 275, intentionalism in, 49, 50, 301-02,
276, 289, 290, 291-92, 294-95, 296, 467, 477-78, 483-84, 487, 519,
496, 777; nominalist argument in, 534-35, 549, 595; definitions of sin
85, 274, 285; Logica "ingredientibus", and virtue in, 301-02; faith in,
271, 274, 275; Dialectica, 259, 260; 493-95, 496, 497, 749; charity in,
Commentary on Romans, 48, 49 nn. 500; sacraments in, 519, 534-35,
30-31, 33, 189, 194-95, 196, 198, 536, 540, 549, 594-98; baptism in,
199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 290, 294, 519, 534-35, 540, 549, 595; infant
295, 453; commentaries on baptism, 534-35, 549, 595; penance
Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds, in, 519, 595, 600, 601, 604, 606;
409-10; sermons delivered as abbot marriage in, 519, 639 n. 433,
of St. Gildas, 49 η. 33, 409; Sic et 640-41, 650 n. 466; as criticized by
non, treatment of authorities in, 44, Alberic of Rheims, 17; by Bruno
50, 88, 253, 503; as a systematic the Carthusian, 160; by Gilbert of
theologian, 47—51; Theologia "summi Poitiers, 128, 136-37, 139,407-08,
boni", 48, 49, 51, 254, 257; Theologia 409; by Hugh of St. Victor, 293,
Christiana, 48, 49, 257, 290, 291, 292, 294; by Invisibilia dei, 141; by
293, 295; Theologia "scholanum", 48, Porretans, 54-55, 85, 292; by
49, 257, 258, 259, 274-75, 290, 294, Robert of Melun, 296; by Summa
295, 323, 324, 410, 492, 494; sententiarum, 113, 393-94; by
schema of theologiae, 47—50; logical William of St. Thierry, 189; by
inconsistencies in, 49-50; use of Peter Lombard, 85, 119-31, 148,
authorities in, 50-51, 90 n. 95; 150, 154, 212-13, 239-41, 254-60,
820 INDEX OF NAMES

287-88, 296-302; influence on 477, 478, 485; natural virtue in,

Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 198, 505, 515; cardinal virtues in, 505;
204; on Robert of Melun, 72, 199; faith in, 393, 494-95, 496; charity
on Roland of Bologna, 66, 67, 295 in, 500; seven deadly sins in, 485;
n. 13; on Sententiae Parisiensis I, 295 definition of sacrament in, 519 n.
n. 13; on Peter Lombard, 18, 88, 112, 521-22; baptism in, 52, 535,
253, 604. See also Abelardians; 536, 538; confirmation in, 520, 526,
Alberic of Rheims; Aristotelianism; 549, 550; Eucharist in, 544, 554,
Boethius; Chartrains; Commentarius 556, 558, 566-67, 568, 576; which
Cantabridgensis; Creation; Ethics; body Christ gave His disciples at
Exegesis, biblical; Gilbert of last supper in, 544; change of
Poitiers; God, doctrine of; Eucharistie elements in, 556, 558;
Hermannus; Hugh of St. Victor; benefits of communion in, 566-67,
Invisibilia dei; Logic; Neoplatonism; 568; penance in, 588 n. 310, 598,
Nominalism; Paul, St.; Peter 598 n. 333; unction in, 611-12, 612
Lombard; Plato; Platonism; n. 364; defense of consent as
Porretans; Robert of Melun; Roland principle of marriage formation in,
of Bologna; Sententiae Parisiensis I 641-42, 647, 655, 674; purely
and II; Summa sententiarum; remedial view of marriage in, 642,
Theological language, problem of; 647, 655, 674; change in rules
Trinity, doctrine of; William of St. governing marriage over time in,
Thierry; World Soul; Ysagoge in 633 n. 489, 664; marital
theologiam impediments, grounds for
Abelard, Peter, school of. See nullification, separation in, 665,
Abelardians 666, 674, 683, 691; interest in
Abelardians, v, 6, 47-48, 51-52, 57, Christian-Jewish polemics in, 52.
66, 78, 126, 156, 194-95, 198-99, See also Abelard, Peter; Angels;
202, 204, 207, 210, 230, 249, 253, Christ; Commentarius Cantabridgensis;
295 n. 131, 345, 437, 439, 477, 478, Ethics; God, doctrine of;
489, 493, 494-95, 496, 500, 505, Hermannus; Paul, St.; Logic; Man,
515, 519 nn. 112, 113, 520, 521-22, doctrine of; Sacraments; Sententiae
526, 535, 536, 538, 548, 549, 550, Parisiensis I; Sententiae Parisiensis II;
554, 556, 558, 566-67, 568, 578, Trinity, doctrine of; Ysagoge in
588 n. 310, 598 n. 333, 606, theologiam
611-12, 612 n. 369, 641-42, 644, Abraham, in St. Paul's epistle to the
647, 655, 660, 633 n. 489, 666, 674, Hebrews, 199; as interpreted by
676, 679; as avant-garde thinkers, 6; Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 199; by
biblical exegesis of, in Commentarius Robert of Melun, 199
Cantabridgensis, 56, 194-95, 198-99, Absalom, 170
202, 204, 207, 210; as systematic Acts of the Apostles, book of, 171, 219
theologians, 47-48, 51-52, 57; Adam, 172, 173, 212, 330, 331, 332,
schemata of their works, 51, 52; use 355, 356, 359, 360, 364, 365, 367,
of authorities in, 51; use of logic in, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374,
51; omissions in, 52; as illustrated 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381,
by Hermannus, 52; by Sententiae 388, 389, 390, 394, 395, 396, 397,
Parisiensis I and II, 52; by Ysagoge in 446, 462, 469, 488, 489, 526, 704,
theologiam, 52; whether God can do 731-33, 740, 741, 745, 747, 748,
better or different than He does in, 776-77; his motivation, in original
295 n. 131 ; doctrine of Trinity in, sin, 372, 373, 375-76, 378, 379,
51, 230, 249, 253; confirmation of 462, 469, 488, 733; in Honorius
angels in their fallen or Unfällen Augustodunensis, 378; in Sententie
state in, 345; human nature in, 437; Anselmi, 373; in William of
Christ's human knowledge in, 439; Champeaux, 378; in Hugh of St.
Christ's saving work in, 345; ethics Victor, 375-76, 378; in Robert
in, 393, 477, 478, 485, 489, 494-95, Pullen,· 373; in Peter Lombard, 379,
496, 500, 505, 515; doctrine of 462, 469, 488, 733; whether he
habitus in, 478; intentionalism in, sinned more seriously than Eve,
 INDEX OF NAMES 821
372, 374-76, 378-80, 396, 733, 777; unworthy priest in, 614. See also
in Sententie Anselmi, 374; in Roland Sacraments, Eucharist, penance
of Bologna, 374; in Porretans, 375, Ambrose, 202, 322, 395, 462, 468,
in Hugh of St. Victor, 375-76, 380; 481, 504, 536, 632, 637, 691, 747;
in Summa sententiarum, 374, 378, 380; his confusion with Ambrosiaster in
in Peter Lombard, 378-80, 396, twelfth century, 462; transmission
733, 777. See also Eve; Man, nature of original sin in, 395, 462, 481;
of, original sin in titles to be given to Christ in, 468;
Adam, bishop of St. Asaph, 433-34 sin in, 481; cardinal virtues in, 504,
Adam du Petit-Pont, logician, 433; 747; theological virtues in, 504;
Ars disserendi of, 433 baptism by blood and by desire in,
Adam of Balsham. See Adam du Petit- 536; defense of consent as principle
Pont of marriage formation in, 632, 637;
Adam of Wales. See Adam, bishop of remarriage, 691; on medicinal use
St. Asaph of garlic, in Commentarius
Adelard of Bath, 5 Cantabridgensis, 202; De paradiso, 322;
Alberic of Trois Fontaines, as Hexaemeron, 481. See also Christ;
testimonium of Peter Lombard, 31 Ethics; Exegesis, biblical; Man,
Alberic, master at school of Rheims, doctrine of; Sacraments, baptism,
opponent of Peter Abelard, later marriage
bishop of Bourges, 17 Ambrosiaster, 462. See Ambrose
Alcuin, 173, 183, 184, 185, 340; as Anonymous, Chartrain, commentator
exegete of the Psalms, 173, 183, on Martianus Capella, 314-15;
184, 185; as an authority on doctrine of Trinity in, 314-15;
creation, 340. See also Psalms, book World Soul as a force of nature in,
of 315; as equatable with God or Holy
Alexander III, pope, 65-66 n. 57, Spirit, 315; incorporeals in, 315;
429, 431, 432, 433, 434, 658; as not creation simul in, 315. See also
the same person as Roland of Chartrains; Creation
Bologna, 65-66 n. 57; as convenor Anonymous of Arras, monk, on Peter
of synod of Tours ( 1163), 429; Lombard as a biblical exegete, 157
consistory in Rome, 433, 434; Third Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 5,
Lateran council (1179), 429, 432; 6, 37, 38 n. 6, 42, 91, 218, 219, 220,
reform of St. Victor as ordered by, 322, 344, 349, 449, 451-53, 454,
431 ; support for principle of consent 455, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 463,
in marriage formation, 568. See also 464, 465, 466, 481, 486, 498, 742;
Adam of St. Asaph; Christology; as a Christian Aristotelian, 5;
John of Cornwall; Lateran council, as a harbinger of scholasticism, 6;
Third; Sacraments, marriage; as a likely teacher of Honorius
Tours, synod of; Victor, St.; Walter Augustodunensis, 37, 38 n. 6, 42;
of St. Victor; William of the White lack of interest in systematic
Hands theology in, 42; rationale for man's
Alexander of Hales, as adding creation in, 322; Christ's saving
distinction subdivisions to text of work in, 218, 219, 220, 344, 449,
Peter Lombard's Sentences, 78 n. 75 451-53, 454, 455, 457, 458, 459,
Alger of Liège, 520-21, 522, 555, 460, 461, 463, 464, 465, 466; on
561-62, 563, 564, 566, 591, 614; why fallen angels cannot be saved,
schema for organization of 344, 349; evil as non-being in,
sacraments in, 520-21, 522; change 481; faith in, 498; Cur deus homo,
of Eucharistie elements in, 555; 218, 344, 449, 451-53, 454, 457,
differential effects of Eucharistie 458. See also Angels; Christ; Ethics;
reception in, 561-62, 563, 564; Faith; Honorius Augustodunensis
spiritual benefits received by Anselm of Laon, 6, 17, 42, 43, 44-47,
communicant in, 561-62, 563, 564, 95, 164, 167, 180, 264, 276, 277,
566; defense of confessionism in 278, 289, 328-29, 365, 373, 374,
penance in, 591; validity of 376, 377, 475, 504, 508, 519, 533-34,
sacraments administered by 555, 570, 571, 592, 610, 670-71,
822 INDEX OF NAMES

706; as a theological conservative, contingency in, 268-69, 270,

6; his disciples as masters at school 272-73, 274, 275, 276, 287, 290;
of Rheims, 17; non-systematic doctrine of creation in, 332, 337;
character of his theology, 42, 43; human nature in, 118, 119; human
disinterest in problem of theological reproduction in, 386; psychology in,
language, 95; role in composition of 361; cardinal virtues in, 504, 505.
Glossa ordinaria, 164; as teacher of See also Abelard, Peter;
Gilbert of Poitiers, 167; analysis Aristotelianism; Boethius; Logic;
and criticism of authorities in, Ethics; Metaphysics; Philosophy;
44-47; God's ubiquity in, 264; Sacraments, Eucharist, marriage
predestination in the light of the Asaph, as an author of Psalms, 171
praevisa mérita of the elect in, 277, Augustine, ix, 5, 7, 36, 40, 47, 49, 50,
278, 289; on creation, 328-29; on 55, 58, 62, 70, 74, 77, 78-79, 80,
inferiority of Eve to Adam, 365; 83, 86, 87, 88, 94, 96, 102, 104, 111,
original sin in, 373, 374, 376, 377; 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119,
morality of commercial activity in, 120, 121, 122-24, 126, 127, 129,
180, 475; fear of the Lord in the 137, 144, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154,
moral life in, 508; pious fraud as a 159, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173, 175,
rationale for lying in, 475; definition 176, 180-82, 183, 184, 185, 186,
of sacrament in, 519; necessity of 189, 190, 200, 206-07, 208-10, 211,
infant baptism in, 533-34; time of 215, 216, 223, 229, 232, 233, 234,
baptism in, 46-47, 543-44, 570; 235, 236, 238, 242-45, 246, 249-50,
which body Christ gave His 251, 252, 258, 260, 268, 271-72,
disciples at last supper in, 553; 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 280,
change of Eucharistie elements in, 281, 283, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291,
555; administration of Eucharist to 293, 297, 298, 299, 301, 303, 317,
infants by chalice alone in, 570; 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324,
validity of Eucharist if administered 325, 326, 328, 329, 331, 332, 333,
by heretic, excommunicated, non- 334, 335, 336, 338, 339, 340, 341,
believing, or immoral priest, 571; 343, 346, 348, 351, 354, 355, 358,
defense of confessionism in penance 361, 362, 365, 366-67, 369, 371,
in, 592; unction as a rite of healing 373-74, 376, 380, 381, 382, 383,
in, 610; prior adulterous affair as a 384, 385, 386-97, 401-02, 403, 408,
marital impediment in, 47, 670-71; 412, 414, 417, 418, 420, 425, 426,
Last Things in, 706. See also Ethics; 439, 443, 464, 468, 473, 474-75,
Gilbert of Poitiers; Glossa ordinaria; 476, 477, 481, 483, 487, 488, 489,
Sacraments; Laon, school of 491, 492, 497, 498, 499, 500-01, 504,
Antoninus of Florence, as critic of 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511-13,
legend that Peter Lombard, Peter 518-19, 528, 529, 530, 532, 533-34,
Comestor, and Gratian were 535, 536, 537, 538-39, 541, 542,
brothers, 16 n. 5 546, 562, 564, 581, 584, 585, 587,
Aquinas, Thomas, 4, 8, 260, 501 n. 66, 599, 601, 611, 613, 629, 633, 639,
507 n. 89; Summa theologiae, 4 642, 657, 659, 660, 664, 670, 671,
Aristotle, 5, 36, 85, 92, 93, 99, 105, 672, 680, 687, 691, 695, 699, 701,
118, 119, 136, 137, 154,221-22, 702, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708-09,
229, 268-69, 270, 272-73, 274, 275, 710, 711, 712, 715, 716, 717,
276, 287, 289, 290, 332, 337, 361, 721-22, 726, 731, 734, 735, 747,
386, 436, 470, 504, 505, 554, 756; 752, 753, 764, 772; catena of his
reception of, in high Middle Ages, positions assembled by Florus of
92, 154, 221-22, 436, 470, 554, 756; Lyon, 86, 88; as a biblical exegete,
logic of, 36, 92, 99, 128, 268-69, 58, 62, 88, 153, 164, 165, 166, 171,
270, 272-73, 274, 275, 276, 287, 179, 180-82, 183, 184, 185, 189,
289, 290; as known by Rupert of 190, 206-07, 207 n. 136, 209-10,
Deutz, 36; Categories, 93; doctrine of 512; Enarrationes in Psalmos, 153, 164,
substance and accident in, 105, 136, 165, 166, 171, 173, 179, 180-82,
137; De interpretation*, 268, 272-73, 183, 184, 185, 189, 190, 512; on
274, 276; necessity, possibility, and gospels of John, Mark, Matthew,
 INDEX OF NAMES 823

209; on Pauline epistles, 189, 190, of evil in, 481; opposition to astral
206-07, 207 n. 136, 209-10; dispute determinism in, 325, 334; seminal
with Jerome on Galatians, 209-11; reasons, doctrine of, in Clarenbald
theological language in, 78-79, 96, of Arras, 317, 318, 319; in Thierry
111, 112, 115, 116, 122-24, 144, of Chartres, 309; in Summa
153, 229, 233, 234, 235, 238, 243, sententiarum, 331-32; in Peter
251, 301, 528, 529, 530, 716-17, Lombard, 336, 339; creation of
726, 753, 772; semantic theory angels in, 208, 243, 339, 343, 346,
in, 74, 78-79, 301, 528-30, 558, 348; creation of man and woman
716-17, 726, 753, 772; in De doctrina and its rationale in, 322, 329, 332,
Christiana, 74, 78-79, 301, 529, 558; 338, 343, 351, 354, 365, 369;
use of relative nouns as names of sensation in, 443; psychogenesis of
Trinitarian persons in, 111, 123-26, sin in, 361, 373-74, 473, 476, 481;
144, 153, 229, 233, 249, 251; original sin in, 50, 186, 187, 376,
doctrine of God in, 234, 235, 238, 380, 381, 382, 383, 386-97, 414,
268, 271-72, 273, 274, 275, 276, 735; effects of in, 376, 380, 382,
278, 279, 280, 281, 283, 287, 288, 383; transmission of in, 186, 187,
289, 290, 291, 293, 297, 298, 536; 386-97, 414, 735; exemption of
God's omnipotence in, 290, 291, Virgin Mary from, 414; Christology
293, 297, 298; God's foreknowledge, in, 153, 176, 208, 216, 223, 401-02,
predestination, providence in 403, 408, 413, 417, 418, 420, 425,
relation to contingency, free will in, 439, 464, 469; gemina substantia
268, 271-72, 273, 274, 275, 276, theory of hypostatic union in, 153,
278, 297, 280, 281, 283, 287, 288, 216,408,417,418,420,425;
289, 536; doctrine of Trinity, in De Christ's human knowledge in, 439;
trinitate, 80, 94, 96, 102, 104, 111, whether human Christ deserves
112, 113, 114, 115-16, 117, 119, dulia or latria in, 176; Christ's
120, 121, 122-24, 125-26, 127, 128, saving work in, 208, 464; cross as
129, 137, 139, 144, 148, 149, 150, devil's mousetrap in, 464; ethics in,
152, 153, 229, 232-33, 234, 235, 186, 200, 209, 215, 272, 289, 343,
238, 239, 242-45, 247, 249-50, 371, 383-85, 386, 389, 442, 474-75,
250-51, 260, 299, 358, 362, 366-67, 476, 477, 481-82, 483, 500, 504,
506, 507, 509, 721-23, 731; unitas- 506, 508, 509, 510, 511-13, 730,
aequalitas-conexio formula of, as used 733-34, 747; intentionalism in, 386,
by Thierry of Chartres and 481-82; free will and grace in, 272,
Clarenbald of Arras, 104, 128, 129; 289, 343, 371, 383-85, 442, 489,
analogies of Trinity in human soul 491, 734; in De gratia et libero arbitrio,
in, as used by Walter of Mortagne, 384; rejection of his irresistibility of
114, Hugh of St. Victor, 232-23, grace doctrine by twelfth-century
242, Summa sententiarum, 115-16, theologians, 289, 383-85, 389, 730,
117; Robert of Melun, 112-13, 362; 733-34; on whether a person who
Peter Lombard, 80, 122-24, 127, possesses one virtue possesses them
150, 152, 242-45, 260, 366-67, all, 476, 477; fear of the Lord as a
721-22, 731; as criticized by virtue in, 508; political obedience
Gilbert of Poitiers, 137, 139, 229, in, 200; gifts of Holy Spirit in, 508,
232-33, 242-45, 358, 362, 721-23; 509, 510; faith in, 497, 498; hope in,
creation in, 58, 62, 88, 208, 243, 499; charity in, 500, 747; virtues as
258, 309, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, modes of charity in, 476, 504, 506;
322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328, 329, Ten Commandments in, 510; lying
331-32, 333, 334-35, 336, 338, in, 186, 474-75, 483, 511-13; in
339-40, 341, 343, 346, 348, 354-55, Contra mendacium, 186, 474-75; in De
369, 481; in Genesis commentaries, mendacio, 512; in Enarrationes in
62, 88, 258, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, Psalmos, 512; in Enchiridion, 512; sin
322, 323, 324, 325, 340; creation against Holy Spirit in, 209, 215,
simul in, 324, 326, 332, 334-35, 336, 487; sacraments in, 36, 46, 47, 49,
339, 340; exemplary causes in, 258, 55, 87, 186-87, 354, 386-87,
317, 318, 321, 336; privative theory 518-19, 523, 529, 530, 533-34, 535,
824 INDEX OF NAMES

536, 537, 538-39, 541, 546, 562, 564, 165, 173, doctrine of Trinity in,
585, 587, 601, 629, 633, 639, 642, 261; creation in, 58, 321, 328, 337;
650, 657, 659, 660, 664, 670-73, angels, their fall and possible
680, 687, 691, 731, 752, 753, 764; salvation in, against Origen, 208;
definition of sacrament in, 49, Christ's human knowledge in, 439,
518-19, 532, 529, 530, 562, 564, 642, 440; fear of the Lord as a virtue in
752, 753, 765; baptism in, 55, 530, next life in, 508, 509; circumcision
533-34, 536, 537, 538-39, 541, 546; in, 530. See also Angels; Christ;
infant baptism in, 533-34, 535, 546; Creation; Ethics; Exegesis, biblical;
administration by triple immersion Origen; Trinity, doctrine of
in, 55, 541; compared with Berengar of Tours, critique of real
circumcision in, 530; marriage in, presence doctrine in Eucharist in,
36, 46, 47, 87, 186-87, 354, 386-87, 221, 517, 519, 552, 553, 560, 563.
629, 633, 639, 650, 657, 659, 660, See also Christ; Lanfranc of
670-73, 680, 687, 691, 731; Canterbury; Sacraments, Eucharist
morality of sexual relations between Bernard of Chartres, 305-06;
spouses in, 36, 186-87, 386, 650, commentary on Plato's Timaeus,
660; prior adulterous affair as a 305; cosmology of, 305-06;
marital impediment in, 46, 87, primordial causes, formae nativae in,
67-73; Last Things in, 40, 70, 83, 305; primordial matter in, 305, 306.
88, 176, 206, 290, 701-17; Antichrist See also Chartrains; Creation; John
in, 206, 207 n. 136; the four states of Salisbury; Matter; Plato,
of souls in the resurrection in, 176; Platonism
City of God, ix, 40, 70, 83, 88, 296, Bernard of Clairvaux, 6, 16-17, 18,
325, 338, 699, 701-17, 772; 41, 132 n. 107, 133 n. I l l , 139 n.
Confessions, view of time in, 271; 134, 149 n. 170, 174 n. 53, 219,
Contra academicos, 509; Contra 227, 228, 253, 363-64, 382, 449,
epistolam Parmeniani, 611, 613; Contra
455-57, 458, 459, 461, 462, 463,
Faustum, 481; Contra Maximinum,
466, 467, 469, 489, 494, 601; as a
251; De duabus animabus, 481; De
theological conservative, 6; as a
nuptiis et concupiscentia, 391; De vera et
falsa poenitentia, as erroneously
monastic reformer, 41; as a
attributed to him, 599; Eighty-Three promoter of Knights Templars, 455;
Diverse Questions, ix, 86, 299, 401-02, as a critic of Peter Abelard, 253,
403, 413, 426; Retractationes, 535, 494; his recommendation of Peter
538-39. See also Angels; Arianism; Lombard to Gilduin of St. Victor,
Christology; Creation; Ethics; 16-17, 18; rhetorical aims of his
Exegesis, biblical; Florus of Lyon; writing style, 601; doctrine of God
Free will, doctrine of; Grace, in, 227, 228; free will and grace in,
doctrine of; Jerome; Last Things; 363-64, 382, 489; Christ's saving
Man, doctrine of, original sin in; work in, 219, 449, 455-57, 458,
Manicheism; Origen; Paul, St.; 459, 460, 462, 463, 466, 467, 469;
Pelagianism; Peter, St.; Sacraments; sermons on Song of Songs, 455,
Theological language, problem of; 456; De consideration, 455. See also
Trinity, doctrine of Abelard, Peter; Christ; Free will,
doctrine of; Gilduin of St. Victor;
Grace, doctrine of; Peter Lombard;
Babylon, library of, 172; as birthplace Templars, Knights
of Antichrist, 206. See also Antichrist Bernard Silvester, 306-09, 314, 315,
Baltzer, Otto, 7 317, 320; creation in, 306-09;
Bandinelli, Roland. See Alexander III, pope primordial causes in, 306-07;
Basil the Great, as an exegete of the primordial matter in, 306-07;
Psalms, 165 cyclical cosmology in, 306, 307;
Bathsheba, 671 World Soul in, 308; creation of man
Bauemker, Clemens, 5 in, 307, 308; human nature in, 307,
Bede, 58, 165, 173, 208, 261, 321, 308, 320; human soul in, 308;
328, 335, 337, 439, 440, 508, 509, Stoicism in, 306, 307; Cosmographia,
530; as an exegete of the Psalms, 306-07, 308, 316, 317; commentary
 INDEX OF NAMES 825

on Martianus Capella, 308, 314. See Bréhier, Emile, 5

also Chartrains; Creation; Man, Brundage, James Α., 660
doctrine of; Martianus Capella; Bruno the Carthusian, as an exegete
Matter; Plato, Platonism, Stoicism of the Psalms, 158-60; pre-monastic
Bertola, Ermenegildo, 3, 4, 227-28 career as master at school of
Bertrada de Montfort, countess of Rheims, 159; use of authorities,
Anjou and mistress of Philip I of 159; critique of philosophers, 159;
France, 636, 638-39, 571-72 polysemous reading of text, 160;
Bischoff, Bernhard, 20 emphasis on tropology, 160
Bliemetzrieder, Franz, 42-43 Burgundio of Pisa, translator of John
Boethius, 19, 36, 85, 92-93, 96, 98, Damascene, Defideorthodoxa, 22
100, 103, 110, 111, 113, 114-15,
116, 117, 118, 133, 137, 138, 142, Calvary, 179
143, 144, 146, 150, 151 n. 174, 167, Cana, marriage of, Christ's miracle
215, 216, 223, 237, 247, 268-69, at, 617, 649, 650; as symbolizing
270, 272-73, 274, 281, 287, 300, functions of subdeacon in school of
327, 358, 399, 400, 402-03, 404, Laon, 617; as a sign of goodness of
405, 408, 413, 415, 416, 423, 424, marriage in Sententie Anselmi, 649; in
425, 429, 435, 436, 774; translations Summa sententiarum, 649; in Peter
of and commentaries on Aristotle's Lombard, 650. See also Sacraments,
logic, 19, 92, 143, 268-69; logic of, holy orders, marriage
85, 92, 143, 144, 774; in Rupert of Candidus, Arian antagonist of Marius
Deutz, 36; Topica, 143; De Victorinus, 239
hebdomadibus, as commented on by Cassian, John, critique of Origen on
Clarenbald of Arras; God's angels in, 339
foreknowledge, predestination, and Cassiodorus, as an exegete of the
providence in relation to Psalms, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171,
contingency, free will, in 174, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185; human
commentary on De interpretation, soul in, 362
268-69, 270, 272-73, 274, 281, 287; Chalcidius, translator of Plato's
in Consolation of Philosophy, 237, 268; Timaeus, 305. See also Plato;
theological works, 92, 133, 215, 399, Platonism
402-03, 409, 413; as commented on Chartrains, ν, 5, 8, 19, 20, 53, 95, 96,
by Gilbert of Poitiers, 133, 167; De 101-06, 111, 128, 129, 153, 154,
trinitate as commented on by 228, 229, 246, 254-57, 258, 303-19,
Thierry of Chartres, 309; analysis of 320, 321, 323, 324, 326, 336, 337,
habitus in Contra Eutychen et 340; as Platonists, 5; cosmological
Nestorium, 402-03, 413; theological interests as index of their
language in, 92-93, 98, 100, 110, contribution to twelfth-century
113, 114-15, 116, 117, 118, 125,216, renaissance, 8; as critics of
399, 404,408, 415, 416, 423, 424, Trinitarian theolgy of Peter
425, 429, 436; definitions of natura, Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers,
92, 137, 327; of persona, 92-93, 98, 101-05, 153; theological language in,
103, 110, 111, 113, 114-15, 116, 95-96, 313; negative theology in,
117, 118, 138, 142, 146, 150, 151 n. 95—96; positive Trinitarian theology
174, 247, 358, 405, 408, 415, 416, in, 101-05, 111, 128, 129, 154,
423, 424, 425, 435, 774; of substantia, 254-55, 256, 309, 310, 311, 313, 314,
125, 137. See also Aristotelianism; 315, 316-18; doctrine of God in,
Aristotle; Clarenbald of Arras; 228, 229, 309, 316; World Soul in,
Gilbert of Poitiers; Logic; Rupert of 102, 308, 309, 310, 312, 315, 318;
Deutz, Thierry of Chartres, exemplary causes in, 258, 305,
Theological language, problem of 306-07,310,311,312, 318, 319;
Boh,Ivan, 297 primordial matter in, 305-07, 310,
Bologna, school of, 65 311, 312, 317, 318; creation in,
Brady, Ignatius C , 15, 23, 24, 27-28, 303-19, 320, 323, 324, 326, 328,
29, 213, 260, 261, 336 336, 337; creation of man in, 307,
Brancaforte, Antonio, 8 308, 320, 323; seminal reasons in,
826 INDEX OF NAMES

309, 317, 318, 391, 324; Anonymous in Peter Abelard, 492; in Summa
Chartrain author of commentary on sententiarum, 497; in Peter Lombard,
Martianus Capella, 314-15; 302, 498, 726; point in gestation
Bernard of Chartres, 305-06; process at which His human soul
Bernard Silvestris, 306-09, 314, was infused into His body, 412,
315, 317, 320; Clarenbald of Arras, 416, 420-21; in school of Laon,
19, 20, 101, 102, 103-06, 128, 129, 412; in Hugh of St. Victor, 412 n.
246, 315-19, 320, 340; Thierry of 21; in Sententiae divinitatis, 412 n. 21;
Chartres, 19, 101, 103, 104-06, 128, in Summa sententiarum, 412 n. 21; in
129,246, 309-10, 311, 312,314, Robert of Melun, 412 n. 21, 416; in
316; William of Conches, 101, 102, Peter Lombard, 420-21; His
104 n. 34,256, 310-14, 315, 316, human geneology as a rationale for
317, 319. See also Abelard, Peter; man's sexual mode of procreation,
Creation; Gilbert of Poitiers; Man, in Porre tans, 647; Boethian
doctrine of; Martianus Capella; definition of incarnate Christ's
Matter; Plato; Platonism; persona as the individual substance
Theological language, problem of; of a rational nature, 98, 103, 110,
Theology, negative; Trinity, 111, 113, 114-15, 116, 117, 118,
doctrine of; World Soul 125, 138, 139, 142, 146, 150, 151 n.
Chartres, bishopric of, 22 174, 247, 358, 405, 408, 410, 415,
Chartres, school of, 33, 53, 133, 304. 416, 418, 422, 424, 425, 435, 538,
See also Chartrains, Gilbert of 744, 746; as accepted by Peter
Poitiers Abelard, 98, 139, 409, 410; by
Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 8, 195-96 Sententiae divinitatis, 142; by
Christ, 26, 27, 36, 39, 50, 54, 59, 60, Clarenbald of Arras, 103; by Robert
61, 66, 67, 68-69, 71, 74, 81, 82, of Melun, 110, 111; by Hugh of St.
83,84,85,93, 101, 107, 117, 118, Victor, 538; as rejected by Walter
138, 139-40, 142, 147-48, 150-53, of Mortagne, 114-15, 150; by
158, 160, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, Gilbert of Poitiers, 138-50, 151,
174, 175-76, 177, 178, 179, 183, 405, 425; by Porretans, 146, 150,
184, 188, 197, 198, 199, 212, 215, 408; by Robert of Melun, 110, 150;
216-17, 218-20, 221, 222, 223, 235, by Peter Lombard, 125, 150, 151 n.
262, 266, 299, 302, 326, 327, 331, 174, 247, 418, 423, 424, 425; as
344, 345, 359, 398-431, 433-70, redefined by Summa sententiarum,
472, 480, 483, 490, 492, 493, 494, 116, 117, 118, 415; titles to be given
497, 498, 499-500, 503-04, 506, to human Christ, in Augustine, 468;
508,509,511,514,515,518,525, in Ambrose, 468; in Peter
532, 534, 537, 541, 543, 544, 545, Lombard, 468, 470; hypostatic
547, 548, 552, 553-68, 575, 576, union, vi, 75, 81, 107-08, 118,
577, 578-79, 580, 581, 582, 616, 139-40, 142, 147-48, 150-53, 177,
617, 618-19, 620, 622, 623-24, 631, 216-17, 222, 223, 262, 266, 398,
632, 635, 636, 641, 642, 644, 646, 399-431, 433-38, 445, 469-70, 568,
647, 649, 650-51, 652, 662, 666, 736, 737-40, 776; in Augustine, 153,
686, 701, 702, 710, 711, 712, 713, 216, 223, 401-02, 403, 408, 413,
714, 717, 723, 726, 730, 736-44, 417, 418, 420; in Boethius, 223,
747-48, 749, 750, 752, 753, 756-58, 402-03, 405, 408, 415, 416; in
761, 765, 771, 772, 773, 774, school of Laon, 107, 118, 147, 152,
777-78; divinity of, as disclosed by 411-12, 414, 421; in William of
Holy Spirit, in Peter Lombard, 533; Champeaux, 411, 417, 420, 437; in
incarnation of, 74, 75, 266, 302, Hugh of St. Victor, 412 n. 21,
411-12, 415-16, 420-21, 462, 492, 412-15, 416, 421, 429; In Summa
497, 498, 558, 647, 726, 736, 737, sententiarum, 118, 152, 412, 412 n.
738, 740, 744; in Hugh of St. 21, 415, 416, 419, 420; in Peter
Victor, 415; in Sententiae divinitatis, Abelard, 409-10, 411, 413; in
416; in Summa sententiarum, 415; in Abelardians, 409, 410, 431; in
Robert of Melun, 74, 75, 416; its Hermannus, 410; in Roland of
timing, in school of Laon, 411-12; Bologna, 410; in Sententiae divinitatis,
 INDEX OF NAMES 827

142, 150, 412 η. 21, 416; in Robert in early thirteenth century, 436,
Pullen, 107-08, 118, 152, 416-17, 739; Christological nihilianism,
418, 419, 420, 422, 437; in Robert vi, 27 η. 36, 140, 222, 223, 416,
of Melun, 74, 75, 412 n. 21, 415-16; 424-25, 426, 427-31, 433-36, 738,
in Gilbert of Poitiers, 139-40, 150, 777-78; as attributed to Gilbert of
151, 152, 216-17,404-07,411, Poitiers, 140-41 n. 137; as
418, 419-20, 422, 423, 424, 429, attributed to Peter Lombard, vi, 27
430, 437; in Porretans, 147-48, 150, η. 36, 222, 223, 427-31, 433-36,
151, 216-17, 400, 407-09, 411, 417, 777—78; Christ's human nature, vi,
418, 422, 430, 437; in Peter 68, 81, 82, 83, 107-08, 138, 152-53,
Lombard, 81, 150-53,. 177, 216-17, 213, 398, 416, 438, 439-48, 449,
222, 223, 262, 266, 403-04, 417-31, 451, 453, 461, 464, 466, 470, 492,
433-38, 448, 736-40, 776; in 504, 514, 515, 736, 737, 740-41,
Psalms commentary, 177; in 743, 774, 776; in Bede, 439; in
commentary on Romans, 216-17; Anselm of Canterbury, 431, 453; in
in commentary on Philippians, 223, Walter of Mortagne, 439; in Gilbert
403-04; in Sentences, 81, 150-53, of Poitiers, 138; in Roland of
262, 266, 417-27, 448, 736-40; Bologna, 492; in Robert Pullen, 68,
debates over his position, 427-31, 107-08, 441; in Peter Lombard, 81,
433-38, 739, 776; habitus theory of, 82, 83, 152-53, 213, 438, 442-48,
139, 222, 223, 400, 401, 403-04, 449, 461, 464, 466, 470, 492, 504,
405, 409, 410, 411, 412, 415, 425, 514, 515, 736; view of Peter
426, 427, 429, 430, 435, 436, 736, Abelard that this human nature
739; analysis of Augustine, 401-02; had to be masculine, 438;
of Boethius, 402-03; as held by counterargument that the Word
some members of school of Laon, could have taken on body and soul
411; by Peter Abelard, 409-10, 411, of a woman, in Peter Lombard,
429, 431; by Hermannus, 410, by 438, 740; Christ's human
Roland of Bologna, 410; by Peter knowledge, vi, 69, 71, 398, 438-43,
Lombard in commentary on 446, 447, 448, 470, 492, 499-500,
Philippians, 223, 403-04, 429; by 514, 736, 737, 740, 749, 750, 776; in
Gandulph of Bologna, 436; by Peter Augustine, 439; in Bede, 439, 440;
of Poitiers, 436; as criticized by in Glossa ordinaria, 439; in school of
Hugh of St. Victor, 415; by Summa Laon, 439, 440, 441, 442; in Hugh
sententiarum, 415; by Gilbert of of St. Victor, 440, 441, 446; in
Poitiers, 139, 405; by Peter Sententiae divinitatis, 439; in Roland
Lombard in Sentences, 425, 426, 429, of Bologna, 439; in Robert Pullen,
736; as ascribed to Peter Lombard 69, 71, 441-42; in Robert of Melun,
by John of Cornwall, 429, 431; by 439; in Abelardians, 440; in Walter
Walter of St. Victor, 435; assumptus of Mortagne, 439, 440, 441; in Peter
homo theory of, 222, 400, 403, 407, Lombard, 442-43, 447, 470, 492,
409, 411, 412, 425, 426, 428, 435, 499-500, 514, 736, 737, 740, 749,
436, 445, 736, 737, 738-39; as held 750, 776; Christ's human
by some members of school of psychology, 398, 440, 441, 443, 444,
Laon, 411; by Hugh of St. Victor, 445, 446, 447-48, 470, 492, 500,
412; by Summa sententiarum, 412; by 515, 736, 737, 740, 744, 776; in
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 428; as school of Laon, 439, 440; in Hugh
criticized by Peter Lombard, 425, of St. Victor, 440, 446, 492; in
426, 736; as ascribed to Peter Summa sententiarum, 446; in Peter
Lombard by Walter of St. Victor, Abelard, 445; in Robert Pullen,
435; subsistence theory of, 222, 400, 441; in Peter Lombard, 443, 444,
401, 403, 406, 408, 409, 411, 425, 447-48, 470, 492, 500, 515, 736,
429, 430, 436, 445, 736, 739; as 737, 740, 744, 776; Christ's moral
criticized by Peter Lombard, 425-26, capacities and virtues, 48, 398,
430, 736; as ascribed to Gilbert 444-48, 461-62, 472, 490, 492, 493,
of Poitiers by John of Cornwall, 499-500, 503-04, 506, 508, 514,
429; as consensus position emerging 515, 516, 730, 736, 737, 740, 741,
828 INDEX OF NAMES

742, 744, 748, 749, 750, 752, 776; in Lombard, 437, 739; resurrection of,
school of Laon, 445; in William of 46-47, 359, 437, 444, 461, 468, 492,
Champeaux, 508; in Peter Abelard, 499, 541, 544, 553-54, 558, 559,
445-46; in Roland of Bologna, 492; 560, 701, 713, 726; in Honorius
in Porretans, 445, 446; in Sententiae Augustodunensis, 499, 701; in Peter
divinitatis, 445, 446; in Hugh of St. Abelard, 492; in Robert Pullen,
Victor, 446; in Summa sententiarum, 359; in Peter Lombard, 499, 713,
446, 508; in Robert Pullen, 445, 726; liturgy of, 46-47, 543;
446; in Peter Lombard, 48, 461, 472, resurrected body as body in which
490, 492, 493, 499-500, 503-04, Christ performs last judgment, 713;
508, 509, 514, 515, 516, 736, 737, as body given to communicants in
740, 741, 742, 748, 749, 750, 752, Eucharist, 553-54, 558, 559, 560;
776; His possession of cardinal His harrowing of Hell, in William
virtues in, 506; His possession of of Champeaux, 411; in Robert of
faith and hope in, 499-500, 749, Melun, 74, 710; His saving work,
750, 776; whether human Christ vi, 11, 36, 37, 38, 48, 52, 56, 57, 58,
should receive dulia or latria, in 59, 64, 68, 75, 81, 131, 140, 152,
John Damascene, 176, 428; in 208, 212, 217-20, 297-300, 326,
Gerhoch of Reichers berg, 427-28; 331, 383, 397, 398-99, 403, 406,
in Peter Lombard, 175-76, 428, 413, 415, 418-19, 448-70, 500, 518,
448; in Psalms commentary, 81, 567, 568, 576, 577, 578-79, 616,
175-76, 428; in Sentences, 428, 448; 617-618, 620, 622, 713, 717, 726,
baptism of, in Peter Lombard, 533; 736, 737, 738, 741-44, 750, 753,
ministry of, as model for Christian 771, 773; in Anselm of Canterbury,
priesthood, in Ivo of Chartres, 617; 449, 451-53, 458, 459, 460, 461,
in school of Laon, 616, 617-18, 620; 465, 466; Honorius
in Hugh of St. Victor, 61, 618-19, Augustodunensis, 37, 38, 457-58,
620, 622, 626; in Master Simon, 518; in Rupert of Deutz, 36; in
619-20, 622, 623, 626, in Peter school of Laon, 450-51, 467; in
Lombard, 82, 621, 622, 623-24, Gilbert of Poitiers, 140, 406; in
628, 761, 765; transfiguration of, Peter Abelard, 48, 449, 453-55,
702; passion and crucufixion of, 457, 458, 459, 463, 466, 469; in
in Anselm of Canterbury, 451, Ysagoge in theologiam, 52; in
452-53; in Hermannus, 566; in Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 567; in
Bernard of Clairvaux, 462, in Peter Roland of Bologna, 458-59, 463; in
Lombard, 179, 302, 345, 462-66, Hugh of St. Victor, 57, 58, 326,
477-78, 726, 741, 742, 743, 744; 413, 458, 459, 463, 518; in Summa
His state during tnduum, as sententiarum, 64, 331, 415, 457, 518;
symbolized in baptism by triple
immersion, 89, 541; in Gregory the in Sententiae divinitatis, 457; in
Great, 89, 541; in Summa Bernard of Clairvaux, 219, 449,
sententiarum, 89, 541; in Robert of 455-57, 458, 459, 460, 462, 463,
Melun, 74; in Peter Lombard, 89, 466, 467, 469; in Robert Pullen, 68,
541; whether His body underwent 459; in Robert of Melun, 75,
decay during, in Robert of Melun, 458-59, 463; in Peter Lombard, 11,
416; full union of His humanity and 81, 131, 152, 212, 217-20, 299-300,
divinity during, as rejected by Peter 383, 397, 418-19, 459-70, 500, 576,
Abelard, 411, 739; by Roland of 717, 726, 741-44, 750, 753; as
Bologna, 410, 739; by Hugh of St. mediated by Eucharist, in Peter
Victor, 413, 739; by Summa Lombard, 577, 578-79, 713; as
sententiarum, 415, 739; by Sententiae mediated by clergy, in Ivo of
divinitatis, 416, 739; by Robert of Chartres, 617; in school of Laon,
Melun, 416, 739; as supported by 617-18, 620; in Hugh of St. Victor,
William of Champeaux, 411, 437; 618, 620; in Master Simon, 620; in
Gilbert of Poitiers, 139, 408, 411, Peter Lombard, 622; "rights of the
437; by Porretans, 408, 411, 437; by devil" theory of atonement, in
Robert Pullen, 417, 437; by Peter Gregory the Great, 450; in school of
Laon, 450-51, 467; in Hugh of St.
 INDEX OF NAMES 829
Victor, 458, 459, 463; in Summa Hugh of St. Victor, 646; in
sententiarum, 457; in Roland of Porretans, 646-47, in Master
Bologna, 458-59; in Robert Pullen, Simon, 647; in Peter Lombard,
459; in Robert of Melun, 458-59; in 650-51, 685-86, 764. See also
Peter Lombard's Pauline exegesis, Christology; Devil, the; Last
217-20, 260-61; reaction against, Things; Sacraments, baptism,
219, 449, 451-55, 457, 458, 459, Eucharist, holy orders, marriage
460, 461-70; in Amselm of Chronica Pontificium et Imperatorum
Canterbury, 449, 451-53, 454, 455, Mantuana, as testimonium of Peter
457, 459, 460, 461, 463, 465, 466; in Lombard, 31 n. 52
Peter Abelard, 449, 453-55, 457, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations of, as
458, 463, 466, 469; in Bernard of cited by Bernard of Clairvaux, 457;
Clairvaux, 219, 449, 455-57, 458, by Peter Abelard, 457
459, 461, 462, 463, 466, 467, 467; Clairvaux, Cistercian monastery of, as
in Peter Lombard's Sentences, 459, provenance of earliest known
461-70, 737, 739, 741, 742-43, 747; manuscript of Peter Lombard's
second coming of, in Honorius Sentences, 28
Augustodunensis, 702; in Robert Clarenbald of Arras, 19, 20, 101, 102,
Pullen, 69; in Peter Lombard, 83, 103-06, 128, 129, 246, 315-19, 320,
205-06,207, 711, 713, 772; real 340; as student of Hugh of St.
presence of, in Eucharist, 221, 517, Victor, 19, 20; of Thierry of
519, 551-82, 756-57; as disputed Chartres, 19; commentary on De
by Berengar of Tours, 221, 517, hebdomadibus of Boethius, 19;
519, 552, 553, 560, 563; as defended doctrine of Trinity in, 104-06, 128,
by Lanfranc of Canterbury, 552, 129, 246; as criticized by Peter
553; by Anselm of Laon, 553, 555, Lombard, 129, 246; critique of
570,571; by William of Trinitarian theology of Peter
Champeaux, 553-54, 570-71; by Abelard, 101, 102, 103-04; of
school of Laon, 565, 568, 570, 571, Gilbert of Poitiers, 104, 128;
580; by Ivo of Chartres, 553, 554, doctrine of creation in, 315-19, 320,
566, 572; by Honorius 340; God as sole cause of creation
Augustodunensis, 565-66, 567; by in, 316; role of Father and Son in,
Alger of Liège, 555, 561, 563, 564; 316-19; exemplary causes in, 317,
by Gratian, 555-56, 572, 579, 580; 318, 319; formae nativae in, 319;
by Hugh of St. Victor, 553, 556, primordial matter in, 317, 318, 340;
561, 564, 565-66, 578; by Summa its creation simul, 317; seminal
sententiarum, 557, 558, 559, 564, reasons in, 317, 318, 319; angels in,
573-74, 575, 576, 577, 578, 582; by 316, 320. See also Abelard, Peter;
Hermannus, 554, 558, 566; by Angels; Boethius; Chartrains;
Sententiae Pansiensis I, 554, 556, 558, Creation; Gilbert of Poitiers; Hugh
564, 566-67; by Ysagoge in of St. Victor; Peter Lombard;
theologiam, 556, 558, 568; by Roland Thierry of Chartres; Trinity,
of Bologna, 554, 555, 561, 564, 567, doctrine of
569-70, 572, 575, 576-77, 579, 582; Clement, pope, as an authority on
by Gilbert of Poitiers, 571; by quality control in admission of
Porretans, 556-57, 563, 570, 571, candidates to holy orders, in
572, 573, 574, 575, 580; by Master Gratian, 622; in Peter Lombard,
Simon, 553, 556, 563, 568, 575; by 622
Sententiae divinitatis, 557-58, 561, Collectanea. See Peter Lombard, biblical
564, 573, 575, 576, 578, 582; by exegesis of, commentary on Pauline
Robert Pullen, 556, 557, 567, 568, epistles
574, 575, 580-81; by Peter Commentarius Cantabridgensis,
Lombard, 559, 562, 575, 756-57; Abelardian exegesis of Pauline
marriage, as signifying His union epistles, 194-95, 198-99, 202, 204,
with church, 631, 636, 642, 644, 207, 210-11, 213, 567; accessus to
646, 647, 650-51, 652, 666, 685-86, text and degree to which it controls
764; in school of Laon, 662; in actual content in, 194-95, 198;
830 INDEX OF NAMES

digressiveness of, 198-99; marriage formation in, 640

interpretation of Hebrews in, Decretum dei fuit, school of Laon work,
198-99; interpretation of actions of defense of consummation as
SS. Peter and Paul in Galatians in, principle of marriage formation in,
210-11; disagreement with Peter 631, 632, 633
Lombard's interpretation of Delhaye, Philippe, 7, 472
Colossians in, 213; agreement with Deus de cuius prinäpio etfinetacetur,
his interpretation on 2 Thessalonians school of Laon work, change in
in, 207; endorsement and expansion rules governing marriage over time
of his historical criticism of St. Paul in, 663 n. 489
on women's role in church in, 204; Deuteronomy, book of, 28
Abraham as our father in faith in, De vera et falsa poenitentia, anonymous
199; Christology in, 198; moral eleventh-century work attributed to
intentionality in, 199; medicinal use Augustine, 599, 603, 604, 605, 608;
of food in, 202; concern with as used by Sententiae divinitatis, 599;
Ambrose's view of garlic in, 202; by Peter Lombard, 603, 604, 605,
criticism of monks in, 199; 608. See also Sacraments, penance
circumcision in relation to baptism DeWulf, Maurice, 5
in, 198; spiritual benefits of DeLubac, Henri, 195
Eucharist in, 567; marriage in, 199; Dionysius the Areopagite. See Pseudo-
Last Things in, 198. See also Dyonisius
Abelardians; Abraham; Ambrose, Donatus, definition of nouns in, 105;
Christ; Ethics; Exegesis, biblical; definition of relative nouns in, 111.
Last Things; Paul, St.; Peter See also Augustine; Grammar
Lombard; Peter, St.; Sacraments, Dutton, Paul Edward, 305
baptism, Eucharist, marriage
Continuatio Beccensis, as source for PeterEadmer of Canterbury, 37
Lombard's election as bishop of Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, 428
Paris, 22 n. 21, 31 Ecclesiastes, book of, 28, 339
Continuatio Sanblasensis, as testimoniumErnis, abbot of St. Victor, 431, 432
of Peter Lombard, 31 Esau, 513
Core, in title of Psalm 40, 178, 179 Esdra, prophet and putative compiler
Cornelius, as example of baptism by of book of Psalms, in Peter
desire, in Anselm of Laon, 534; in Lombard, 29, 172
Robert Pullen, 535 Eskyl, archbishop of Lund, 432
Courtenay, William J., 1, 18 Espen berger, J. Ν., 5
Courtney, F., 70, 234 Esther, book of, 28
Cousin, Victor, 5 Ethan, as an author of Psalms, 171
Cyprian, on baptism by single Eugenius III, pope, 21
immersion, 55; on baptism by blood Eutyches, heretic, 402
and by desire, 536 Evans, Gillian R., 8, 195-96
Eve, 165-66, 331, 332, 335, 355, 356,
Dan, tribe of, as providing ancestry of 365-66, 367-68, 369, 372, 374, 375,
Antichrist, in Honorius 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 488,
Augustodunensis, 701; in Peter 519, 641, 657, 656, 704, 731-33,
Lombard's gloss on 2 745, 748, 766-67; creation of, 331,
Thessalonians, 206. See also 332, 367, 519, 641, 656, 731, 733,
Antichrist; Exegesis, biblical; Last 745, 748, 776-77; in Augustine, 331,
Things; Paul, St. 365; in Hugh of St. Victor, 367; in
David, king, as author of the Psalms, Summa sententiarum, 331, 332, 367; in
163, 170, 171, 178, 179, 207; his Peter Abelard, 641; in Peter Lombard,
affair with Bathsheba, 671 367, 656; as inferior to Adam, in
Daniel, prophet, 206 twelfth-century theologians, 365-66,
Dante Alighieri, as testamonium of 731; inconsistency on this point, in
Peter Lombard, 32 Peter Lombard, 366-68, 377, 731,
De coniugo, school of Laon work, 732, 776-77; possibility of her
defense of consent as principle of experiencing painless childbirth
 INDEX OF NAMES 831
before the fall, in Porretans, 355; 62, 75, 88, 231, 235, 255, 303-04,
her motivation in original sin, in 308, 309-10, 316-18, 319, 320-21,
Anselm of Laon, 373, 377; in 323, 325, 326-27, 328, 329, 331,
Sententie Anselmi, 373, 377; in 333, 336, 339, 340, 348, 367, 727,
William of Champeaux, 373; in 728; Augustine's interpretation of,
Hugh of St. Victor, 373, 375, 378; 62, 88, 258, 317, 318, 321, 324, 326,
in Peter Lombard, 372, 377, 378, 328, 333, 340; efforts, by Chartrains,
379, 488; on whether she sinned to synthesize it with Platonic
more seriously than Adam, 372-73, account of creation, 303-04, 309-10,
374-76, 378-79; in Anselm of 316, 320-21, 727; in Thierry of
Laon, 374; in school of Laon, 374; Chartres, 309-10; in Clarenbald of
in William of Champeaux, 375; in Arras, 316-18; account of original
Peter Abelard, 374; in Robert sin in, 376, 380. See also Augustine;
Pullen, 374, 375; in Porretans, 375; Chartrains; Clarenbald of Arrras;
in Summa sententiarum, 375; in Peter Creation; Plato; Platonism; Thierry
Lombard, 378-79, 380, 733, 777; of Chartres
view that primal parents were Gennadius, 34 n. 2, 581
equally guilty, in Hugh of St. Gerhoch of Reichers berg, 17, 31, 158,
Victor, 375-76, 380; as a type of 161-62, 427-28; as testimonium of
the church, in Glossa ordinaria, 165— Peter Lombard, 31; his objections
66, Roland of Bologna, 331; in to Christology of Lotulph of
Summa sententiarum, 331, 367; in Novara, 17; of Peter Lombard, 31,
Peter Lombard, 367. See also Adam; 427-28; whether human Christ
Church, doctrine of; Man, doctrine should receive dulia or latria in,
of, original sin in 427-28; as exegete of the Psalms,
Exodus, book of, 28, 86, 335, 392, 158, 161-62; typology in, 161; use
396,511 of authorities in, 161, 162;
Ezechiel, prophet, 386, 504; virtues as digressive style in, 161-62;
analogized to figures in his vision, contritionist-confessionist debate on
in Gregory the Great, 504; in penance in, 162; grace and free will
Sententie Anselmi, 504. See also Ethics in, 162. See also Christ; Exegesis,
biblical; Grace, doctrine of; Free
Flint, Valerie I. J., 41 Will, doctrine of; Lotulph of
Florus of Lyon, 86, 88, 165, 193; his Novara; Peter Lombard; Psalms,
catena of Augustine, 86, 88; as book of; Sacraments, penance
model for abbreviated citation of Geyer, Bernhard, 5
authorities in Glossa ordinaria, 165, Ghellinck, Joseph de, 9, 10, 42
193; in Robert of Melun's Gilbert of Poitiers, v, ix, 5, 12, 18, 24
Quaestiones de epistolas Pauli, 193. See n. 26, 52-53, 72, 96, 102, 104, 105,
also Augustine; Exegesis, biblical, 119, 128, 129, 131, 132-48, 149,
Glossa ordinaria, Robert of Melun 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 162,
Fulgentius of Ruspe, 34 n. 2 164, 167-70, 172, 173, 174, 187,
196, 215-17, 227, 229, 230, 245,
Gabriel, archangel, 351 246, 249, 252, 304, 399-400,
Galen, on human conception, 414, 415 404-07, 408, 409, 411, 418, 419-20,
Gandulph of Bologna, 435-36; as 422-25, 429-30, 432, 433, 437, 441,
abbreviator of Peter Lombard and 448, 571, 598, 599, 610; as an
possible source for idea that he avant-garde thinker in his day, 5;
taught Christological nihilianism, teaching career at Chartres, 53,
435-36; habitus theory in, 436. See 133, 304; at Paris, 24 n. 26, 53, 133,
also Christ 168, 215 n. 155; trial at Council of
Genesis, book of, 1, 28, 56, 58-59, 62, Rheims (1148), 52; biblical exegesis
75, 81, 88, 231, 235, 255, 303-04, of, 133, 156, 162, 164, 167-70, 172,
308, 309-10, 316-18, 319, 320-21, 173, 174, 187, 196, 408, 448; Media
323, 325, 326-29, 331, 333, 336, glossatura as medieval name for, 156;
339, 340, 348, 367, 376, 380, 727, commentary on the Psalms, 133,
728; creation account in, 56, 58-59, 162, 164, 167-70, 172, 173, 174,
832 INDEX OF NAMES

187; accessus to, 167, 168; format in, Psalms, 164-67, 170, 173, 174, 175,
167, 168, 170; on composite nature 178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 185, 187;
of text in, 167-68; on authorship in, format in, 164, 165; abbreviated
167-68; verbal and visual keys to address to text in, 164-65, 167;
Psalms on different themes in, 168; abbreviated citation and use of
use of authorities in, 167, 168; authorities in, 165, 166-67; reuse of
typological and moral emphasis in, Jerome's prefaces to books of Bible
167, 168, 169; development of in, 164, 194, 196; typological and
theological quaestiones in, 168; moral emphasis in, 164, 165, 167;
psychology of ethical life in, 169-70; theological content in, 165-66, 167;
commentary on Pauline epistles, Mariology in, 165-66; ecclesiology
196, 408; literal and allegorical in, 165-66, 167; on Pauline epistles,
reading in, 196; commentary on 193-94, 196, 198, 200; abbreviated
theological works of Boethius, 133, address to text in, 196; use of
167, 399; metaphysics in, 133-34, authorities in, 196; polysemous
135, 144, 406; semantics in, 132-48, reading in, 196; interpretation of
149-53, 154, 167, 215-17; Hebrews, 198; of Romans, 200; on
theological language in, 96, 119, Christ's human knowledge in gloss
132-48, 245, 249, 399-400, 404-07, on gospel of Luke, 439;
408, 409; doctrine of God in, 227, countercitation of authorities in
229, 230, 249; doctrine of Trinity glosses on gospels of Mark and
in, 101, 102, 104, 105, 128, 136-41, Matthew, 208. See also Christ;
149-50, 153-54, 246, 249; critique Christology; Church, doctrine of;
of Trinitarian doctrine of Augustine Exegesis, biblical; Jerome; Mary,
in, 137; of Peter Abelard in, 101, Virgin; Paul, St.; Psalms, book of
102, 128, 136-37; human nature in, Godescalc of St. Martin, 132 n. 107
138, 405, 406, 408; critique of Peter Godfrey of St. Victor, author of
Abelard on human nature in, 138; Microcosmus, 432; of Fons philosophiae,
Christology in, 119, 138, 139-40, 432
142, 145, 150, 151, 216-17,400, Godfrey of Viterbo, creator of myth
404-07, 437, 411, 441; critique of that Gratian, Peter Comestor, and
Peter Abelard's Christology in, 139; Peter Lombard were brothers, 16
on administration of Eucharist to Grabmann, Martin, 5, 10, 42
infants by chalice alone in, 571; Gratian, 16, 18, 28, 65, 82, 89-90,
inconsistent defense of contritionism 479, 484, 503, 512, 513-14, 519-20,
in penance in, 598, 599; rejection of 521, 537, 543 n. 184, 545, 549,
sacramentality of unction in, 610. 555-56, 566, 579, 580, 584-85,
See also Abelard, Peter; Augustine; 589-91, 592, 601, 602, 603, 607,608,
Boethius; Christ; Christology;
Ethics; Exegesis, biblical, God, 615, 619, 631, 632-34, 635, 636, 638,
doctrine of; Man, doctrine of; 648, 651-62, 663 n. 489, 664, 665,
Metaphysics; Paul, St.; Psalms, 666, 667, 669, 672-73, 677, 679,
book of; Sacraments, Eucharist, 680, 683, 685, 687, 688, 689, 690,
penance, unction; Theological 691, 692, 693, 696, 753, 758, 763,
language, problem of; Trinity, 771; myth that Peter Lombard and
doctrine of Peter Comestor were his brothers,
Gilbert of Poitiers, school of. See 16; Peter Lombard's bequest of his
Decretum to cathedral chapter of
Porretans Notre Dame, Paris, 28; influence on
Gilduin, prior of St. Victor, 16-17, 18 Peter Lombard, 18, 82, 89-90,
Gilson, Etienne, 6 601-02, 603-04, 607, 651-62, 753;
Giovo, Paolo, as creator of myth of commentary on, by Roland of
Lumellogno as Peter Lombard's Bologna, 65; ignorance as
birthplace, 15 mitigating moral culpability in, 478,
Glossa ordinaria, 156, 164-67, 168 η. 484; perjury in, 512, 513-14;
34, 170, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, charity in, 503; sacraments in, 519,
180, 183, 184, 185, 187, 193-94, 521, 537, 543 n. 184, 545, 549,
196, 198, 200, 208, 439; on the 555-56, 572, 580, 584-85, 589-91,
 INDEX OF NAMES 833
592, 615, 663 η. 489, 664, 665, 666, "rights of the devir view of
667, 669, 672-73, 677, 680, 683, 685, atonement, 149; on cardinal and
687, 688, 689, 690, 693, 696, 763; theological virtues, 504, 747; on
validity of their administration by etiology of seven deadly sins, 374,
heretic, excommunicated, or 485, 746; on salvation in the pre-
immoral priest in, 521, 572, 592, Christian dispensation, 530; on
580; baptism in, 519, 521, 537, 543 pious fraud as an excuse for lying,
n. 184, 545; infant baptism in, 537; 475, 483, 511; on administration of
time of baptism in, 543 n. 184; baptism, 55, 89, 541, 570; on
validity of if improper verbal repeatability of penance, 584, 586,
formula is used in, 545; 587; on definition of contrition, 601;
confirmation in, 521, 549; Eucharist on sexual relations and sexual
in, 519, 521, 555-56, 566, 572, dysfunction in marriage, 659, 674;
579-80, 582, 757; real presence on Last Things, 83, 176, 699,
doctrine in, 555-56; spiritual benefits 701-02, 703, 704, 705, 706, 708,
of reception in, 566; validity as 709, 712-13, 715, 772; on the four
affected by juridical status or states of souls in the resurrection,
morality of minister in, 572, 579, 176. See also Angels; Christ; Ethics;
580; defense of confessionism in Last Things; Leander of Seville;
penance in, 521, 589-90, 763; Sacraments, baptism, penance,
unction in, 521; holy orders in, 521, marriage
615; accent on juridical and Gregory VII, pope, reform movement
administrative rules pertaining to of, 35, 37, 428, 517, 520, 552, 59
in, 615; ruling that monastic priest Gregory Nazianzus, 706
has same sacerdotal faculties as Gross-Diaz, Theresa, 167
secular priest, 615; defense of Guérin, abbot of St. Victor, 432
consummation as principle of
marriage formation, 521, 631, 763; Häring, Nikolaus M., 19, 429
change in rules governing marriage Haimo of Auxerre, as an exegete of
over time in, 663 n. 489; mutuality the Psalms, 178, 179, 184; as an
of spouses in rendering marriage exegete of 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
debt in, 677, 696; marital 206
impediments, grounds for Hauréau, Barthélémy, 5
nullification, separation in, 664, Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete, 255,
665, 666, 667, 669, 672-73, 677, 323, 457, 641
679, 680, 683, 685, 687, 688, 689, Heman, as an author of Psalms, 171
690, 691,692, 693, 696; De Henry II, king of England, 433
consecratione, 519; Decretum, 28, 65, Henry, bishop of Beauvais, 21
89; De penitentia, 519. See also Herbert of Bosham, pupil of the
Charity; Ethics; Roland of Bologna; Lombard, 23, 24; testimony that
Paucapalea; Perjury, Peter the master's Psalms commentary
Comestor; Peter Lombard; was written for his personal
Sacraments reflection, 23; as external witness to
Gregory I, the Great, pope, 83, 89, double redaction of Peter
149, 165, 176, 199, 321, 329,335, Lombard's commentary on Pauline
340, 343, 346, 350, 374, 449, 475, epistles, 24; as putting finishing
483, 485, 504, 511, 530, 541, 573, touches on his biblical exegesis, 24.
584, 586, 587, 601, 659, 674, 699, See also Exegesis, biblical; Paul, St.;
701-02, 703, 704, 705, 706, 708, Peter Lombard; Psalms, book of
709, 712-13, 729, 715, 746, 747, Hermannus, 51 n. 43, 52, 477, 505,
772; as an exegete of the Psalms, 519 n. 113,554,566,598, 598 η.
165; misquotation in Commentarius 333, 611-12, 641-42, 644, 647, 655,
Cantabridgensis, 199; Moralia in Job, 665, 666, 674, 683, 691; ethics in,
83, 485, 699, 704; as an authority 477, 505; intentionalism in, 477;
on creation, 321, 335, 340, 729; on natural virtue in, 505; definition of
angelic hierarchy, 329, 343, 350, sacrament in, 519 n. 113; Eucharist
729; on guardian angels, 346; on in, 554, 566; which body Christ
834 INDEX OF NAMES

gave disciples at last supper in, 554; relationship of God's foreknowledge,

spiritual benefits of communion in, predestination, providence to free
566; inconsistent defense of will, contingency in, 279; creation
contritionism in penance in, 598, in, 321-23, 342, 344-45, 351, 703;
598 n. 333; unrepeatability of creation simul in, 321; rationale for
unction in, 611-12; defense of creation of man in, 322; man as
consent as principle of marriage microcosm in, 322-23; rationale for
formation in, 641—42; purely creation of animals in, 322; Eden,
remedial conception of marriage in, its location and nature in, 322;
642, 647, 655, 674; change in rules angels in, 342, 344-35, 351; original
governing marriage over time in, sin in, 38, 39, 372, 373, 376-77,
664; marital impediments, grounds 378, 380; Christ's saving work in,
for nullification, separation in, 665, 457-58; ethics in, 39, 89, 481;
666, 674, 683, 691. See also Abelard, interweaving of ethics and
Peter; Abelardians; Ethics; sacraments in, 69; moral aptitudes
Sacraments, Eucharist, penance, and temptations of various
marriage occupational and age groups in,
Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, as an 39; evil as non-being in, 481;
exegete of Romans, 188, 190-93; ecclesiology of, as context for
accessus to text in, 190-91; style and treatment of sacraments, 518,
format in, 191, 193; use of 565-66; sacraments in, 518, 520,
authorities including Peter Abelard, 537, 565-66, 567, 589, 610, 614;
Peter Lombard in, 190-91; moral organization of treatise on
emphasis in, 191-92; natural sacraments in, 518, 520; baptism
theology in, 191; anthropology in, in, 537; spiritual benefits of
191; grace and free will in, 192 communion in, 565—66, 567;
Hilary of Poitiers, 144, 163, 167, 251, penance in, 589; unction as viaticum
321, 444; as an authority favored by in, 610; response of laity to immoral
Gilbert of Poitiers, 144; as an priests in, 614; Eucharistie ministry
exegete of the Psalms, 163, 167; as of priests in, 614; change in rules
an authority on the Trinity, 251; on governing marriage over time in,
creation, 321; Peter Lombard's 663 n. 489; Last Things in, 700-03,
critique of his view that Christ was 704, 710, 712, 713; Antichrist in,
impassible, 444. See also Christ; 701; general resurrection in, 701,
Christ; Creation; Exegesis, biblical; 703, 710, 712, 713; four states of
Gilbert of Poitiers; Peter Lombard; souls in, 701, 712, 713; color-coded
Psalms, book of; Trinity, doctrine of bodies of the resurrected in, 703,
Hildebert of Lavardin, erroneous 710, 712; second coming of Christ
ascription to him of Peter in, 702; last judgment in, 702; new
Lombard's sermons in Patrologia heavens, new earth in, 703; Hell in,
latina, 26. See also Peter Lombard 701, 702, 703; Purgatory in, 701,
Honorius Augustodunensis, 5, 35, 36, 703; Heaven in, 703; Elucidarium, 5,
37-42, 60, 69, 264-65, 279, 304, 35, 36, 37-42, 60, 69. See also
321-23, 342, 344-45, 351, 372, 373, Angels; Anselm of Canterbury;
376-77, 378, 380, 457-58, 381, 518, Christ; Church, doctrine of;
520, 537, 565-66, 567, 589, 610, Creation; Eadmer of Canterbury;
614, 663 n. 489, 700-03, 704, 710, Eden, garden of; Ethics; Free will,
712, 713; seen as an Aristotelian, 5; doctrine of; Hugh of St. Victor;
likelihood of his studies with Julian of Toledo; Last Things;
Anselm and Eadmer of Canterbury, Man, doctrine of; Robert Pullen;
37-38, 42; schema and use of Sacraments, baptism, Eucharist,
authorities as a systematic penance, unction, holy orders,
theologian, 38-41, 321; intended marriage
audience of, 37-38; originality of, Horace, as cited by Pseudo-Bede, 163
42; popularity of his work, 41; Hugh of St. Victor, v, 17, 18, 19, 20,
doctrine of God in, 264-65, 279; 35, 57-63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69,
God's ubiquity in, 264-65; 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80-81,
 INDEX OF NAMES 835

82,83,88, 101, 108, 110, 111, 195 364-65, 484, 487; free will in,
η. 104, 228, 229, 230-33, 234, 235, 363-64, 371, 488; inferiority of Eve
236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242, 244, to Adam in, 365, 366; original sin
258, 265, 279-80, 285-86, 293, 294, in, 372, 373, 375-76, 378, 380, 382,
304, 326-30, 332, 333, 334, 335, 392-94, 396, 397; Christology in,
336, 338, 340, 342, 343, 345, 346, 57, 58, 59, 326, 412 n. 21, 412-15,
351, 354, 356, 358, 363-64, 365, 416, 418, 419, 421, 440, 441, 442,
366, 369, 370-71, 372, 373, 375-76, 446, 447, 458, 463, 492; hypostatic
378, 380, 382, 392-93, 394, 396, union in, 412 n. 21, 412-15, 416,
397,412 η. 21,412-15,416,418, 418, 419, 421; Christ's human
419, 421, 431, 432, 440, 441, 442, knowledge in, 440, 441, 442, 492;
446, 447, 458, 463, 484, 485, 487, Christ's saving work in, 57, 58,
488, 492, 495-97, 500-01, 502, 505, 59, 413, 458, 463; ethics in, 485,
510,511,515, 516, 518, 522, 495-97, 500-01, 502, 505, 508, 749;
523-25, 526, 527, 529, 530, 535, 540, grace and free will in man's moral
541, 548, 549, 553, 554, 556, 561, life in, 363-64, 371,488, 515;
564, 565-66, 567, 586-87, 593-95, seven deadly sins in, 485; faith in,
600, 601, 602, 605, 606, 607, 610, 495-97, 749; charity in, 500-01, 502;
611,612,613,618-19,620,621, cardinal virtues in, 505; beatitudes
622,623,624,625,626,631, in, 505; gifts of Holy Spirit in, 505;
642-46, 647, 648, 649, 650, 652, fear of the Lord in the moral life in,
654, 655-56, 659, 662, 664, 666, 508; ecclesiology of, as context for
679, 683, 688, 691, 694-95, 699, sacramental theology, 518, 565, 566;
707-09, 710, 711, 716, 739, 752, sacraments in, 516, 522, 523-25,
771, 777; correspondence with 526, 527, 529, 535, 540, 541, 548,
Walter of Mortagne, 17; as teacher 549, 553, 554, 556, 561, 565, 566,
of externs, 18-20; as possible 586-87, 593-95, 600, 605, 606,
teacher of Peter Lombard, 18, 20; 607,610,611,612,618-19,620,
biblical exegesis of, 57-58, 195 η. 622, 625, 626, 631, 642-46, 648,
104; schema of his systematic 652, 655-56, 659, 662, 665, 666,
theology, 57-63, 64, 72, 73-76, 78, 679,691, 752, 764, 771, 777;
707; man's knowledge organization and definition of
of God in, 229, 230-33, 234, 236, sacraments in, 522, 523-25, 526,
510; proofs of God's existence in, 527, 529, 564, 752, 764, 771, 777;
231-33, 234, 235, 237, 238, 240, baptism in, 535, 540, 541;
241; doctrine of God in, 228, 229, confirmation in, 548, 549; Eucharist
230-33, 234, 265, 278-80, 285-86, in, 553, 554, 556, 561, 565, 566;
293, 294; God's ubiquity in, 265; real presence doctrine in, 556;
God's foreknowledge, predestination, spiritual benefits of communion in
providence in relation to free will, different kinds of recipients in, 565,
contingency in, 278-80, 285-86; 566; which body Christ gave His
whether God can do different or disciples at last supper in, 553, 554;
better than He does in, 293, 294; penance in, 586-87, 593-95, 600,
doctrine of Trinity in, 17, 230-33, 605, 606, 607; its repeatability in,
242, 244; critique of Peter Abelard 586-87; inconsistent defense of
on the Trinity in, 101, 233; creation contritionism in, 593-95, 600,
in, 58, 59, 88, 331, 237, 258, 304, deathbed repentence in, 605, 606;
326-30, 332, 333, 334, 336, 338, definition of sacramentum and res
342, 343, 354, 356 n. 156, 358, 360, sacramenti in, 607; unction in, 610,
361, 363-65, 369, 370-71, 484, 487; 611, 612; as both rite of healing and
exemplary causes in, 88, 237, 258; as viaticum in, 610; its repeatability
creation simul in, 326, 329, 333; in, 611; its effects on recipient in,
angels in, 342, 434; human nature 612; holy orders in, 618-19, 620,
in, 58, 59, 326, 329-30, 354, 359, 622, 625, 626; as imparting grace to
360, 361, 369, 370-71; physical recipient enabling him to imitate
needs and moral aptitudes of Christ's personal ministry as well as
prelapsarian man in, 356 n. 156, empowering him to serve as
836 INDEX OF NAMES

channel of grace to laity in, 618, Isidore of Seville, 321, 335, 340, 374,
620, 622, 626; superiority of 375, 666; as an authority on
sacerdotium to regnum in, 618-19, creation, 321, 335, 340; creation
622, 625; restriction of ministry of simul in, 335, 340; as a source for
monastic priests to their own psychogenesis of sin, 374, 375; as a
monastic communities in, 619; source for Roman law of marriage,
canonical rules governing clerics in, 666. See also Creation; Ethics; Law,
619; liturgical vessels and vestments Roman; Sacraments, marriage
used by clerics in, 619; marriage in, Ivo of Chartres, 537, 541, 543, 564,
631, 642-46, 648, 652, 655-56, 659, 566, 572, 589, 616-17, 620, 621,
662, 664, 665, 666, 679, 684-85, 622, 624, 636-39, 640, 665, 667,
683, 688, 691; defense of consent as 669, 671-72, 676, 679, 685, 689,
principle of marriage formation in, 693, 704-05; baptism in, 537, 541,
631,642-46,652,662,665; 543; its necessity in, 537; its
distinction between present and administration in, 541; proper time
future consent in, 645; marriage as of in, 543 n. 184; Eucharist in, 553,
companionate union of minds and 554, 564, 566, 572; which body
hearts in, 643-44, 645, 648, 652, Christ gave His disciples at last
655-56, 684-85; morality of sexual supper in, 553, 554; spiritual
relations between spouses in, 659; benefits of communion in, 566;
change in rules governing marriage validity if administered to a heretic,
over time in, 664, 683; marital excommunicated, or improperly
impediments, grounds for disposed person in, 572; status of
nullification, separation in, 666, Eucharistie elements if dropped or
679, 688, 691; Last Things in, 699, consumed by a mouse in, 564;
707-09, 710, 711, 716; De penance in, 589; holy orders in,
sacramentisfideichrutianae, 17, 18, 20, 616, 617, 620; sacramental, moral,
57-63, 64, 66, 74, 75, 230, 233, 235, and ecclesiological significance of
327, 328, 458, 594, 643, 644, 707, grades of holy orders in, 616, 620;
709; Didascalicon, 57, 74, 327; priests as executors of Christ's
Epistola de beatae Mariae virginitate, saving work in, 617; holy orders as
643, 644, 645. See also Adam; the imitation of Christ's personal
Abelard, Peter; Angels; Augustine; ministry in, 617; defense of consent
Charity; Christ; Church, doctrine as principle of marriage formation
of; Clarenbald of Arras; Creation; in, 636-39, 640, 676; marital
Ethics; Eve; Exegesis, biblical; impediments, grounds for
Faith, God, doctrine of; Lawrence nullification, separation in, 665,
of Westminster; Man, doctrine of; 667, 669, 671-72, 676, 679, 685,
Peter Lombard; Sacraments; Summa 689, 693; Last Things in, 704-05;
sententiarum; Trinity, doctrine of; Decretum, 554; Panormia, 554. See also
Walter of Mortagne Last Things; Sacraments, baptism,
Humbert, bishop of Lucca, as person Eucharist, penance, holy orders,
who brought Peter Lombard to marriage
Bernard of Clairvaux's attention,
17. See also Bernard of Clairvaux; Jacob, 513, 683
Peter Lombard Jacques de Vitry, as testimonium of
Peter Lombard, ix, 31
Invisibilia dei, Porretan work, 142-45, James, epistle of, as authority for
149, 150; natural theology in, 142, institution of sacrament of unction
143-44; negative theology in, by apostles, 611.
143-44; semantic theory in, 142-45, Jerome, 125, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167,
149, 150; logic in, 144; grammar in, 170, 171, 173, 176, 178-79, 181, 183,
144. See also Grammar; Logic; 184, 194, 196, 197, 199, 209-10,
Porre tans; Theological language, 211, 260, 339, 346, 350, 373-74,
problem of; Theology, natural; 385, 641, 687; his prefaces to books
Theology, negative of the Bible, as used in twelfth
Isaiah, prophet, 27 n. 37, 623 century, 164, 194, 196; as an
 INDEX OF NAMES 837

exegete of the Psalms, 164, 165, human Christ should receive dulia
166, 171, 173, 176, 178-79, 181, or latria in, 176, 428; Peter
183, 184; his alleged tamperings Lombard's use of, 22, 24, 25, 86,
with text; 178-79, 181; his 119-21, 122, 123, 125-26, 127,
emendations of text, 181; his view 128-30, 148, 149, 151, 215, 216,
of nature of book of Psalms, as 217, 352, 400, 418-20, 423, 428. See
criticized by Peter Lombard, 171; also Burgundio of Pisa; Christ;
as an exegete of Pauline epistles, Godjdoctrine of, Peter Lombard;
194, 196, 197,209-10, 211; his Trinity, doctrine of
debate with Augustine on behavior John of Cornwall, pupil of Peter
of SS. Peter and Paul in Galatians, Lombard, his charge that the
209-10, 211; his use of theological master taught Christological
language, as criticized by Peter nihilianism, 27 n. 36, 428-31, 434,
Lombard, 125; his critique of 435, 436; Eulogium, 429, 431
Origen's angelology, 339; his John of Salisbury, ix, 22, 76, 95 n. 6,
critique of marriage, 199, 641, 687; 305, 453; as a pupil of Adam du
as cited by Commentarius Petit-Pont, 433; exceptional case as
Cantabndgensis, 199; on God alone a foreigner elevated to a French
as having the non posse peccare, 346, bishopric, 22; as a source for
350; as source for the psychogenesis Robert of Melun's teaching
of moral decisions in twelfth methods as a logician, 76; as a
century, 373-74, 473; as source for source for cosmology of Bernard of
doctrine of conscience in Peter Chartres, 305; Metalogicon, 305
Lombard, 385; as source for the John, St., the Baptist, 403, 533
four states of souls in the John, St., the Evangelist, 260; gospel
resurrection, 176; Adversus of, 209
Jovinianum, 641. See also Angels; John Scottus Eriugena, 95, 258, 303,
Augustine; Commentanus 305, 318, 327, 402, 403, 706;
Cantabndgensis, Ethics; Exegesis, negative theology in, 95; exemplary
biblical; Glossa ordinaria; Last causes in, 258, 305, 318, 327;
Things; Origen; Paul, St.; Peter Christology in, 402, 403; Penphyseon,
Lombard; Peter, St.; Psalms, book 327. See also Christ; Creation;
of; Sacraments, marriage; Platonism; Neoplatonism;
Theological language, problem of Theology, negative
Jerusalem, temple of, 617, 620, 623, Joscelin of Soissons, on God's
624 foreknowledge, 290
Jesus. See Christ Joseph, St., his marriage to Virgin
Joachim of Fiore, his misundestanding Mary, as a consideration
of Peter Lombard's Trinitarian influencing marriage formation
theology, 246, 434. See also Lateran theory in twelfth century, 630, 631,
council, Fourth 632-33, 635, 642-44, 647, 648, 651,
Job, book of, 28 654, 656, 662, 763, 770. See also
John Chrysostom, 338, 602, 632, 637; Mary, Virgin; Mariology;
defense of consent as principle of Sacraments, marriage
marriage formation in, 632, 637 Josephus, cited as an authority by
John Damascene, 22, 24, 25, 86, 119, Bruno the Carthusian, 159
120, 121, 122, 123, 125-26, 127, Judah, 462
128-30, 148, 149, 151, 154, 176, Judas, 170, 174, 468, 562, 563, 564,
215,216,217,352,400,418-20, 568, 569, 571; as example of ill-
423, 428, 437, 447; Defideorthodoxa, disposed or unbelieving
22, 119; translation of by communicant who receives
Burgundio of Pisa, 22; doctrine of Eucharist to his damnation, 562,
God in, 148, 352; doctrine of 563, 564, 569, 571; his reception of
Trinity in, 49, 119, 120, 121, 122, Eucharist by inunction at last
125-26, 127, 128-29, 148, 149; supper, 568, 569. See also
Christology in, 151, 215, 216, 217, Sacraments, Eucharist
418-20, 423, 437, 447; whether Judith, book of, 28
838 INDEX OF NAMES

Julian of Toledo, Prognosticon futuri in, 107, 108, 118, 147, 152,411-12,
saeculi as a source for Last Things, 414, 421, 439, 440, 441, 442, 445,
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 40, 446, 450-51; hypostatic union in,
700, 701, 703, 710, 712; in Peter 411-12, 414, 421; Christ's human
Lombard, 83, 88, 710 knowledge in, 439, 440, 441, 442;
Justinian, emperor, law code of, 692, Christ's moral capacities in, 445,
769; Digest, 692 446; Christ's saving work in,
Juvenal, as alluded to by Peter 450-51; ethics in, 180, 278, 282,
Lombard, 182 345, 363, 373, 382, 383, 439, 445,
475, 495, 498, 499, 500-01, 502,
Kuttner, Stephan G., 45 511, 603; intentionalism in, 345,
373; grace and free will in, 278,
Lacombe, George, 27 282, 363, 382, 383, 439, 445;
Landgraf, Artur Michael, ix, 9, 10 morality of profession of merchants
Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, in, 180, 475; of jongleurs in, 475;
as defender of real presence pious fraud as a rationale for lying
doctrine against Berengar of Tours, in, 475, 511; faith in, 495, 498; hope
552, 553. See also Berengar of Tours; in, 495, 499; charity in, 500-01, 512;
Sacraments, Eucharist fear of the Lord in the moral life
Laon, school of, 12, 17, 42-47, 87, 95, in, 508; sin in, 603; sacraments in,
106, 107, 108, 118, 147, 152, 180, 46-47, 534, 535, 539-40, 541, 548,
196, 230, 234, 264, 278-79, 282, 549, 555, 565, 566, 568, 570-71,
290, 304, 328-29, 335, 336 n. 100, 580, 586, 587, 589, 593, 616-18,
342, 344-45, 356 nn. 156, 157, 363, 620, 622, 624, 631, 639-40, 640,
365, 366, 373-74, 375, 382, 383, 642, 659, 663 n. 489, 663-65, 666,
385-88, 411-12, 414, 421, 439, 439, 667, 668, 670, 671, 674, 675 n. 526,
440, 441-42, 445, 446, 450-51, 473, 671, 685; infant baptism in, 534,
475, 478, 495, 498, 499, 500-01, 535; effect on baptizand in, 539-40;
502, 508, 510, 533 n. 154, 534, 535, administration of baptism in, 541;
539-40, 541, 548, 549, 555, 565, time of baptism in, 46-47;
566, 568, 570-71, 580, 586, 587, confirmation and its relative
589, 593, 602, 603, 616, 617-18, necessity in, 548, 549, 668, 670; real
619, 620, 621, 622, 624, 626, 631, presence doctrine in, 555; spiritual
639-40, 642, 645, 654, 659, 663 n. benefits of communion in, 565, 566,
489, 663-65, 666, 667, 671, 674, 568, differential effects of
675 n. 526, 677, 685, 699, 705-07, Eucharistie reception on different
709; members teaching at school of kinds of communicants in, 565;
Rheims, 17; biblical exegesis of, 43, defense of administration of
196; unsystematic character of its Eucharist to infants by chalice
theology, 42-44; analysis and alone in, 570-71, 580; repeatability
critique of authorities in, 44-47; of penance in, 586, 587, 589;
doctrine of God in, 264, 278-79, defense of contritionism in penance
282, 290; God's ubiquity in, 264; in, although inconsistently, 593;
God's omnipotence in, 290; God's grades of holy orders seen as
foreknowledge, providence, imitation of Christ's personal
predestination in relation to free ministry in, 616, 618, 620, 622, 624;
will, contingency in, 278-79, 282; canonical rules governing clergy in,
doctrine of Trinity in, 107, 108, 617-18, defense of consummation
118, 147; creation in, 328-29, 335, as principle of marriage formation
336 n. 100, 342, 344-45, 356 nn. in Decretum dei fuit, 631; more
156, 157, 365, 366; angels in, 342, typical defense of consent as
344-45; garden of Eden in, 335, principle of marriage formation in,
336 n. 100; physical needs of 639-40, 642, 664, 666, 670, 675;
prelapsarian man in, 356 nn. 156, distinction betwen present and
157; inferiority of Eve to Adam in, future consent in, 640, 645; change
365, 366; original sin in, 373-74, in rules governing marriage over
375, 382, 383, 385-88; Christology time in, 663 n. 489, 663-64; marital
 INDEX OF NAMES 839
impediments, grounds for Lotulph of Novara, master at school
nullification, separation in, 47, of Rheims, 17
663-65, 666, 667, 668, 671, 674, Louis VII, king of France, 21, 22,
675 n. 526, 671, 685; Last Things 431-32; brother of Philip,
in, 699, 705-07, 709; De coniugo, archdeacon of cathedral chapter of
640, 645, 668, 674, 685; Decretum dei Notre Dame, Paris, 22; policy for
fuit, 631, 667, 670; Deus de cuius elevating men to bishoprics, 21;
prinäpio etfinetacetur, 663 η. 489, approval of Peter Lombard's
667; Sententiae Anselmi, 372, 373, nomination as bishop of Paris, 22;
374, 376, 377, 502, 639, 659, 663 n. informed by pope Alexander III of
489, 668. See also Adam; Alberic of reform of St. Victor, 431-32
Rheims; Angels; Anselm of Laon; Lucan, as cited by Pseudo-Bede, 163
Charity; Christ; Christology; Luke, gospel of, 439
Creation; Eden, garden of; Ethics; Lumellogno, putative birthplace of
Eve; Exegesis, biblical; Free will, Peter Lombard, 15
doctrine of; God, doctrine of; Luscombe, David E., 6, 8, 63, 77
Lotulph of Novara; Man, doctrine
of; Sacraments, baptism, Macrobius, as cited by Pseudo-Bede,
confirmation, Eucharist, penance, 163
holy orders, marriage; Trinity, Macy, Gary, 564-65
doctrine of; William of Champeaux Manegold of Lautenbach, 162 η. 23
Lawrence, abbot of Westminster, Mark, gospel of, 208-209
19-20, his studies with Hugh of St. Marcellus, St., church of, as Peter
Victor and Sententiae de divinitate, Lombard's burial place, 23
19-20; move to Durham abbey on Martianus Capella, 308, 314-15;
return to England, 19 commentary on, by Bernard
Lazarus, 716 Silvestris, 308; by anonymous
Leander, bishop of Seville, his Chartrain of twelfth century,
correspondence with Gregory the 314-15
Great on administration of baptism, Martin, Raymond-M., 73
541 Mary, Virgin, 75, 165-66, 414,
Leah, 683 421-22, 437, 630, 631, 632-33, 635,
LeGoff, Jacques, 10 642-44, 647, 648, 651, 654, 656,
Leclercq, Jean, 8 662, 737, 738, 740, 763, 770; her
Leo I, pope, 46-47, 55, 87, 89, 541, conception of incarnate Christ, 75;
543-44, 674, 675, 685; his ruling on her cleansing from original sin, in
time of baptism, 46-47, 543-44; as Augustine, 414, in Hugh of St,
criticized by school of Laon, 46-47, Victor, 414, in Peter Lombard's
543-44; his ruling on baptism by sermons, 421, in his Sentences,
triple immersion, 55, 89, 541, 542; 421-22, 738; marriage of, to St.
as criticized by Porretans, 55-56; Joseph, as a consideration affecting
his ruling on prior adulterous affair theory of marriage formation in
as a marital impediment, as twelfth century, 630, 631, 632-33,
supported by school of Laon, 47; as 635, 642-44, 647, 648, 651, 654,
rejected by Peter Lombard, 87; on 656, 662, 763, 770; as a type of the
sexual dysfunction in marriage as church, in Glossa ordinaria, 165—66.
grounds for nullification 674, 675, See also Augustine; Christ; Church,
685. See also Sacraments, baptism, doctrine of; Glossa ordinana; Hugh of
marriage St. Victor; Joseph, St.; Peter
Letbert of Lille, as exegete of the Lombard; Sacraments, marriage
Psalms, 158-59; misattribution of Matthew, gospel of, 208, 209
his work to Rufinus of Aquileia, 158 Maurice, monk of Durham, abbot of
nn. 5, 6; typology in, 158; tropology Rievaulx, and dedicatee of
in, 158-59; use of authorities in, Lawrence of Westminster's Sententiae
159; of Augustine in, 159 de divinitate, 19
Leviticus, book of, 28 Maurice of Sully, bishop of Paris, 29,
Lottin, Odon, 43 430, 432; sermons of, 430; role of,
840 INDEX OF NAMES

in restoring property of Eskyl, library catalogues as sources for

bishop of Lund, 432. See also identifying Peter Lombard's works,
Alexander III, pope; Eskyl, bishop 28-30
of Lund Notre Dame, Paris, school of, as locus
Melchisidech, as referred to in of Peter Lombard's teaching career,
Hebrews, 197, 198, 578-79; as 17, 20, 23-24; its members as likely
interpreted by Peter Lombard, 198, audience for his sermons, 26; his
by Robert of Melun, 199; his sacrifice role in enhancing its reputation as
as forerunner of Eucharist in Sententiae center of scholastic theology, 30
divinitatis, Summa sententiarum, Peter Novara, as region of Peter Lombard's
Lombard, 578-79. See also Paul, St.; birth, 15, 16, 17
Sacraments, Eucharist Numbers, book of, 28
Metamorphosis Goliae, as testimonium of
Peter Lombard, 20, 31 Odo, abbot of Ourscamp, 424 n. 49,
Michael, archangel, 351 431, as pupil of Peter Lombard and
Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo, 433 witness to fact that he did not teach
Mont Ste. Geneviève, as school in Christological nihilianism, 424 n.
Paris where Gilbert of Poitiers 49; as charged by pope Alexander
taught, 53, 133, 168 III to assist in reform of St. Victor,
Moses, debate over moral 431
acceptability of lies told by his Ordericus Vitalis, chronicler, ix
nurses and those of other Israelite Origen, 208, 339-40, 344, 348, 349,
children to protect their lives, in 354, 368, 629, 705, 710, 713, 727,
Augustine, 186, 511-13; in Gregory 731 ; critique of his view that devil
the Great, 475, 483, 511; in Anselm and fallen angels can be saved, that
of Laon, 475; in school of Laon, souls in Hell and Heaven can
475, 511; in Summa sententiarum, 475, improve and backslide, as a
511; in Robert Pullen, 475, 511; in consensus position in twelfth
Peter Lombard, 186, 483, 511-13. century, 208, 344, 349, 727; in Peter
See also Ethics, intentionality in; Lombard, 339-40, 348, 349, 727;
Fraud, pious; Lying critique of his view of human body
and human sexuality, in Augustine,
Nero, emperor, as associated with 354, 629, 731; as a twelfth-century
Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians, 206, consensus position, 629, 731; in
207, 207 n. 136, 350, 699, 707, 714; Peter Lombard, 368, 369, 731; as
as accepted by some twelfth-century an authority in Peter Lombard for
thinkers, 699; this view as rejected idea that angels need grace to
by Augustine, 207 n. 136; by school activate free will toward the good,
of Laon, 707; by Peter Lombard, 348; On Ezechiel, 348. See also
196, 206, 207, 207 n. 136, 350, 714. Angels; Devil, the; Last Things;
See also Exegesis, biblical; Last Man, doctrine of
Things; Antichrist; Paul, St. Ott, Ludwig, 19
Nicholas II, pope, defense of consent Otto of Freising, as a critic of Peter
as principle of marriage formation Abelard's theological analogies, 100
in, 632, 637 n. 20. See also Abelard, Peter;
Nicodemus, 544 Theological language, problem of
Nile, river, as putative location of Ovid, as cited by Peter Abelard, 201
garden of Eden, in Robert Pullen,
335-36 Paris, bishopric of, 16, 22-23, 29-30,
Nestorius, heretic, 402 157, 428, 430, 431, 434; Peter
Nobile, Enrico, 7 Lombard's election to, 16, 22-23,
Normore, Calvin, 269 30, 157, 428, 431, 434; posthumous
Notre Dame, Paris, cathedral, 27, 29 charge that he had obtained it by
Notre Dame, Paris, cathedral chapter simony, 431, 434; Maurice of
of, 17, 20-21, 26-27, 28-30; its Sully's tenure of, 29-30, 430. See
social composition in twelfth also Christ; Maurice of Sully;
century, 20-21; its cartulary and Walter of St. Victor
 INDEX OF NAMES 841

Paris, consistory of (1147), 21, 132, Epistolas divi Pauli; Robert of Melun;
434 Sacraments, marriage; William of
Paris, schools and masters of, 16-23, St. Thierry
25, 33, 36, 68, 77-78, 133, 168, 428 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 7
Paris, university of, 11, 30, 434; Peter, canon of St. Mary's, Chartres,
statute of 1215 mandating study of 21
Peter Lombard's Sentences for Peter, master recommended to Henry,
candidates in theology, 434 bishop of Beau vais, by pope
Paschal II, pope, his prohibition of Eugenius III, 21
intinction in administration of Peter Comestor, 16, 28, 29, 424 n. 49;
Eucharist, 568-69, 570, 580 legend that he was brother of Peter
Paucapalea, commentator on Gratian, Lombard and Gratian, 16; pupil of
592, 634-35, 667, 673, 677, 689; Peter Lombard and source of his
defense of contritionism in penance wider work as a biblical exegete,
in, 592; defense of consummation 28; as witness to fact that he did
as principle of marriage formation not teach Christological nihilianism,
in, 634-35, marital impediments, 424 n. 29; possible author of
grounds for nullification, separation exegetical works listed in library
in, 667, 673, 677, 689. See also catalogue of cathedral chapter,
Gratian; Sacraments, penance, Notre Dame, Paris, 29
marriage Peter Lombard, v, vi, vii, ix, 1, 2, 3,
Paul, St., vi, 24, 25, 28, 48, 83, 122, 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10, 11, 12, 15-18,
142, 149 η. 168, 152 η. 178, 155, 20-32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 65, 68, 73,
156, 157, 171, 174 η. 53, 175, 77-90,92, 113, 114, 119-31, 132,
188-225, 235, 236, 238-40, 242, 133, 146, 148-54, 156, 157, 160,
258, 308, 338, 384, 388, 401, 402, 162, 164, 167, 170-88, 190,
403, 413, 429, 460-61, 466, 468, 192-225, 227-30, 238-54, 259-65,
487, 489, 490, 494, 495, 497, 266-68, 269, 277, 285-90, 292,
498, 499, 503, 530, 666, 667, 669, 296-303, 304, 314, 323, 326, 334,
690-91, 698, 707, 711, 714, 720, 749, 336-42, 346, 347-53, 354, 365,
769, 772; Romans, 24, 152 η. 178, 366-72, 374, 377-81, 383-85, 386,
200-01, 203, 208 η. 138, 209, 211, 393-97, 398, 399, 400, 403, 416,
212, 213-15, 216, 217, 218-19, 220, 417-31,432-44,446-48,449,459-73,
235-36, 238-40, 242, 384, 460-61, 480-93,496-516, 523, 526, 527-32,
466, 487, 489, 494, 498, 499, 530, 533, 537-43, 544-48, 550-51, 555,
720; 1 Corinthians, 24, 203-05, 208 558-60, 562, 574, 575-83, 600-09,
η. 138, 220-21, 222, 690-91, 698, 612-13,621-28,631,649-58,660-62,
749, 769; 2 Corinthians, 690-91, 680, 681-98, 699, 700, 710-78;
698, 769; Galatians, 174 η. 53, 209, historiographical approaches to,
210; Philippians, 223, 401, 402, 403, 3-11; life of, v, 11, 15-18, 20-23,
413, 429, 468; Colossians, 203 η. 28-29, 30, 32, 157, 428, 431; legends
129, 213; 1 Thessalonians, 204, 711, about, 15—16; recommendation to
714, 772; 2 Thessalonians, 196, Gilduin of St. Victor by Bernard of
205-07, 707, 714, 772; 1 Timothy, Clairvaux, 16-17, studies at school
202, 203-04; Hebrews, 196-99, 219 of Rheims, 17; move to Paris and
n. 163, 338, 460, 494-95, 497; possibility of his studies with Hugh
forged correspondence with Seneca, of St. Victor, 17-18, 20; as teacher
treated as authentic by Peter at cathedral school of Notre Dame,
Abelard, 258; on disparity of cult in Paris and member of cathedral
marriage, 666, 667, 669, 690-91. chapter, 17, 20-30; as peritus at
See also Abelard, Peter; Ambrose; council of Rheims (1148) and
Augustine, Commentarius possibly at consistory of Paris
Cantabridgensis; Exegesis, biblical; (1147), 21, 215 n. 155; as deacon
Gilbert of Poitiers; Glossa ordinaria; and archdeacon, 22; likelihood of
Haimo of Auxerre; Hervaeus of his having accompanied Theobald,
Bourg-Dieu; Jerome; Peter bishop of Paris, to Rome (1153-54),
Lombard; Quaestiones et decisiones in 22; election as bishop of Paris, 16,
842 INDEX OF NAMES

22-23, 30, 157, 428, 431; death, of souls in the resurrection in,
burial, and epitaph of, 23; obituary 176-77, 712, 772; commentary on
of, 28; last will and testament of, Pauline epistles, 12, 23-25, 149 n.
28-29; library of, 28-29; 168, 152 n. 178; 156, 157, 186, 188,
personality of, as it emerges from 192-225, 499, 530, 694, 711, 714,
his biography, 30, 32; medieval 772; format and mise-en-page of,
reputation and testimonia of, v, 11, 193, 224; accessus to St. Paul and to
20, 22, 30-32, 157; works, v, 11, 15, each epistle in, compared with
23-30; biblical exegesis of, 11, 15, Peter Abelard, Commentarius
23, 26, 27-29, 31, 32, 83, 88, 149 n. Cantabndgensis, Robert of Melun,
168, 152 n. 178, 156, 157, 160, 162, (Quaestiones et decisiones in Epistolas divi
170-88, 192-225, 238-39, 240, 242, Pauli, 194-95, 197, 224; literal
339, 272, 384, 403-04, 429, 460-61, reading of text in, 195, 199-205; 2
464, 466, 468, 487, 490, 499, 530, Thessalonians as sole exception,
625,694, 711, 712, 714,772; 196, 205-07, 207 n. 136; historical
fragmentary or non-extant exegesis contextualization and criticism of
of, 27-28; Magna glossatura as Paul in, 195, 196-98, 200-07, 212,
medieval name of, 156; use of 224; development of theological
authorities in, 173, 174-75, 176-77, doctrine in, 196, 204-07, 403, 429,
178-79, 193, 207-12, 223, 224; use 487, 490, 498, 499, 530, 656, 694,
of classical authors in, 182; use of 772; natural theology in, 212, 224,
liberal arts in, 182, 173, 187, 238-39; critique of Peter Abelard's
211-12; rhetoric in, 170-74, 175, equation of Trinity with Platonic
183, 187, 194-95, 197, 200, 202, One, Nous, World Soul as
211, 224; logic in, 182,211-12; accessible by natural reason in,
equipollent argumentation in, 182; 212-13, 239-40, 242, 294; his own
reference to universale in, 211 ; countervailing appeal to
commentary on the Psalms, 12, 23, Neoplatonic theology in, 212;
28, 156, 157, 170-88, 192, 194 n. predestination in, as a theological
100, 208, 214, 372; influence of not logical problem, 213;
Glossa ordinana on, 170, 173, 174, Christology in, 215-17, 222-23,
184, 185; influence of Gilbert of 403-04, 429, 460, 468; hypostatic
Poitiers on, 167-70, 172-74; accessus union in, 222-23, 403-04, 429;
to, 170-74, 175, 183, 187, 224; Christ's saving work in, 217-20,
format of, 174, 187; on Psalms as a 460-61, 464, 466; ethics in, 209,
composite book, 171-72; key to 213-14, 215, 298, 490, 499;
Psalms on different themes in, intentionalism in, 213-14;
171-72, 187; accuracy of text in, psychogenesis of ethical acts in,
178-82, 187; awareness of variant 214; free will and grace in, 490;
texts of, 178-80; on authorship of, definition of faith in, 213-14, 298,
170-71; typological and reading hope in, 499, sin against the Holy
of, 170, 171, 172-74, 179, 182-83, Spirit in, 209, 215, 487; salvific
185, 187; anagogical interpretation power of Old Testament rites in,
in, 184; critique of Neoplatonic 530; sacraments in, 204-05,
anthropology in, 174; concept of 220-22, 656, 694; Eucharist in,
substance in, 177; problem of 220-22; marriage in, 204-05, 656,
theological language in, 172; 694; Antichrist in, 196, 204, 205-07,
development of theological doctrine 207 n. 136, 772; his teaching of
in, 173-78, 188, 712; hypostatic exegesis, 23, 24, 25, 87; its use in
union in, 177, 188; whether human his sermons, 26-27; reputation and
Christ should receive dulia or latria influence as an exegete, 28, 30-32,
in, 175-76; ethics in, 173-74, 156-57, 170, 192, 193; Sentences of,
177-78, 185-86, 188; modes of fear 1,2, 3,4, 7 , 8 , 9 , 10, 11,23,24,25,
in the moral life in, 177, 178; lying 27, 28, 29, 30, 31-32, 34, 35, 77,
in, 185-86; sacraments in, 175, 78-90, 92, 120, 122, 156, 157, 175,
186-87, 188; penance in, 175, 188; 176, 186, 204, 205 n. 132, 208,
marriage in, 186-87; the four states 214-15,216,217,219,221, 222,
 INDEX OF NAMES 843

223, 225, 227, 228-30, 238, 241, 748, 751, 761, 773, 777; man's
242, 244, 251, 259, 260-61, 262, knowledge of, in next life, 717,
263, 285, 288, 296, 301, 303, 336, 773; proofs of God's existence in,
337, 338, 342, 347, 352, 367, 372, 79-80, 122, 227, 229-30, 238-40,
377, 403, 419, 421, 423, 426, 428, 515, 719, 720-21, 777; God as
429, 433-38, 443, 448, 468, 469, absolute being, metaphysical
471, 472, 490, 492, 507, 510, 511, ground of other beings in, 121,
514, 515, 516, 527, 528, 530, 227, 228, 240, 241, 245, 247,
603-04, 606, 625, 651-52, 653-54, 263, 267, 300, 718, 719-21,
656, 662, 682 η. 545, 690-91, 692, 723, 773; His eternity in, 121, 149,
713, 714, 715, 716-17, 718, 726, 245, 247, 248, 289, 300, 722, 724,
727, 728, 730, 744, 749, 751, 752, 730; freedom in, 297-98, 725-26,
753, 771, 772, 773, 775, 776, 777; 727, 742, 754; goodness in, 119-26,
schema as a sentence collection, 9, 131, 241, 248, 300, 718, 725-26,
10, 78-84, 92, 744, 751-52, 777; 727, 730, 773; critique of Peter
use of authorities in, 10, 24-25, Abelard's use of this attribute as
84-90, 92, 244, 251, 260-61, 336, personal name of Holy Spirit in,
468, 603-04, 606, 651-52, 653-54, 119-26, 131; His immutability in,
662, 690-91, 718, 727, 777; theme 121, 240-41, 245, 247, 249, 288-89,
of signs and things, use and 300, 301, 352, 353, 717, 719, 720,
enjoyment in, 78-79, 301, 338, 528, 721, 723, 724, 726, 730, 737, 739,
530, 716-17, 718, 726, 753, 772; 773; incommutability in, 121, 242,
commentaries on, 1-2, 3, 6, 32, 682 245, 248, 260, 263, 719, 723;
n. 545; impact on education of incomparability in, 245, 723;
university theologians, philosophers, infinity in, 719, 724; love in, 336,
1, 2, 11, 30, 31-32; sermons of, 337, 773; justice in, 297, 713,
26-27, 152 nn. 177, 178, 216 n. 715-16, 725-26, 772, 773; mercy
158, 403, 421, 482 n. 24; biblical in, 713, 715-16, 717, 772-73;
exegesis in, 226-27; typology in, 26; omnipotence in, 119-26, 131, 218,
rhetoric in, 26, intended audience 241, 248, 264, 296-300, 301, 302,
of, 26-27; Christology in, 152 nn. 431-66, 539, 717, 725-76, 754, 771,
177, 178; Mariology in, 421; theme 773, 775; critique of Peter Abelard's
of regio dissimilitudinis in, 174 n. 53; use of this attribute as personal
482 n. 24; dubia and spuria of, 27 n. name of God the Father, 119-26,
36; theological language in, 80, 81, 131; His omniscience in, 265,
85-86, 119-31, 148-54, 215, 227, 285-90, 300-01, 302, 724, 726, 730,
229, 243, 245-49, 286, 399, 418, 775; perfection in, 299, 300, 724,
423, 424-25, 428-31, 433-38, 726; rationality in, 240, 298, 721;
469-70,559-60, 719, 722, 737, 739, simplicity in, 149, 240, 242, 245,
756-57, 774; doctrine of God in, vi, 248, 301, 719, 720, 721, 723, 724,
vii, 11, 25, 27, 78, 79,80,81,82, 726, 737, 739; transcendence in,
85,86,88,89, 119-27, 128-31, 227, 240, 241, 245, 247, 248, 260,
149-50, 152, 153-54, 177, 209, 287, 302, 719, 720, 723, 725, 726,
212-13, 215, 218, 227-30, 238-54, 727, 747, 754; ubiquity in, 263, 264,
259-65, 266-68, 269, 277, 289-90, 265, 266-68, 437, 723-24; unity in,
292, 296-300, 301, 302, 303, 325, 240, 242, 248, 719, 721, 724; His
336, 337-39, 346, 352, 365, 366-67, will in, 297-302, 725-26; as
385, 398, 418, 419, 421, 436, 437, manifested in His precept,
439, 466, 472, 485-89, 490-92, 498, prohibition, permission, and
501, 506, 507-10, 513, 514, 515, counsel in, 301; His wisdom in,
529, 539, 544, 545, 548, 550, 555, 119-26, 131, 241,248,299, 724;
562, 578, 662, 713, 715-17, 718-26, critique of Peter Abelard's use of
727, 730, 737, 739, 742, 744, 745, this attribute as personal name of
747, 748-49, 771, 772-73, 774-75, God the Son in, 119-26, 131; God's
777; man's natural knowledge of, foreknowledge, predestination,
78, 79, 122, 227, 229-30, 238-43, providence in relation to free will,
247, 513, 529, 719, 720-21, 747, contingency in, 264, 269, 285-90,
844 INDEX OF NAMES

723, 724-75, 726, 774; use of critique of equation of with World

nominalist argument in analysis of, Soul in, 212-13, 337; sin against
287, 775; whether God can do and its remissibility in, 209, 215,
better or different than He does in, 346; as guiding Jacob's masquerade
264, 297-310, 732, 725-26, 774-75; as Esau in, 513; creation in, vi, 11,
use of nominalist argument in 79, 80-81, 83, 88, 89, 254, 259, 267,
analysis of, 85, 299-300, 775; God's 286, 287, 298-99, 301, 302, 304,
relation to universe in cosmological 336-42, 347-53, 367-69, 378-79,
order in, 227, 242, 248, 259, 263, 393, 444-45, 654, 656, 711, 713,
266, 267, 287, 301, 719, 720, 723, 720, 726, 727-32, 737, 742, 745,
724-25, 727, 773, 775; God's 750, 751 772, 773, 777; cosmology
relation to universe in charismatic in, 81, 88, 259, 267, 340, 342, 727,
order in, 248, 260-63, 267, 539, 729; creation simul in, 336, 337,
719, 720, 723-24, 724-25, 726, 750, 339-40, 347, 727, 728; exemplary
754, 771, 773, 775; God's ordained causes in, 336, 337, 339, 342, 727;
and absolute power in, 85, 298-99, primordial matter in 337, 339-40,
539, 723, 725-26; God as 347, 728; seminal reasons in, 339,
unconsumed by manifestations of 340, 357, 393, 728; angels in, 81,
Himself to other beings or by 83, 89, 337-40, 342, 347-53, 378,
interactions with them in, 263, 300, 445, 711, 713, 726, 729-30, 732,
719-20, 723, 724; doctrine of 742, 745, 772, 773, 777; nature of as
Trinity in, vi, 11, 25, 27, 79, 80, 81, simple, indivisible, immortal,
82, 86, 119-27, 128-31, 149-50, spiritual persons with memory,
152, 153-54, 209, 212-213, 215, reason, free will in, 347-48,
227-30, 240, 242-54, 259-63, 267, 729-30, 732; how, given their
299, 337, 346, 365, 366-67, 385, constitution, they differ from deity
396, 398, 418, 419, 472, 486-87, in, 352-53, 730; angelic free will in,
490-92, 501, 506, 507-10, 513, 514, 348; rational and moral state of
515, 544, 548, 550, 562, 578, 662, angels before fall, need for grace in
719, 721-23, 737, 744, 745, 747, order to choose the good in, 348,
748, 750, 761, 774, 775, 777; 349-50, 353, 729-30, 745, 777; as
analogies of in human mind in, 80, differing in degrees of rarefaction,
123-26, 127, 149-50, 152, 242-45, wisdom, and will before fall in, 348,
260, 366-67, 721-22; engendering 729; angelic hierarchy after fall in,
of Trinitarian persons in, 249-54, 348, 350-51, 727-30; headed by
260, 299; critique of view of seraphim reflecting primacy of love
Godhead as metaphysical over knowledge in, 350-51; three
substratum of which Trinitarian subsets of angelic ranks within
persons are expressions in, 126-27, hierarchy in, 351; gradations of
129, 246, 722; Holy Spirit in, 80, angels within each rank in, 351; fall
82, 131, 209, 212-13, 215, 253-54, of in, 338, 349, 378, 729-30;
259-63, 267, 337, 346, 385, 396, confirmation of fallen angels in
398, 419, 472, 486-87, 490-92, 501, fallen state, good angels in goodness
506, 507-10, 513, 514, 515, 544, in, 349-50, 378, 445, 729-30, 742,
548, 550, 562, 578, 662, 737, 744, 773; retention of free will by both
745, 750, 761, 777; definition of as groups in, 349-50, 353, 730, 772,
charity in, 260-62, 501, 750; 773; fallen angels as continuing to
missions of in, 80, 82, 262-63, 267, will evil and hence to merit
385, 419, 501, 506, 507-10, 514, punishment in, 350, 727-30; as
515; gifts of in, 80, 82, 131, 261-63, tempters of men, 350; good angels'
385, 472, 490, 491-92, 506, 506-10, perfection in quality but growth in
514, 544, 550, 622, 744, 745, 747, quantity of their love and merit in,
748, 761, 777; as inspiring virtues, 352-53, 730, 742; missions of good
80, 131, 261-62, 385, 472, 490, angels, view that all ranks of angels
491-92, 506, 507-10, 514, 737, 744, are sent, 351 ; assumption of bodies
745; as communicated in for this purpose, doubt concerning
sacraments, 344, 548, 562, 578, 761; their metaphysical status in, 350,
 INDEX OF NAMES 845

729; view that angels influence men in, 377, 378, 379, 488, 732-33, 744,
by their effects and not 777; Adam's motivation in fall in,
substantially in, 350; guardian 379, 462, 469, 488, 733, 777; view
angels, view that one angel can that he sinned more seriously than
guard more than one human being she did in, 378, 380, 396, 733;
simultaneously in, 351; role in Last effects of original sin in, 81, 187,
Things in, 350, 711, 713, 729; 214, 383-85, 732, 733-34, 741,
creation and nature of man in, vi, 754-55, 773; man's retention of
11, 78, 79,81,83,84,89, 123-26, conscience notwithstanding in, 385;
149-50, 204, 242-45, 260, 302, 331, transmission of original sin in, 81,
336, 338-39, 341, 350, 354-56, 186-87, 393-97, 421-22, 734-36;
366-72, 377, 379-86, 393, 396-97, Christology in, vi, vii, 11, 25, 81,
418, 421-22, 423, 443-44, 448, 472, 82, 83, 89, 125, 131, 150-53, 174,
486-87, 489-90, 502, 515, 654, 657, 175-78, 212, 215, 216-20, 222, 223,
726, 727, 729, 727-28, 730-36, 737, 247, 262, 266, 299-300, 302, 345,
739, 740, 741, 742-43, 744, 745, 383, 397, 403-04, 417-31, 433-38,
746, 747, 748, 750, 754-55, 773, 442-48, 449, 459, 461-70, 472,
774, 775, 776-77; rationale for 477-78, 490, 492, 493, 499-504,
man's creation in, 336, 338—39, 506, 508, 509, 514, 515, 516, 517,
351, 367, 444, 654, 727-28; creation 533, 541, 558-60, 575-78, 579, 581,
of woman, her nature in 582, 621, 622, 623-29, 650-51, 652,
comparison with that of man in, 657,685-86, 702, 711, 712, 713,
366-68, 377, 657, 732-33, 776-77; 714, 717, 723, 726, 730, 736-44,
rationale for creation of sub-human 748, 749, 750, 752, 753, 771, 773,
beings in, 338, 341, 728, 750; 774, 776, 777-78; in sermons of, 27;
hylemorphic constitution of human influence of John Damascene on,
nature in, 338-39, 341, 396-97, 25, 151, 215, 217, 418-20, 423, 428,
418, 423; soul of prelapsarian man, 437, 447; divinity of, as disclosed by
its potential immortality in, 124-25, Holy Spirit in, 533; incarnation of,
366-71, 379-86, 731, 732-33, 745, in, 498, 736, 740, 774; exemption of
748, 773, 776-77; analogies of Virgin Mary from original sin in,
Trinity in, 123-26, 149-50, 242-45, 421, 738; exemption of incarnate
260, 421-22, 731; intellectual Christ from original sin in, 422,
aptitudes of prelapsarian man in, 443, 470, 738; His taking on of
350, 731-32, 740, 741, 777; moral some of its effects in, 443-44,
aptitudes of prelapsarian man, his 446-47, 741; point in gestation
free will, need for grace in order to process at which His human soul was
advance in merit in, 370-72, 448, infused into His body in, 420-21;
472, 487, 489-90, 727, 729, 730, hypostatic union in, 81, 150-53,
731, 732, 741, 742, 744, 747, 777; 177, 216-17, 222, 223, 262, 266,
body of prelapsarian man in, 204, 403-04, 417-31, 433-38, 448, 723,
331, 354-55, 369, 731; freedom 736-40, 776; critique of assumptus
from pain, illness, exercising such homo theory in, 425, 426, 738-39;
natural functions as eating, 331, critique of habitus theory in Sentences,
369; sexual activity, 204, 354-55, 425, 426, 429, 739; entertainment of
731; nature of children of Adam habitus theory in gloss on
and Eve, had they been born before Philippians, 223; critique of
the fall in, 368-69; original sin in, subsistence theory in, 425-26, 430,
11,81,84, 186-87, 212,214,225, 739; attribution of Christological
370, 377-81, 382-85, 393-97, 421- nihilianism to him, vi, 27 η. 36,
22, 462, 464, 465, 487-88, 529, 555, 222, 223, 427-31, 433-36, 738, 739,
726, 732-36, 740, 741, 744, 745, 776, 777-78; Christ's human nature
746, 747, 748, 754-55, 773, 776-77; in, 81, 82, 83, 152-53, 215, 438,
psychogenesis of sin in, 378, 379- 442-48, 449, 461, 464, 466, 470,
80, 732-33, 744, 776; as not 472, 492, 499-500, 503-04, 506,
excused by ignorance in, 378-79, 508, 509, 514, 515, 516, 736, 737,
733, 745; Eve's motivation in fall 740-41, 743, 749, 750, 752, 774,
846 INDEX OF NAMES

776; His human knowledge in, 715; on Eucharist as bonding

442-43, 447, 470, 492, 499-500, 514, Christians in, 576, 577, 578,
736, 749; His human psychology in, 582-83; as context for treatment of
443, 444, 447-48, 470, 492, 500, holy orders in, 532; on marriage as
515, 736, 737, 776; His human moral signifying union of Christ with in,
capacities in, 446-48, 461, 472, 490, 650-51, 652, 685-86; ethics in, vi,
492, 493, 499-500, 503-04, 506, vii, 11, 25, 27, 79, 80-84, 89, 131,
508, 509, 514, 515, 516, 729, 736, 170, 171, 172-74, 175, 177, 178,
737, 741, 742, 744, 748, 749, 750, 180-81, 183, 185-86, 187, 188, 190,
752, 776; His possession 197, 200-01, 207, 210, 213-14, 215,
of faith and hope in, 499-500, 749, 261, 271, 318, 348, 349-50, 353,
750, 776; of charity in, 500, 503-04, 370-72, 377-81, 382, 384, 385, 387,
506; of cardinal virtues in, 506; of 390, 393-97, 415, 421-22, 448, 464,
perfect filial fear of the Lord in, 467-72, 473, 477-78, 479, 480-516,
508, 509, 748, 749; titles to be given 529, 530, 538-39, 540, 547, 600,
Him in, 468, 470; whether human 603, 606, 607, 721, 723-24, 729-30,
Christ should receive dulia or latria 732-34, 726, 737, 741, 742, 743,
in, 81, 175-76, 741; His baptism 744-52, 753, 754, 755, 757, 760,
and circumcision in, 533; His 761, 762, 764, 765-67, 770, 771,
ministry, as a model for men in 773, 774, 777; intentionalism in, 84,
holy orders in, 82, 621, 622, 623-24, 180-81, 379, 393, 467-68, 469, 472,
626, 628; His transfiguration in, 480-87, 503, 511, 514, 607, 744,
702; His passion and crucifixion in, 745-52; conscience in, 385;
299, 302, 345, 462-66, 477-78, 726, ignorance, as conditioning moral
741, 742, 743, 744; union of His culpability in, 378-79, 488, 733,
divinity and humanity during 745, 746, 762; sin in, 82, 186, 318,
triduüm in, 437, 739; His 379-80, 467, 471, 472, 481, 482,
resurrection in, 299, 302, 437, 726; 483, 484-88, 511-14, 515, 529, 530,
His saving work in, 11, 81, 131, 540, 547, 600, 603, 627-28, 657,
152, 212, 217-20, 299-300, 383, 673, 687, 693, 745, 746, 751, 752,
397, 459, 461-70, 500, 516, 717, 753, 754, 755, 757, 761, 762, 764,
736, 737, 738, 741-44, 750, 753, 765-67, 768, 770, 771, 777;
771, 773; position on "rights of the psychogenesis of, 378, 379-80, 515,
devil" theory of atonement, in 732-33, 741, 745; actual sin in, 529,
Pauline exegesis, 217-20; in 530, 540, 547, 754; mortal sin in,
Sentences, 459, 461-70, 737, 739, 484, 512, 513, 746; etiology of seven
741, 742-43, 744; His role in last deadly sins in, 484-85, 746; venial
judgment in, 711, 712, 713, 714; sin in, 485, 512, 513, 746; adultery
His death and resurrection as in, 511, 514, 673, 687, 693; other
symbolized in baptism by triple sexual sins in, 693; lying in, 186,
immersion in, 89, 541; His 483, 511-13, 751, 752; perjury in,
resurrected body as His real 512, 513-14, 751, 752; rape in, 693,
presence in Eucharist in, 553-54, 768; simony in, 627-28, 657, 762,
558-60, 575-78, 579, 581; which 765, 771, 777; usury in, 82, 511,
body He gave disciples at last 514; vice in, 180, 415, 484, 506,
supper in, 525, 582; church, 744, 746, 766; virtue in, 27, 80,
doctrine of, in, 172, 182-83, 185,
202, 205-07, 532, 576, 577, 578, 81-82,89, 131, 177, 178, 190,213,
582-83, 650-51, 652, 684, 685-86, 261-62, 384, 385, 472, 473, 482,
690, 698, 715, 736; in Psalms 483, 488-92, 493-504, 505, 506-10,
commentary, 172, 182-83; in 514-15, 607, 627-28, 657, 727, 729,
commentary on 2 Thessalonians, 730, 741, 742, 744, 745, 746-48,
206-07; treatment of concept of 749-51, 752, 760, 764, 771, 773,
ecclesia primitiva in, 202, 205-06, 777; natural virtue in, 472, 484,
684, 690, 698; as extension of 507, 515, 745, 746, 747, 777;
Christ's saving work in time in, virtues as gifts of Holy Spirit in,
736; as communion of saints in, 80, 131, 261-62, 385, 472, 490,
491-92, 506, 507-10, 514, 744, 747,
 INDEX OF NAMES 847

748-49; fear of the Lord in, 177, baptism by blood and by desire in,
178, 508-09, 510, 607, 748-49; 538-39, 754, 757; its validity if
understanding in, 509, 510, 748-49; administered by heretic,
wisdom in, 509-10, 748-49; their excomunicate, non-believer, lay
perdurance in next life in, 508, 510, person in, 545, 754, 765;
748-49; cardinal virtues in, 27, 82, confirmation in and general
505, 506-07, 508, 744, 747-48, approach to, 550-51, 753, 754,
their perdurance in next life in, 755; its physical medium and
506-07, 747-48; theological virtues administration in, 550, 755; its
in, 81-82, 89, 190, 213, 384, 482, effects in, 550, 755; status of its
492, 493-504, 506-07, 508, 744, minister in, 550-51, 755; its relative
748, 749-51; their perdurance in neccessity in, 551, 755; Eucharist
next life in, 506-07, 508, 749, 751; in, 88, 208 n. 435, 220-22, 558-60,
interaction of grace and free will in, 575-83, 713, 723, 753, 755-58, 761,
488-92, 507, 514-15, 727, 729, 730, 762, 773, 774; general approach to,
732, 741, 742, 744, 745, 746-48, 582, 756-58; physical media and
771, 773, 777; sacraments in, vii, their significance in, 575-77;
11,61, 75, 7 9 , 8 2 , 8 3 , 8 4 , 8 7 , 8 8 , necessity of for salvation in, 756;
89, 183, 186-87, 188, 198, 204-05, real presence doctrine in, 220-21,
208 n. 138, 220-22, 338-39, 348, 558-60, 575-77, 581-82, 756;
351, 378-79, 395, 421, 426, 427-32, change of Eucharistie elements in,
472, 499, 509, 511,516, 526, 527-32, 559-60; which body Christ gave
537-39, 540-43, 544-48, 550-51, His disciples at last supper in, 559,
553, 556-60, 575-83, 577-78, 560, 582, 756; objective efficacy of
582-83, 600-09, 612-13, 621-28, in, 577, 581, 582, 757; its spiritual
633, 649-98, 694, 710-17, 723, benefits and differential effects on
729, 734, 735, 736, 743, 744, 748, different kinds of communicants in,
752-73, 763-70, 771, 774, 775-78; 577-78, 577-78, 582-83; validity of
influence of canonists especially its administration by heretic,
Gratian in, 82, 89-90, 601-02, schismatic, or excommunicated
603-04, 607, 753, 758, 763, 767, priest in, 579, 582, 757; by immoral
771; general approach to, 753-54, priest in, 579-80; attitude toward
755, 770—71; general definition of Greek Eucharistie practice in, 580;
sacrament in, 499, 511, 516, 526, status of Eucharistie elements if
527-32, 579, 752-53, 754-55, 757, accidentally consumed by a mouse,
764, 773, 777; difference from pre- in commentary on 1 Corinthians,
Christian rites in, 198, 378-79, 221, 222; in Sentences, 582, 757;
530-31, 533, 623-24, 777; objective penance, definition of and general
efficacy of in, 539, 744, 752-53, approach to in, 600-09, 633, 694,
773; effect of subjective intention of 715, 753, 758-61, 763, 766, 771,
recipient, minister, in, 744, 752-53, 777; defense of contritionism in,
754; baptism in, 89, 395, 396, 421, 600-07, 758-59, 771; its
530-31, 532, 533-34, 537-39, repeatability in, 601-02, 608, 754,
540-46, 547-48, 578, 735, 753, 754, 758; purely declaratory role of
755, 757, 762, 765, 777; difference confessor in, 604, 759; notion that
from baptism of John the Baptist priests do not exercise power of
in, 533; when instituted in, 544; keys in, 604-05, 759, 761;
support of consensus positions confession to lay people in, 604,
concerning in, 544-46, 754; general 605, 759, 761; as associated with
approach to in, 547-48, 755; deathbed repentence in, 605-07;
necessity of in 534, 538, 539, 754; general confession in, 607;
administration by triple vs. single penitent's inadvertant or deliberate
immersion in, 89, 542, 755; effects omission of a sin in confession in,
of in, 540, 547, 754-77; infant 607; duty of priests to maintain
baptism in, 537, 538-39, 754; grant confidentiality of confessions in,
of baptismal grace to infants in 607, 759, 766; unction in, 612-13,
munere, non in usu in, 539, 754; 753, 761, 762, 771, 777; definition
848 INDEX OF NAMES

of as both healing rite and viaticum 766-67, 770; marital impediments,

in, 612, 761; effects on recipient in, grounds for nullification, separation
613, 761; its repeatability in, 613; in, 87, 681-93, 696-98, 765-66,
view that bishop is its ordinary 767-68; organization of this topic
minister in, 761; holy orders in, 61, in, 681-82, 697, 767-70; change in
82, 198, 604-05, 606, 608, 621-28, rules governing marriage over time
694, 753, 754, 761-63, 765, 766, in, 683-84, 689-93, 767, 768, 769;
771, 777; accent on how grace of relaxation of rules prohibiting
ordination functions in spiritual remarriage in, 693-94, 764, 768,
lives of recipients in, 621, 626, 628, 769; theology of marriage as not
761; disinterest in most juridical completely symmetrical with
aspects of topic in, 621-22, 761; sacramental theology more
ecclesiological contextualization of generally, 694-96; contributions to
holy orders as exemplifying and theology of marriage in, 696-98,
continuing Christ's personal 764, 770, 771, 777; Last Things in,
ministry in, 61, 622, 626, 761; vii, 82-83, 84, 88, 183, 338-39,
grades of, as manifestations of gifts 348, 351, 509, 606 n. 351, 710-17,
of Holy Spirit in, 622, 761; as 729, 734, 748, 771-73; omission of
imparting authority within church Antichrist from, in Sentences, 83,
in, 622, 761; importance of quality 714, 772; second coming of Christ
control in ordination of candidates in, 713, 772; general resurrection,
in, 622; bishops and other prelates perfection of resurrected body in,
including popes as not constituting 711-12; last judgment in, 712-13;
a separate grade of orders in, the four states of souls in, 176-77,
624-25, 762; seers, prophets, poets, 712, 772; emphasis on states of
and musicians as holding rank and damned and blessed rather than on
dignity in church whether ordained events between their deaths and
or not in, 625-26; conditions assignment to Hell or Heaven in,
validating administration and 711, 772; Purgatory in, 714-15, 772;
reception of orders in, 626-28, 762, doctrine of communion of saints
765-66, 771; as affected by heresy, with respect to in, 715; Hell in,
schism in, 626—27; by simony in, 715-16, 772; Heaven in, 338-39,
627, 772-73, 765, 771, 777; 348, 351, 715-16, 716-17, 729, 734,
ordination as conveying a 750, 752, 772; confirmation of
permanent spiritual character to damned and blessed in their bad or
recipient in, 616, 763; marriage in, good will, their continuing to add
82, 87, 186-87, 188, 204-05, 208 n. to their own demerit or merit
138, 395, 472, 531-32, 631, 649-58, eternally, 715-17, 772-73, 774;
660-62, 680, 681-98, 735, 753, emphasis on God's justice and
763—70, 777; defense of consent as mercy in, 713-17. See also Abelard,
principle of marriage formation in, Peter; Anselm of Canterbury;
204, 631, 649-58, 662, 682, 683, Aristotelianism; Augustine; Bernard
686, 691, 693, 696, 698, 763-64, of Clairvaux; Chartrains;
765, 767-68, 769, 770, 771; use of Commentarius Cantabridgensis;
Aristotelian causal terminology to Exegesis, biblical; Gilduin of St.
describe marriage formation in, Victor; Gilbert of Poitiers; Glossa
652-53, 656; view of marriage as a ordinaria; Gregory the Great;
sacrament both physically and Herbert of Bosham; Hugh of St.
spiritually in, 650-52, 657, 662, Victor; Jerome; John Damascene;
698, 763-74, 770; marital affection Neoplatonism; Notre Dame, Paris,
in, 655-66, 767, 770; stress on bishopric of; cathedral chapter of;
equality, mutuality of spouses in, school of; Odo of Ourscamp; Peter
653, 656, 662, 685, 696, 767, 770; Comestor; Platonism; Porretans;
morality of sexual relations between Quaestiones et decisiones in Epistolas divi
spouses in, 186-87, 188, 368, 369, Pauli; Robert of Melun; Sententiae
395, 396, 397, 650-51, 652, 656, divinitatis; Summa sententiarum;
657, 660-62, 685, 696, 735, 765, Theological language, problem of;
 INDEX OF NAMES 849
Walter of Mortagne 319, 326, 332-33, 337. See also
Peter of Poitiers, pupil of Peter Abelard, Peter; Chartrains;
Lombard, 10, 29, 432, 435-36; as Creation, doctrine of; Robert of
thought to have been responsible Melun; Platonism; Neoplatonism;
for establishing the master's Trinity, doctrine of; William of St.
reputation, 10; as possible author of Thierry; World Soul, Platonic
exegetical works noted in library Plotinus, theology of, as transmitted
catalogue of Notre Dame, Paris, 29; by Marius Victorinus and reprised
Quaestiones of, as listed in same by Peter Lombard, 212; theory of
catalogue, 29; as possible source for cosmic fall of the soul in, 482; as
view that Peter Lombard taught criticized by Peter Lombard, 174 η.
Christological nihilianism, 435-36; 53, 175
habitus theory in, 436 Poitiers, bishopric of, tenure of by
Peter of St. Audemars, chancellor of Gilbert of Poitiers, 53, 145
Notre Dame, Paris, his donation of Porphyry, his critique of dispute
a copy of Peter Lombard's Sentences between SS. Peter and Paul in
to library of Notre Dame, 29 Galatians, 210; his theology, as
Peter, St., appropriateness of St. transmitted by Marius Victorinus
Paul's criticism of his following and reprised by Peter Lombard,
Jewish dietary practices as reported 212, 239-40
in Galatians, 209-10, in Porphyry, Porretans, v, 6, 12, 18, 52-57, 78,
210; in Jerome, 210; in Augustine, 83, 85, 89, 132, 135, 135 n. 123,
210; in Peter Lombard, 209-10; in 141-48, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153,
Commentanus Cantabridgensis, 209-10; 211, 216-17, 230, 252, 276-77, 292,
in Robert of Melun, 210 304, 319, 330, 343, 345, 355, 358,
Peter the Chanter, pupil of Peter 373, 382, 392, 400, 404, 407-09,
Lombard and source for his work 411, 418, 419, 420, 422, 430, 437,
as a biblical exegete, 28 440-41, 445, 446, 486, 504, 520,
Philip I, king of France, 636, 638-39, 535, 536, 538, 540, 542, 543, 546,
671-72 548, 549, 550, 553, 563-64, 567,
Philip of France, brother of king 568, 571-72, 573, 574, 576, 588
Louis VII, archdeacon of Notre n. 310, 598, 599, 610, 611, 646-47,
Dame, Paris, withdrawal of his 654, 665, 668, 671, 676, 681-85,
nomination to bishopric of Paris in 704, 707; as avant-garde thinkers
favor of Peter Lombard's, 22-23 in their day, 6; schema as sentence
Piazzoni, Ambrogio, 20 collectors, 52-57; logic in, 211;
Plato, 51, 74, 75, 80, 85, 102, 159, 174 critique of Peter Abelard's
n. 53, 212-13, 236, 239, 249, 254, application of his logic to theology
255, 257, 260, 294-95, 296, 305, in, 54-55, 85, 292, theological
308, 309, 311, 312, 314,315,318, language in, 132, 135, 136 n. 123,
319, 324, 326, 332-33, 337, 360, 141-48, 149, 150, 152, 153, 404,
361, 727; cast as a Christian in 407-09; in sentence collectors,
Peter Abelard's Theologia 145-48,149,407-09; in commentator
"scholarium", 257; William of St. on Pseudo-Athanasian Creed, 141;
Thierry's critique of application of in Invisibilia dei, 142-45, 149; in
his philosophy to doctrine of Sententiae divinitatis, 141-42; God's
Trinity, 159, 256, 311, 313, 314, providence in relation to neccessity,
319; as source for Peter Abelard's contingency in, 276-77; whether
argument that God cannot do God can do better or different than
better or different than He does, He does in, 54-55, 85, 292, 299;
294-95, 296; as applied to this doctrine of Trinity in, 252, 407;
argument by Robert of Melun, 296; creation, and critique of Chartrain
on World Soul, 51, 74, 75, 80, 85, approach to in, 56, 304, 319, 330;
102, 212-13, 236, 239, 249, 254-55, angels, their nature, confirmation of
260, 308, 309, 310, 312, 315, 318, in their fallen or Unfällen state in,
324, 326, 360; cosmology of, in 343, 345; human nature in, 407-08;
Timaeus, 254, 255, 259, 305, 308, psychology of in, 358; human
850 INDEX OF NAMES

sexuality in Eden in, 355; original Priscian, definition of nouns in, 105;
sin in, 54, 375, 382, 392; Christology of relative nouns in, 111. See also
in, 54, 142, 145, 147-48, 150, 151, Augustine; Grammar
216-17, 400, 407-09, 411, 417, 418, Protois, F., 6, 8
419, 420, 422, 437, 440-41; Christ's Proverbs, book of, 29
human knowledge in, 441; view Psalms, book of, v, 23, 28, 155, 156,
that He was incapable of sin in, 157, 158-88, 192, 194 n. 100, 208,
445, 446; etiology of seven deadly 214, 378, 448. See also Alcuin;
sins in, 486; sacraments in, 53-54, Augustine; Basil the Great; Bede;
55-56, 520, 536, 538, 542, 543, 546, Bruno the Carthusian, Cassiodorus;
548, 549, 550, 554, 563-64, 567, Exegesis, biblical; Gerhoch of
568, 571, 573, 574, 580, 588 n. 310, Reichersberg; Gilbert of Poitiers;
598, 599, 610, 611, 646-47, 665, Glossa ordinaria, Haimo of Auxerre;
668, 671, 676, 680-81, 685; Hilary of Poitiers; Jerome; Peter
definition and organization of Lombard; Pseudo-Bede; Pseudo-
sacraments in, 53-54, 520; baptism Bruno of Würzburg; Remigius of
in, 55-56, 536, 538, 540, 542, 542, Auxerre; Theodore;
546; administration of in, 55-56, Psalters, 179, 181. See also Psalms,
542, 543, 546; single vs. triple book of
immersion in, 55-56; confirmation Pseudo-Areopagite. See Pseudo-
in, 549, 550; physical medium in, Dionysius
548; proper disposition of Pseudo-Augustine. See De vera et falsa
confirmand in, 549; Eucharist in, poenitentia
554, 563-64, 567, 568, 571-72, 573, Pseudo-Bede, as commentator on the
574, 580; which body Christ gave Psalms, 162-64, 167, 170-71; use of
His disciples at last supper in, 550; logic in, 162; use of grammar in,
status of consecrated elements if 162; use of authorities in, 162-63;
dropped or eaten by a mouse in, philosophers in, 162, 163; classical
563-64; spiritual benefits of authors in, 162, 163; authorship of
communion, effects on different Psalms in, 163, 170-71; polysemous
kinds of recipients in, 563, 567, 568; reading of text in, 163; typological
validity if received by heretic, emphasis in, 163; doctrinal issues,
excommunicate, person known to theological excurses in, 162, 164
be or suspected of being immoral Pseudo-Bruno of Würzburg, as
in, 571-72; validity of commentator on the Psalms, 158,
administration by priest suffering 160-61; use of authorities in, 160;
nocturnal emission in, 574; by of scholastic exegetes in, 160;
heretic, excommunicated, immoral topological emphasis in, 160;
priest in, 573; administration to critique of secular learning in,
infants by chalice alone in, 571, 161; promotion of monastic calling
580; penance in, 588 n. 310, 598, in, 161; insertion of prayers into,
599; its repeatability in, 588 n. 310; 160
defense of contritionism in, but with Pseudo-Chrysostom, 385, 603
inconsistencies, 598, 599; unction Pseudo-Dionysius, 69, 95, 96, 143,
in, 610, 611; as a sacrament of 144, 160, 343, 350, 566, 618, 729; as
healing in, 610; its repeatability in, putative apostle of France, 160; use
611; its ordinary minister a priest of affirmative theology in, 143, 144;
in, 611; marriage in, 646-47, 665, use of negative theology in, 95, 96,
668, 671, 676, 680-81, 685; effort to 143, 144; as source for doctrine of
combine consent and consummation angelic hierarchy, 69, 343, 350, 729;
theories of marriage formation in, as model for Hugh of St. Victor's
646-47; marital impediments, participatory view of holy orders,
grounds for nullification, separation 618; Celestial Hierarchy, 566;
in, 665, 668, 671, 676, 680-81, 685; Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 618. See also
Last Things in, 704, 707. See also Angels; Sacraments, holy orders;
Gilbert of Poitiers, Invisibilia dei, Hugh of St. Victor; Theology,
Sententiae divinitatis negative
 INDEX OF NAMES 851

Quaestiones et decisions in Epistolas divi 72, 73-76, 77; use of authorities in,
Pauli, Victorine commentary, on 72-73, 76-77, 87; teaching method
Romans, 200 of as derived from his technique as
a master of logic, 76, 77; use of
Rachel, 683 grammarin, 111, 112, 113, 153;
Raphael, archangel, 351 theological language in, 73, 74, 75,
Regaldi, Giuseppe, 16 108-13, 121, 266, 284; doctrine of
Remigius of Auxerre, as a God in, 230, 234-38, 241, 265-66,
commentator on the Psalms, 164, 282-85, 296, 299; proofs of God's
165, 173 existence in, 230, 234-38, 241, 266;
Revelation, book of, 61, 206, 698, 699, God's ubiquity in, 265-66; God's
702, 707 foreknowledge, providence,
Rheims, council of (1148), 21, 62, predestination in relation to free
132, 142, 144. See also Bernard of will, contingency in, 282-85;
Clairvaux; Gilbert of Poitiers whether God can do better or
Rheims, school of, 17, 159; Peter different than He does in, 296, 299;
Lombard's studies at, 17; as locus doctrine of Trinity in, 234, 251-52,
of Bruno the Carthusian's teaching 284-85, 362; critique of Peter
while a secular master. See also Abelard's Trinitarian theology in,
Alberic of Rheims, Lotulph of 101, 105, 108-13, 121, 126, 127;
Novara, Walter of Mortagne causality in, 237-38, 265-66, 282,
Richard of St. Victor, 431, 432 332; creation in, 304, 326, 332-34,
Ricobaldo of Ferrara, 16, 32; as 337; creation simul in, 332-33; on
source of legend that Peter work as a natural good present in
Lombard was the son of a poor Eden in, 356; human psychology in,
widow, 16, as testimonium of Peter 362-63; original sin in, 72, 74, 199,
Lombard, 32 334, 372, 376, 382, 390, 393;
Ritter, Heinrich, 5 Christology in, 74, 75, 412 n. 21,
Robert of Garland, canon of Notre 415-16, 439, 458-59, 563; hypostatic
Dame, as a pluralist, 21 union in, 412 n. 21, 415-16, 429;
Robert of Melun, v, 65, 68, 72-77, 78, Christ's human knowledge in, 439;
87, 101, 105, 108-13, 121, 126, 127, Christ's saving work in, 458-59,
150, 153, 193, 194-95, 199, 200, 463; ethical intentionalism in, 476,
207, 211, 213, 230, 234-38, 241, 478; distinction between sacraments
251-52, 256-66, 282-85, 296, 299, and their pre-Christian forerunners
304, 326, 332-34, 337, 339, 348, in, 527, Last Things in, 699, 709-
355, 356, 362-63, 372, 376, 382, 10. See also Abelard, Peter;
390, 393, 412 n. 21, 415-16, 429, Exegesis, biblical; Hugh of St.
439, 458-59, 463, 478, 527, 699, Victor; John of Salisbury; Paul, St.;
709-10; promotion to bishopric of Peter Lombard
Hereford, 73; as competitor of Peter Robert Pullen, vi, 18, 45, 68-72, 75,
Lombard, 65, 68; exegesis in 76, 78,82, 101, 105-08, 111, 118,
Quaestiones in epistolas Pauli, 193, 152, 220, 234, 235, 237, 238, 240,
194-95, 199-200, 207, 211, 213; 249, 264, 281, 293, 304, 335-36,
accessus to text and degree to which 346, 349, 350, 359-62, 366, 373,
it controls actual commentary in, 374, 375, 381, 390-91, 392, 416-17,
194-95; abbreviated and digressive 420, 422, 437, 439, 445, 459, 475,
treatment of Hebrews in, 199; 489 η. 36, 508, 511, 535, 541, 549,
inclusion of questions not addressed 550, 554, 556, 557, 567, 568, 574,
by St. Paul in, 199; interpretation 575, 580, 588 η. 310, 591-92, 595,
of Romans in, 200; influence of 615-16, 620, 625, 626, 640, 647,
Peter Lombard on interpretation of 659,660,661,664,676,699,
Antichrist in gloss on 2 Thessalonians 710—11, 713; his appoinment as a
in, 207; interpretation of Galatians cardinal, 72; as a competitor of
in, 211; critique of Peter Lombard's Peter Lombard, 18, 65; schema of
interpretation of Colossians in, 213; his sentence collection, 68-72, 75,
schema of his sentence collection, 234; use of authorities in, 71-72;
852 INDEX OF NAMES

theological language in, 72, 105-08, recipient in, 615-16, 620; marriage
234; doctrine of God in, 230, 234, in, 69, 476, 640, 659, 664, 676; as a
235, 237, 238, 240, 264, 281, 293; calling in the church in, 69, 476,
proof of God's existence in, 230, 640; defense of consent as principle
234, 235, 237, 238, 240; God's of marriage formation in, 640;
ubiquity in, 264; God's distinction between present and
foreknowledge in relation to future consent in, 640; morality of
contingency in, 281; whether God sexual relations between spouses in,
can do different or better than He 659, change in rules governing
does in, 293; doctrine of Trinity in, marriage over time in, 664; sexual
105-08, 111, 118, 249; critique of dysfunction as grounds for
Peter Abelard's Trinitarian nullification in, 676; Last Things in,
theology in, 101, 105-06; creation 699, 710-11, 713. See also Abelard,
in, 69, 70, 335-36, 346, 349, 350, Peter; Peter Lombard
359-62, 366, 489 n. 36; creation Roland of Bologna, v, 65-68, 77, 251,
simul in, 335; free will of angels 281-82, 288, 295 n. 131, 319-20,
after their fall in, 346, 349, 350; 331, 340, 342, 356, 366, 372, 374,
guardian angels in, 69, 70, 489 n. 377, 389-90, 439, 458-59, 479, 492,
36; human psychology in, 359-62; 496-97, 502-03, 523, 537, 540, 548,
inferiority of Eve to Adam in, 366; 549, 550, 554, 555, 559, 562, 564,
original sin in, 68, 69, 373, 374, 567, 569-70, 572-73, 575, 576,
375, 381, 390-91, 392; Christology 577-78, 579, 581, 585, 591, 592,
in, 416-17, 422, 437, 441-42, 445, 610, 611, 614-15, 635-36, 664, 668,
459; hypostatic union in, 416-17, 669, 674, 677-78, 679, 680, 685,
420, 422, 437; Christ's human 687, 691, 693; as a master at school
knowledge in, 441-42; view that of Bologna and commentator on
Christ was incapable of sin in, 445; Gratian in Summa, 65, 66, 635-36;
Christ's saving work in, 459; pious schema of his sentence collection,
fraud as a rationale for lying in, 66-68, 635; use of authorities in,
475, 511; fear of the Lord in moral 67-68; use of logic in, 67-68;
life in, 508; ecclesiology in, 69, 70, interest in philosophical
625; sacraments in, 69, 70, 476, implications of theological doctrines
535, 541, 549, 550, 554, 556, 557, in, 67-68; theological language in,
567, 568, 574, 575, 580, 588 n. 310, 67; doctrine of God in, 67, 281-82,
591-92, 595, 615-16, 620, 640, 659, 288, 295 n. 131; God's
660, 661, 664, 676; baptism in, 69, foreknowledge, predestination in,
70, 541, age at which confirmation 67, 281-82 288; agreement with
should be administered in, 549; its Peter Abelard on whether God can
dignity in relation to baptism in, do better or different than He does
541; Eucharist in, 554, 556, 557, in, 295 n. 313; creation in, 319-20,
567, 568, 574, 575, 580; which body 331, 342, 366; angels in, 342; Eve
Christ gave His disciples at last as type of the church in, 331; her
supper in, 554; change of inferiority to Adam in, 366; work
Eucharistie elements in, 556, 557; as a natural good in Eden in, 356;
spiritual benefits of communion in, original sin in, 66, 372, 374, 377,
567, 568, validity of if administered 389-90; Christology in, 439,
by heretic, excommunicated, 458-59; Christ's human knowledge
immoral priest, 574; frequency of in, 439; Christ's saving work in,
communion for laity in, 575, 580; 458-59; ethics in, 479, 492, 496-97,
penance in, 588 n. 310, 591-92, 502-03; intentionalism in, 479;
595; its repeatability in, 588 n. 310; virtue in, 492, faith in, 497-97;
defense of confessionism in 591-92, charity in, 502-03; distinction
595; holy orders in, 615-16, 620; between inner ethical affectus and
qualifications, rights, duties, moral external effectus in, 479, 502-03;
responsibilities of clerics in, 615; sacraments in, 67, 523, 537, 540,
ordination as conveying a 548, 549, 554, 555, 559, 562, 564,
permanent sacerdotal character to 567, 569-70, 572-73, 575, 576,
 INDEX OF NAMES 853

577-78, 579, 581, 585, 591, 592, Aristotelian, Boethian logic in, 35;
610, 611, 614-15, 635-36, 664, 668, familiarity with views of Roscellinus
669, 674, 677-78, 679, 680, 685, of Compiègne in, 36; theological
687, 691, 693; canonistic treatment language in, 35, 91; doctrine of
of sacraments in, 67; organization, Trinity in, 35-37, 260; cosmology
definition of sacraments in, 523; in, 36; Christology in, 35; salvation
baptism in, 537, 540; confirmation history in, 37
in, 548, 549, 550; institution of in,
548; appropriate age at reception of Santiago-Otero, Horacio, 440
in, 549; effects on recipient in, 550; Satan. See Devil, the
clerical rank of ordinary minister Seneca, cited by Peter Abelard as
in, 550; Eucharist in, 555, 559, 562, supporter of doctrine of Trinity,
564, 567, 569-70, 572-73, 577-78, 257; forged correspondence with St.
579, 581; which body Christ gave Paul treated as authentic by Peter
His disciples at last supper in, 554, Abelard, 258
575; change of Eucharistie elements Sens, council of (1140), 100 n. 19
in, 555, 559; status of consecrated Sententiae divinitatis, 56-57, 65, 141-42,
elements if accidentally consumed 249, 251, 265, 334-35, 340, 372,
by a mouse in, 564, 581; spiritual 374, 378, 381, 391-92, 412 n. 21,
benefits of communion in, 562, 567, 416, 439, 445, 446, 457, 504, 518,
577-78; differential efficacy of in 523, 526, 527, 537, 541, 544, 546.
different kinds of recipients in, 562, 547, 548, 549, 549 n. 204, 551, 556,
577-78; validity of if administered 557-58, 559, 561-62, 568, 573,
by heretic, excommunicated, 575-76, 577, 578, 581, 582, 587-88,
immoral priest, 572-73, 579; use of 589, 590, 595, 598-600, 601, 604,
unleavened bread in, vs. Greek 704; schema as sentence collection,
church in, 575; penance in, 585, 56-57; theological language in,
591, 592; its repeatability in, 585; 141-42, 249; God's ubiquity in,
defense of confessionism in, 591, 265; doctrine of Trinity in, 56, 249,
592; unction in, 610, 611; its role as 251; creation in, 334-35, 340;
both viaticum and rite of healing in, creation simul in, 334-35, 240;
610; ordinary minister of as priest original sin in, 56, 372, 374, 378,
or bishop in, 611; power of keys 381, 391-92; Christology in, 142,
wielded by clergy in, 614; marriage 412 n. 21, 416, 439, 445, 446, 457;
in, 67, 635-36, 664, 668, 669, 674, hypostatic union in, 412 n. 21, 416;
677-78, 679, 680, 685, 687, 691; Christ's human knowledge in, 439;
defense of consummation as Christ's moral capacities in, 445,
principle of marriage formation in, 446; Christ's saving work in, 457;
635-36; distinction between present sacraments in, 518, 523, 526, 527,
and future consent in, 635; marital 537, 541, 546, 548, 549, 549 n. 209,
impediments, grounds for 551, 556, 557-58, 561-62, 568, 573,
nullification, separation in, 67, 635, 575, 576, 577, 578, 587-88, 589,
664, 668, 669, 674, 677-78, 679, 595, 604; treatment of in context of
680, 685, 687, 691. See also Abelard, ecclesiology in, 518; definition and
Peter; Gratian organization of in, 518, 523, 526,
Roscellinus of Compiègne, familiarity 527; baptism in, 537, 541, 546; its
of Rupert of Duetz with, 36 necessity in, 537; its administration
Rufinus of Aquileia, misattribution of in, 541; its institution in, 541; self-
Psalms commentary of Letbert of baptism in, 546; view of penance
Lille to, 158 nn. 5, 6 before baptism as unnecessary in,
Rupert of Deutz, as a systematic 546; confirmation in, 548, 549, 549
monastic theologian in On the Trinity n. 209; its institution in, 548;
and Its Works, 35-37, 41, 52, 91, disposition of recipient in, 549;
260, 304; intended audience of, 37, condition of minister in, 549 n. 209;
41; originality of, 41, 42; popularity Eucharist in, 551, 556, 557-58, 559,
of, 41-42; schema of, 36; use of 561-62, 566, 573, 575, 576, 577,
authorities in 37; familiarity with 578; difference from its pre-
854 INDEX OF NAMES

Christian forerunners in, 578; real view of marriage in, 642, 647. See
presence doctrine in, 551; change of also Abelard, Peter; Abelardians
Eucharistie elements in, 556, 557- Sententie Anselmi, 372, 373, 374, 376,
58, 559, 575; its spiritual benefits 377, 502, 639, 649, 659, 663 n. 489;
and effects in different kinds of original sin in, 372, 373, 374, 377;
recipients, 561-62, 568, 577; charity in, 502; marriage in, 639,
spiritual communion in, 562, 573, 649, 659, 663 n. 489; defense of
576; validity of administration by consent as principle of marriage
heretic, excommunicated, immoral formation in, 639; morality of
priest in, 573; penance in, 587-88, sexual relations between spouses in,
589, 595, 599, 604; its repeatability 659; change in rules governing
in, 587-88; defense of contritionism marriage over time in, 663 n. 489.
in, 587, 595; confession to lay See also Anselm of Laon; Laon,
person in, 599, 604. See also school of
Aristotelianism; De vera et falsa Simon, Master, 522, 532, 541, 543
poenitentia; Gilbert of Poitiers; n. 184, 546, 547, 548, 549, 549 n.
Porretans 209, 550, 553, 556, 557-58, 563,
Sententiae Parisiensis I, 52, 295 n. 131, 567, 568, 573, 589, 610, 611, 613,
478,494-95, 505,519 n. 112, 521-22, 619-21, 622, 623, 626, 647-48,
548, 549, 550, 554, 556, 558, 650, 656, 659, 661, 663 n. 489, 665,
566-67, 612 n. 369, 642, 647, 655, 666-67, 676, 679; definition and
663 n. 489, 674; schema as sentence organization of sacraments in, 522,
collection, 52; defense of Peter 523; baptism in, 541, 543 n. 184,
Abelard's position on whether God 546, 547; its administration in, 541;
can do better or different than He time of in, 543 n. 184; conditional
does in, 295 n. 131; ethics in, 478, baptism in, 546; emergency baptism
494-95, 505; intentionalism in, 478; of own child as not affecting
view of habitus in, 478; gradation of validity of parents' marriage in,
virtues in, 478; faith in, 494-95, 547; confirmation in, 548, 549, 549
cardinal virtues in 505; sacraments n. 209, 550; its institution in, 548,
in, 519 n. 112, 521-22,549, 550, appropriate age of recipient in, 549;
554, 556, 558, 566-67, 612 n. 369, disposition of recipient in, 549;
642, 655, 663 n. 489, 674; definition condition of minister in, 549, 549 n.
of sacrament in, 519 n. 112, 521-52; 209; its spiritual benefits in, 550;
confirmation in, 549, 550; Eucharist in, 553, 556, 563, 567,
appropriate age of recipient in, 549; 565, 573; which body Christ gave
its dignity in relation to baptism in, His disciples at last supper in, 553;
550; Eucharist in, 554, 556, 558, change of Eucharistie elements in,
566-67; which body Christ gave 556, 557-58; spiritual benefits of
His disciples at last supper in, 554; communion in, 564, 563; status of
change of Eucharistie elements in, Eucharistie elements if dropped or
556, 558; spiritual benefits of consumed by a mouse in, 563;
communion in, 566-67; unction in, validity if administered by heretic,
612 n. 369; marriage in, 642, 647, excommunicated, immoral priest in,
655, 663 n. 489, 674; defense of 573; penance in, 589; unction in,
consent as principle of marriage 610, 611, 613; as both viaticum and
formation in, 642; purely remedial rite of healing in, 610; its
view of marriage in, 642, 647, 655, unrepeatability in, 611, 613; holy
674; change in rules governing orders in, 619-20, 621, 623, 626;
marriage over time in, 663 n. 489. deemphasis on juridical aspects of
See also Abelard, Peter; Abelardians and emphasis on effects of
Sententiae Parisiensis II, 52, 494, 642, sacramental grace on ordinands in,
647, 655; schema as sentence 619-20, 622, 623, 626; grades of
collection, 52; faith in, 494; orders as imitation of Christ,
marriage in, 642, 647, 655; defense manifestating His saving work in,
of consent as principle of marriage 620, 622; as manifesting gifts of
formation in, 642; purely remedial Holy Spirit in, 620, 621; as
 INDEX OF NAMES 855

conveying a permanent sacerdotal Abelard in, 113-14; creation in, 70,

character to recipient in, 620; 326, 330-32, 336, 338, 343, 345-36,
marriage in, 647-48, 656, 659, 661, 349,356 η. 156, 363-64, 371;
663 n. 489, 665, 666-67, 676, 679; seminal reasons in, 331-32; free
as a Christian calling in, 647; effort will of fallen angels in, 343, 345-46,
to combine consent with 349; human nature in, 330, 331;
consummation as principle of man's need to eat in Eden in, 356
marriage formation in, 647-48; n. 156; man's free will in, 363-64,
hierarchical view of relations 371; original sin in, 63, 64, 331,
between spouses in, 647, 656, 665; 372, 374, 375, 378, 379, 382-83,
morality of sexual relations between 391; Christology in, 117-19, 121,
spouses in, 659, 661; change in 152, 412, 412 n. 21, 415, 416, 419,
rules governing marriage over time 439, 446, 457; hypostatic union in,
in, 663 n. 489; marital 412,412 η. 21,415, 416, 417;
impediments, grounds for Christ's human knowledge in, 439;
nullification, separation in, 666-67, Christ's moral capacities in, 446;
676, 679 Christ's saving work in, 457; ethics
Sinai, Mount, 179 in, 475, 485, 490-91, 497, 500, 502,
Smalley, Beryl, 27, 28, 195 508, 511, 514-15; intentionalism
Song of Songs, 28, 455, 456 in, 475, 485; grace and free will in,
Spicq, Ceslaus, 195 490-91, 514-15; modes of fear of the
Stephen Langton, as source for Peter Lord in, 508; Ten Commandments,
Lombard's work as biblical exegete, Mosaic law and extent to which
28 they continue to bind Christians in,
Stegmüller, Friedrich, 1 511; pious fraud as a rationale for
Summa sententiarum, ν, 18, 57, 63-65, lying in, 475, 511; seven deadly sins
70, 75, 78,88,89, 113, 114, 115, in, 485; faith in, 497, charity in,
117-19, 121, 152, 230, 249,251, 500, 502; sacraments in, 64, 89,
260, 265, 281, 282, 285, 286, 288, 526-27, 529, 535-36, 538, 541, 542,
290, 293-94, 299, 326, 330-32, 334, 546, 547, 549, 556, 557, 559-60,
336, 338, 343, 345-46, 347, 349, 562, 566, 567, 568, 573, 575, 578,
356, 356 η. 156, 363-64, 371, 372, 588, 591-92, 595, 648-49, 650, 654,
374, 375, 378, 379, 382-83, 391, 655, 657, 659-60, 664, 665, 668-69,
412, 412 η. 21, 415, 416, 419, 439, 679, 671, 680, 683, 694; baptism in,
446, 457, 475, 483, 497, 502, 504, 64, 89, 535-36, 538, 541, 542, 546,
508, 511, 526-27, 529, 535-36, 538, 546, 547; necessity of infant
541, 542, 546, 547, 548, 556, 557, baptism in, 535-36, 538; its
559, 562, 566, 567, 568, 573, 576, administration in, 64, 89, 541, 542;
577, 578, 581, 582, 588, 591-92, triple vs. single immersion in, 89;
595, 648-49, 650, 654, 655, 656, penance as not needed before
657, 659-60, 661, 664, 665, 668-69, baptism in, 546; emergency baptism
676, 679, 671, 680, 683, 694, 704; of own child as not affecting
schema as a sentence collection, validity of parents' marriage in,
63-64, 75; use of authorities in, 547; physical medium of
64-65; theological language in, confirmation in, 549; Eucharist in,
113-19; doctrine of God in, 230, 265, 556, 557, 558, 562, 566, 567, 568,
281, 282, 285, 286, 288, 290, 293-94, 573, 575, 577, 578; its difference
299; God's ubiquity in, 265; God's from pre-Christian forerunners of
foreknowledge, predestination in in, 578; change of Eucharistie
relation to free will, contingency in, elements in, 556, 557, 558, 575;
281, 282, 286, 288; God's spiritual benefits of communion,
omnipotence in, 290, 293-94; effects in different kinds of
whether God can do different or recipients in, 562, 566, 567, 568,
better than He does in, 293-94, 577, 578; its validity if administered
299; doctrine of Trinity in, 115-17, by heretic, excommunicated,
249, 251, 260; critique of immoral priest in, 573; penance in,
Trinitarian theology of Peter 588, 591-92, 595; its repeatability
856 INDEX OF NAMES

in, 588; defense of confessionism in, Vergil, 308, 336 n. 100; World Soul
591-92, 595; marriage in, 648-49, in, 308
650, 564, 655, 657, 659-60, 661, Victor, St., abbey and school of, 17,
664, 665, 668-69, 671, 680, 683, 18-20, 431-32; extern students at
694; stress on goodness of marriage in time of Hugh of St. Victor, 17,
in, 649; defense of consent as 18-20; troubles at and reform of in
principle of marriage formation in, 1170s, 431-32. See also Alexander
648-49, 650, 654, 655, 657, 664, III, pope; Clarenbald of Arras;
694; morality of sexual relations Ernis of St. Victor; Gilduin of St.
between spouses in, 659-60, 661; Victor; Godfrey of St. Victor;
change in rules governing marriage Guérin of St. Victor; Hugh of St.
over time in, 654, 683; marital Victor; Lawrence of Westminster;
impediments, grounds for Odo of Ourscamp; Peter Lombard;
nullification, separation in, 664, Richard of St. Victor; Victorines;
665, 668-69, 676, 679, 680, 683; Walter of St. Victor; William of the
influence on Peter Lombard, 18, White Hands
88-89, 114, 347; on Robert of Victorines, 6, 18, 19, 58, 59, 63, 72,
Melun, 70. See also Abelard, Peter; 78, 83, 110, 195, 200, 329-30, 332,
Aristotelianism; Hugh of St. Victor; 334, 338, 354, 356 nn. 156, 157,
Peter Lombard; Robert of Melun 360, 361, 365, 377-80, 393, 413-14,
Syagrius, Regulis definitionum contra 417,418,419,420,421,431-32,
haereticos, 260, 261 433, 436-37, 438, 502, 510, 528,
530-31, 537, 540, 576; as
Thierry of Chartres, 19, 101, 103, theological conservatives in their
104-06, 128, 129, 246, 309-10, 311, day, 6; biblical exegesis of, 156,
312, 314, 316; as teacher of 195, 200; schemata as sentence
Clarenbald of Arras, 19; collectors, 75, 78; doctrine of
commentaries on Boethius, De Trinity in, 110; human nature in,
trinitate, 309, 310; doctrine of 58, 59, 329-30, 332, 334, 338, 354,
Trinity in, 104-06, 128, 246, 309, 355, 356 nn. 156, 157, 359, 360,
310; critique of Trinitarian theology 361, 365, 413-14, 433, 437, 502;
of Peter Abelard in, 101-103; of original sin in, 377-80; influence
Gilbert of Poitiers in, 104, 128; on Peter Lombard, 380, 393;
critique of his doctrine of Trinity by Christology in, 417, 418, 419, 420,
Peter Lombard, 129, 246; creation 436-37, 438; sacraments in, 528,
in, 309-10, 311, 312, 314,316; 530-31, 537, 540, 576; relationship
seminal reasons in, 309; primordial between sacraments and pre-
matter in, 310; its creation simul in, Christian rites in, 530-31; baptism
310; self-contradiction on in, 537, 540; similarity between res
primordial forms in, 310; God as sacramenti and physical medium
forma essendi in, 309; World Soul as signifying it in Eucharist in, 576;
force of nature in, 310; as Last Things in, 83. See also Hugh of
associated with Holy Spirit in, 310. St. Victor; Quaestiones et decisiones in
See also Abelard, Peter; Boethius; Epis tolas divi Pauli; Robert of Melun;
Chartrains; Gilbert of Poitiers; Summa sententiarum
Peter Lombard; Platonism; World Victorinus, Marius, as transmitter of
Soul Neoplatonic theology, 212, 239-40
Theobald, bishop of Paris, 22 Vincent of Beauvais, as testimonium
Theodore, as exegete of the Psalms, of Peter Lombard, 31
165
Theophrastus, his critique of Walter of Mortagne, 17, 113-15, 116,
marriage, 199, 641, 687 119, 121, 150, 439, 440, 441, 650 n.
Tobias, book of, 28 466; as master at school of Rheims
Tours, synod of (1163), 429 during Peter Lombard's studies
there, 17, 114; doctrine of Trinity
Van Dyk, John, 1 in, 17, 113-15, 116, 119, 121, 150,
Van Engen, John, 35-36 650 n. 466; correspondence with
 INDEX OF NAMES 857

Hugh of St. Victor on Trinity, 17; 314; Dragmaticon, 311; Elementorum

rejection of Boethian definition of philosophiae, 313; Glosae super
persona in, 150; Christ's human Platonem, 311, 313; Philosophia mundi,
knowledge in, 439, 440, 441; 311. See also Chartrains; Creation;
marriage in, 650 n. 466 Platonism; World Soul
Walter of St. Victor, allegation in his William of St. Thierry, 188-90, 191,
Four Labyrinths of France that Peter 212,253,256, 304, 311,313,316,
Lombard taught Christological 534; as commentator on Romans,
nihilianism, 428, 431, 432-33, 188-90, 191; critique of philosophy
434-35, 436 in, 189, 190; critique of natural
Weisweiler, Heinrich, 43 theology in, 190; critique of Peter
Willaim Andrensus, as testimonium of Abelard in, 189, 190, 212; use of
Peter Lombard, 31 n. 52 authorities in, 189, 190; use of
William, archbishop of Tyre, 28,30-31 ; Augustine in, 189, 190; style and
as pupil of Peter Lombard, 28; as aim in, 189, 190; moral, hortatory
source for his wider work as a emphasis in, 189-90; critique of
biblical exegete, 28; as testimonium theology of Peter Abelard in other
of Peter Lombard, 30-31 works, 253, 256; critique of William
William of Champeaux, 6, 276, 289, of Conches on Trinity, 256, 311,
357, 360, 371, 373, 375, 378, 383, 313, 316, 319; critique of Chartrains
386, 411, 417, 420, 437, 445, 446, in general, 304; infant baptism in,
485-86, 504, 508, 534, 536, 553-54, 534. See also Abelard, Peter;
555; as a theological conservative in Augustine; Chartrains; Exegesis,
his day, 6; God's providence and biblical; Paul, St.; William of
predestination in, 276; Peter Conches
Lombard's critique of his view that William of the White Hands,
God chooses elect because of their archbishop of Sens and, from 1176,
praevisa mérita, 289; human archbishop of Rheims, 429, 431-32,
psychology in, 357, 360, 371; 434; as charged by pope Alexander
original sin in, 373, 375, 378, 386; III with reform of St. Victor,
hypostatic union in, 411, 417, 420, 431-32; with being alert to teaching
437; Christ's moral capacities in, of Christological nihilianism within
445, 446; deadly sins in, 486; modes his see, 434
of fear of the Lord in moral life in, Wisdom, book of, 28
508; sacraments in, 534, 536, Wodeham, Adam, commentary on
553-54, 555; baptism in, 534, 536; Sentences of Peter Lombard, 1
Eucharist in, 553-54, 555; which
body Christ gave His disciples at Ysagoge in theologiam, 52, 345, 478, 485,
last supper in, 553-54; change of 505, 515, 520, 526, 535, 538, 549,
Eucharistie elements in, 555. See 556, 568, 576, 588 n. 310, 598, 598
also Laon, school of n. 333, 642, 647, 655, 663 n. 489,
William of Conches, 101, 102, 104 n. 674 n. 523, 679; schema as a
34, 256, 310-14, 315, 316, 317, 319; sentence collection, 52; confirmation
theological language in, 313; of angels in fallen or Unfällen states
definition of substance in, 104 n. in, 345; departure from Peter
34; doctrine of Trinity in, 311, 313, Abelard on Christ's saving work in,
314; as criticized by William of St. 345; ethics in, 478, 485;
Thierry, 256, 311, 313, 316, 319; intentionalism in, 478, 485; natural
critique of Trinitarian theology of virtue in, 505, 515; cardinal virtues
Peter Abelard, 101, 102; creation in, 505; seven deadly sins in, 485;
in, 310-14; primordial causes in, sacraments in, 52, 520, 526, 535,
3\\;formae nativae in, 312; 538, 549, 556, 558 n. 310, 598, 598
primordial matter in, 311, as n. 33, 644, 647, 655, 663 n. 489,
created simul in, 312; seminal 674, 679; baptism in, 52, 535, 538;
reasons in, 312; World Soul as force confirmation in, 520, 526, condition
of nature in, 312; whether to equate of minister in, 549; Eucharist in,
it with Holy Spirit in, 312, 313, 556, 558, 568; 576; change of
858 INDEX OF NAMES

Eucharistie elements in, 556, 558; formation in, 642; purely remedial
spiritual benefits of communion in, conception of marriage in, 642, 647,
568; penance in, 588 n. 310, 598, 655, 674; change in rules governing
598 n. 333; its repeatability in, 588 marriage over time in, 663 n. 489;
n. 310; defense of contritionism in, marital impediments, grounds for
but with inconsistencies, 598, 598 n. nullification, separation in, 674 n.
333; marriage in, 642, 647, 655, 663 523, 679. See also Abelard, Peter;
n. 489, 674 n. 523, 679; defense of Abelardians
consent as principle of marriage
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Abortion, 657, 672; in Gratian, 672; creation, in Augustine, 343; in

in Peter Lombard, 657. See also Gregory the Great, 329, 343, 346,
Sacraments, marriage 350; in Pseudo-Dionysius, 69, 343,
Active life, as a Christian calling, in 350; in Anselm of Canterbury, 344,
Robert Pullen, 69, 476 348; in Honorius Augustodunensis,
Actors, whether their perceived 38, 40, 322, 342, 343, 344; in school
immoral conduct should bar them of Laon, 329, 342, 344-45, 348; in
from receiving Eucharist, 571-72; Gilbert of Poitiers, 176; in
in Porretans, 571, in Ivo of Chartres, Porretans, 54, 343; in Ysagoge in
571-72, in Gratian, 571-72. See also theologiam, 52, 345; in Hugh of St.
Sacraments, Eucharist Victor, 59, 328, 330, 342, 344, 345,
Adoptionism, heresy of, 108, 118, 139, 346, 351; in Summa sententiarum, 63,
140, 151, 153, 217,400,407,412, 64, 118, 330-31, 332, 343, 342-43,
415, 416, 420-21, 422, 424, 425, 345-46, 346-47, 349, 351, 352; in
427, 446, 737 Roland of Bologna, 66, 342; in
Adultery, 47, 87, 511, 514, 617, 639, Robert Pullen, 68-69, 70, 335, 349,
670-73, 687, 693, 697; as a sin 350; in Robert of Melun, 74, 75,
against marriage, in Peter 334; in Clarenbald of Arras, 316; in
Lombard, 511, 514; in relationship Peter Lombard, 81, 83, 89, 337,
between Philip I of France and 339-40, 347-53, 502; their
Bertrada de Montfort, 639; as constitution, 342-44, 347, 348, 352,
grounds for unfrocking a priest, in 729-30; inconclusiveness on this
school of Laon, 617; as a marital point, in Roland of Bologna, 342;
impediment, in Augustine, 47, confusing use of substantia in this
670-71; in Leo I, 47, 670-71; in connection, in Hugh of St. Victor,
school of Laon, 47, 670-71; in 342; as having rarefied bodies, in
Porretans, 671; in Summa sententiarum, Honorius Augustodunensis, 342; in
511, 671; in Ivo of Chartres, 671-72, one Laon master, 341; as being
in Gratian, 672-73; in Roland of simple, spiritual, indivisible,
Bologna, 671; in Paucapalea, 673; immortal persons, in Anselm of
in Peter Lombard, 87, 687, 697. See Canterbury, 344; Honorius
also Augustine; Leo I, pope; Augustodunensis, 344; in Hugh of
Sacraments, marriage St. Victor, 343; in Summa
Advent, liturgy of, 26, 54; in sententiarum, 342-43, 352; in Peter
Porrretans, 54 Lombard, 347, 348; on how, given
Agriculture, as a Christian calling their nature, they differ from God,
with particular responsibilities and in Summa sententiarum, 342-43, 352;
temptations, 39, 475, 476; in in Peter Lombard, 352, 729; as
Honorius Augustodunensis, with his having reason and free will, a
estimate of practitioners' chances of consensus position, 343, 344-50,
salvation, 39, 475; in Robert Pullen, 353, 729-30, 745, 772, 777; as
476 possessing memory as well, in Peter
Angels, v, 38, 40, 52, 54, 57, 59, 63, Lombard, 347, 729; his definition of
64, 66, 68-69, 70, 74, 75, 81, 83, angelic free will, 347-48; as having
89, 118, 208, 303, 308, 309, 316, gradations in these attributes, in
320, 322, 328, 329, 330-31, 332-33, Hugh of St. Victor, 343, 348; as
335, 337, 338, 339-40, 342-53, being equal in reason and
376-77, 378, 424, 445, 450, 451, constitutional attributes but as
489 n. 36, 500, 616, 617, 620, 702, differing in grades of rarefaction, in
703, 704, 711, 713, 727-28, 729-30, degrees of wisdom and will, in
742, 745, 772, 773, 777; their Peter Lombard, 343, 348, 729; as
860 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

requiring grace in order to activate 350; in Pseudo-Dionysius, 69, 343,

free will toward the good, in 350; in Honorius Augustodunensis,
Augustine, 343, 348; as a twelfth- 703; in Anselm of Laon and his
century consensus position, 343, school, 329, 342; in Robert of
349-50, 353, 729-30, 745, 777; in Melun, 74; in Peter Lombard, as
Peter Lombard, 345, 348, 349-50, related to gradations of angels
353, 729-30, 745, 777; his use of before fall, 348, 351, subsets of
Origen as an authority on this three within nine orders of, 351;
point, 345; their fall, 38, 66, 320, gradations within each angelic
322, 329, 335, 338, 343-44, 348, rank, 351; perfection in their
349, 378, 729-30; in Honorius contemplation of God, in quality of
Augustodunensis, 38, 322, 343-44; their love and merit, but growth in
in Hugh of St. Victor, 329; in knowledge of events occurring in
Summa sententiarum, 334-44; in time and in quantity of virtue, their
Robert Pullen, 335; in Peter capacity for growth a means of
Lombard, 338, 349, 378, 729-30; distinguishing them from God, in
timing of fall, in Honorius Peter Lombard, 352-53, 742;
Augustodunensis, Sententie Anselmi, missions of, 40, 69, 70, 74, 170, 320,
Summa sententiarum, 343-44; as being 343, 346, 350, 351, 376-77, 383 n.
partially limited in their free will 36, 702, 703, 711, 713, 729; whether
after their fall, in Honorius all ranks of angels are sent, in
Augustodunensis, 344; in Hugh of Hugh of St. Victor, 346, 351; in
St. Victor, 345; in Summa Summa sententiarum, 346, 352; in
sententiarum, 345-46, 349; as Robert of Melun, 74, in Peter
retaining free will after fall, in Peter Lombard, 351, 729; their
Lombard, 347, 349-50, 353, 730, assumption of bodies on such
772, 777; their confirmation in their missions, 343, 346, 350, 729,
fallen or Unfällen state, as a metaphysical status of these bodies
consensus position vs. Origen, 320, and bodies of offspring angels may
344-46, 349-51, 378, 445, 729-30, engender while using them, in
742, 772, 773; in Anselm of church fathers, 343; in Augustine,
Canterbury, 344, 348; in Honorius 343; in Porretans, 343;
Augustodunensis, 344-45, 351; in unwillingness of Peter Lombard to
school of Laon, 344-45, 346, 348; rule on this question, 350; his view
in Porretans, 345; in Ysagoge in that angels interact with men by
theologiam, 345; in Hugh of St. their effects, not substantially, 350,
Victor, 345; in Summa sententiarum, 729, role of angels as guardians of
345-36, 349; in Robert Pullen, Eden after fall, 376-77; as
346, 349, 350; in Peter Lombard, guardians of men, 40, 69, 70, 170,
349-50, 378, 445, 772, 773; fallen 346, 351, 483 n. 36, 703, 729; in
angels, 69, 70, 170, 343, 344, Gregory the Great, 356; in
345-46, 348-50, 616, 617, 620, 703, Honorius Augustodunensis, 40, 703;
704; number of, in Hugh of St. Victor, in Gilbert of Poitiers, 170; in Hugh
346; as lacking in gradations, in of St. Victor, along with view that
Summa sententiarum, 343, 350; as number of good angels is identical
having gradations, in Peter at any given moment with number
Lombard, 350; their assignment to of human beings on earth, 346; in
Hell or upper air and function as Summa sententiarum, 346, in Peter
tempters of men, in Honorius Lombard, with critique of Hugh
Augustodunensis, 40, 344; in Hugh and view that one angel can guard
of St. Victor, 346; in Summa more than one human being at the
sententiarum, 345; in Peter Lombard, same time, 351, 729; role of, in Last
350; their role in Last Things, in Things, in Honorius
Peter Lombard, 350, 703, 704, 713; Augustodunensis, 702, 703, in
good angels, their hierarchy, 69, 74, Porretans, 704; in Peter Lombard,
329, 342-43, 350-53, 703, 729, 742; 711,713,729
in Gregory the Great, 329, 343, Animals, rationale for their creation,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 861
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 332; applied to sacraments, 609, 652-53,
in Peter Lombard, 338, 341, 727; 656, 760, 775; as applied to
souls of, in Robert Pullen, 362 marriage, by Peter Lombard,
Antichrist, in Augustine, 207 n. 136; 652-53, 656, 775; logic in, 92, 99,
in Ivo of Chartres, 705; in Honorius 128, 229, 268-69, 270, 272-73, 274,
Augustodunensis, 401, 701, 714, 275, 276, 287, 289, 436; natural
722; in school of Laon, 707; in philosophy in, 136; doctrine of
Glossa ordinaria, 206; in Robert human nature in, 118, 119, 728,
Pullen, 70, 709; in Robert of 774; psychology in, 357, 361, 362,
Melun, 707; in Peter Lombard's 371; ethics in, 261, 447, 478, 484,
exegesis of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 504, 505, 747; cardinal virtues in,
196, 204, 205-07, 207 n. 136, 504, 505; virtue as lying in the
350; omission from Sentences, 83, mean in, 478, 504; doctrine of
714, 772. See also Last Things; habitus in, 261, 477, 478, 484. See
Paul, St. also Abelard, Peter; Aristotle;
Apocalypse, book of. See Revelation, Boethius; Ethics; God, doctrine
book of of; Logic; Metaphysics; Peter
Apocalypticism, 698, 699, 714 Lombard; Philosophy; Sacraments,
Apollinarianism, heresy of, 440 Eucharist, marriage; Trinity,
Apostles, 506, 702, 712; role in Last doctrine of; William of Champeaux
Things, in Honorius Ark, Noah's, as a metaphor for
Augustodunensis, 702; in Peter church, 518
Lombard, 712. See also Paul, St.; Arts, liberal, as applied to biblical
Peter, St. exegesis and theology, 8, 26, 33,
Arianism, heresy of, as opposed by 49-50, 54-55, 57-58, 71-72, 73,
Jerome, 125; by Augustine, 232; by 84,85,86,91,98-100, 101, 104,
Marius Victorinus, 239-40 105, 128, 149-50, 155, 158, 161,
Aristotelianism, 5, 6, 85, 92, 93, 94, 162, 173, 181, 182, 187, 196,
95, 98, 99, 102-03, 104, 105, 107, 211-12,223, 246,435, 718, 774;
109, 111, 112, 113, 115, 117, 118, in Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 161;
119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 128, in Pseudo-Bede, 162; in Hugh of
136-37, 138, 144, 153, 221, 228, St. Victor, 57-58; in Peter Abelard,
229, 243, 247, 261, 268-69, 270, 49-50, 54-55, 85, 98-100; in
272-73, 274, 275, 276, 287, 289, Gilbert of Poitiers, 101, 104, 128,
337, 357, 361, 362, 371, 436, 477, 246; in Porretans, 54-55, 85; in
484, 504, 505, 555-60, 575, 582, Thierry of Chartres, 104, 105, 128,
609, 652-53, 656, 721-22, 728, 747, 246; in Clarenbald of Arras, 104,
756-57, 760, 774-76; as an index of 105, 128, 246; in Robert Pullen,
perceived importance of medieval 71-72, 105; in Robert of Melun, 72,
thinkers, 5, 6; doctrine of relation 73, 74; in Peter Lombard, 8, 26, 84,
as an accident, as applied to 86, 173, 181, 187, 211,223, 718,
Trinitarian theology, 93, 94, 95, 98, 774; as source of errors imputed to
102-03, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111, Peter Lombard and other
112, 113, 114, 115, 123, 124, 125, theologians criticized by Walter of
128, 138, 144, 159, 229, 243, 247, St. Victor, 435. See also Grammar;
721-22, 775-76; doctrine of Logic; Mathematics; Rhetoric;
substance, as applied to the deity, Walter of St. Victor
94-95, 98, 103, 105, 117, 118, 121, Atonement, the. See Christ, His saving
122, 136-37, 177; metaphysics in, work
as applied to change in Eucharistie Authorities, their use, criticism, and
elements, 221, 555-60, 575, 582, evaluation, v, 24-25, 32, 34, 37,
726, 774; in Summa sententiarum, 556, 38-41, 44-90, 92, 158, 159-60, 161,
557, 558, 575; in Sententiae divinitatis, 165, 166-67, 168, 170-71, 173,
556, 557-58, 559; in Peter 174-75, 176-77, 179-80, 180-88,
Lombard, 221, 559-60, 575, 582, 196, 202, 220, 541-54, 546, 550,
726, 774; causal language in, 337, 584-87,588-90,601-02,603-04,606,
609, 652-53, 656, 760, 775; as 630-31, 632-33, 635, 637, 639, 643,
862 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

648-49, 651-52, 653-54, 662, 668, 161, 619; debate on whether its
671, 690-91; by monastic authors, 37, members should engage in pastoral
38-41,159-60,161; in biblical exegesis ministry, 37; opposition of Hugh of
of Letbert of Lille, 159; of Bruno St. Victor to the practice, 619;
the Carthusian, 159-60, of Pseudo- Elucidarium of Honorius
Bruno of Würzburg, 160; of Augustodunensis as a response to
Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 161; in critics of order on this point, 37-41
systematic theology of Rupert of Bible, ix, 23-25, 26, 28-29, 37, 40,
Deutz, 37; of Honorius 49, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62-63,
Augustodunensis, 38-41; by 71, 72, 73-74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81,
canonists, 44, 45, 202, 584-85, 83, 85, 88, 100, 108, 110, 155-225,
589-90, 603-04, 632-33, 635, 637, 229, 230, 235, 236, 238, 308, 338,
668; in Ivo of Chartres, 637; in 339, 401, 404, 486, 494, 503, 510-13,
Gratian, 584-85, 598-90, 603-04, 514, 519, 524, 525, 527, 528, 529,
632-33, 635, 668; in Roland of 530, 531, 544, 550, 568, 569, 578,
Bologna, 635, 668; by scholastic 579, 587, 594, 616, 621, 622, 623,
theologians, 24-25, 44-90, 158, 624, 648, 656, 663, 664, 665, 666,
162-63, 166-67, 168, 170-71, 173, 672, 684, 690, 698, 699, 700, 703,
174-75,176-77,179-80,180-88,196, 704, 711, 727, 728, 731, 751,772;
202, 220, 541-44, 550, 570, 586-87, apocryphal texts of, 203; Hebrew
601-02, 603-04, 606, 639, 643, text of, 178, 179; Septuagint text of,
648-49, 651-52, 653-64, 662, 671, 178, 179; Vulgate text of, 178, 494.
690-91; as biblical exegetes, 24-25, See also Exegesis, biblical; Paul, St.,
158, 162-63, 166-67, 168, 170-71, Psalms, book of
173,174-75,176-77,178-79,180-88,
196, 199, 202, 204, 220; in Pseudo- Canonists, x, 44, 45, 65-66, 67, 68,
Bede, 162-63; in Glossa ordinaria, 69, 89-90, 202, 479, 484, 487, 510,
165, 166-67; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 516, 518, 520-21, 523, 524, 532,
167, 168; in Peter Lombard's 533, 537, 543, 552, 553, 565, 566,
commentary on the Psalms, 569, 571, 572-73, 574, 575, 579,
170-71, 173, 174-75, 176-77, 580, 582, 584-85, 588, 589-90, 591,
178-79, 180-88; in Peter Lombard's 592, 601-02, 603-04, 607, 609, 614,
commentary on Pauline epistles, 626, 628, 631, 634-39, 645, 655,
24-25, 196, 212, 220; in 656, 662, 663, 669, 674, 679, 680,
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 199, 683, 688, 689, 696, 753, 758, 761,
202, 204; as theologians, in school 762, 767, 771; criticism and
of Laon, 44-47, 58, 543-44, 639; in evaluation of authorities in, 44,
Peter Abelard and his school, 47, 45, 202, 584-85, 589-90, 603-04,
50-51; in Porretans, 54-55, 632-33, 635, 637, 668; as
542-43, 570; in Hugh of St. Victor, ecclesiologists, 69, 565; ignorance
62-63, 586-87, 643; in Summa in, as a factor mitigating moral
sententiarum, 64-65, 588, 648-49, culpability, 479, 484, 487; Ten
671; in Roland of Bologna, 67-68, Commandments in, 510;
550; in Robert Pullen, 71-72; in sacraments in, 65-66, 67, 68,
Robert of Melun, 72-73, 76-77; in 520-21, 532, 537, 545, 552, 553,
Peter Lombard's Sentences, 24-25, 571, 572-73, 574, 575, 580, 582,
84-90, 601-02, 603-04, 606, 588, 590, 591, 592, 601, 609, 614,
651-52, 653-54, 662, 690-91. See 615, 626, 628, 630, 634-39, 645,
also Arts liberal; Church, fathers of; 655, 662, 663, 674, 679, 680, 683,
Exegesis, biblical; Sacraments; 688, 689, 761; general concern with
Sentences collection; Theology, validity of sacraments from
systematic standpoint of canonical status of
minister in, 520-21, 545, 572-73; in
Beatitude. See Last Things, Heaven baptism, 545; in Eucharist, 572-73;
Beatitudes, in Hugh of St. Victor, defense of real presence doctrine in,
505; in Peter Lombard, 509 552, 553; validity of administration
Benedictine order, 35-36, 37-41, 158, by priest suffering nocturnal
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 863

emission in, 574; validity if of Laon, 500-01, 502; in Sententie

administered to a heretic, Anselmi, 502; in Peter Abelard, 48,
excommunicate person known to be 454, 493, 500; in Abelardians, 500;
or suspected of being immoral in, in Hermannus, 477; in Roland of
552, 571 ; frequency of communion Bologna, 66, 67, 502-03, 591; in
of laity in, 575, 580, 582; penance Hugh of St. Victor, 500-01, 502,
in, 588, 590, 591, 592, 601, 609; 535; in Summa sententiarum, 64, 500,
tendency to support confessionism 502, 509, 514; in Robert of Melun,
in, 588, 590, 591; exception to this 74, 75, 534; in Peter Lombard, 178,
rule in Paucapalea, 592; holy orders 207, 464, 482, 499, 500-04, 506,
in, 614, 615, 626, 761; marriage in, 514, 697, 742, 749, 750-51. See also
628, 630, 634-39, 645, 655, 662, Ethics, virtues, theological; Trinity,
663, 674, 679, 680, 688, 689, 696; doctrine of, Holy Spirit
marital impediments, grounds for Christmas, 26, 165, 575, 580-81;
nullification, separation in, 662, liturgy of, 165; as a feast on which
663, 674, 679, 680, 683, 688, 689; laity should receive Eucharist, in
influence on Peter Lombard's canonists, 575, 580; in Robert
sacramental theology, 82, 89-90, Pullen, 575, 580, 581; in Peter
601-02, 603-04, 607, 753, 758, Lombard, 580-81. See also
763-67, 767, 771. See also Alger of Sacraments, Eucharist
Liège; Authorities; Gratian; Ivo of Christology, vi, 11, 17, 25, 27, 27 η.
Chartres, Law, canon; Paucapalea; 36, 31, 36, 38-39, 48-52, 54, 56,
Roland of Bologna; Sacraments 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68-69, 71,
Capetian dynasty, 21 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 92,
Catenae, patristic, 62, 86, 88, 159, 166, 93,95,96, 101, 103, 106, 107, 110,
727; Augustinian catena of Florus of 111, 113, 114-15, 116, 117-19, 125,
Lyon, 86; use of catenae by Peter 138, 139-40, 142, 145, 146, 147-48,
Lombard on creation, 88, 727; 150, 151, 151 η. 174; 153, 158, 163,
biblical exegesis of Letbert of Lille, 164, 167, 176, 177, 198, 208 η. 138,
Glossa ordinaria presented as, 159, 215,216, 217,222-23,247,251,
166. See also Authorities 253, 358, 398-431, 433-70, 503-04,
Catharism, heresy of, 187, 221, 339, 515, 516, 568, 576, 730, 736-44,
628, 629, 649, 650 752, 776; in Hilary of Poitiers, 444;
Causation, 79-80, 122, 227, 229-30, in Augustine, 153, 176, 216, 223,
237-38, 238-40, 265-66, 282, 332, 401-02, 403, 413, 417, 418, 420,
337, 467-68, 515, 609, 652-53, 656, 425, 439, 450, 464, 468; in
670, 719, 720-21, 724-25, 775; Boethius, 92, 93, 98, 103, 110, 111,
analysis of, in Robert of Melun, 113, 114-15, 116, 117, 118, 125,
237-38, 265-66, 282, 332; in Peter 138, 142, 146, 150, 151 n. 174, 247,
Lombard, 79-80, 122, 227, 229-30, 358, 402-03, 405, 408, 410, 413,
238-40, 467-68, 515, 719, 720-21, 415, 416, 418, 423, 424, 425, 435; in
724-25, 775; Aristotelian, 337, 609, Gregory the Great, 450; in Bede,
652-53, 656, 760, 775; as applied to 439-40; in Anselm of Canterbury,
marriage by Peter Lombard, 652-53, 251; in Honorius Augustodunensis,
656, 775. See aUo Aristotelianism; 38-39; in Lotulph of Novara, 17; in
Creation; God, doctrine of, proofs Rupert of Deutz, 36; in Gerhoch of
of God's existence; Sacraments, Reichersberg, 17, 31, 428; in
marriage Letbert of Lille, 158; in Glossa
Celibacy, as a Christian calling, in ordinaria, 164, 167; in Pseudo-Bede,
Robert Pullen, 69, 476 163; in Walter of Mortagne, 150,
Charity, 48, 64, 66, 67, 74, 75, 178, 439, 440; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 119,
207, 213, 334, 454, 464, 476-77, 138, 139-40, 142, 145, 150, 151,
482, 493, 498, 499, 500-04, 506, 152, 153, 216-17; in Porretans, 54,
507, 509, 514, 530-31, 534, 535, 145, 147-48, 150, 151, 153; in Peter
585, 591, 697, 742, 749, 750-51; in Abelard, 48, 101; in Commentarius
Augustine, 476, 500-01, 504; in Cantabridgensis, 198; in Ysagoge in
Anselm of Laon, 476-77, in school theologiam, 52; in Roland of Bologna,
864 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

66; in Hugh of St. Victor, 56, 142; communion of saints in church, in

in Summa sententiarum, 62, 64, 65, connection with Purgatory, in Peter
117—19; in Sententiae divinitatis, 56, Lombard, 715. See also Last Things;
142; in Robert Pullen, 68-69, 71, Sacraments, Eucharist, penance,
106, 107; in Robert of Melun, 74, holy orders, marriage
75, 110; in Peter Lombard, 11, Church, fathers of, 7, 8, 10, 55, 58,
25, 27, 31, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 62, 63, 71, 72, 76, 81, 86, 89, 95,
150-53, 171,208 η. 138, 215, 217, 146, 149, 159, 162, 163, 165, 166,
222-23, 253, 443, 444, 503-04, 515, 182, 189, 191, 193, 202, 207, 233,
516, 576, 730, 736-44, 752; 287, 303, 321, 322, 323, 329, 333,
influence of John Damascene on, 336, 343, 344, 374, 385, 400, 401,
25, 151, 215, 217, 418-20, 423, 428, 491, 494, 504, 505, 508, 509, 517,
437, 447; allegation that he taught 541, 542, 594, 666, 667, 669, 700,
Christological nihilianism by John 711, 727, 736, 748, 769, 772; Greek
of Cornwall, 27 n. 36; 428-31, 434, fathers on grace and free will, 385,
435, 436; by Walter of St. Victor, 491. See also Ambrose; Augustine;
428, 431, 432-33, 434-35, 436; Authorities; Basil the Great;
testimony that he did not teach this Cyprian; Hilary of Poitiers; Jerome;
doctrine by pupils Adam of St. Gregory the Great; Origen; Pseudo-
Asaph, 434; Odo of Ourscamp, 424 Chrysostom; Theodore
n. 49; Peter Comestor, 424 n. 49. Church, Gallican, its rules on
See also Christ penance, 584, 585; on marriage,
Church, doctrine of, 39, 40, 60, 61, 629, 631, 674-75, 676-77, 679-80,
64, 69, 82, 158, 164, 165-66, 167, 692
172, 182-83, 185, 188, 203, 204, Church, Roman, its rules on penance,
206-07, 518, 525, 527, 532, 561-62, 584; on marriage, 674-75, 679, 692
565-66, 567, 574, 576, 577-78, Church, primitive, idea of, 44-90,
582-83, 591, 618-19, 622, 625, 631, 202, 204, 205-07, 467, 532-34, 537,
636, 642, 644, 646, 647, 650-51, 541-44, 546, 550, 570, 583, 584-88,
652, 665-66, 686, 700, 715, 757, 589, 590, 601-02, 607, 608, 611,
762, 764; in Ivo of Chartres, 566; 666-68, 684, 690, 698, 754, 758,
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 39, 761; general attitude to, in
40, 518, 565-66, 700; in Letbert canonists, 46, 532, 584-85, 667-68;
of Lille, 158; in Glossa ordinaria, in Gratian, 584-85, 667-68, 691,
165-66; in Hugh of St. Victor, 56, 692; in scholastic theologians,
60, 61, 518, 525, 565-66, 618-19, 44-90, 202, 204, 205-07, 532, 537,
622, 625; in Robert Pullen, 69, 70, 542-44, 546, 550, 570, 584-88, 589,
574, 625; in Peter Lombard, 182-83, 608, 666-68, 684, 690, 698, 754,
188, 206-07, 532, 576, 577, 578, 758, 761; in school of Laon, 46-47,
582-83, 622, 651, 715, 757; as 543-44, 570, 586, 589, 602; in
persons bonded by Eucharistie Hugh of St. Victor, 586-87, 601,
communion, in Honorius 602, 666, 667; in Summa sententiarum,
Augustodunensis, 565-66; in Hugh 588; in Porretans, 542-43, 570, 588
of St. Victor, 565-56; in Summa n. 310, in Hermannus, 566, 666; in
sententiarum, 561-62, 578; in Robert Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 204; in
Pullen, 578; in Peter Lombard, 576, Sententiae Parisiensis I, 666; in Ysagoge
577, 578, 582-83, 757; marriage as in theologiam, 588 n. 310; in Roland
signifying its union with Christ, as of Bologna, 537, 550, 585; in
a consensus position, 172, 631, 636, Sententiae divinitatis, 546, 587-88,
642, 644, 646, 647, 650-51, 652, 589, 590; in Master Simon, 667; in
665-66, 685-86, 764; in Robert Pullen, 588 η. 310; in Peter
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 204; Lombard, 202, 205-07, 601-02,
in Peter Lombard, 650-51, 652, 608, 684, 690, 698, 754, 758, 762; in
685-86, 764; argument, by twelfth-century debates on baptism,
confessionists, that church must be 46-47, 537, 542, 546, 570; on
satisfied by penitential satisfaction confirmation, 550; on Eucharist,
imposed by confessor, 591; 570; on penance, 583, 584-88, 589,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 865

590, 601-02, 607, 608, 611, 758; on 310-14, 317, 319; in Chartrain
marriage, 666-68, 684, 690, 698, Anonymous, 314-15; in Clarenbald
754. See also Authorities; Church, of Arras, 315-19, 320, 340; in Peter
doctrine of; Sacraments, baptism, Abelard, 48, 255, 304, 323-26; in
confirmation, Eucharist, penance, Roland of Bologna, 66, 319-20,
marriage 326, 340, 342; in Porretans, 59, 304,
Church-state relations, in Hugh of St. 319, 330; in Sententiae divinitatis, 56,
Victor, 618-19; in Robert Pullen, 235, 334-35, 339, 340; in Hugh of
69, 70, 625; in Peter Lombard, 762. St. Victor, 57-59, 60, 62, 231, 235,
See also Sacraments, holy orders 304, 326-30, 334-35, 336, 339, 340;
Circumcision, as forerunner of in Summa sententiarum, 64, 3 3 0 - 3 2 ,
baptism, in Anselm of Laon, 519; in 336-37, 339-40, 346; in Robert
Peter Abelard, 49, 519; in Pullen, 68, 70, 335-36; in Robert of
Commentarius Cantabndgensis, 198, Melun, 74, 75, 283, 304, 332-34,
199; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 52; in 336; in Peter Lombard, 11, 79, 80,
Hugh of St. Victor, 525, 578; in 81, 82, 88, 286, 287, 298-99, 301,
Summa sententiarum, 538; in Peter 302, 304, 336-42, 347, 717, 720,
Lombard, 530-31, 533, 578. See also 726, 727-31, 750-51; cosmology in,
Sacraments, baptism 36, 54, 64, 74, 81, 88, 102, 236,
Cistercian order, 9, 439 254-55, 259, 267, 276, 283, 303-19,
Civil service, as a Christian calling, in 326, 333-34, 340, 346, 727; in
Robert Pullen, 69, 476 Augustine, 88; in Chartrains, 8,
Clergy. See Sacraments, holy orders 254, 303-19; in Bernard of
Concubinage. See Sacraments, Chartres, 305-06; in Bernard
marriage Silvestris, 306-09; in Thierry
Conscience, in Peter Lombard, 385. of Chartres, 309-10, 311, 312,
See also Ethics; Jerome 314, 316; in William of Conches,
Contemplative life, as a Christian 102, 310-14, 315; in Chartrain
calling, in Robert Pullen, 69, 476 Anonymous, 314-15; in Clarenbald
Contingency, 85, 213, 268-90, 319, of Arras, 315-19; in Peter Abelard,
325, 445, 723, 724, 725, 726, 773, 255; in Roland of Bologna, 66,
774. See also Abelard, Peter; 319-20; in Porretans, 54, 319; in
Aristotle; Aristotelianism; Boethius; Hugh of St. Victor, 88, 276, 326; in
Free will, doctrine of; God, doctrine Summa sententiarum, 64, 330, 346; in
of; Logic Robert of Melun, 236, 283, 333-34;
Contraception, in Peter Lombard, 657 in Peter Lombard, 81, 88, 259, 267,
Craftsmen, vices deemed to be 340, 342, 727; creation simul in, 58,
attached to their profession, in 61, 310, 312, 317, 321, 324,326,
Honorius Augustodunensis, 475 328, 329, 330, 332-33, 334-35, 336,
Creation, vi, 11, 36, 37, 38, 40, 48, 54, 337, 339-40, 347, 727, 728; as
56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, defended by Hilary of Poitiers, 321;
68, 70, 74, 75, 79, 80-81, 88, 102, by Augustine, 324, 326, 334, 335;
231, 255, 258, 259, 267, 276, 278, by Gregory the Great, 335; by
283, 287, 298-99, 301, 302, 303-42, Bede, 335; by Honorius
325, 351, 362, 367, 393, 395, 413, Augustodunensis, 321; by Thierry
417, 418, 422, 443, 444, 717, 720, of Chartres, 310; by William of
726, 727-31, 750-51, 773; in Conches, 312; by Clarenbald of
Honorius Augustodunensis, 37, 38, Arras, 317; by Hugh of St. Victor,
40, 279, 321-32; in Rupert of 326, 329, 333; by Summa sententiarum,
Deutz, 36, 37; in Anselm of Laon, 330, 346; by Sententiae divinitatis,
328-29; in school of Laon, 328-29; 334-35, 339, 340; by Robert Pullen,
in Chartrains, 303-19, 320, 340, 335; by Robert of Melun, 332-33,
727; in Bernard of Chartres, 346; by Peter Lombard, 336, 337,
305-06; in Bernard Silvestris, 339-40, 347, 727, 728; as rejected
306-09, 314, 315, 317; in Thierry of by Anselm of Laon and his school,
Chartres, 309-10, 311, 312, 314, 328, 329; exemplary or primordial
316; in William of Conches, causes in, 58, 59, 62, 64, 66, 80,
866 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

231, 258, 259, 305, 309, 317, 318, Canterbury, 322, 329; in Honorius
321, 324, 327, 328, 329, 330, Augustodunensis, 38, 40, 322; in
331-32, 333, 336, 337, 339, 342, Anselm of Laon, 329; in Peter
727; in Augustine, 258, 317, 318, Abelard, 325, 329; in Hugh of St.
331-32, 333, 336, 727; in John Victor, 58, 329, 334, 338; in Summa
Scottus Eriugena, 258, 305, 318; in sententiarum, 64, 330, 334; in Roland
Honorius Augustodunensis, 321; in of Bologna, 66; in Sententiae
Chartrains, 258, 305, 309, 317, 318; divinitatis, 56, 334, 338; in Bernard
in Bernard of Chartres, 305; in Silvestris, 307, 308, 320, 325; in
Bernard Silvestris, 309; in Thierry Robert Pullen, 69, 70, 335; in
of Chartres, 309; in Clarenbald of Robert of Melun, 74, 334; in Peter
Arras, 317, 318; in Peter Abelard, Lombard, 338-39, 341, 342, 396-97,
258, 259, 324; in Hugh of St. 414, 423, 444, 727-28; rationale
Victor, 58, 59, 62, 231, 258, 327, for, 322, 325, 329, 330, 331, 334,
328, 330, 333; in Summa sententiarum, 335, 336, 338, 339, 341, 351,
331-32; in Robert of Melun, 332, 727-28; in Augustine, 322, 329,
337, 339; in Peter Lombard, 336, 331, 336, 338, 351; in Anselm of
337, 339, 342, 727; primordial Canterbury, 322, 329; in Honorius
matter in, 58, 66, 74, 305-06, Augustodunensis, 322, 329; in
306-07, 310, 311,312, 317, 318, Anselm of Laon, 329; in Hugh of
328, 330, 332, 337, 339-40, 347, St. Victor, 329-30, 334, 338, 351;
728; in Anselm of Loan and his in Summa sententiarum, 330, 339; in
school, 328; in Bernard of Chartres, Sententiae divinitatis, 334, 338; in
305-06; in Bernard Silvestris, 306; Robert Pullen, 335; in Robert of
in Thierry of Chartres, 310; in Melun, 334; in Peter Lombard, 336,
William of Conches, 311, 312; in 338-39, 351, 727-28; rationale for
Clarenbald of Arras, 317, 318; in subhuman creation, in Honorius
Hugh of St. Victor, 58, 328; in Augustodunensis, 332; in Peter
Summa sententiarun, 330; in Roland of Lombard, 338, 341, 727; creation of
Bologna, 66; in Robert of Melun, animals, in Honorius
74, 332, 337; in Peter Lombard, Augustodunensis, 40, 322; souls of
337, 339-40, 347, 728; seminal animals, in Robert of Melun, 74;
reasons in, 258, 309, 312, 317, 318, their capacity to dream, in Robert
319, 324, 331-32, 335, 339, 340, Pullen, 362; souls of plants, in Peter
367, 393, 728; in Augustine, 258, Abelard, 325; in Robert of Melun,
317, 318, 319, 324, 335, 339, 340; in 74. See also Angels; Animals;
Thierry of Chartres, 309; in Causation; Genesis, book of; Man,
William of Conches, 312; in doctrine of; Matter; Plato;
Clarenbald of Arras, 318, 319; in Platonism
Summa sententiarum, 331-32, 367; in Creeds, of church, 34, 93, 95, 136,
Sententiae divinitatis, 335; in Peter 141, 149, 216, 409-10, 499, 722,
Lombard, 339, 340, 367, 393, 728; 749; Peter Abelard's commentaries
creation of angels, 81, 83, 89, 300, on Apostles' and Athanasian
320, 328, 339-40, 342, 347-53, creeds, 409-10; Porretan
727-28; in Hugh of St. Victor, 328; commentary on Pseudo-Athanasian
in Summa sententiarum, 330, 338, creed, 141; language of, as used by
346-47; in Peter Lombard, 81, Peter Lombard, 149, 722
83, 89, 337, 339-40, 342, 347-53,
727-28; where angelic creation took Decretals. See Law, canon
place, in Summa sententiarum, 346-47;Demiurge, 319, 326, 330, 337. See also
in Peter Lombard, 347; creation of Chartrains; Creation; Plato;
man, 38, 40, 54, 56, 58, 64, 66, 68, Platonism
70, 74, 81, 307, 308, 320, 322, 325, Demons. See Angels, fallen; Devil, the
329, 330, 334, 338-39, 341, 342, Determinism, astral, as opposed by
351, 396-97, 414, 423, 443, 444, Augustine, 325, 334; by Peter
727-28; in Augustine, 322, 329, Abelard, 325, 334; by Robert of
331, 338, 351; in Anselm of Melun, 334
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 867

Devil, the, 52, 57, 62, 69, 70, 208, Ecclesiology. See Church, doctrine of
213, 218, 219, 220, 372, 373, 377, Eden, garden of, 36, 61, 173, 204,
379, 447, 449-67, 463, 525, 702, 704, 322, 325, 335-36, 341, 354-55, 356,
705, 710, 729, 732, 741, 742-43, 368, 369-72, 376, 380, 381, 389,
744; his fall, in Peter Lombard, 629, 640, 650; forbidden fruit in, in
378; his representation of the Honorius Augustodunensis, 376,
sensual faculty in so doing, 379; his 380; in Anselm of Laon, 376; in
temptation of Adam and Eve, 372, Sententie Anselmi, 376; in Robert of
373, 377, 704, 732; his temptation Melun, 376; in Peter Lombard,
of other human beings, 69, 70, 213, 380-81; marriage and human
218, 219; "sacraments of the devil," sexuality in, in anti-Manichean
in Hugh of St. Victor, 62, 525; Augustine, 354-55, 629; as
"rights of the devil" theory of the influencing twelfth-century
atonement, 218, 219, 220, 449-67; consensus on, 335, 341, 355, 629,
his punishment of damned in Hell, 640, 650; in Honorius
703; opposition to Origen's view Augustodunensis, 322, 335; in
that he could be saved, as a school of Laon, 335; in Peter
consensus position, 208, 705, 710, Lombard, 341, 368, 369, 650;
729. See also Adam; Angels; Eve; Porretans, Robert of Melun as
Christ, His saving work; Hugh of exceptions to this rule, 355; other
St. Victor; Last Things; Man, aspects of man's physical,
doctrine of, original sin of; Origen intellectual life before fall, in Peter
Devils. See Angels, fallen Lombard, 369-72; man's
Dietary practices, Jewish, in Hebrews, continuing life in Eden had fall not
196-98, 201-02, 209-11; as occurred, in Peter Lombard, 369,
interpreted by Peter Abelard, 201; 370; work as a natural good in, in
by Peter Lombard, 201; by Robert of Melun and Roland of
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 202; as Bologna, 356; location of and
followed by St. Peter in Galatians, warning not to search for it, in
debate on propriety of, in Porphyry, Robert Pullen, 335-36. See also
209; in Jerome and Augustine, Man, doctrine of; Sacraments,
209-10; in Peter Lombard, 210; in marriage
Commentanus Cantabridgensis, 210-11;Eschatology. See Apocalypticism; Last
in Robert of Melun, 211. See also Things
Exegesis, biblical; Paul, St., Peter, Ethics, vi, vii, 11, 27, 36, 38, 39, 40,
St. 46, 48, 48 n. 29, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55,
Diversity, within orthodox consensus, 56, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69, 73, 74,
55, 89, 399, 427, 470, 541, 542, 572, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81-82, 83, 84, 89,
739-40; Gregory the Great as an 102, 131, 135, 157-62, 164, 165,
authority for, in administration of 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172-74,
baptism, 55, 89, 541, 542, 570; as 177, 178, 179, 180-81, 183, 185-87,
an accepted principle in twelfth- 189-92, 197, 199, 200-01, 207, 209,
century theology, 89, 399; in 210, 211, 213-14, 215,248,260,
Master Simon, 572; in Peter 261-62, 264, 267, 268-90, 291, 292,
Lombard, 427, 470, 542, 739-40 300, 301, 302, 303, 318, 319, 321,
Donatism, heresy of, as opposed by 325, 331, 334, 343, 347, 348,
Augustine, 585, 601,602 349-50, 353, 354, 355, 358, 359,
361, 362, 363-65, 367, 369, 370-97,
Easter, 26, 46-47, 543-44, 570, 575, 398, 414, 416, 421-22, 442, 443-48,
580-81; as appropriate time of 451, 452, 453, 454, 459, 461,
baptism, in Leo I, 46-47, 543, 570; 462-64, 465, 466, 467-68, 469, 470,
rejection of this rule by school of 471-516, 518, 519, 522, 526, 529,
Laon, 46-47, 543-44, 570; as a 530, 534, 535, 538, 539-40, 547,
feast on which laity should receive 593, 595, 600, 603, 606, 607, 620,
Eucharist, in canonists, 575, 580; in 700, 714, 729-30, 733, 736, 737,
Robert Pullen, 575, 580, 581; in 741, 742, 744-52, 753, 754, 757,
Peter Lombard, 580-81 760, 761, 762, 764, 765-67, 770,
868 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

771, 773, 774, 776, 777; in St. Paul, 69, 70, 362, 373, 374, 375, 381,
494, 495, 503; in Origen, 354; in 390-91, 392, 459, 475-76, 478-79,
Ambrose, 481, 504; in Augustine, 480, 508; in Robert of Melun, 72,
36, 180-81, 186-87, 209-10, 215, 74, 75, 79, 199,211, 334,372,376,
373-74, 386, 473, 474-75, 476, 478, 382, 390, 393; in Peter Lombard's
481-82, 483, 487, 497, 498, 499, Psalms commentary, 170,171,172-74,
500, 504, 506, 508, 511-13, 514; in 177, 179, 183, 185-86, 187, 188; in
Gregory the Great, 475, 483, 485, commentary on Pauline epistles,
486, 504, 506, 511; in Anselm of 197, 200-01, 207, 210, 213-14, 215,
Canterbury, 451; in Honorius 271; in sermons, 27, 505, 506; in
Augustodunensis, 38, 39, 40, 372, Sentences, 11, 27, 78, 79, 81-83, 84,
376-77, 378, 380, 475, 518; in 89, 177-81, 183, 185-86, 187, 188,
Rupert of Deutz, 36; in Letbert of 197, 200-21, 207, 210, 213-14, 215,
Lille, 158-59; in Bruno the 271, 370, 377-81, 382, 385, 387,
Carthusian, 160; in Pseudo-Bruno 390, 393-97, 421-22, 464, 465, 467,
of Würzburg, 160-61; in Gerhoch 470, 473, 477-78, 479, 480-516,
of Reichers berg, 160, in William of 529, 530, 538-39, 540, 547, 603,
St. Thierry, 189-90; in Hervaeus of 606, 607, 741, 744-52, 754, 747,
Bourg-Dieu, 190-92; in Bernard of 760, 761, 762, 765-67, 770, 771,
Clairvaux, 489; in Gratian, 479, 776; conscience, in Peter Lombard,
487-88; in Glossa ordinaria, 164, 385; ignorance, as a factor
165, 167; in Anselm of Laon, 180, mitigating ethical responsibility, in
373, 374, 376, 377, 475-77, 478 Gratian, 479, 513-14; in school of
507; in William of Champeaux, Laon, 479; in Peter Abelard, 49, 50,
373, 375, 378, 386, 485-86, 508; in 301-02, 467, 468, 479, 480; in
Sententie Amselmi, 372, 373, 374, 375, Hugh of St. Victor, 382, 392-93,
377, 504, 505; in school of Laon, 394, 397, 479; in Summa sententiarum,
180, 373-74, 378, 382, 385-88, 473, 479; in Robert Pullen, 478-79; in
475, 478, 479, 504-05, 507, 539-40, Peter Lombard, 378-79, 484,
593, 603; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 135, 487-88, 733, 745, 746, 762;
167, 168, 169; in Porretans, 54, 375, intentionalism in, 49, 50, 84,
382, 392, 486, 540; in Peter 180-81, 190, 199, 362, 379, 386,
Abelard, ix, 40, 46, 48 n. 29, 49, 50, 387, 388, 393, 454, 467-68, 469,
301-02, 325, 374, 387, 388-89, 393, 472, 473-87, 490, 491, 502-03,
394, 397, 454, 467-68, 477-78, 479, 511-76, 595, 607, 737, 744, 745-53,
480-84, 487, 493, 494-95, 500, 519, 771; in Ambrose, 481; in Augustine,
534, 540, 595; in Abelardians, 52, 180-81,386, 476, 478, 481; in
199, 210, 477, 478, 485, 486, Gregory the Great, 475, 483; in
494-95, 501, 505; in Commentarius Honorius Augustodunensis, 39, 475;
Cantabridgensis, 199, 210; in in William of St. Thierry, 189-90;
Hermannus, 477, 505; in Sententiae in Anselm of Laon 180, 473, 475,
Parisiensis I, 505; in Ysagoge in 478; in school of Laon, 180, 473,
theologiam, 52, 478, 485, 486; in 475, 478; in Peter Abelard, 49-50,
Roland of Bologna, 66, 67, 372, 388, 459, 467, 477-78, 479, 480-84,
374, 377, 389-90, 479, 485, 492, 487, 539, 545; in Hermannus, 477;
496-97, 502-03; in Hugh of St. in Ysagoge in theologiam, 478; in
Victor, 61, 364-65, 372, 373, Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 199;
375-76, 377, 378, 380, 382, 392-93, in Roland of Bologna, 479, 485,
394, 396, 397, 414, 478, 479, 484, 502-03; in Hugh of St. Victor, 393,
485, 492, 488, 495-97, 498, 500-01, 478, 485; in Summa sententiarum, 475,
502, 505, 508, 522, 540; in Summa 483, 511; in Sententiae divinitatis, 477; in
sententiarum, 63, 64, 331, 372, 374, Robert Pullen, 69, 475-76, 478-79,
378, 379, 382-83, 391, 475, 479, 480; 189-90; in Peter Lombard, 84,
483, 490-91, 497, 498, 500, 502, 180-81, 379, 393, 467-68, 469,
508, 511, 514-15, 527; in Sententiae definition as a habitus mentis, 18-81,
divinitatù, 56, 372, 374, 378, 381, 386, 476, 478, 481; by Ambrose,
391-92, 477; in Robert Pullen, 68, 481; by Augustine, 180-81, 386,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 869

476, 478, 481; sin, 39, 74, 212, 385, 398, 444-48, 452, 454, 459,
373-74, 378, 379-80, 394, 396, 461-62, 464, 472, 473, 475, 476,
444-48,473,477,478, 480, 481,482, 477, 478, 479, 482, 483, 484, 487,
484-88, 500, 505, 512, 513, 514, 488-516, 522, 539, 607, 621,
515, 529, 530, 540, 547, 548, 600, 729-30, 736, 737, 740, 741, 742,
603, 741, 744, 745, 746, 753, 754, 744, 745-51, 752, 760, 764, 771,
757, 761, 764, 765-67, 770, 776; in 773, 776, 777; Christ's possession
Augustine, 481; in Honorius of, 48, 398, 444-48, 461-62, 472,
Augustodunensis, 39; in Robert of 490, 492, 493, 499-500, 503-04,
Melun, 74; in Peter Lombard, 378, 505, 506, 508, 514, 515, 516,
379-80, 467, 472, 481, 482, 484-88, 729-20, 736, 737, 740, 741, 742,
514, 515, 600, 603, 745, 746, 753, 744, 748, 749-51, 752, 776; twelfth-
754, 757, 761, 764, 765-67, 770; century consensus position on need
psychogenesis of, in Jerome, for interaction of free will and grace
373-74, 473; in Augustine, 373; in in acquisition of, 348, 349-50, 353,
school of Laon, 373-74, 378, 543, 364, 370-72, 385, 448, 472, 487,
603; in Sententiae divinitatis, 374, 378; 488-92, 498, 506, 507, 514-15,
in Summa sententiarum, 374, 378, 379; 729-30, 741, 742, 745, 746-48, 760,
in Peter Lombard, 378, 379-80, 771, 772, 774, 777; in Bernard of
515, 741, 744, 745, 764; actual sin, Clairvaux, 489; in Hugh of St.
in Peter Abelard, 387, 754; in Victor, 364, 488; in Summa
Summa sententiarum, 64; in Robert sententiarum, 490-91, 514-15; in
Pullen, 69; in Peter Lombard, 81, Peter Lombard, 385, 472, 473,
212, 394, 396, 529, 530, 540, 547; 488-516, 539, 744, 760, 771, 776;
sacraments as a remedy for, in as admitting gradations, in Ysagoge
Peter Lombard, 529, 530, 540, 547; in theologiam, 478; in Robert Pullen,
mortal sin, in school of Laon, 478; 478; in Roland of Bologna, 492; as
in Peter Abelard, 477; in Robert inhering in profession of farming, in
Pullen, 478; in Peter Lombard, Honorius Augustodunensis, 475; as
486-87; seven deadly sins, in possible for merchants, in school of
Gregory the Great, 374, 485-86; in Laon, 180, 475; in Peter Lombard,
William of Champeaux, 485-86; in 180; for jongleurs, in school of
Hugh of St. Victor, 485, 505; in Laon, 475; natural virtue, in
Summa sententiarum, 485; in Sententiae Hermannus, 505; in Peter
divinitatis, 374; in Ysagoge in Lombard, 472, 484, 507, 515, 777;
theologiam, 485; in Porretans, 486; in virtues as gifts of Holy Spirit, vii,
Peter Lombard, 486-87, 746; venial 40, 80, 131, 261-62, 385, 472, 490,
sin, in school of Laon, 478; in Peter 491-92, 505, 506, 507-10, 514, 515,
Abelard, 477; in Robert Pullen, 744, 748-49; in Peter Abelard, 490;
478; in Peter Lombard, 512, 513, in Hugh of St. Victor, 505; in Summa
746; his view of pious fraud as sententiarum, 490; in Peter Lombard,
venial sin, in contradistinction to 80, 131, 261-62, 385, 472, 490,
Augustine, 513, 514; vice, vii, 39, 491-92, 506, 507-10, 514, 744, 748;
69, 180-81, 447, 472, 475-76, 477, their perdurance in next life, 508-09,
478, 479, 484, 506, 744, 746, 766, 510, 748-49; fear of the Lord, its
776; as attached to particular modes and role in moral life, twelfth-
professions, in Augustine, 180-81; century consensus on, 507-08; in
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 39, William ofChampeaux, 508; in Anselm
475; in Anselm of Laon, 180, 475; of Laon and his school, 507; in
in school of Laon, 180, 475; in Hugh of St. Victor, 508; in Summa
Robert Pullen, 69, 475-76; in Peter sententiarum, 508; in Robert Pullen,
Lombard, 180-81; virtue, vii, 27, 508; in Master Simon, 621; in Peter
39, 40, 46, 48, 63, 64, 67, 68, 74, Lombard, 177, 178, 508-09, 510,
75, 79, 80, 81-82, 89, 135, 172, 177, 607, 748; its supercession in next
178, 180, 190, 191-92, 199, 207, life, in Augustine, 508, 509; in
213, 261-62, 303, 334, 348, 349-50, Bede, 508, 509; its perdurance in
353, 361, 362, 364, 370-72, 384, next life, in Peter Lombard, 508,
870 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

509; cardinal virtues, vii, 27, 82, Neoplatonism

452, 472, 476, 490, 492, 493, Excommunication, 69, 517, 545, 572,
504-07, 508, 509, 744, 747-48; in 573, 574, 579, 598, 599, 605, 614,
Ambrose, 504; in Augustine, 476, 617,626-27, 758, 762
504; in Gregory the Great, 504, Exegesis, biblical, v, 11, 15, 17,
505, 506; in Anselm of Canterbury, 23-25, 26, 27-29, 31, 32, 34, 43,
452; in school of Laon, 504-05; in 48, 51, 57-58, 62, 74, 75-76,
Sententie Anselmi, 504, 505; in 78-79, 83, 88, 108, 110, 153, 156,
Hermannus, 505; in Sententiae 157, 155-225, 285, 321, 328, 337,
Parisiensis I, 505; in Hugh of St. 338, 385, 439, 440, 448, 453, 454,
Victor, 505; in Peter Lombard, 27, 455, 456, 485, 512, 567, 699, 704; in
82, 472, 504-07, 508, 744, 747-48; Hilary of Poitiers on the Psalms,
their perdurance in next life, 163, 167; in Ambrose, 481; in
506-07, 508, 748; theological Jerome, 164, 165, 171, 173, 176,
virtues, vii, 46, 48, 63, 64, 66, 67, 178-79, 181, 183, 184, 194, 196,
69, 74, 75, 79, 81-82, 89, 135, 172, 197,209-10, 211, 385; in
178, 190, 191-92, 199, 207, 213, Augustine's De doctrina Christiana,
334, 384, 454, 459, 464, 472, 476, 78-79; Enarrationes in Psalmos, 153,
477, 482, 583, 490, 492, 493-504, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173, 179, 183,
506, 507, 508, 522, 744, 747, 748, 184, 185, 189, 190, 512;
749-51; in St. Paul, 494, 495, 503; commentaries on Mark, 209; on
in Ambrose, 504; in Augustine, Matthew, 209; on John, 209; on
476, 497, 500-01; in Gregory the Pauline epistles, 189, 190, 206-07,
Great, 504; in school of Laon, 495, 207 n. 136, 209-10; on Genesis, 58,
498, 499, 501; in Peter Abelard, 62, 88; influence of on Peter
46, 49, 454, 493, 494-95, 500; in Abelard's Hexaemeron, 255; in
Abelardians, 494-95, 501; in Theodore on the Psalms, 165; in
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 199; in Basil the Great on the Psalms, 165;
Hermannus, 477; in Roland of in Cassiodorus on the Psalms, 163,
Bologna, 66, 67, 496-97, 502-03; in 164, 165, 166, 171, 174, 179, 182,
Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, 191-92; in 183, 184, 185; in Gregory the Great
William of St. Thierry, 190; in on the Psalms, 165; Moralia in Job,
Gilbert of Poitiers, 135; in 83, 485, 699, 704; in Bede, 58, 165,
Porretans, 54; in Hugh of St. 173,321, 328, 337, 439, 440; in
Victor, 495-97, 498, 500-01, 522; Alcuin on the Psalms, 173, 183,
in Summa sententiarum, 63, 64, 497, 184; in Florus of Lyon, 165, 193; in
498, 500, 502; in Robert Pullen, 69, Haimo of Auxerre on the Psalms,
459; in Robert of Melun, 74, 75, 178, 179, 184, 206; in Remigius of
334; in Peter Lombard, 81-82, 89, Auxerre on the Psalms, 164, 165,
190, 213, 384, 482, 484, 492, 173; in Bernard of Clairvaux on the
493-501, 506, 507, 508, 744; their Song of Songs, 455, 456; in Herbert
perdurance in next life, 506-07, of Bosham, 23, 24; in school of
749, 750. See also Charity; Christ, Laon, 17, 43, 196; in school of
moral capacities and virtues of; Rheims, 17; in Hugh of St. Victor,
Faith; Free will, doctrine of; 57-58; in Robert of Melun's
Fortitude; Grace, doctrine of; Hope; Sentences, 14, 75-76, 108, 110; in
Justice; Prudence; Sacraments; Stephen Langton, 28; in
Temperance; Trinity, doctrine of, commentaries on the Psalms by
Holy Spirit monastic authors, 155, 157-62, 167;
Eutychianism, heresy of, 403 in Letbert of Lille, 158-59; in
Evangelists, 505. See also Luke, St.; Bruno the Carthusian, 158, 159-60;
John, St.; Mark, St.; Matthew, St. in Pseudo-Bruno of Würzburg, 158,
Evil, privative theory of, in Augustine, 160-61; in Gerhoch of
481; in Anselm of Canterbury, 481; Reichersberg, 158, 161-62; by
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 481; scholastic authors, 11, 15, 23, 28,
as rejected by Peter Lombard, 51, 156, 157, 158, 162-88, 192, 208,
481-82, 488, 745, 746. See also 214; in Pseudo-Bede, 162-64; in
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 871

Glossa ordinaria, 156, 164-67, 170, gospel of; Matthew, gospel of; Paul,
173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 183, St.; Psalms, book of; Song of Songs
184, 185, 187; in Gilbert of Poitiers,
156, 162, 164, 167-70, 172, 173, Fabula, as a hermeneu tic technique.
174, 187, 448; in Peter Lombard, See Involucrum
23, 28, 156, 157, 170-88, 192, 208, Faith, 27, 41, 48, 54, 60, 64, 66, 69,
214; influence of, 156-57; in 89, 135, 178, 190, 191-92, 199, 213,
commentaries on Pauline epistles 221, 384, 459, 484, 490, 493-500,
by monastic authors, 188-92; in 503, 508, 514, 522, 525, 526,
William of St. Thierry, 188-90, 530-31, 534, 535-36, 538-39, 545,
191; in Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, 552, 558, 560, 563, 564, 577, 721,
188, 190-92, 193; by scholastic 746, 749-50, 758; in St. Paul, 494,
authors, 11, 23-25, 48, 75-76, 156, 495, 503; in Augustine, 497; in
157, 186, 188, 189, 190, 192-225, Anselm of Canterbury, 498; in
454; in Peter Abelard, 48, 189, 190, Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, 191-92; in
196, 200, 201, 202, 454; in William of St. Thierry, 190; in
Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 194-95,school of Laon, 495, 498; in Peter
198-20, 202, 207, 210-11, 213, 567; Abelard, 48, 494-95; in
in Robert of Melun, 193, 194-95, Commentarius Cantabridgensis, 199; in
199, 207, 211, 213; in Quaestiones et Sententiae Parisiensis I, 494-95; in
decisiones in Epistolas divi Pauli, 200; Sententiae Parisiensis II, 494; in
in Peter Lombard, 23-25, 156, 157, Roland of Bologna, 66, 496-97; in
186, 188, 192-225; influence of, Hugh of St. Victor, 60, 495-97,
156-57; literal or historical 498, 522, 525, 535; in Summa
exegesis, in Rupert of Deutz, 36; in sententiarum, 64, 89, 497, 498; in
Pseudo-Bede, 163; in Hugh of St. Sententiae divinitatis, 526, 558; in
Victor, 57; in Victorines, 195; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 135; in Robert
Gilbert of Poitiers on Pauline Pullen, 69, 459; in Robert of Melun,
epistles, 196; in Peter Lombard on 199; in Peter Lombard, 89, 178,
Pauline epistles, 195; allegorical 213, 384, 484, 490, 493, 497-500,
exegesis, in Hugh of St. Victor, 57; 508, 514, 530-31, 746, 749-50,
in Gilbert of Poitiers on Pauline 758; as conditioning efficacious
epistles, 196; in Peter Lombard on reception of baptism, 221, 534,
1 and 2 Thessalonians, 196, 204, 535-36, 538-39, 545, 721; in
205-07; mystical exegesis, in Bruno Anselm of Laon, 534; in Ysagoge in
the Carthusian, 160; in Pseudo- theologiam, 535; in Porretans, 536; in
Bede, 163; tropological exegesis, in Summa sententiarum, 535-36; in Peter
Letbert of Lille, 158-59; in Bruno Lombard, 538-39, 721; of
the Carthusian, 160; in Pseudo- Eucharist, 22, 552, 560, 561-63,
Bruno of Würzburg, 160-61; in 565, 577, 582; in Alger of Liège,
Gerhoch of Reichers berg, 161; in 561; in school of Laon, 565; in
Pseudo-Bede, 163; in Glossa Porretans, 563; in Sententiae
ordinaria, 164, 165, 167; in Gilbert divinitatis, 561-62; in Summa
of Poitiers, 167, 168, 169; in Peter sententiarum, 562; in Roland of
Lombard, 170, 171, 172-74, 179, Bologna, 562; in Peter Lombard,
183; typological exegesis, in Letbert 577, 582. See also Ethics, theological
of Lille, 158-59; in Bruno the virtues; Sacraments, baptism,
Carthusian, 160; in Pseudo-Bruno Eucharist
of Würzburg, 160; in Gerhoch of Faith, good, as a natural virtue, 462,
Reichersberg, 161; in Pseudo-Bede, 744, 745, 760
163; in Glossa ordinaria, 164, 167; in Fall, of angels. See Angels
Gilbert of Poitiers, 167, 168, 169; in Fall, of man. See Man, doctrine of,
Robert of Melun's Sentences, 75-76; original sin
in Peter Lombard, 26, 170, 171, Fate, in Boethius, 268; in Peter
172-74, 179, 183, 197-98. See also Abelard, 272
Genesis, book of; Luke, gospel of; Fetus, ensoulment of, in book of
Job, book of; John, gospel of; Mark, Exodus, 335, 392, 398; in school of
872 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Laon, 388; in Hugh of St. Victor, divinitatis, 56, 363-64, 490-91;

392; in Robert Pullen, 335; in Peter in Hugh of St. Victor, 279-80,
Lombard, 398 285-86, 363-65, 371, 484, 487, 488;
Form, 58, 74, 92, 94, 309, 317, 319, in Summa sententiarum^ 281, 286,
324, 326, 330, 332, 333, 337, 340, 363-64, 371, 382; in Gerhoch of
726. See also Causation; Creation, Reichersberg, 102; in Bernard of
exemplary or primordial causes in; Clairvaux, 363-64, 382, 489; in
Man, doctrine of; Matter Clarenbald of Arras, 319; in Robert
Fortitude, in school of Laon, 505; in Pullen, 381; in Robert of Melun,
Sententiae Parisiensis I, 505, in Peter 74, 282-85; in Peter Lombard, 81,
Lombard, 506, 507, 748. See also 83, 215, 264, 285-90, 300, 301, 347,
Ethics, cardinal virtues 363-64, 371-81, 383, 464, 469, 472,
Fraud, pious, as a rationale for lying, 482, 484, 488-92, 506, 507, 514-15,
in Augustine, 186, 474, 512, 513; in 724, 726, 729, 730, 732, 733-34,
Gregory the Great, 475, 483, 511; 742, 744, 745, 746-47, 760, 772,
in Anselm of Laon, 475; in school 773, 774. See also Angels; Christ,
of Laon, 475, 511; in Summa His moral aptitudes; Ethics; God,
sententiarum, 475, 511; in Robert doctrine of; Grace, doctrine of;
Pullen, 475, 511; in Peter Lombard, Man; doctrine of
186, 483, 511-13. See also Ethics,
intentionality in; Lying Glorification, of man. See Last Things,
Free will, doctrine of, vi, 38, 39, 48, Heaven
49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 64, 66, 67, 74, God, doctrine of, v, vi, vii, 10, 11,
81, 83, 102, 215, 264, 268-90, 291, 12, 16, 25, 27, 35-37, 38, 39, 52,
292, 300, 301, 343, 344-45, 347-48, 54-55, 56, 59, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73-74,
349-50, 353, 359, 363-65, 370-81, 75, 76, 7 9 , 8 0 , 8 1 , 8 2 , 8 5 , 8 8 , 9 3 ,
382, 383, 385, 398, 444-48, 451, 94, 95, 96, 100-31, 136, 143-44,
464, 469, 472, 481, 485-92, 498, 148-50, 152, 153-54, 177,209,
506, 507, 514-15, 723, 724-25, 726, 212-13, 215, 218, 227-302, 303, 316,
729-30, 732-34, 742, 744, 745, 319, 329, 331, 332, 336, 337-39,
746-48, 760, 771, 772, 773, 774, 346, 352, 353, 366-67, 385, 398,
777; as an attribute of angels, 343, 400, 417, 418, 419, 421, 436, 437,
344-45, 347-48; of prelapsarian 439, 444, 451, 466, 472, 482, 484-89,
man, 363-65, 371-81, 488, 732; in 490-92, 494, 497, 498, 500, 501,
human Christ, 398, 444-48, 451, 506, 507-10, 513, 515, 524, 529,
461, 464; in Aristotle, 268-69, 270, 535, 538, 539, 544, 546, 550, 555,
272-73, 276, 287; in Augustine, 652, 578, 662, 713, 715-17, 718-26,
268-69, 270, 271, 272-73, 274, 727, 730, 737, 739, 742, 744, 745,
276, 287; in Boethius, 268-69, 270, 747, 748-49, 754, 761, 771, 772-73,
272-73, 276, 287; twelfth-century 774-75, 777; in Aristotle, 268-69,
consensus position on need for its 270, 274, 287; in Augustine, 268,
interaction with grace in acquisition 271-72, 273, 274, 276, 287, 290,
of virtue, 348, 349-50, 353, 364, 291, 297; in Boethius, 268-69, 270,
370-72, 385, 448, 472, 487, 488-92, 272, 273, 274, 276, 287; in Anselm
498, 506, 507, 514-15, 729-30, 741, of Canterbury, 451; in Honorius
742, 746-48, 760, 771, 772, 774, Augustodunensis, 38, 39, 264-65,
777; in Anselm of Canterbury, 363; 279, 285-86; in Rupert of Deutz,
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 38, 35-37; in Bernard of Clairvaux,
39, 279, 285-86; in Anselm of 227-28; in Anselm of Laon, 264,
Laon, 277, 278, 363; in William of 277, 278, 289; in William of
Champeaux, 276; in school of Laon, Champeaux, 276, 277, 289; in
278, 282, 363, 382, 383; in Peter school of Laon, 264, 278-79, 282,
Abelard, 48, 49, 50, 271-75, 291, 290; in Joscelin of Soissons, 290; in
292; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 52, Peter Abelard, 54-55, 67, 100-02,
485; in Abelardians, 66, 489; in 108-11, 122, 131, 213, 228, 271-75,
Roland of Bologna, 67, 281-82; in 288, 290, 293, 294-95, 296, 297,
Porre tans, 54, 276-77; in Sententiae 500; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 52; in
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 873

Abelardians, 500; in Gilbert of 289, 300, 722, 724, 730; freedom of,
Poitiers, 136, 227, 249; in in Clarenbald of Arras, 319; in
Porretans, 54-55, 292, 293, 299, Peter Abelard, 292, 293, 295; in
376-77; in Hugh of St. Victor, 10, Hugh of St. Victor, 293, 299; in
57, 59, 67, 72, 75, 228, 229, 230-33, Summa sententiarum, 294; in Peter
234-38, 240, 265, 279-80, 285-86, Lombard, 297-98, 725-26, 742,
293, 294, 328, 329, 338; in Summa 754; goodness of, in Hugh of St.
sententiarum, 115, 117, 265, 281, Victor, 329, 228; in Summa
285-86, 293-94, 299, 331, 500; in sententiarum, 294; in Robert Pullen,
Sententiae divinitatis, 56, 265; in 293; in Peter Lombard, 241, 297,
Roland of Bologna, 66, 67, 281, 300, 329, 338, 719, 725-26, 727,
288, 295 n. 131; in Master Simon, 773; as personal name of God the
535; in Clarenbald of Arras, 316, Holy Spirit, in Peter Abelard,
319; in Robert Pullen, 68, 105, 100-12, 108-11, 131, 291, 292, 293,
230, 234, 235, 237, 238, 240, 281, 294; in Robert of Melun, 108-11;
293, 417; in Robert of Melun, 72, as criticized by Peter Lombard,
73-74, 75, 76, 108-11, 230, 234-38, 119-26, 131; immutability of, in
265-66, 282-85, 288, 296, 299; in Peter Lombard, 121, 240-41, 245,
Peter Lombard, vi, vii, 11, 25, 27, 247, 248, 288-89, 300, 301, 352,
78, 79,80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 89, 119-27, 353, 717, 719, 720, 721, 723, 724,
128-31, 148-50, 152, 153-54, 177, 737, 739, 773; imcommutability of,
209, 212-13, 215, 218, 227-30, in Peter Lombard, 121, 242, 245,
238-54, 259-64, 265, 266-68, 269, 248,260, 719, 720; incomparability
277, 285-90, 292, 296-302, 303, of, in Peter Lombard, 245, 723;
325, 336, 337-39, 346, 352, 353, infinity of, in Peter Lombard, 719,
366-67, 385, 398, 418, 419, 421, 724; justice of, in Peter Abelard,
436, 437, 439, 466, 472, 485-89, 294, 295, 296; in Peter Lombard,
490-92, 498-501, 506, 507-10, 513, 297, 713, 715-17, 725-26, 772-73;
514, 515, 529, 544, 545, 548, 550, love of, in Peter Lombard, 325,
555, 562, 578,662, 713, 715-17, 336, 337, 545; mercy of, in Peter
718-26, 727, 730, 737, 739, 742, 744, Lombard, 713, 715-16, 717, 771,
745, 747, 748, 749, 754, 761, 771, 772-73; omnipotence of, in
772-73,774-75,777; man's knowledge Augustine, 290, 291; in Anselm of
of, in this life, in Pseudo-Dionysius, Canterbury, 451 ; in school of Laon,
95, 96, 143, 144; in John Scottus 290; in Peter Abelard, 29, 293, 294,
Eriugena, 95; in Hugh of St. Victor, 295; in Hugh of St. Victor, 293,
57, 72, 75, 230-33, 234, 236, 328, 524; in Summa sententiarum, 290,
495; in Invisibilia dei, 143-44; in 293-94; in Robert Pullen, 293; in
Chartrains, 95-96; in Robert of Robert of Melun, 282-84; in
Melun, 72, 73-74, 75, 108, 230, Clarenbald of Arras, 316; in Master
234^38, 266; in Peter Lombard, 78, Simon, 535; in Peter Lombard, 218,
79, 122, 227, 229-30, 238-45, 247, 241, 248, 264, 296-300, 301, 302,
482, 515, 529, 719, 720-21, 775, 439, 466, 539, 717, 725-26, 754,
777; proofs of God's existence, in 771, 775; omniscience of, in
Clarenbald of Arras, 316; in Hugh Honorius Augustodunensis, 279; in
of St. Victor, 59, 230-33, 234, 235, Robert of Melun, 282, 289; in Peter
238, 240; in Robert Pullen, 68, 230, Lombard, 269, 285-90, 300-01,
234, 235, 237, 238, 240; in Robert 302, 724-25, 726, 775; His
of Melun, 235-38; in Peter foreknowledge, providence,
Lombard, 79-80, 122, 227, 229-30, predestination in relation to
238-40, 515, 719, 720-21, 777; God contingency, free will, in Aristotle,
as absolute being, metaphysical 268-69, 270, 274, 287; in
ground of other beings, in Peter Augustine, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274,
Lombard, 121, 227, 228, 240, 241, 278, 287; in Boethius, 268-69, 270,
245, 247, 263, 267, 300, 718, 272-73, 276, 287; in Honorius
719-21, 773; eternity of, in Peter Augustodunensis, 39, 279, 285-86;
Lombard, 121, 149, 245, 247, 248, in Anselm of Laon, 277, 278, 289;
874 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

in William of Champeaux, 276, 108-11; as criticized by Peter

277, 289; in school of Laon, 278, Lombard, 119-26, 131; whether
282; in Joscelin of Soissons, 290; in God can do different or better than
Peter Abelard, 67, 213, 271-75, He does, in Peter Abelard, 54-55,
276, 288, 291, 292, 295; in Roland 290-92, 293, 294-95, 296; in
of Bologna, 167, 281-82, 288; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 295 n. 131; in
Porretans, 276-77; in Hugh of St. Roland of Bologna, 295 η. 131; in
Victor, 67, 279-80, 285-86; in Hugh of St. Victor, 293, 294; in
Summa sententiarum, 281, 285-86, Summa sententiarum, 293-94, 299; in
288; in Robert Pullen, 281, 293; in Porretans, 54-55, 292, 293, 299; in
Robert of Melun, 72, 282-85; in Robert Pullen, 293; in Robert of
Peter Lombard, 213, 264, 288-90, Melun, 296, 299; in Peter Lombard,
292, 298, 300, 489, 723, 724-25, 85, 264, 296-302, 723, 725-76;
726, 727; perfection of, in Peter God's relations with created
Abelard, 294-95, 296; in Robert of universe, vi, 227, 242, 245, 247,
Melun, 296, 299; in Peter Lombard, 248, 259, 261, 263-302, 308,
299, 300, 724, 726; power of, as a 337-38, 399, 717, 719, 720, 723-24,
personal name of God the Son, in 725-26, 727, 747, 750, 771, 773,
Peter Abelard, 100-02, 108, 131; 775; in Peter Lombard, 227, 242,
in Robert of Melun, 108-11; as 248, 259, 263, 266, 267, 287, 301,
criticized by Peter Lombard, 717, 719, 720, 723-26, 727, 747,
119-26, 131; predestination of, 771, 773, 775; God's ordained and
doctrine that elect are chosen for absolute power, in Peter Lombard,
their praevisa mérita, in William of 85, 298-99, 539, 723, 724-26, 754.
Champeaux, 276; in Anselm of See also Logic; Metaphysics;
Laon, 277; as criticized by Peter Neoplatonism; Nominalism;
Lombard, 289; rationality of, in Platonism; Theological language,
Clarenbald of Arras, 316; in Peter problem of; Theology, negative;
Abelard, 294; in Peter Lombard, Trinity, doctrine of
240, 298, 720, 721; simplicity of, in Grace, doctrine of, vi, 27, 39, 56, 64,
Peter Lombard, 149, 240, 242, 245, 67, 81, 83, 102, 135, 162, 190, 209,
248, 301, 719, 720, 721, 723,. 724, 212, 215, 248, 260, 267, 268, 272,
726, 737, 739; transcendence of, in 274, 280, 283, 285, 287, 289, 291,
Peter Lombard, 227, 240, 241, 245, 301, 318, 319, 343, 348, 349-50,
247, 248, 260, 287, 302, 719, 720, 353, 358, 364, 365, 370-72, 381,
723, 725, 726, 727, 747, 754, 773; 382, 383-85, 389, 439, 442, 444,
unity of, in Peter Lombard, 240, 242, 445, 446, 448, 454, 463, 468, 469,
248, 719, 721, 724; ubiquity of, in 472, 483, 484, 487-92, 499-500,
Honorius Augustodunensis, 264-65; 506,507, 510,511, 514—15, 523,
in Anselm of Laon, 264, 277; in 524, 526, 527, 528-31, 539,
school of Laon, 264; in Hugh of St. 540,544, 545, 547,548,551,
Victor, 265; in Summa sententiarum, 556, 561, 569, 574, 578, 579, 581,
265, 331; in Sententiae divinitatis, 265; 582, 585, 615, 616-17, 618, 620,
in Robert Pullen, 264, 417; in 622, 626, 627, 628, 636, 642, 695,
Robert of Melun, 265-66; in Peter 715, 724-25, 729-30, 732, 733-34,
Lombard, 263, 264, 265, 266-68, 740, 741, 742, 743, 744, 745,
437, 719, 723-24; will of, in 746-47, 750, 752, 753, 754, 755,
Augustine, 290, 291, 297; in school 756, 758, 759, 760, 761, 764, 766,
of Laon, 278; in Peter Abelard, 290, 771, 772, 773, 774, 776, 777; in
294; in Robert of Melun, 282, 284; Augustine, 272, 274, 289, 318,
in Peter Lombard, 297, 298, 299, 383-85, 389, 472; in Gerhoch of
300-02, 725-26; wisdom of, in Reichersberg, 162; in William of St.
Summa sententiarum, 281, 294; in Thierry, 190; in Bernard of
Peter Lombard, 248, 285, 294, 724; Clairvaux, 489; in Ivo of Chartres,
as a personal name of God the 616-17; in Alger of Liège, 561; in
Father, in Peter Abelard, 100-12, Gratian, 615; in Clarenbald of
108, 131, 295; in Robert of Melun, Arras, 318, 319; in Honorius
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 875

Augustodunensis, 610; in school of by theologians, in Augustine, 111,

Laon, 382, 439, 445, 548, 617-18; 112, 113, 122-23, 153; in Pseudo-
in Peter Abelard, 274, 291; in Bede, 162; in Hugh of St. Victor,
Hermannus, 642; in Abelardians, 233; in Walter of Mortagne, 114-16;
489, 610; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 135; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 134, 135; in
in Porrretans, 611; in Hugh of St. Invisibilia dei, 144; in Porretans, 420;
Victor, 280, 359, 364-65, 484, 487, in Robert Pullen, 71, 72, 105; in
523, 524, 556, 578, 594, 601, 611, Robert of Melun, 111, 112, 113,
618-19; in Summa sententiarum, 382, 153; in Peter Lombard, 8, 85, 122-
527, 610; in Sententiae divinitatis, 56, 24, 127-28, 153, 229, 243, 420, 435,
490-91, 526, 551; in Roland of 722-23, 728, 775; relative nouns as
Bologna, 67, 365; in Robert Pullen, applied to Trinitarian theology,
615; in Robert of Melun, 283, 365; 111, 112, 113, 114-16, 122-24, 153,
in Master Simon, 620-21; in Peter 229, 233, 243, 247, 722-23, 725. See
Lombard, 27, 81, 83, 212, 215, 248, also Donatus; Priscian; Theological
260, 267, 268, 287, 301, 472, language, problem of
488-92, 499-500, 506, 510, 511, Greek, use of, 73, 77, 616
514-15, 528-31, 539, 540, 545, 547,
578, 579, 581, 582, 601, 602, 608, Heavenly bodies, composition of, in
609, 613, 621-22, 626, 627, 628, Plato, 333; in Robert of Melun,
715, 724-25, 729-30, 732, 733-34, 333, 334
740, 741, 742, 743, 744, 745, Heresy, anti-clerical, 609; anti-
746-48, 750, 752, 753, 754, 756, sacramental, 221, 471, 517, 552,
758, 759, 761, 764, 766, 771; twelfth- 553, 560, 563, 609, 756;
century consensus position on need Christological, 252, 398. See also
for its interaction with free will in Adoptionism; Apollinarianism;
acquisition of virtue, 348, 349-50, Arianism; Catharism; Donatism;
353, 364, 370-72, 385, 448, 472, Eutychianism; Manicheism;
487, 488-92, 498, 506, 507, 514-15, Monophysitism; Monothelitism;
729-30, 741, 742, 745, 746-48, 760, Nestorianism; Pelagianism;
771, 772, 774, 777; twelfth-century Sabellianism
consensus position rejecting Hierarchy, principle of, in creation in
Augustine's view of its general, 720, 727; of being, 240; of
irresistability, 289, 383-85, 389, goodness, 356; of good angels, 74,
472, 730, 733-34, 746-47; as 329, 343, 350-51, 703, 729; of fallen
transmitted through sacraments, in angels, 350; between the sexes,
Ivo of Chartres, 616-67; in Alger of 565-68, 731; of reasons for seeking
Liège, 561; in Gratian, 615; in sexual relations in marriage, 659-62;
Honorius Augustodunensis, 610; in in political life, 618; in grades of
school of Laon, 548, 617-18; in holy orders, 616-26; in grades of
Hugh of St. Victor, 523, 524, 556, vice and virtue, 374, 385, 477, 478,
578, 594,601,611, 618-19; in 484, 486-87, 501-04, 505, 512, 513,
Summa sententiarum, 527, 610; in 746, 750-51; in Hell and Heaven,
Sententiae divinitatis, 526, 551 ; in 715-16
Porretans, 661; in Hermannus, 642; Holy Innocents, cited as rationale for
in Abelardians, 610; in Robert doctrine of baptism by blood, in
Pullen, 615; in Master Simon, Anselm of Laon, 534; in Summa
620-21; in Peter Lombard, 528-31, sententiarum, 536; as ignored by
539, 540, 545, 547, 578, 579, 581, Peter Lombard, 538. See also
582, 601, 602, 608, 609, 613, Sacraments, baptism
621-22, 626, 627, 628, 715, 724-25, Homicide, in general, in Summa
729-30, 732, 733-34, 740, 741, 742, sententiarium, 511 ; as grounds for
743, 744, 745, 746-48, 750, 753, unfrocking a priest, in school of
754, 756, 758, 761, 764, 766, 771. Laon, 617; as a marital
See also Ethics; Free will, doctrine impediment, in Gratian, 680, 688;
of; Sacraments in Roland of Bologna, 681 ; in
Grammar, as a conceptual tool used Summa sententiarum, 680; in Peter
876 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Lombard, 687-88, 765, 768; See also 488,498,530-31, 773

Sacraments, holy order, marriage
Hope, in St. Paul, 494, 495, 503; in Keys, sacerdotal power of. See
school of Laon, 495, 499; in Hugh Sacraments, penance, holy orders
of St. Victor, 495; in Summa Knowledge of God, man's. See God,
sententiarum, 64; in Peter Lombard, doctrine of, man's knowledge of
498, 499-500, 508, 749, 750. See also
Ethics, theological virtues Laity, as exercizing a Christian
calling, in Robert Pullen, 89, 476;
Incarnation, of Christ. See Christ reception of Eucharist by, 568-71,
Incest, 681, 692, 693. See also 574-75, 581; frequency of, in
Sacraments, marriage canonists, 575, 581; in Robert
Infidels, as capable of natural virtue, Pullen, 575, 581; in Peter Lombard,
in Hermannus, 505; in Peter 581; as appropriate persons to serve
Lombard, 484 as confessors, in De vera et falsa
Intinction, in administration of poenitentia, 599; in Sententiae
Eucharist, as way in which Judas divinitatis, 599; in Peter Lombard,
received communion at last supper, 603, 604, 605. See also Ethics;
568, 569; as opposed by pope Sacraments, Eucharist, penance
Paschal II, 568, by Peter Lombard, Lamb, paschal, as forerunner of
580; as defended by Roland of Eucharist, in Hugh of St. Victor,
Bologna, 569-70 578; in Peter Lombard, 578-79
Investiture controversy, 162, 672 Last Things, vii, 11, 38, 40, 48,
Involucrum, as a hermeneutical 53, 54, 59, 61, 64, 66, 70, 73, 74,
technique, in Peter Abelard, 254, 82-83, 84, 88, 176, 177, 183, 196,
255-56, 257, 258; in Chartrains, 204, 205-07, 207 n. 137, 344, 350,
254-55, 256 384, 444, 461, 462, 465, 469, 501,
503, 508-09, 529, 592, 594, 595, 606,
Jews, their resposibility for Christ's 606 n. 351, 698-717, 727, 729, 734,
crucifixion, in Peter Abelard, 50, 743, 748, 750, 752, 771-73, 774,
102, 467; in Peter Lombard, 776-77; in Augustine, 207 n. 137,
467-68; as capable of natural 699, 701, 702, 704, 705, 706, 707,
virtue, in Peter Lombard, 484; their 708-09, 710, 711, 712, 715, 716,
conversion to Christianity during 717; in Gregory the Great, 699,
reign of Antichrist, in Honorius 701, 702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 708,
Augustodunensis, 701; Christian- 709, 712-13, 715, 772; in Julian of
Jewish polemic, as an interest of Toledo, 700, 703, 710; in Ivo of
Ysagoge in theologiam, other Chartres, 704, 705; in Honorius
Abelardians, 52, 230. See also Augustodunensis, 38, 40, 700-03,
Ethics, intentionality in, natural 714, 772; in Anselm of Laon, 706;
virtue in; Last Things in school of Laon, 699, 705-06,
Jongleurs, their morality and 707; in Porretans, 54, 704; in Hugh
perceived chances for salvation, in of St. Victor, 59, 61, 699, 707-09,
Honorius Augustodunensis, 39, 475; 711; in Robert Pullen, 70, 699,
in school of Laon, 475 709-10, 711; in Robert of Melun,
Justice, in Anselm of Canterbury, 452; 699, 709-10; in Peter Lombard,
in school of Laon, 505; in 11, 82-83, 183, 196, 204, 205-07,
Hermannus, 505; in Sententiae 207 n. 137; 344, 350, 384, 444, 465,
Parisiensis I, 505; in Hermannus, 469, 501, 503, 509, 592, 594, 595,
505; in Hugh of St. Victor, 505; in 606, 606 n. 351, 710-17, 727, 729,
Peter Lombard, 490, 492, 493, 506, 734, 743, 748, 750, 752, 771-73,
748. See also Ethics, cardinal virtues 774, 776-77; location and state of
Justification, in Gerhoch of souls between their separation from
Reichersberg, 162; in William of St. bodies in death and general
Thierry, 190; in Hugh of St. Victor, resurrection, in Honorius
488; in Robert Pullen, 69; in Peter Augustodunensis, 701; in Anselm of
Lombard, 213, 215, 384, 463, 469, Laon, 706; in Glossa ordinaria, 206;
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 877

in Hugh of St. Victor, 707; Pullen, 74, 711; in Robert of

Antichrist, in Ivo of Chartres, 705; Melun, 74, 709, 710; in Peter
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 40, Lombard, 83, 176-77, 350, 713,
701, 714, 772; in school of Laon, 715-16, 772; punishment of
707; in Hugh of St. Victor, 707-08; damned, in Ivo of Chartres, 705; in
in Robert Pullen, 70, 709; in Robert Honorius Augustodunensis, 703; in
of Melun, 709; in Peter Lombard, school of Laon, 706-07; in Hugh of
exegesis of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, St. Victor, 708; in Robert Pullen,
196, 204, 205-07, 207 n. 137, 350; 713; in Robert of Melun, 709; in
in Sentences, 83, 714, 772; second Peter Lombard, 713, 715-16, 772;
coming of Christ, in Honorius Heaven, in St. Paul, 503; in Ivo of
Augustodunensis, 702; in Robert Chartres, 705; in Honorius
Pullen, 69; in Peter Lombard, 83, Augustodunensis, 40, 59, 703; in
204, 205-207, 711, 713, 772; school of Laon, 705, 706; in Hugh
perceived imminence of, in St. Paul, of St. Victor, 59, 61, 708-09, 711;
as reason for his position on in Robert Pullen, 70, 711; in Robert
marriage in 1 Corinthians, on of Melun, 709; in Peter Lombard,
Antichrist in 1 and 2 711, 715, 716-17, 729, 734, 750,
Thessalonians, as criticized by 752, 772; beatitude of saints, in
Peter Lombard, 204, 205-07; Augustine, 705; in Honorius
general resurrection, in Ivo of Augustodunensis, 703; in Ivo of
Chartres, 705; in Honorius Chartres, 705; in school of Laon,
Augustodunensis, 701-02; his view, 705-06, 707; in Hugh of St. Victor,
based on Julian of Toledo, that 708-09; in Robert of Melun, 709; in
bodies of resurrected will be color- Peter Lombard, 384, 444, 463, 469,
coded, 703; in school of Laon, 706, 501,529, 711, 715, 716-17, 727,
707; in Hugh of St. Victor, 707-08; 734, 743, 752, 774; as promise of
in Robert of Melun, 709; in Peter sacraments, in Peter Lombard, 529.
Lombard, 711, 712, 713, 714, 715; See also Ethics; Sacraments
last judgment, in Ivo of Chartres, Lateran council, Fourth (1215),
705; in Honorius Augustodunensis, vindication of Peter Lombard's
344, 701, 702, 712, 713; in Hugh of teaching on hypostatic union at, 22,
St. Victor, 711; in Robert Pullen, 434; on Trinity at, 246, 434;
69, 711; in Robert of Melun, 74, definition of transsubstantiation at,
75, 709, 710; in Peter Lombard, 555. See also Christ; Trinity,
176-77, 712-13, 772; on the four doctrine of; Sacraments, Eucharist
states of souls in the resurrection, in Lateran council, Third (1179), 429,
Jerome, 176, Augustine, 176, 431, 434
Gregory the Great, 712, 772; in Law, canon, 66, 516-17, 547, 550,
Honorius Augustodunensis, 701, 569, 632, 652, 654, 657, 658, 667,
712, 713; in Peter Lombard, 669, 670, 688, 693, 698. See also
176-77, 712-13, 772; new heaven, Alger of Liège; Canonists; Gratian;
new earth, in Honorius Ivo of Chartres; Paucapalea;
Augustodunensis, 703; Purgatory, Roland of Bologna
in Ivo of Chartres, 705; in Honorius Law, Mosaic, vii, 40, 62, 63, 64,
Augustodunensis, 40, 701; in school 66, 73, 74,82,201,296,411-12,
of Laon, 707; in Peter Abelard, 595; 510-14, 516, 519, 525, 527, 528-29,
in Porretans, 704; in Hugh of St. 530-31, 547, 550, 578-79, 751-52,
Victor, 59, 594, 708; in Summa 769. See also Ten Commandments
sententiarum, 592; in Robert Pullen, Law, natural, in Aristotle, 268, 270,
70, 710; in Robert of Melun, 272-73, 274, 275, 276; in Anselm of
709-10; in Peter Lombard, 83, 84, Laon, 277; in school of Laon, 412;
176, 177, 606, 712, 714, 772; Hell, in in William of Champeaux, 276; in
Ivo of Chartres, 705; in Honorius William of Conches, 312, 314; in
Augustodunensis, 40, 344, 702, 703; Thierry of Chartres, 309, 310; in
in Hugh of St. Victor, 59, 61, 708, Peter Abelard, 97, 272, 273, 274,
711; in Porretans, 704; in Robert 275, 291, 324, 325; in Porretans,
878 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

276-77, in Hugh of St. Victor, 280, dei, 144; Porretans' critique of Peter
327-28, 359, 525; in Summa Abelard's logic as applied to
sententiarum, 527; in Robert Pullen, theology, 54-55; in Roland of
281; in Robert of Melun, 284; in Bologna, 68; in Chartrains, 102-03,
Peter Lombard, 285, 290, 297, 299, 195, 228; in Hugh of St. Victor, 57,
724, 726 58, 61,63, 67, 231,645, 654; in
Law, Roman, 316, 452, 630, 634, 666, Summa sententiarum, 66, 654; in
669, 678, 679, 692, 693, 769 Robert Pullen, 70, 71, 72, 106; in
Law, secular, 629, 636, 639, 646, 654, Robert of Melun, 72, 76-77, in
658, 666, 678, 698 Peter Lombard, 6, 10, 84-86, 182,
Lent, liturgy of, 26, 54, in Porretans, 211-12,213, 250,251,287-88,
54 296-300, 435, 600, 603, 654, 722,
Lévites, in Hebrews, as interpreted by 723, 724, 725, 736, 760, 774-75,
Peter Lombard, 197, 198 776, 777. See also Contingency;
Liturgy, feasts of Advent through Neccesity, logical; Nominalism;
Easter, as focus of Peter Lombard's Realism; Universals
sermons, 26-27; Easter and Lying, in Augustine, 186, 474-75,
Pentecost as appropriate time of 483, 511-13; in Gregory the Great,
baptism, 46-47, 543-44; Advent 475, 483, 511; in Anselm of Laon,
and Lent, in Porretans, 54; changes 475; in school of Laon, 475; in
in liturgical practice, as rationale Summa sententiarum, 475, 511; in
for Peter Lombard's sacramental Robert Pullen, 475, 511; in Peter
theology, 754; Marian liturgy, as Lombard, 82, 186, 210, 483,
rationale for reading of Psalm 44 in 511-13, 514, 752; on whether St.
Glossa ordinaria, 165; monastic Peter dissimulated his faith, in
liturgy, as context for monastic Galatians, in Augustine, 209-10; in
Psalms exegesis, 157, 160, 161, 162; Jerome, 209-10; in Peter Lombard,
as context for monastic reflection on 210; in Commentarius Cantabridgensis,
Last Things, 699. See also Exegesis, 210-11; on God's inability to lie as
biblical; Mary, Virgin; Sacraments a divine perfection, 290. See also
Logic, 5, 6, 8, 10, 19, 36, 42, 43, Ethics, intentionalism in; Exegesis,
49-50, 51, 54-55, 56, 57, 58, 61, biblical; Fraud, pious; God,
63, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, doctrine of; Paul, St.
76-77, 84-85, 86, 92, 93, 94, 96,
98-100, 102-03, 105, 106, 107, 124, Magicians, as persons perceived to be
128, 133, 135, 142, 143, 144, 162, immoral, 571, 572
167, 182, 200, 211-12, 213, 227, 229, Man, doctrine of, v, 8, 11, 30, 52, 54,
231, 243, 250, 251, 268-77, 280, 59, 63, 74, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84,
281, 285, 287-88, 289, 290, 291-92, 89, 106-07, 138-39, 211, 302, 303,
294-95, 296, 300, 435, 445-46, 480, 320, 322-23, 325, 326, 329, 330,
496, 596, 598, 600, 603, 635, 636, 331, 334, 335, 338-39, 341, 353-72,
637, 645, 654, 722, 723, 724, 725, 393, 396-97, 409, 413-14, 417, 418,
736, 760, 774-75, 776, 777; in 423, 441, 443, 472, 484, 487, 489-90,
Aristotle, 36, 92, 93, 99, 128, 229, 502, 515, 721-22, 727-28, 729,
268-69, 270, 272-73, 274, 276, 287, 730-36, 737, 739, 741, 744, 746,
289, 290; in Boethius, 19, 85, 92, 747, 748, 750, 754-55, 773, 775,
143, 144, 268-69, 270, 272-73, 274, 776-77; in prelapsarian state, in
281, 287, 774; in Rupert of Deutz, Augustine, 354-55, 365, 409; in
36; in Pseudo-Bede, 162; in Glossa Honorius Augustodunensis, 39,
ordinaria, 200; in Gratian, 636, in 322-23, 355, 356; in Anselm of
Ivo of Chartres, 637; in school of Laon and his school, 329, 356 nn.
Laon, 32, 43, 654; in Peter Abelard, 156, 157, 365-66; in William of
49-50, 54-55, 67, 76, 83, 86, 98-100, Champeaux, 357, 360; in Hugh of
269, 270-75, 276, 289, 290, 291-92, St. Victor, 58, 59, 326, 329-30, 334,
294-95, 296, 445-46, 480, 496, 596, 338, 355, 356 nn. 156, 157, 358,
598; in Abelardians, 51; in Gilbert 359, 360, 361, 365, 366, 413-14,
of Poitiers, 133, 167; in Invisibilia 433, 502; in Summa sententiarum, 63,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 879
64, 330, 334, 339, 353, 356 η. 156; 721-22; as followed by Walter of
in Peter Abelard, 138, 325, 365-66; Mortagne, 114; by Hugh of St.
in Ysagoge in theologiam, 52; in Victor, 232-33, 242; by Summa
Abelardians, 353; in Gilbert of sententiarum, 115-16, 117; by Peter
Poitiers, 138-39; in Porretans, 54, Lombard, 80, 122-24, 127, 149-50,
353, 358; in Roland of Bologna, 152, 242-45, 260, 366-67, 721-22;
366; in Robert Pullen, 68, 70, as rejected by Gilbert of Poitiers,
106-07, 335, 356-62, 366; in 137, 139; by Robert of Melun,
Robert of Melun, 72, 74, 76, 334, 112-13, 362; prelapsarian human
356, 362-63; in Peter Lombard, body, rationale for, in Hugh of St.
11, 78, 7 9 , 8 1 , 8 3 , 8 4 , 8 5 , 8 9 , 302, Victor, Summa sententiarum, 330, 338;
338, 354, 366-72, 393, 418, 472, in Robert Pullen, 335; in Peter
515, 721-22, 727-29, 730-36, 737, Lombard, 338, 728; sexuality in,
738, 739, 761, 744, 746, 747, 748, twelfth-century consensus on as
754-55, 773, 775, 776-77; man as shaped by anti-Manichean
microcism of universe, in Honorius Augustine, 204, 354-55, 368; in
Augustodunensis, 322-23; in Hugh Peter Lombard, 204, 368; exception
of St. Victor, 330, 358; in Summa to this rule, in Porretans, 355;
sententiarum, 330; in Peter Lombard, potential immortality of, freedom
211, 338-39, 358, 728; hylemorphic from pain, illness, its need to eat, in
constitution of, in Hugh of St. Honorius Augustodunensis, 39,
Victor, 329, 330, 339, 358, 413, 322-33, 356; in school of Laon,
433, 502; in Summa sententiarum, 330, Hugh of St. Victor, Summa
339; in Robert Pullen, 360, 417; in sententiarum, 356 nn. 156, 157; in
Peter Lombard, 211, 338-39, 341, Peter Lombard, 369; work, in Eden,
396-97, 418, 423, 443, 502, 727, as a constructive natural activity
728, 736, 737, 739, 774; women, without fatigue, in Roland of
their nature in comparison with Bologna, Robert of Melun, 356;
that of men, in Augustine, 354, 365; ethical aptitudes of prelapsarian
in Anselm of Laon, 365; in Sententie man, consensus views on, 353, in
Anselmi, 374; in school of Laon, 366; Hugh of St. Victor, 364-65, 484,
in Hugh of St. Victor, 365, 366; in 487; in Summa sententiarum, 365; in
Roland of Bologna, 366, 374; in Roland of Bologna, 365; in Robert
Robert Pullen, 366; in Peter Pullen, 361, 365; in Robert of
Lombard, 366-68, 377, 731, 732-33, Melun, 362-63, 365; in Peter
776-77; his self-contradiction on Lombard, 370-72, 472, 484, 487,
this topic, 377, 732-33, 776-77; 489-90, 730-32, 741, 742, 744, 747,
773; on children of Adam and Eve,
prelapsarian human soul, 39, 72, had they been born before the fall,
123, 124, 325, 326, 329, 330, 331, in Augustine, 355, in Honorius
335, 356-63, 366-71, 379-80, 381, Augustodunensis, 355, 368; in
391, 393, 729, 745, 776-77; Hugh of St. Victor, Summa
immortality of, 362-63; intellectual sententiarum, 355, 368; in Peter
aptitudes, psychological faculties of, Lombard, 368-69; original sin in,
in Honorius Augustodunensis, 39; v, 11, 38, 39, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56, 59,
in Anselm of Laon and his school, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 72, 74, 81, 84,
329, 357-58; in William of 87, 186-89, 199, 212, 214, 215, 225,
Champeaux, 357, 360, 371; in Peter 303, 321, 325, 331, 334, 354, 355,
Abelard, 325; in Porretans, 358; in 361, 367, 369, 370, 372-97, 414,
Hugh of St. Victor, 326, 329, 330, 416, 421-22, 442, 443, 446, 447,
359, 360, 361, 370, 393; in Summa 448, 451, 452, 453, 462, 464, 465,
sententiarum, 330, 331; in Robert 469, 470, 471, 487-88, 515, 519,
Pullen, 335, 359-62, 381, 391; in 526, 529, 530, 534, 535, 538,
Robert of Melun, 72, 339, 362-63, 539-40, 547, 732-36, 738, 744,
in Peter Lombard, 123, 124, 366-71, 745, 746, 748, 754-55, 773; in
379-80, 776-77; its analogies to Anselm of Canterbury, 451; in
Trinity, in Augustine, 137, 139, Rupert of Deutz, 36; in Honorius
229, 232-33, 424-45, 358, 362,
880 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Augustodunensis, 38, 39, 372, 383-85, 394, 397, 464, 465, 470,
376-77, 378, 380; in Anselm of 540, 547, 733-34, 754-55, 773;
Laon, 373, 376, 377, 379; in Sententie transmission of, in Augustine,
Anselmi, 372, 373, 374, 376, 377; 186-87, 386; in Honorius
in William of Champeaux, 373, Augustodunensis, 39; in William of
375, 378, 386; in school of Laon, Champeaux, 386; in school of Laon,
373-74, 378, 382, 383, 385-88; in 385-88; in Hugh of St. Victor,
Peter Abelard, 48, 49, 50, 325, 374, 392-93, 396, 397, 414; in Summa
388-89, 393, 394, 397, 519, 534; in sententiarum, 391; in Sententiae
Porretans, 54, 375, 382, 392; in divinitatis, 391-92; in Porretans,
Hugh of St. Victor, 59, 372, 373, 392; in Roland of Bologna, 389-90;
375-76, 377, 378, 380, 382, 392-93, in Robert Pullen, 390-91, 392; in
394, 396, 397; in Summa sententiarum, Robert of Melun, 199, 390, 393; in
63, 64, 331, 372, 374, 375, 378, 379, Peter Lombard, 81, 186-87,
382-83, 391; in Sententiae divinitatis, 393-97, 421-22, 732-36, 738; as
56, 372, 374, 378, 381, 391-92; in remedied by baptism, in school of
Roland of Bologna, 66, 372, 374, Laon, 539-40; in Peter Abelard,
377, 389-90; in Robert Pullen, 68, 540; in Porretans, 540; in Hugh of
69, 373, 374, 375, 381, 390-91, 392; St. Victor, 540; in Roland of
in Robert of Melun, 72, 74, 199, Bologna, 540; in Peter Lombard,
334, 372, 376, 382, 390, 393; in 529, 530, 538, 539, 540, 547,
Peter Lombard, 11, 81, 89, 212, 754-55, 773. See also Adam; Eve;
214, 225, 370, 377-81, 383-85, Free will, doctrine of; Grace,
393-97, 462, 464, 465, 487-88, 515, doctrine of; Sacraments, baptism
519, 732-36, 738, 744, 745, 746, Manicheism, heresy, as attacked by
747, 748, 754-55, 773; timing of, in Augustine, 268, 340, 354, 381 n.
Honorius Augustodunensis, 376-77; 243, 385, 390, 394, 480, 488, 492
as not excused by ignorance, in Manna, as forerunner of Eucharist, in
Peter Lombard, 378-79, 733, 745; Summa sententiarum, Sententiae
exemption of incarnate Christ from, divinitatis, Peter Lombard, 578-79
in Augustine, 414; in Anselm of Mariology, 165, 412, 414, 421-22,
Canterbury, 453; in Hugh of St. 646, 738. See also Mary, Virgin
Victor, 414; in Robert Pullen, 441; Marriage, as a Christian calling, in
in Peter Lombard, 422, 443, 470, Robert Pullen, 69, 476, 640; in
738, 741; His taking on of some of Master Simon, 647; in Peter
its effects in fallen man, in Summa Lombard, 765; as a social reality in
sententiarum, 446; in Peter Lombard, twelfth century, 629, 637, 638, 639,
443-44, 446-47, 741; exemption of 646, 648, 657, 658, 676, 682-83,
Virgin Mary from, in Augustine, 694, 765, 766. See also Sacraments,
414; in Hugh of St. Victor, 414, in marriage
Sententiae divinitatis, 416; in Peter Mathematics, as applied to
Lombard, 421, 738, 776; effects Trinitarian theology, in Augustine,
of, in Origen, 354; in Augustine, 104; in John Damascene, 128; in
186-87, 376, 380, 381, 382; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 101, 104, 128-29,
Rupert of Deutz, in Honorius 132, 137, 138, 144, 153, 154; in
Augustodunensis, 39, 322, 355; in Thierry of Chartres, 104-05,
Sententie Anselmi, 373; in William of 128-29, 154; in Clarenbald of
Champeaux, 386; in school of Laon, Arras, 104-05, 128-29, 154; in
539-40, 382; in Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, 128, 129-30, 151,
382, 392-93, 394, 397, 540; in 153; as a discipline in the liberal
Summa sententiarum, 382-83, 391; in arts, in Peter Lombard, 181
Sententiae divinitatis, 381; in Peter Matter, 58, 74, 81, 94, 309, 310, 324,
Abelard, 540; in Porretans, 540; in 326, 330, 332, 333, 337. See also
Roland of Bologna, 540; in Robert Creation; Form; Man, doctrine of;
Pullen, 69, 381, 391; in Robert of Metaphysics
Melun, 372, 382, 390; in Peter Merchants, morality of their
Lombard, 81, 187, 214, 367, 369, profession, in Augustine, 180; in
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 881
Anselm of Laon, 180, 475; in school 368; as applied to Christology, in
of Laon, 475; in Robert Pullen, 476; Peter Lombard, 418; as applied to
in Peter Lombard, 180-81. See also God's relation to man in
Ethics charismatic order, in Peter
Metaphysics, 5, 6, 55, 68, 76, 78, Lombard, 481-82, 488; as applied
79-80, 81, 94, 122, 126, 130, 133-34, to Eucharist in twelfth century,
135, 144, 150, 227-28, 234, 236-42, 221, 222, 533-60, 563-64, 581-82,
243, 245-46, 248, 250, 251, 720-21, 722, 723-25, 727, 728, 731,
263-302, 319, 320, 337, 342, 751, 754, 756-57, 774-75; to debate
342-43, 347, 348, 351, 352-53, 368, on which body Christ gave His
406, 418, 481-82, 488, 553-60, disciples at last supper, in Anselm
563-64, 566, 581-82, 618, 720-21, of Laon, 553; in William of
722, 723-25, 727, 728, 731, 751, Champeaux, 553, 554; in Ivo of
756, 774, 775; in Plato, 230, 235, Chartres, 553; in Hugh of St.
239, 249, 295-96, 299, 303-19, 727; Victor, 553, 554; in Master Simon,
in Aristotle, 105, 136, 137, 332, 553; in Robert Pullen, 554; in
337, 554-60, 720-21, 756-57, 774, Roland of Bologna, 554, 559; in
775; revival of, in high Middle Peter Lombard, 559; to change of
Ages, 5, 6, 554; application to real Eucharistie elements, in Anselm of
presence doctrine in twelfth century, Laon, 555; in William of
221, 222, 553-60, 563-64, 581-82; Champeaux, 555; in Alger of Liège,
756-57, 774-75; in Neoplatonists, 555; in Gratian, 555-56; in Roland
212-23, 239-40, 303-19, 320, 323, of Bologna, 555; in Sententiae
324, 326, 328, 336, 337; participatory Parisiensis I, 556; in Ysagoge in
metaphysics as influencing Hugh of theologiam, 556; in Hugh of St.
St. Victor on Eucharist, 566; on Victor, 556; in Porretans, 556-57;
holy orders, 618; as applied to in Robert Pullen, 556, 557; in
doctrine of God, in fourth-century Sententiae divinitatis, 557-59; in
Arian heresy, 239-40; in orthodox Summa sententiarum, 557-59; in Peter
Christian Neoplatonism of Marius Lombard, 559-60, 720-21, 722,
Victorinus, 239-40; in Augustine, 723-25, 727, 728, 731, 751, 756-57,
481-82; in twelfth century, 227-28, 774-75. See also Angels; Creation;
234, 236-42, 245-46, 248, 250, 251, God, doctrine of; John Scottus
263-302; in Honorius Eriugena; Pseudo-Areopagite; Man,
Augustodunensis, 264-65, 285-86; doctrine of; Sacraments, Eucharist,
in Anselm of Laon, 264, 277, in holy orders
school of Laon, 264; in Gilbert of Microcosm, man as, in Honorius
Poitiers, 133-34, 135, 144, 406; in Augustodunensis, 322-33; in Hugh
Hugh of St. Victor, 265, 279-80, of St. Victor, 330, 358; in Summa
285-86, 293; in Summa sententiarum, sententiarum, 330; in Peter Lombard,
265, 293-94, 299; in Robert Pullen, 211, 338-39, 358, 728; impossibility
234, 264, 293; in Robert of Melun, of man serving this function in
76, 126, 266, 236-38, 241, 265-66, Bernard Silvestris, 308
267, 282-85, 296, 299; in Roland Millers, morality of their profession,
of Bologna, 68; in Peter Lombard, in Robert Pullen, 476
78-79, 81, 94, 121-22, 126, 130, Mönad, the, 130, 137
150, 221, 222, 227-28, 238-42, Monastic life, as a Christian calling,
245-46, 250, 251, 263-64, 266-68, with particular responsibilities and
285-90; as applied to proofs of God's temptations, in Honorius
existence, in Robert Pullen, 234; in Augustodunensis, 39
Robert of Melun, 236-38, 241; in Monks, 575. See also Benedictine
Peter Lombard, 238-42; as applied order; Carthusian order; Cistercian
to creation and constitution of order; Exegesis, biblical, monastic;
angels, consensus view on, 342-43; Knights Templars
in Peter Lombard, 300, 337, 342, Monophysitism, heresy of, 447
347, 348, 351; as applied to human Monothelitism, heresy of, 447
nature, in Peter Lombard, 352-53, Musicians, as holding rank and
882 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

dignity in the church, in Peter Oaths. See Perjury

Lombard, 625-26, 762. See also Old Testament worthies, their
Sacraments, holy orders salvation, in Gregory the Great,
530; in Peter Lombard, 530-31. See
Necessity, logical, 55, 85, 213, 268, also Christ, His harrowing of Hell
272-75, 290, 291, 294, 296, 445-46, One, Platonic, in William of Conches,
724. See also Abelard, Peter; 102; in Peter Abelard, 213, 239,
Aristotle; Boethius; Contingency; 249, 257; in Abelardians, 249; in
Free will, doctrine of; God, doctrine Robert of Melun, 236. See also
of; Logic; Possibility, logical Platonism; Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism, 51, 74-75, 95, 102,
103, 174 n. 53, 175,212-13, 229, Pagan, virtuous. See Ethics, natural
303-19, 320, 323, 324, 326, 328, virtue
336, 339-40, 357, 358-59, 482, 566, Passover, as both link and distinction
618, 775; One, Nous, and World between Old Testament rites and
Soul as equated with Trinity, in Christian sacraments, in Peter
Peter Abelard, 212-13, 239-40; Lombard, 579
World Soul, in Peter Abelard, 51, Pelagianism, heresy of, as attackes by
213, 239; in Abelardians, 51; in Augustine, 36, 50, 86, 268, 354,
William of Conches, 102; in Robert 381, 381 n. 243, 385, 386, 391, 393,
of Melun, 74-75; as criticized by 394, 395, 397, 491; as a code word
Peter Lombard, 212-13, 349-40, for Abelardians, in Peter Lombard,
775; theological triad of being, life, 394
thought, as transmitted by Marius Pentecost, foundation of church at, in
Victorinus, 212, 239-40; as Honorius Augustodunensis, 39; as
approved by Peter Lombard, 212, point in Christ's life when He
239-40; cosmology of, its influence instituted baptism, in Hugh of St.
on creation doctrine of Chartrains, Victor, Roland of Bologna, 544; as
303-19, 320, 323, 324, 326, 328, point in His life when He instituted
336, 339; psychology of, 174 n. 53, confirmation, in Roland of Bologna,
175, 357; its influence on Hugh of 548; as appropriate time for
St. Victor, 358-59, 482; critique of baptism, in Leo I, 46-47, 543, 544,
"fall of the soul" doctrine, in Peter 570; rejection of this rule by school
Lombard, 174 n. 53, 175; of Laon, 46-47, 543-44, 570; as
participatory metaphysics of, its feast when laity should receive
influence on Hugh of St. Victor on Eucharist, in canonists, 575, 580; in
Eucharist, 566; on holy orders, 618. Robert Pullen, 575, 580, 581; in
See also John Scottus Eriugena; Peter Lombard, 580-81. See also
Creation; Man, doctrine of; Plato; Sacraments, baptism, confirmation,
Platonism; Pseudo-Dionysius; Eucharist
Trinity, doctrine of Perfection, modes of, in Robert of
Neo-Thomism, 4, 5, 7 Melun, 333; in rational faculty of
Nestorianism, heresy of, 400, 451, 453 angels before their fall, in Peter
Nominalism, revival of as an index of Lombard, 348
high medieval thought, 6; as viewed Perjury, in Gratian, 512, 513-14; in
by Gilbert of Poitiers, 133; in Peter Peter Lombard, 512, 513-14
Abelard's doctrine of God, 85, 275, Philosophy, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 17, 36,
287; in Peter Lombard's doctrine of 49, 51, 52, 59, 61, 68, 71, 72, 77,
God, 85, 287-88, 300, 775. See also 84-86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 102, 119, 122,
God, doctrine of; Logic; Realism; 127, 135, 136, 137, 142, 149, 159,
Universals 160, 166, 177, 189, 212, 213, 224,
Nous, Platonic, in William of 227, 228, 229, 230, 234, 235, 238,
Conches, 102; in Peter Abelard, 239-40, 242, 243, 247, 250, 251,
213, 239, 249, 257-58, 259; in 254-59, 265-66, 268-77, 282, 285,
Abelardians, 236; in Robert of 286, 287-88, 289, 290, 291-92,
Melun, 249. See also Platonism ; 294-95, 296, 303-19, 321, 336,
Neoplatonism 341, 342, 348, 351, 352-53, 357,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 883

361, 362, 368, 396, 406, 414, 415, holy orders

416, 421, 436, 481, 493, 496, 497, Prophets, major, 28; minor, 28
553-60, 581-82, 618, 635, 637, 645, Prudence, in school of Laon, 504; in
654, 718, 720-22, 724, 725, 727, 728, Peter Abelard, 505; in Hermannus,
729, 730, 747, 748, 756-57, 758, 505; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 505;
774-76, 777. See also Abelard, Peter; in Peter Lombard, 505, 506, 748.
Aristotle; Aristotelianism; Boethius; See also Ethics, cardinal virtues
Chartrains; Creation; Ethics; Psalms, book of, as commented on by
Gilbert of Poitiers; God, doctrine of; Hilary of Poitiers, 163, 167; by
Logic; Man, doctrine of; Jerome, 163, 164, 166, 167, 171,
Metaphysics; Neoplatonism; 173, 176, 178-79, 181, 183, 184; by
Nominalism; Peter Lombard; Plato; Augustine, 164, 166, 171, 174, 176,
Platonism; Realism; Stoicism; 179-82, 183, 184, 185-86; by Basil
Sacraments, baptism, confirmation, the Great, 165; by Gregory the
Eucharist, marriage; Trinity, Great, 165; by Theodore, 165; by
doctrine of; Uni versais Cassiodorus, 163, 164, 171, 174,
Plants, souls of, in Peter Abelard, 179, 182, 184, 185; by Bede, 165,
325; in Robert Pullen, 74 174; by Alcuin, 173, 183, 184, 185;
Platonism, as an index of high by Haimo of Auxerre, 178, 184;
medieval thoght, 5, 6; as a source by Remigius of Auxerre, 164, 165,
for terminology of Boethius, 85, 93; 174; by Bruno the Carthusian, 158,
theology of, in Peter Abelard, 51, 159-60; by Letbert of Lille, 158-59;
212-13, 230, 235, 236, 239, 242, by Pseudo-Bruno of Würzburg, 158,
249, 256; in Abelardians, 51, 230, 160-61; by Gerhochof
249, 254-55, in William of Reichersberg, 158, 161-62; by
Conches, 102; in other Chartrains, Pseudo-Bede, 162-64, 167, 171; by
303-19, 326, 330, 332, 337; in Glossa ordinana, 156, 162, 164-67,
Robert of Melun, 74, 75; as 170, 173, 174, 175, 179, 184, 185,
criticized by Bruno the Carthusian, 187; by Gilbert of Poitiers, 133,
159; by William of St. Thierry, 189, 156, 160, 167-70, 172, 173, 174,
190; by Porretans, 319; by Roland 187; by Peter Lombard, 23, 28,
of Bologna, 319-20; by Peter 170-88
Lombard, 227, 228, 239-40, 775; Psalters, local, as sources of variant
doctrine of creation, in Chartrains, readings of texts of the Psalms, as
254, 255, 303-19, 326, 330, 332, noted by Augustine, 181; by Peter
357; human nature in, 354, 357, Lombard, 179, 181.
363, 369, 405, 408, 409, 413, 418, Publicists. See Canonists
437, 728, 730, 774, 775; psychology
in, 315, 361, 363, 370; cardinal Rape, as a means of establishing a
virtues in, 504, 747. See also marital claim, in Carolingian
Abelard, Peter; Boethius; authorities, 669, 670, 693; as a
Chartrains; Creation; Ethics; God, marital impediment in twelfth
doctrine of; Man, doctrine of; century, in Ivo of Chartres, 637-38,
Metaphysics; Neoplatonism; Plato; 669, 693; in Gratian, 669, 672, 693;
Trinity, doctrine of in Roland of Bologna, 669, 693; in
Poets, as holding rank and dignity in Decretum dei fuit, 670; in Peter
the church, in Peter Lombard, Lombard, 693, 768. See also
625-26, 762. See also Sacraments, Sacraments, marriage
holy orders Realism, as an index of high medieval
Possibility, logical, 55, 85, 213, 268, thought, 6; attitude to, in Gilbert of
272-75, 290, 292, 291, 294, 445-46, Poitiers, 133; in Peter Lombard,
724. See also Abelard, Peter; 129. See also Logic; Nominalism;
Aristotle; Boethius; God, doctrine Universale
of; Logic; Necesity, logical Reason, natural, in theology. See God,
Prophets, as holding rank and dignity doctrine of; Theology, natural
in the church, in Peter Lombard, Redemption, of man. See Christ, His
625-26, 762. See also Sacraments, saving work; Justification
884 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Regio dissimilitudinis, theme of, 174, 174 530, 564, 631, 644, 646, 695, 752,
n. 53, 482, 482 n. 24, 514, 600, 716, 764, 771, 777; in Summa sententiarum,
745, 747, 753, 773; in Peter 63, 511, 526-27, 529, 538; in
Lombard, 174, 482, 514, 600, 716, Robert of Melun, 72, 73, 235; in
745, 747, 753, 773 Master Simon, 522, 523, 531; in
Revelation, progressive, doctrine of, in Peter Lombard, 82, 499, 511, 516,
Robert of Melun, 296 526, 527-32, 579, 607, 695, 752-53,
Revolution, French (1789), cause of 757, 777; validity of, if administered
destruction of church of St. by a heretical, excommunicated, or
Marcellus, Paris, burial place of immoral minister, in Cyprian, 572;
Peter Lombard, 23 as raised by Gregorian reform
Rhetoric, as applied to biblical movement, 517; in Ivo of Chartres,
exegesis, theology in Bruno the 572; in Alger of Liège, 520-21; in
Carthusian, 160; in Hervaeus of Gratian, 521, 545, 572, 579, 580,
Bourg-Dieu, 190, in Peter Abelard, 582; in Roland of Bologna, 572-73,
194; in Gilbert of Poitiers, 17-69, 579; in Anselm of Laon, 571; in
172; in Hugh of St. Victor, 320; in Porretans, 571-72, 573; in Master
Robert Pullen, 71; in Peter Simon, 573, 620; in Sententiae
Lombard's sermons, 26; divinitatis, 573; in Summa sententiarum,
commentary on the Psalms, 573-74; in Robert Pullen, 574; in
170-74; 183, 187; commentary on Peter Lombard, 528, 545, 577,
Pauline epistles, 194, 195, 202, 211, 579-81, 582, 626, 752-53, 754, 758,
224. See also Exegesis, biblical; 762-63; intentionality, as
Liberal arts conditioning their efficacious
Ruled, the, morality of their calling, administration, fruitful reception, in
in Robert Pullen, 476 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 162; in
Rulers, morality of their calling, in Alger of Liège, 560-61; in Gratian,
Robert Pullen, 69, 476 579, 633, 758; in Paucapalea, 592;
in school of Laon, 593, 618; in
Sabellianism, heresy of, 125 Decretum dei fuit, 631; in Sententie
Sacraments, vii, 11, 36, 38, 39, 40, 47, Anselmi, 639; in Peter Abelard, 50;
48, 49-50, 52, 53-54, 56, 59-61, in Hermannus, 641; in Sententiae
62, 63, 64, 66, 67-70, 72, 73, Parisiensis I, 549; in Roland of
74-76, 79, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89, 92, Bologna, 549; in Hugh of St.
98, 162, 175, 186, 188, 204-05, 208 Victor, 601, 644, 645, 646, 655,
n. 138; 220-21, 235, 327, 386-87, 694-95; in Summa sententiarum, 562,
388, 389, 395, 396, 421, 435, 465, 568, 648, 649, 655; in Sententiae
471, 472, 476, 479, 495, 499, 508, divinitatis, 526, 562, 568; in Robert
511, 516-698, 700, 713, 714, 715, Pullen, 550, 640; in Peter Lombard,
721, 735, 736, 743, 744, 752-71, 545, 547, 572-74, 577-78, 582, 594,
773, 774, 777; general definition of, 601, 622, 626, 628, 648, 649, 652,
organization of treatises on, in 653, 654, 655, 656-57, 694-95, 696,
Augustine, 49, 518-19, 523, 764; in 743, 744, 752-57, 758, 760, 761,
Alger of Liège, 520-21; in Gratian, 762, 763, 765, 767, 769, 770, 771,
519-20, 521; in Honorius 777; baptism, twelfth-century
Augustodunensis, 38, 39, 518, 520; consensus positions on, 544-46;
in Rupert of Deutz, 36; 162; in debated positions on, 532-44; in
Anselm of Laon, 519; in Peter Cyprian, 55, 542; in Ambrose, 536;
Abelard, 49, 519; in Sententiae in Augustine, 55, 533-34, 535, 536,
Parisiensis I, 521-22; in Ysagoge in 537, 538-39, 541, 542, 546, 585; in
theologiam, 520, 526; in Roland of Leo I, 46-47, 55, 89, 135, 541, 542,
Bologna, 523, 525, 531; in 543; in Gregory the Great, 55, 89,
Porretans, 53-54, 520; in Sententiae 541, 542; in canonists, 519-21, 532,
divinitatis, 518, 523, 526, 527; in 533, 537, 541, 543 n. 184, 545; in
Hugh of St. Victor, 59-60, 62, 235, Ivo of Chartres, 537, 541, 543 η.
327, 395, 499, 511, 516, 518, 519 n. 184; in Alger of Liège, 520-21; in
113, 522, 523-25, 526, 527, 529, Gratian, 519-20, 521, 537, 543 n.
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 885

184, 545; in Honorius munere, non in usu, 539, 736, 754-55;

Augustodunensis, 39, 518, 520, 537; effects of baptism, in school of
in Anselm of Laon, 519, 533-34, Laon, 539-40, in Porretans, 540; in
570; in William of Champeaux, Hugh of St, Victor, 540; in Peter
534, 536, 570-71; in school of Abelard, 540; in Roland of Bologna,
Laon, 46-47, 386-87, 534, 535, 540; in Peter Lombard, 540, 547;
570-71; in Porretans, 54, 55, 520, conditional baptism, 532, 546; in
536, 538, 540, 543, 546, 570; in Master Simon, 546; self-baptism, in
Peter Abelard, 46, 49, 368, 519, Sententiae divinitatis, 546; appropriate
534-35, 540, 595; in Hermannus, time of baptism, in Leo I, 46-47,
519 n. 113; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 543; in Ivo of Chartres, 543 η. 184;
519 n. 112, 521-22; in Ysagoge in in Gratian, 543 n. 184; in school of
theologian, 52, 520, 535, 538; in Laon, 46-47, 543-44, 570; in
Hugh of St. Victor, 60, 393, 522, Master Simon, 543 n. 184; single
524, 535, 540, 541; in Summa vs. triple immersion in its
sententiarum, 64, 89, 535, 541, 542, administration, in Cyprian, 55, 542;
548; in Sententiae divinitatis, 523, 527, in Augustine, 55, 542; in Leo I, 55,
541, 546; in Master Simon, 522, 89, 135, 541, 642, 543; in Gregory
523, 541, 543 n. 184, 546, 547; in the Great, 55, 89, 541, 542; in
Roland of Bologna, 537, 540; in school of Laon, 541; in Porretans,
Robert Pullen, 69, 70, 535, 541; in 55, 542, 570; in Hugh of St. Victor,
Robert of Melun, 527; in Peter 541; in Summa sententiarum, 89, 541,
Lombard, 89, 395, 396, 421, 542; in Sententiae divinitatis, 541; in
530-31, 532, 533, 537-39, 540-43, Roland of Bologna, 541-42; in
544-48, 753, 754-55; baptism by Master Simon, 541; in Robert
blood, in Anselm of Laon, 534; in Pullen, 541; in Peter Lombard, 89,
school of Laon, 543; in Ysagoge in 542, 755; baptism of John the
theologiam, 535, 538; in Porretans, Baptist, its significance, in Anselm
536, 538; in Hugh of St. Victor, of Laon, 533 n. 154; in school of
535; in Summa sententiarum, 536; in Laon, 533 n. 154; in Abelardians,
Robert Pullen, 541; in Peter 533 n. 154; in Hugh of St. Victor,
Lombard, 538-39, 592, 754; 533 n. 154; in Summa sententiarum,
baptism by desire, in Anselm of 533 n. 154; in Porretans, 533 n.
Laon, 534; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 154; in Master Simon, 533 n. 154;
535, 538; in Porretans, 536, 538; in in Peter Lombard, 533; baptism of
Hugh of St. Victor, 535; in Summa Christ, when instituted during His
sententiarum, 536; in Master Simon, life, in Anselm of Laon, 544; in
535, 537; in Robert Pullen, 535; in Hugh of St. Victor, 544; in Summa
Peter Lombard, 538-39, 754; infant sententiarum, 544; in Hermannus,
baptism, its necessity, as disputed 544; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 544; in
by Anselm of Laon, 533-34, 571; Roland of Bologna, 544; in Sententiae
by William of Champeaux, 534, divinitatis, 544; in Master Simon,
536, 571 ; by school of Laon, 534, 544; in Peter Lombard, 544;
535, 571; by Peter Abelard, 534-35, validity of marriage of parents who
595; by Ysagoge in theologiam, 535, baptize their child in an emergency
538; by Summa sententiarum, 535-36, and hence contract spiritual affinity,
538; by Porretans, 535, 536, 538, in Master Simon, 547; in Summa
571; as supported by Augustine, sententiarum, 547; in Peter Lombard,
533-34, 535; by Ivo of Chartres, 546; confirmation, consensus
537; by Gratian, 537; by Honorius positions on, 548, 550, 755, 762; its
Augustodunensis, 537; by Roland of physical medium, in Hugh of St.
Bologna, 537, by Sententiae divinitatis, Victor, 549; in Summa sententiarum,
537; desirability of, as supported by 549; in Porretans, 549; in Peter
Peter Lombard, 538, 539; objective Lombard, 550; its Old Testament
efficacy of, in Peter Lombard, forerunners, in Hugh of St. Victor,
533-34, 754-55; his doctrine that 550; its effects, in Roland of
infants receive baptismal grace in Bologna, 550; in Porretans, 550; in
886 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Master Simon, 550; in Peter 598, 595 n. 333, 606; by Hugh of

Lombard, 550; its relative necessity St. Victor, but with inconsistencies,
for salvation, in school of Laon, 593-95, 597, 600; by Gilbert of
549; in Sententiae divinitatis, 549; in Poitiers and Porretans, but with
Peter Lombard, 551; its perceived inconsistencies, 598, 599; by
superiority to baptism, in Sententiae Sententiae divinitatis, 587, 595,
Parisiensis I, 550; in Porretans, 550; 598-600, 604, 681; by Peter
in Robert Pullen, 550; when it was Lombard, in Sentences, 600-01, 602-
instituted, in Master Simon, 558, in 07, 758-59, 760, 763, 764, 771;
Sententiae divinitatis, 548; in Roland confession to a lay person, in De
of Bologna, 548; confirmand's age vera et falsa poenitentia, 599; in
at time of administration, in Sententiae divinitatis, 599, 604; in
Gratian, 549; in Master Simon, Peter Lombard, 603, 604, 605, 608,
549, in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 549; 759; as associated with deathbed
Robert Pullen, 549; proper repentance, in Hugh of St. Victor,
disposition of confirmand, in 605, 606; in Peter Lombard,
Gratian, 549; in school of Laon, 605-07; Eucharist, its necessity for
549; in Porretans, 549; in Master salvation as a consensus position,
Simon, 549; in Sententiae divinitatis, 551-53, 576; real presence doctrine,
549; condition of minister, in as a consensus position, 550-53,
Gratian, 549; in Hugh of St. Victor, 560, 756, 773; as attacked by
549; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 549; in Berengar of Tours, 221, 517, 519,
Master Simon, 549 n. 209; in 552, 553, 563; as defended by
Sententiae divinitatis, 549 n. 209; Lanfranc of Canterbury, 552, 553,
clerical rank of minister, in Roland 560; in Peter Lombard, 220-21,
of Bologna, 550; in Peter Lombard, 558, 559, 560, 575-76, 581-82, 721,
550-51; penance, changes in 756-57, 773; concomitance in, as a
understanding and administration consensus position, 220, 552-53,
of between early church and twelfth 567, 568-71, 576-77, 581, 756, 757;
century, 583-84, 609, 611; on change of Eucharistie elements,
repeatability of, in Gratian, 584-85; in Anselm of Laon, 554-55; in
601, 602; in Roland of Bologna, William of Champeaux, 555; in
585; in school of Laon, 586, 589, school of Laon, 555; in Alger of
602; in Porretans, 588 n. 310; in Liège, 555; in Gratian, 555-56; in
Hugh of St. Victor, 586-87, 601, Roland of Bologna, 555; in
602; in Summa sententiarum, 588; in Porretans, 556-57, 559; in Sententiae
Sententiae divinitatis, 586-88, 589, Parisiensis I, 556, 558; in Ysagoge in
590; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 588 n. theologiam, 556, 558, 559; in Hugh of
310; in Robert Pullen, 588 η. 310; St. Victor, 556; in Sententiae
in Peter Lombard, 601-02, 608, divinitatis, 531, 556, 557-58; in
754, 758; defense of confessonism Summa sententiarum, 556, 557; in
in, by Gerhoch of Reichersberg, Master Simon, 556; in Robert
162; by Alger of Liège, 590; by Pullen, 556, 557, 558, 559; in Peter
Gratian, 589-91, 592, 600, 603, Lombard, 559-60, 575, 582, 756-57,
607, 608, 609, 632-33, 763; by 773-74; last supper, as time of its
Roland of Bologna, 591, 592; by institution by Christ, 552, 578, 581,
Anselm of Laon, 592; by Summa 756; on which body, historical
sententiarum, 591-92, 595, 600; by or resurrected, He gave to disciples
Robert Pullen, 591-92, 595; by at last supper, in Ivo of Chartres,
Peter Lombard, in Psalms 553, 554; in Anselm of Laon, 553;
commentary, 175; defense of in William of Champeaux, 553-54;
contritionism in, by Paucapalea, in Porretans, 554; in Hugh of St.
592; by school of Laon, but with Victor, 553, 554; in Hermannus,
inconsistencies, 593, 595; by Peter 556; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 554; in
Abelard, but with inconsistencies, Master Simon, 553; in Roland of
50, 595-98; as reprised by Bologna, 554, 559; in Robert
Hermannus, Ysagoge in theologiam, Pullen, 554; in Peter Lombard, 559,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 887

560, 575, 582, 756; its spiritual Peter Lombard's commentary on 1

effects, as received by different Corinthians, 221; in Sentences, 222,
kinds of communicants, in Alger of 581, 757; on status of Eucharistie
Liège, 561-62, 563, 564; in school elements if dropped or vomited
of Laon, 565; in Porretans, 563; in by an ill communicant, in Ivo of
Hugh of St. Victor, 561; in Summa Chartres, 564; in Porretans, 563-64;
sententiarum, 562; in Roland of in Master Simon, 563; on use of
Bologna, 562; in Sententiae divinitatis, unleavened bread in, as vs. practice
561-62; in Peter Lombard, 557, of Greek church, in Roland of
577-78, 581, 757; spiritual benefits Bologna, 757; on validity of its
of, in believing and well-disposed administration by priest suffering
communicants, in Ivo of Chartres, nocturnal emission, consensus view
566; in Alger of Liège, 516-62, 563, of canonists, theologians as
564, 566; in Gratian, 566; in summed up by Porretans, 574; in
Roland of Bologna, 562, 467, 582; Peter Lombard, 580, 758; unction,
in Honorius Augustodunensis, changes in understanding and
565-66, 567; in school of Laon, administration of between early
565, 566, 568; in Commentarius church and twelfth century, 609-10,
Cantabridgensis, 567; in Hermannus, 611, 761; consensus view of its
566; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, institution by apostles, 611, in Peter
566-67; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 568; Lombard, 613; as not a sacrament
in Hugh of St. Victor, 565, 566; in of necessity, 610; its definition as
Summa sententiarum, 562, 566-67, extreme unction, in Honorius
568, 577, 582; in Porretans, 563, Augustodunensis, 610; as a rite of
567, 568, 576; in Sententiae divinitatis, healing, in Anselm of Laon, 610; in
561, 568, 577, 582; in Master Porretans, 610; as serving both
Simon, 567, 568, 576; in Robert functions, in Hugh of St. Victor,
Pullen, 567, 568; in Peter Lombard, 610; in Roland of Bologna, 610; in
576, 577-78, 581, 582, 757; Master Simon, 610, in Peter
spiritual communion, 562, 577, 757; Lombard, 613, 761; on priest as
administration of, to laity, in both ordinary minister of, in Porretans,
kinds, sequentially, as consensus 611; on priest or bishop as ordinary
position, 568-71, 580, 757; in Peter minister of, in Roland of Bologna,
611; on bishop as ordinary minister
Lombard, 580, 582, 757; opposition of, in Peter Lombard, 613, 761,
to, in Roland of Bologna, 569-70; 762; its repeatability, as rejected by
shift to administration by host Hermannus, 611; by Master Simon,
alone, by end of twelfth century, 611-12; as approved by Hugh of
570; effect of Eucharistie devotion, St. Victor, 611, 613; by Porretans,
"bleeding host" miracles, in that 611; by Peter Lombard, 613, 758,
change, 551-52, 570; defense of 761; view that married recipient
administration by chalice alone to would have to abstain from sexual
infants, as well as to aged, infirm, relations after its reception, in
or moribund, by Anselm of Laon Master Simon, 611-12; its effects
and his school, William of on recipient, in Hermannus, 611,
Champeaux, 570-71, 580, 757; by 612; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 612 n.
Gilbert of Poitiers and Porretans, 369; in Ysagoge in theologiam, 612 n.
571, 580; frequency of reception, for 369; in Master Simon, 612; in
laity, in Gennadius as misascribed Hugh of St. Victor, 612, 613; in
to Augustine, 581; in canonists, Summa sententiarum, 612, 612 n. 369;
574-75, 580; in Robert Pullen, 575, in Porretans, 612 n. 369; in Roland
580; in Peter Lombard, 580-81, of Bologna, 612 n. 369; in Peter
757; debate on what is received if a Lombard, 613, 761; holy orders,
mouse consumes consecrated host, grades of, as signifying gifts of Holy
in Ivo of Chartres, 564; in Roland Spirit, in Ivo of Chartres, 616; in
of Bologna 564, 581; in Sententiae Master Simon, 620, 621; in Peter
Parisiensis I, 564; in Porretans, Lombard, 622, 761; as reflecting
563-64; in Master Simon, 563; in
888 LNDEX OF SUBJECTS

personal ministry of Christ and infidelity as only grounds for

serving as an imitation of Christ for separation, without right of
ordinand, in Ivo of Chartres 617; in remarriage, 662, 668, 684, 687-88,
school of Laon, 617-18, 620, 622, 689, 690-93, 696-97, 765-66, 767,
623, 624, 626, 761, 765; in Hugh of 768; vicissitudes of wealth, health,
St. Victor, 61, 618-19, 620, 622, sterility as providing no grounds for
626; in Master Simon, 619-20, 622, nullification, separation, 680, 788;
623, 626; in Peter Lombard, 82, debated questions on: defense of
621, 622, 623-24, 628, 761, 765; as consummation as principle of
imparting an indelible sacerdotal marriage formation, problems
character to recipient, in Robert raised by this position, 630, 631,
Pullen, 615-16, 620; in Peter 632, 635; in Gratian, 631, 632-34,
Lombard, 626, 763; canonical rules 646, 652, 653, 654, 657, 763; in
governing, in Gratian, 615; in Paucapalea, 634-35; in Roland of
school of Laon, 617-18, in Hugh of Bologna, 635; in Decretum dei fuit,
St. Victor, 619; in Master Simon, 631, 632, 633; defense of consent as
619; in Robert Pullen, 615; in Peter principle of marriage formation,
Lombard, 621-22, 626-28, 762, problems raised by this position,
765, 771, 777; sacerdotal power of 630, in Ivo of Chartres, 636-39,
keys, in Alger of Liège, 590; in 640; in school of Laon, 63, 639; in
Gratian, 589-91, 592, 600, 603, Peter Abelard, 640-41; in
607, 608, 609; in Roland of Hermannus, 641; in Sententiae
Bologna, 591, 592, 614; in Anselm Pansiensis I and II, 642; in Ysagoge
of Laon, 592; in Peter Abelard, in theologiam, 642; in Hugh of St.
596-98; in Master Simon, 619; in Victor, 642-46, 647, 648; in Summa
Summa sententiarum, 591-92, 595, sententiarum, 648-49; in Peter
600; in Peter Lombard's Psalms Lombard, 649-58, 662, 696, 697,
commentary, 175; in Sentences, 763-65, 767-68, 769, 770, 771;
604-05, 606, 608, 759, 761; marriage, distinction between present and
general approach of canonists and future consent in, 635, 639, 640,
scholastic theologians to, compared, 641, 645, 646, 648, 653-54, 655,
663; twelfth-century consensus 763, 770; attempt to combine both
positions on: institution in Eden principles of marriage formation, in
before fall, reflecting creator's Porretans, 646-47, in Master
ordinance that human race should Simon, 647-48; marital affection, as
be propagated sexually, and required in marital consent, in Ivo
reinstitution after fall as office and of Chartres, 638, 645; in Gratian,
remedy for sin, 629, 631, 640, 650, 634, 636, 645; in Hugh of St.
661, 766, 770; its indissolubility, Victor, 645; in Summa sententiarum,
629; mutuality of spouses in 655; in Peter Lombard, 655-56,
rendering marriage debt, no 767, 770; morality of sexual
unilateral withdrawal from sexual relations between spouses, in
relations, 653, 677, 687, 766-67; Augustine, 36, 186-87, 354-55,
distinction between goods of 386, 391, 629; in Rupert of Deutz,
marriage (fidelity, permanence, 36; in Sententie Anselmi, 659; in
offspring) from marriage itself, 639, school of Laon, 387, 659; in
640, 645, 648, 657; coercion, fraud, Porretans, 355; in Hermannus, 641;
error, insanity, ignorance of identity 660 n. 485; in Sententiae Parisiensis I,
or legal status of a contracting 660 n. 485; in Ysagoge in theologiam,
party, inability to consummate 660 n. 485; in Hugh of St. Victor,
marriage, prior vows, holy orders, 36, 659, 644; in Summa sententiarum,
consanguinity, cognation, spiritual 659-60, 661; in Master Simon, 659;
affinity, disparity of cult, under age in Robert Pullen, 640, 659, 660,
status as principal categories of 661; in Robert of Melun, 355; in
marital impediments, grounds for Peter Lombard, 186-87, 188, 368,
nullification, 629, 630, 662-63, 369, 395, 396, 397, 650-51, 656,
664-65, 666-69; 673-80, 682; 657, 660-62, 685, 696, 735, 765,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 889
766-67, 770; on changes in rules sententiarum, 680; in Peter Lombard,
governing marriage over time, in 687-88, 765, 768; on prior
Gratian, 663 n. 489; in Honorius adulterous affair between principles,
Augustodunensis, 663 n. 489; in in Augustine, 47, 670-73; in Leo I,
school of Laon, 663 n. 489, 663-64; 47, 670-73; in Ivo of Chartres,
in Hermannus, 664, 683; in 671-72; in Gratian, 672-73, 687; in
Sententiae Parisiensis I, 663 n. 489; in Paucapalea, 673, 687; in Roland of
Ysagoge in theologiam, 663 n. 489; in Bologna, 671, 687; in Anselm of
Master Simon, 663 n. 489; in Hugh Laon, 47, 670-71; in school of
of St. Victor, 664, 683; in Summa Laon, 47, 671; in Porretans, 671; in
sententiarum, 664, 683; in Robert Summa sententiarum, 671; in Peter
Pullen, 664; in Peter Lombard, Lombard, 687, 697, 768; on rape, in
683-84, 689-93, 697, 698, 767, 768, Carolingian authorities, 669, 670,
769; marital impediments: age, in 693; in Ivo of Chartres, 637-38,
Gratian, 664; in Roland of Bologna, 669, 693; in Gratian, 669, 672, 693;
664; in school of Laon, 664-65; in in Roland of Bologna, 669, 693; in
Summa sententiarum, 664; in Peter Decretum dei fuit, 670, in Peter
Lombard, 690, 691-92, 698, 769; Lombard, 693, 768; on sexual
insanity, in Ivo of Chartres, 665; in dysfunction, in Leo I, 674, 675,
Gratian, 665; in Porretans, 665; in 685; in Ivo of Chartres, 676, 685; in
Summa sententiarum, 665; in Peter Gratian, 677, 685; in Paucapalea,
Lombard, 684, 686, 697, 767, 768; 677; in Roland of Bologna, 674,
consanguinity, cognation, spiritual 677-78, 685; in De coniugo, 674, 685;
affinity, in school of Laon, 681; in in Decretum dei fuit, 674, 677; in
Peter Lombard, 546-47, 681, 767, school of Laon, 675, 675 n. 526; in
769, 770; disparity of cult, in St. Hermannus, 674 n. 523; in Sententiae
Paul, 690-91; in Ivo of Chartres, Parisiensis I, 674 n. 523; in Ysagoge
667; in Gratian, 666, 667, 690, 691; in theologiam, 674 n. 523; in Porretans,
in Paucapalea, 667; in Roland of 676, 685; in Master Simon, 676; in
Bologna, 668; in De coniugo, 668; in Summa sententiarum, 767; in Robert
Decretum dei fuit, 667; in Deus de cuius Pullen, 676; in Peter Lombard, 684,
principio etfinetacetur, 667; in Sententie 685, 686, 694, 696-97, 767, 768,
Anselmi, 668; in school of Laon, 666; 770; on unfree status, in Ivo of
in Hermannus, 665, 666; in Chartres, 679; in Gratian, 679, 688;
Sententiae Parisiensis I, 665, 666; in in Roland of Bologna, 679; in
Master Simon, 666-67; in Hugh of Hermannus, 679, 688; in Sententiae
St. Victor, 666, 691; in Peter Parisiensis I, 679; in Ysagoge in
Lombard, 684, 690-91, 697-98, theologiam, 679; in Master Simon,
767, 769; on spouse's falling away 679, 688; in Hugh of St. Victor,
from Christian faith or orthodoxy 679, 688; in Summa sententiarum, 679;
seen as spiritual fornication and in Peter Lombard, 688-89, 767,
grounds for separation, not 769. See also Circumcision;
annullment, in Porretans, 668, in Intinction; Lamb, paschal; Manna;
Summa sententiarum, 668-69; in Melchisidech; Paschal II, pope;
Robert Pullen, 668; in Peter Passover
Lombard, 691, 769; on error or Sacramentals, in Hugh of St. Victor,
fraud as to identity, status of 522, 525; in Summa sententiarum, 527;
marriage partner, in Gratian, 679, in Peter Lombard, 530
683; in Roland of Bologna, 679; in Saints. See Last Things, Heaven
Hugh of St. Victor, 679; in Sanctification, of man, in school of
Hermannus, 679; in Porretans, 681; Laon, 616, 617-18, 620, 622, 624,
in Master Simon, 679; in Peter 626; in Roland of Bologna, 578; in
Lombard, 682, 683, 688, 767, 768; Porretans, 563; in Hugh of St.
on leprosy, in Porretans, 680-81; Victor, 523, 524, 566, 587, 618-19,
on monstruous crime, typically 620, 622, 625, 636; in Master
uxoricide, in Gratian, 680, 688; in Simon, 619-20, 622, 626; in
Roland of Bologna, 680; in Summa Sententiae divinitatis, 546; in Peter
890 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Lombard, 61, 261, 469, 528, 530, virtues in, 504, 505, 747. See also
536, 547, 582-83, 621, 622, 624, Creation; Ethics; Man, doctrine of,
626, 713, 752, 753, 754, 755, 757, soul of
758, 760, 763, 764, 771, 773. See also Substance, non-partisan definition of,
Sacraments in William of Conches, 104 n. 34;
Semantics. See Theological language, in Peter Lombard, 177, 722, 774.
problem of See also Aristotelianism; Form;
Sentence collection, as a genre of Matter; Metaphysics
theological literature, v, 1,2, 3, 4, Summa, as a genre of theological
7 , 8 , 9 , 10, 11,23,24,25-27,28, literature, 7
29, 30, 31, 32-34, 35, 42-90, 145,
470, 699; use of subdivisions within Temperance, in school of Laon, 504;
text for ready reference, in Robert in Sententiae Parisiensis I, 505; in
of Melun, 73; in Peter Lombard, Peter Lombard, 506, 507, 748. See
78. See also Theology, systematic also Ethics, cardinal virtues
Serfdom, as an impediment to Ten Commandments, in Augustine,
marriage, 678-80 510; twelfth-century consensus view
Simony, as a sin affecting valid of their binding force on Christians,
administration of Eucharist, in 510-11; in Hugh of St. Victor, 60;
canonists, 552, 572, 575-80, 582; in in Summa sententiarum, 64; in Peter
Gratian, 579, 580; in Roland of Lombard, 82, 510. See also Law,
Bologna, 572-73, 579; in Hugh of Mosaic
St. Victor, 61; in Porretans, 573; in Templars, Knights, 455
Master Simon, 573; in Sententiae Theft, in Summa sententiarum, 511 ; in
divinitatis, 573; in Robert Pullen, Peter Lombard, 511
615; in Peter Lombard, 579-80, Thief, good, on cross, as example of
582, 657; as a sin affecting valid baptism by desire, in Augustine,
administration, reception of holy 538; in Sententiae divinitatis, 537; in
orders, in canonists, 626-28; in Robert Pullen, 535; in Peter
Master Simon, 620; in Peter Lombard, 538. See also Sacraments,
Lombard, 626-28, 657, 762, 765, baptism
777. See also Sacraments; Eucharist, Theological language, problem of, in
holy orders Augustine, 78-79, 96, 111, 112,
Sin. See Ethics, sin; Man, doctrine of, 115, 116, 122-24, 144, 153,229,
original sin in 234,235,238,243,251, 301,528,
Slavery, as an impediment to 529, 530, 716-17, 726, 753, 772; in
marriage, 678-80 Boethius, 92-93, in Greek as vs.
Soldiers, as men whose calling bears Latin, 93-94, 96, 114, 117, 119,
particular responsibilities and 120-22, 125, 146, 149, 216; in Alger
temptations, in Honorius of Liège, 555; in Gratian, 555-56;
Augustodunensis, 39, 475; in in Roland of Bologna, 555; in
Robert Pullen, 69, 476 Rupert of Deutz, 36; in William of
Soteriology. See Christ, His saving Conches, 313, 719, 722, 756; in
work Clarenbald of Arras, 309; in Walter
Soul, immortality of, in Pseudo-Bede, ofMortagne, 113, 115, 116, 119; in
163 Anselm of Laon, 554-55; in
Stoicism, cyclical cosmology in, 306; William of Champeaux, 555; in
mind as ruling principle of human school of Laon, 555; in Gilbert of
constitution in, 357; theory of Poitiers, 131, 132-48, 149, 167,
sensation in, 361; source of theory 216, 227, 245, 249; in Invisibilia dei,
of psychogenesis of ethical acts in 142-48, 149; in Porretans, 53, 132,
Peter Lombard and other twelfth- 135, 141-48, 149, 150, 152, 153,
century theologians, as mediated by 216, 404, 407-09, 556-57, 559; in
Jerome and Augustine, 473-74; Sententia divinitatis, 141-42, 249, 531,
source of idea of ethical 555, 556, 557-58; in Peter Abelard,
intentionality as fixed mental 96-104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110,
disposition, 476, 478; cardinal 113, 115, 213, 245, 271; in Sententiae
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 891
Parisiensis I, 556, 558; in Ysagoge in theology, 7, 8, 11, 33-35, 36, 38,
theologiam, 556, 558, 559; in 40, 42-90; schemata of sentence
Abelardians, 51; in Hugh of St. collections, 47-90, 516-18; in Peter
Victor, 60, 61-62, 101, 110, Abelard and his school, 47-50,
230-33, 556; in Summa sententiarum, 51-52; in Gilbert of Poitiers and his
65, 556, 557; in Master Simon, 556; school, 52-57; in Hugh of St.
in Robert Pullen, 72, 105-08, 234, Victor, 57-62; in Summa sententiarum,
556, 557, 558, 559; in Robert of 63-64; in Roland of Bologna,
Melun, 74, 75, 77, 105, 108-13, 65-67; in Robert Pullen, 68-71; in
121, 266, 284; in Peter Lombard, Robert of Melun, 72, 73-76, 77; in
80, 81, 85-86, 119-31, 148-54, 215, Peter Lombard, 2, 3, 15, 25, 78-84,
227, 229, 243, 245-29, 286, 399, 719. See also Sentence collection
418, 423, 424-25, 428-31, 433-36, Thomism, 4, 8
466-70, 559-60, 719, 722, 737, 739, Time, creation of, in Origen, 334; in
756, 774; in connection with change Augustine, 333; in Robert of
in Eucharistie elements, in Alger of Melun, 333; end of, following
Liège, 555; in Gratian, 555-56; in assignment of damned and saved to
Roland of Bologna, 555; in Anselm posthumous destinations, 703, 713.
of Laon, 554—55; in William of See also Creation; Last Things
Champeaux, 555; in school of Laon, Tonsure, clerical, symbolism of, in
555; in Porretans, 556-57, 559; in Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard,
Sententiae Pansiensis I, 556, 558; in 623
Ysagoge in theologiam, 556, 558, 559; Traducianism, as supported by
in Hugh of St. Victor, 556; in Robert Pullen, 360, 391; as opposed
Summa sententiarum, 556, 557; in by school of Laon, 388; by Roland
Sententiae divinitatis, 556, 557-58; in of Bologna, 389; by Peter Lombard,
Master Simon, 556; in Robert 393, 395, 397, 421; as treated as an
Pullen, 556, 557, 558, 559; in Peter open question, by Hugh of
Lombard, 559-60, 756-57, 774. See St.Victor, 392; by Sententiae
also Sacraments, Eucharist divinitatis, 392
Theology, natural, in St. Paul, 142, Trinity, doctrine of, in Latin church,
189-91; in William of St. Thierry, 80,93,94,96, 102, 104, 111, 112,
189-90; in Hervaeus of Bourg-Dieu, 113, 114, 115-17, 119, 120, 121,
191; in Hugh of St. Victor, 57-59, 122-24, 125-26, 127, 129, 137, 139,
231,233, 235, 236, 241; in Summa 144, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153,
sententiarum, 497; in Invisibilia dei, 229, 232-33, 234, 235, 238, 239,
142, 143-44; in Peter Abelard, 97; 242-45, 247; as expressed by
in Robert of Melun, 72, 73, 75, Augustine, 80, 94, 96, 102, 104,
235-36; in Peter Lombard, 79-80, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115-16, 119,
122, 212, 229, 233, 236, 238-39, 120, 121, 122-24, 125-26, 127, 129,
241, 497, 515 Theology, negative, in 137, 139, 144, 148, 150, 152, 153,
Pseudo-Dionysius, 95, 96, 143, 144; 229, 232-33, 234, 235, 238, 239,
in John Scottus Eriugena, 95; in 242-44, 247, 249-50, 260, 299, 358,
Invisibilia dei, 143-44; in Chartrains, 362, 366-67, 506, 507, 508, 721-23,
95-96; in Robert of Melun, 108, 731; in Greek church, 49, 93-94,
266, as rejected by Peter Lombard, 96, 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122,
149, 229, 247, 482, 719, 775. See also 125-26, 127, 128-29, 146, 148, 149,
Theological language, problem of 260, 407; as expressed by John
Theology, pre-scholastic and non- Damascene, 49, 119, 120, 121, 122,
scholastic, 34, 35-42, 91 125-26, 127, 128-29, 148, 149; in
Theology, systematic, in twelfth Boethius, 93; in Thierry of
century, monastic exponents of, Chartres, 128, 129, 309, 313; in
35-42; Rupert of Deutz, 35-37, 41, William of Conches, 311; in
42; Honorius Augustodunensis, 35, Clarenbald of Arras, 128, 129,
36, 37-42; scholastic exponents of, 316-18; in Rupert of Deutz, 36-37;
33-35, 42-90; the sentence in Bruno the Carthusian, 159; in
collection as a genre of scholastic Walter of Mortagne, 17, 113-15,
892 INDEX OF SUBJECTS

116; in Peter Abelard, 48, 50-51, Lombard, 550; of Eucharist, in

98, 100-04, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, Roland of Bologna, 562, 578; of
113, 115, 120, 153-54, 234,236, holy orders, in Ivo of Chartres, 616;
239, 249, 284, 289, 324, 405, 410, in Master Simon, 620, 621; in Peter
443; in Abelardians, 51, 153, 249; Lombard, 622; sin against, and its
in Gilbert of Poitiers, 101, 102, 104, remissibility, in Augustine, 209; in
105, 128, 136-41, 149-50, 153-54, Peter Lombard, 209,215, 396,486-87;
246, 249; in Porretans, 53, 144-48, as guiding Jacob's masquerade as
252, 407; in Hugh of St. Victor, 17, Esau, in Augustine, 513; in Peter
59, 60, 101, 110, 230-33, 242, 244, Lombard, 513; as disclosing
413, 419; in Summa sententiarum, 63, Christ's divinity at His baptism, in
65, 115-17, 118, 249, 251, 415, 497; Peter Lombard, 533, 544;
in Sententiae divinitatis, 56, 249, 251; comparison or equation of with
in Roland of Bologna, 66, 251; in World Soul, in Peter Abelard, 51,
Robert Pullen, 68, 105-07; in 212-13, 234, 239, 249, 253-60, 324,
Robert of Melun, 74, 100, 105, 493; in Abelardians, 51, 249; in
108-13, 121, 126, 127, 235-38, William of Conches, 102, 312, 317;
251-52, 284-85, 415; in Peter in Thierry of Chartres, 309, 310,
Lombard, 11, 25, 27, 79, 80, 81, 86, 317; in Chartrain Anonymous, 315;
88, 119-21, 122, 149-50, 153-54, in Clarenbald of Arras, 317, 318,
212, 227-30, 238-54, 259-63, 285, 319; vagueness on this point in
302, 337, 367, 418, 425, 498, 501, Bernard Silvestris, 308; in Hugh of
506, 721-23, 737, 745, 747, 748, St. Victor, 326; in Robert Pullen,
750, 761; his teaching as 360; in Robert of Melun, 74, 75,
misunderstood by Joachim of Fiore, 236; as criticized by Peter
246; analogies of Trinity in human Lombard, 212-13, 349-50, 775. See
soul, in Augustine, 331, 358, 362, also Creation; Ethics, virtues as gifts
366-67; in school of Laon, 358; in of Holy Spirit; Sacraments;
Summa sententiarum, 331 ; in Robert of baptism, confirmation, Eucharist,
Melun, 362; in Peter Lombard, holy orders; Theological language,
260, 342-45, 366-67; Holy Spirit, problem of; World Soul
theology of, in Rupert of Deutz, Two-swords theory, in Robert Pullen,
260; in school of Laon, 501; in 69
Thierry of Chartres, 104; in
Clarenbald of Arras, 104; in Robert Universals, revival of debate over, as
Pullen, 69, 106; in Roland of an index of high medieval thought,
Bologna, 548; in Peter Lombard, 5, 6; as rejected by Gilbert of
80,82, 131, 171, 209, 215, 253, Poitiers, 133, 142; as accepted by
260-62, 385, 396, 414, 419, 421, Invisibilia dei, 142, 143; as referred
486-87, 501, 506, 507-10, 513, to positively by Peter Lombard, in
514, 515, 533, 544, 550, 622, 747, biblical exegesis, 211; as treated by
748-49, 750, 761, 774, 775, 777; him as inapposite to Trinitarian
defined as charity, by school of Laon, theology, 126-27, 129, 775. See also
501; by Peter Lombard, 260-62, 510, Logic; Realism
750; charisms of, as communicated Usury, in Summa sententiarum, 511; in
in His gifts, in Peter Abelard, 40; in Peter Lombard, 82, 511, 514
Hugh of St. Victor, 505, in Summa
sententiarum, 490; in Peter Lombard, Vice. See Ethics
82, 131, 261-62, 385, 506, 747, Virginity, as a Christian calling, in
748-49, 761, 774, 775, 777; as Robert Pullen, 69
communicated in sacrament of Virtue. See Ethics
baptism, in Peter Lombard, 544; of Visionary experience, 699
confirmation, in school of Laon, 548,
550; in Sententiae Parisiensis I, Hugh Wisdom, as a cardinal virtue. See
of St. Victor, Summa sententiarum, Prudence
Porretans, Roland of Bologna, Witchcraft, as a possible reason for
Master Simon, 448; in Peter sexual dysfunction, 673, 674, 675,
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 893

676, 677, 678, 685, 768. See also World Soul, in Plato, 308; in Vergil,
Sacraments, marriage 308; twelfth-century debates over,
Women, their perceived inequality to 51, 74, 75, 80, 85, 212-13, 234,
men, in twelfth-century theologians, 236, 239, 249, 253-60, 308, 309,
365-66, 731; in Peter Lombard, 310, 315, 317, 318, 319, 324, 326,
366-68, 377, 731, 733, 776-77; 349-50, 493, 775; in Peter Abelard,
their salvation, in the Old 51, 212-13, 234, 239, 249, 253-60,
Testament dispensation, in Gregory 324, 493; in Abelardians, 51, 249;
the Great, 530; in Hugh of St. in Bernard Silvestris, 308; in
Victor, 525; in Peter Lombard, 530; William of Conches, 102, 312, 317;
their role in the church, in St. Paul, in Thierry of Chartres, 309, 310,
203-24; as interpreted by Peter 317; in Chartrain Anonymous, 315;
Lombard, 203-04; by Commentarius in Clarenbald of Arras, 317, 318,
Cantabridgensis, 204 319; in Hugh of St. Victor, 326; in
Work, as a natural good present in Robert Pullen, 360; in Robert of
Eden, in Robert of Melun, 356; in Melun, 74, 75, 236; equation of,
Roland of Bologna, 356 with Holy Spirit, as criticized by
Works, good, in William of St. Peter Lombard, 212-13, 349-50,
Thierry, 190; in Hugh of St. Victor, 775. See also Creation; Trinity,
60, 522, 525; in Summa sententiarum, doctrine of
526; in Peter Lombard, 530-31. See
also Ethics