Peter Lombard (c. 1100–60) was a theologian from Novara who taught at the cathedral school of Notre Dame, Paris. He was consecrated Bishop of Paris in 1159, shortly before his death. He wrote his most famous work, the Libri Quatuor Sententiarum (‘Four Books of Sentences’), around 1150. The Sentences is a systematic compilation of statements, or sententiae, from authoritative theological sources, including the Bible and commentaries of the Church Fathers. It quickly became a fundamental theological textbook in the medieval universities, and was the most frequently commented upon Christian text (besides the Bible) until the 16^th century.

The Winchester copy begins with a table of contents (fols 3r–8r). The text is decorated throughout with red and blue initials, the larger of which are elaborated with elaborate penwork. The wide margins of the text contain notes in various hands dating from the 13^th to 14^th centuries.

Bound into the manuscript before and after the Sentences (fols 1, 2, and 165) is an early 13^th-century Italian copy of the Compilatio quarta of Gratian’s Decretals. The Compilatio is the fourth addition to the Decretals: a 12^th-century legal textbook. Written by an anonymous author around 1216, the Compilatio quarta contains decrees from the pontificate of Innocent III (c. 1160–1216) and canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).

 

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, no. 1355; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 607; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 3; James M. W. Willoughby, The Libraries of Collegiate Churches, Vol. 2 (London, 2013), p. 822.

Provenance: Given to the College by Henry Jordan (Fellow, 1609–16), 7 April 1612. The manuscript formerly belonged to Queens’ College, Cambridge, probably entering the library after 1472, but before the mid-16^th century. The position of a chainmark suggests it may have belonged to another chained library other than that of Queens’ before it was in Jordan’s possession.

Location: Fellows’ Library