The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's 'Sentences'

The Story of a Great Medieval Book will be of great interest to students of the history of theology as well as for those interested in intellectual history more generally. In this broadly conceived and accessibly written book, Philipp W. Rosemann surveys the legacy of Peter Lombard in representative commentaries on his Sentences from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century, charting shifts in their literary form and in the commentators' changing views of the theological enterprise itself. As lucid as it is learned, his study succeeds admirably in introducing newcomers to this subject while at the same time mapping the terrain for future research. A distinguished and innovative contribution to the Rethinking the Middle Ages series.

Marcia L. Colish, Visiting Fellow, Yale University

After a somewhat controversial start, the Sentences of Peter Lombard became every author's dream, the standard textbook of its subject, and required reading on systematic theology for many generations of students. Rosemann's readable and perceptive book traces this medieval phenomenon through the changes of scholarly fashion it survived for so long and asks why it succeeded so well and why, in the end, it gave way to a new style of doing theology.

G.R. Evans, Professor Emeritus of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge

The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' provides an excellent introduction not only to the history and textual traditions of commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences, but also to how such texts were used by university students and teachers of the late Middle Ages. Through his analysis of the important commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Rosemann traces the development of the discipline of theology itself from a study of sacred texts to an independent scientific discipline within man's understanding. This is not the end of the story, though, for Rosemann also finds a late medieval reaction to this idea which returned a sense of mystery to God on the eve of the Reformation. By providing an analytical structure through which hundreds of late medieval commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences that survive today can be understood, Philipp W. Rosemann's work provides an extremely useful conceptual framework for new students of late medieval theology.

Donna Trembinski, Queen's University