Commentary on the Sentences

Genre and Historical Context

The Commentary on the Sentences refers not to a single work but to a major scholastic genre: learned expositions on Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences (Libri quattuor Sententiarum), a mid‑twelfth‑century compilation of authoritative theological statements. Lombard’s Sentences rapidly became the standard theology textbook in the emerging universities of Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere.

From the early thirteenth century, composing a formal commentary on the Sentences was a required step for theologians seeking the highest academic degrees and teaching licenses. As a result, nearly every major Latin scholastic—among them Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel—produced such a commentary. These works are typically titled Scriptum super Sententiis (“writing on the Sentences”) or Commentarius in Sententias.

The genre thus occupies a central place in medieval intellectual culture. It functioned both as:

• A pedagogical tool, organizing Christian doctrine according to Lombard’s fourfold division (Trinity, creation, Christ and salvation, sacraments and last things).
• A research format, in which new philosophical and theological positions could be developed under the rubric of explicating an authoritative text.

Structure and Method

Commentaries generally follow the division of Lombard’s Sentences into four books:

1. Book I: God and the Trinity
2. Book II: Creation, angels, and human nature
3. Book III: Christ, virtue, and the moral life
4. Book IV: Sacraments and eschatology

Within this framework, individual commentaries often exhibit the characteristic scholastic method:

• Textual exposition: The commentator first paraphrases or explicates Lombard’s text, sometimes noting its sources (e.g., Augustine, Anselm, earlier canon law).
• Questions and distinctions (quaestiones, distinctiones): The text is divided into “distinctions” and further unpacked through disputed questions on specific doctrinal or philosophical problems.
• Objections and replies: Many commentaries adopt a quasi‑disputational format: presenting objections drawn from authorities or reason, then offering a determinatio (authorial solution) followed by detailed replies.
• Use of authorities and reason: Scriptural and patristic citations are combined with Aristotelian philosophy, especially from the thirteenth century onward, reflecting the integration of newly translated Greek and Arabic materials.

Because the commentary was an academic exercise, its method is often exploratory. Authors sometimes propose tentative solutions, reserve judgment, or discuss multiple views without conclusively deciding among them. This experimental character makes the Commentaries invaluable for tracing the development of a thinker’s views in contrast to later, more polished works (such as Aquinas’s Summa theologiae).

Philosophical Themes and Influence

Although primarily theological, the Commentaries engage extensively with philosophical questions. Among the recurring themes are:

• Metaphysics of God: Discussions of divine simplicity, attributes, Trinitarian relations, and the nature of divine knowledge and will. These sections shaped later debates on classical theism.
• Creation and ontology: Analyses of creation ex nihilo, the nature of time, the hierarchy of beings (angels, humans, material creatures), and the status of universals, substance, and accident.
• Human nature and cognition: Treatments of the soul, intellect and will, free choice, and the relation between reason and grace. Later philosophical psychology draws heavily on these discussions.
• Ethics and law: Investigations of virtues, vices, happiness, natural law, and divine law, often connecting moral theology to broader moral philosophy.
• Language and logic: Especially in fourteenth‑century commentaries, sophisticated work on signification, mental language, and logical consequence appears in the context of theological questions.

Because the genre was institutionally central, it became the primary site for articulating innovations. Many positions later associated with a thinker’s name—such as Scotus’s univocity of being or Ockham’s nominalism—first appear or are systematically worked out in their Sentences commentaries.

The influence of these works extends into early modern thought. Reformers such as Martin Luther were trained in the Sentences tradition, and early Protestant scholasticism initially reworks the genre before gradually replacing Lombard with other loci‑based systems. Elements of the scholastic method and many doctrines (on grace, justification, sacraments) can be traced back through this commentary tradition.

Reception and Modern Scholarship

Historically, the Commentaries on the Sentences formed the backbone of university theology from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Their sheer number is enormous: hundreds of commentaries, partial and complete, survive in manuscript, many still unedited.

From the seventeenth century onward, as scholastic curricula declined, the genre was often viewed as overly technical or repetitive. Modern historians initially focused more on later, self‑standing works (e.g., summas and treatises) than on Sentences commentaries. However, twentieth‑ and twenty‑first‑century research has emphasized that these commentaries are often the earliest and most detailed sources for a thinker’s doctrinal and philosophical positions.

Contemporary scholarship uses the Commentaries to:

• Reconstruct intellectual networks, teaching practices, and academic careers in medieval universities.
• Trace the evolution of doctrines on topics such as the Trinity, grace, ecclesiology, and natural law.
• Study the intersection of philosophy and theology, especially how Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Arabic traditions were appropriated in a Christian context.

Assessment of the genre remains mixed. Some critics highlight the density, formalism, and dependence on authority; others stress its conceptual rigor, its capacity for systematic analysis, and its crucial role in shaping Western philosophical theology. Whatever the evaluation, the Commentaries on the Sentences constitute one of the most important and voluminous bodies of scholastic writing, indispensable for understanding medieval philosophy and theology as a whole.