Stephen Langton and Hugh of St. Cher on Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica : The Lombard's sentences and the problem of sources used by Comestor and his commentators

Abstract

In this article, I explore preliminarily whether Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica was well suited to extended theological inquiry. After providing a brief introduction to Comestor's method to acquaint the reader with the literary character of the History, I turn my attention to the use by Stephen Langton and Hugh of St. Cher, two prominent commentators on the History, of source material that Comestor himself used in composing the History. I pay particular attention to the Lombard's Sentences, the most important source for Comestor's treatment of the first three chapters of Genesis in the first twenty-five chapters of the History and, not surprisingly, a crucial source for his two commentators. Focusing on source material from the Lombard's Sentences used both by Comestor and by Langton and Hugh illustrates well the disparate ends of Comestor and his commentators. It also provides a common basis for comparing not only how the two Peters treated certain problematic theological matters but also how Langton and Hugh interpreted and commented upon Comestor's presentation of the same. I conclude that, at least in certain instances, a work like the History was not entirely amenable to the new ways of pursuing theological inquiry in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.