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Peter Lombard's Libri Quattuor Sententiarum (Four Books of Sentences)
Book 2 Distinction 7

Postscripts

Postscript February 2001

From her retirement Rhona has continued her research into the sources of our fragment. The results of this new research have been included in the endnotes to the text. In addition, she has located another published edition of Lombard's work by Bonaventura entitled Petrii Lombardi Libri IV Sententiarum studio et cura P.P. Collegii S. Bonaventurae in lucem editio 2nd edition Ad Claras Atques prope Florentiam 1916 located at the Bodley Library to compare with the Migne edition.

In January 2001 a Sydney bookseller located another piece of our fragment which had been separated at some time and framed for display purposes. He was able to negotiate the sale with the owner and it now resides with our fragment.

Postscript March 2001

Thankyou to Bro. Alexis Bugnolo, editor of The Franciscan Archive, who has sent me a link to an ongoing English translation of Lombard's Sentences from the Quarrachi edition of 1882. At the present time only selected distinctions from Lombard's first book, in Latin & English, have been completed.

Postscript May 2002

Denis Muzerelle (via email dated 25.5.02) from the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (Section de paléographie latine) 40 avenue d'Iéna, F-75116 Paris believes the origin of our manuscript fragment is undoubtedly Northern France (presumably Paris), 2nd quarter of the 13th century. We thank him for his expert opinion.
http://irht.cnrs-orleans.fr/
http://irht.cnrs-orleans.fr/cipl/cipl.htm

Postscript October 2004

According to Associate Professor Wanda Zemler-Cizewski from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin our fragment has been identified as forming part of another that binds one of the rare books held at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Associate Professor Zemler-Cizewski who has examined and compared their vellum leaves with our online ones, believes that they are from the same manuscript. The book is a 1526 printing from the Parisian press of Johannes Petit of Thomas Aquinas' lectures on the epistles of St. Paul entitled Sancti Thome de Aquino Ordinis Predicatorum Super epistolas Pauli commentaria preclarissima : cum tabula vel indice alphabetico. She says that "the boards of the original binding are missing, but there are two full vellum leaves attached, one in front and the other at the back. They contain the text of Peter Lombard's Sentences lib. 2, dist. 8 and 9. The text is in a 13th c. north French hand, in two columns 5.1 cm. wide with a 1cm. space between the columns. The average height of the letters is .5 cm. Each column is 39 lines. Capital letters are done in blue ink with fine red penned decoration around them and subheadings within the text are done in red ink."

I was also contacted by the donor of the Aquinas volume, Mr. William Throckmorton Warren, who thanked us for the work we had done on the manuscript fragments. He said that the work he donated to Marquette University  has been in his family for centuries. Written in Latin, the book is missing its cover but is still extremely valuable, as only two other copies are known to exist in all the world. In the binding of this book are the 8th and 9th distinctions from Book 2 of Lombard's work. We hold the manuscript fragments of distinction 7.

The book was published and found its way into Mr Warren's family in the 17th century, when it was acquired by his ancestor, Sir Robert Throckmorton, 1st Baronet of Coughton, Warwickshire, in England. This distant relative, who signed the book in 1627, along with others in the family had a history of religious persecution. Mr Warren is unclear concerning the book's provenance between the years 1627 and 1938, when it was purchased in England by a friend, who subsequently returned it to the family when Mr Warren was born. In July of this year he donated  the volume to the Marquette University library. There is a further Australian connection in that he was educated at Footscray Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The Marquette University's connection to our University's Dr. Rhona Beare is yet another coincidence. They own the original manuscripts for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and later this week they'll be hosting an international conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of LOTR, and so they are very familiar with Dr. Beare's scholarship on J.R.R. Tolkien.