Commentary on the Sentences

The Commentary on the Sentences is the written record of Aquinas's lectures on Peter Lombard's Four Books of Sentences, delivered at the University of Paris between 1252 and 1256 . Writing a commentary on the Sentences was a standard requirement for a bachelor of theology seeking to become a master, and it served as evidence of one's qualification for the degree . But the work is far more than an academic exercise: in its final form, the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum is a stunning intellectual achievement in breadth, coherence, and size . It allowed Aquinas to address the full range of theological topics—God, creation, Christ, sacraments, eschatology—using Lombard's distinctions as a framework for his own questions and resolutions.

The Commentary is not a draft of the Summa but its immediate forerunner. One bookseller's description, citing the Catholic Encyclopedia, notes that the commentary stands among Aquinas's first important theological writings and is one of the immediate forerunners of the Summa Theologica . A contemporary catalog observes that the massive Commentary is Aquinas's first systematic engagement with all the philosophical and theological topics on which he expended his energy over his career, and that it is characterized by an exuberance and elaborateness seldom found in his subsequent writings . The Summa is more streamlined and pedagogical, but the Commentary preserves Aquinas thinking through problems at greater length and with more experimental freedom. It was never formally superseded; it remains an essential source for tracing the development of his positions.

For each distinction of Lombard's text, Aquinas proceeds in three stages. First comes the divisio textus, a division of the text that provides a conceptual frame for the whole distinction and its parts . Second, Aquinas raises his own questions on the material, divided into articles and sometimes further into quaestiunculae, in the modified form of the disputed question . These questions may arise from Lombard's text, from disputes of Aquinas's own day, or from topics he considers necessary or interesting. Third, there is an expositio textus, in which he briefly touches on specific issues arising directly from Lombard's words that do not merit articles of their own . The result is a work that is simultaneously commentary and personal systematic theology.

Yes. In 1265, the general chapter of the Dominicans ordered Aquinas to return to the Roman province to educate beginning Dominican theologians, and he taught the Sentences there for one year, 1265–1266 . This second classroom commentary, known as the Lectura Romana, was never published by Aquinas and all but disappeared. The only reference to it is found in the biography of Thomas by Tolomeo of Lucca, written around 1317, who says he had even seen a manuscript . The Lectura Romana was rediscovered in the twentieth century and has recently been edited. Its existence matters because it allows scholars to compare Aquinas's earlier Parisian commentary with his later Roman treatment of the same distinctions, tracking the development of his thought on specific issues .

The Commentary survives in numerous manuscripts and was among the earliest printed works of Aquinas. The fourth book was printed as early as 1469 by Peter Schöffer in Mainz . A second Venice edition of the fourth book appeared in 1481, printed by Johannes Herbort de Seligenstadt for Johannes de Colonia, Jenson et Socii . The complete Commentary was included in the major editions of Aquinas's works, including the Parma and Vivès editions, and is now being edited critically by the Leonine Commission. The Leonine edition remains unpublished for much of the Commentary, which is why the 2008 English translation of the love and charity texts notes that the better part of its translation is based on the as-yet unpublished Leonine critical edition .

The Commentary has suffered almost total neglect among translators, despite its importance . The reason is partly its sheer size—more than 4,000 pages in the last printed edition—and partly the difficulty of the Latin and the scholastic format. For modern students of Thomistic and medieval thought, it has remained a closed book because of its relative inaccessibility in English or in Latin . The situation began to change with the 2008 publication of On Love and Charity: Readings from the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, translated by Peter A. Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin, and Joseph Bolin, published by the Catholic University of America Press . This volume contains the major texts on love and charity from all four books and is by far the most extensive English translation ever made from the Commentary . No complete English translation exists.

The most common misunderstanding is that it is merely a commentary—a secondary exposition of someone else's text—and therefore less important than the Summa. This is false. The Commentary is a work of original systematic theology, not a slavish following of Lombard. A nineteenth-century assessment notes that Aquinas did not hesitate to correct both Lombard's arguments and conclusions, as well as to offer solutions to many curious theological problems about which the Master was unable to make up his mind . The commentary was the genre through which a bachelor demonstrated mastery of theology and qualification for the mastership; it was expected to be original, not derivative . Readers who treat it as a preliminary exercise miss the fact that some of Aquinas's most extended and experimental treatments of key topics appear here, not in the Summa.