Sentences- Med MS 7A

Peter Lombard, Sentences. Single folio on vellum. England, ca. 1275: 328 x 218 mm, written area 200 x 125 mm. Double column, 50 lines. Decoration: four multi-line initials in alternating red and blue with contrasting penwork decoration rubricated headings and marginal chapter numbers in red and blue. Abundant marginal glossing in a fourteenth-century English hand. Provenance: from a manuscript owned by Edward Walmsley (his sale, Marc 1795), Nell and Charles Wheeler (their sale, New York, 29 July 1919 lot 593), and C Lindsay Ricketts (d. 1941; see De Ricci, Census, 1 p. 646, no. 185, his sale Parke-Berne, NYC, 24 February 1929 lot 280). This leaf sold at Sotheby’s 22 June 1982 lot 25 (to Ralph Hanna), re-sold 17 June 1997 lot 16. The manuscript was already missing leaves by 1910, for John Frederick Lewis acquired fragments at that time (now Philadelphia, Free Library MS Lewis XIII:373).

Peter Lombard, (French- Pierre Lombard, Latin-Petrus Lombardus) was born ca. 1100 in Novara, Lombardy and died August 21 or 22, 1160 in Paris. He was the bishop of Paris whose Four Books of Sentences (Sententiarum libri IV) was the standard theological text of the Middle Ages. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]