The Four Books of Sentences
A systematic collection of the teachings of the Fathers in four books: on God, on creation, on the incarnation and on the sacraments. Later theologians, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure among them, wrote commentaries on it.
Read the text at tha.de ↗Latin text of books 3 and 4 in the Quaracchi edition of 1916 (Internet Archive) ↗
Peter Lombard compiled the Sentences from Scripture and the Fathers. His prologue says that the purpose is to put the opinions of the Fathers, with their own words, into one short volume, so that a student need not search through many books. The four books treat the Trinity, creation, the incarnation, and the “doctrine of signs”, that is the sacraments.
The date given above is that of the Bibliotheca Augustana, whose text is used here. The work is cited for what it says. Its later use as the book on which theologians lectured is not documented from the Sentences themselves.
Cited in
- about 1150 to 1215, estimated date