Christian History Home > Issue 73 > Thomas Aquinas: A Gallery of Scholastic Superstars
Thomas Aquinas: A Gallery of Scholastic Superstars
The white heat produced by these great minds lit up the High Middle Ages.
Stephen E. Lahey | posted 1/01/2002 12:00AM
MR. MIDDLE GROUND
Peter Lombard
c. 1100-1160
Peter Lombard's birthplace, the Piedmontese town of Novara, lies at a strategic crossroads between Turin, Milan, Genoa, and Switzerland. When Peter found himself at the crossroads of competing approaches to theology, he again chose the middle ground.
The intellectual climate of the early twelfth century was stormy. Peter Abelard (1079-1142), author of Sic et Non (Yes and No), questioned everything—and readily flouted church authority—in a quest for theological truth. Ecclesiastical authorities struggled just as vigorously to maintain the primacy of church fathers such as Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great.
Peter Lombard responded to this clash by writing a textbook characterized by its rigorous approach to the whole spectrum of theological knowledge. This text, called Sentences, would become the template for formal theological discourse well into the Modern period.
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