Book Series Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, vol. 37

Petrus Comestor

Lectures on the Glossa ordinaria

David M. Foley, Simon Whedbee (eds)

  • Pages: xi + 157 p.
  • Size:140 x 215 mm
  • Language(s):Latin
  • Publication Year:2022

  • € 17,50 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-0-88844-487-5
  • Paperback
  • Available


Review(s)

"The published texts are produced to a high standard but are light on their feet; they give readers a good sense of both the malleability and the remarkable relative accuracy of medieval manuscript copies." (Lesley Smith, in Sehepunkte, 23/9, 2023)

Summary

Edited for the first time from the late twelfth-century manuscript Troyes, Médiathèque du Grand Troyes, MS 1024, the prefatory material of Comestor’s lecture courses on the four glossed Gospels offers a unique glimpse into the classroom of one of Paris’s preeminent masters at the height of the renaissance of the twelfth century. Peter Comestor’s oral lectures on the Glossa ordinaria were originally delivered at the cathedral school of Paris around the year 1160 and survive in the form of student transcripts. As one of the period’s pioneering masters, Comestor lectured using the newly-fashioned biblical Gloss as his textbook, meticulously weaving its component glosses into his teaching to distil its richly varied patristic exegesis. While at times elegant and consciously rhetorical, Comestor’s lectures are preserved in vividly conversational Latin, bearing traces of the master’s direct address to his students and lively examples drawn from contemporary life in the schools.