The Sentences. Giulio Silano, translator. 4 volumes: Book 1: The Mystery of the Trinity, and: The Sentences. Giulio Silano, translator. 4 volumes: Book 2: On Creation, and: The Sentences. Giulio Silano, translator. 4 volumes: Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word, and: The Sentences. Giulio Silano, translator. 4 volumes: Book 4: The Doctrine of Signs (review)

With the arrival of the fourth volume of this work, Peter Lombard's Sentences is now fully available in English for the first time. Giulio Silano's text, based on the third critical edition by Ignatius C. Brady in two volumes (Grottaferrata, 1971-81) is distinguished by its accuracy and readability, meeting the exacting criteria of a Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies translation. Each volume has a detailed table of contents, an index of biblical and patristic references, and a full bibliography of English translations of sources cited in the text along with on-line versions where they exist. Volume 1 contains a bibliography of Anglophone scholarship pertinent to the Lombard, not updated in volume 4. Omissions aside, and not always late-breaking ones, the bibliography in volume 1 contains (remarkably) the only glitch: Silano misspells the name of Nancy Spatz and omits Nancy van Deusen, editor of the collection in which Spatz's paper appears. Silano presents a substantial introduction to each volume; the one in the first volume also reprises the known facts about the Lombard's life and works. Put forth as mere summaries of the work's contents, these introductions are actually mini-commentaries that frequently give the translator's own opinions, delivering pats and pans in particular to the readings of Philipp W. Rosemann and the undersigned. The understanding of the Sentences yielded by these introductions has both strengths and weaknesses. Some themes receive brilliant elucidation. Others do not do the Lombard full justice. Newcomers to his study are thus advised to use Silano's introductions with caution.

Among the many virtues of this translation, Silano prints his own English versions of the sources the Lombard cites by name or work, even when earlier translations exist, for the sake of consistency in style, spelling, and punctuation. A limitation of this policy is that he does not do the same for the moderni conventionally flagged in the Sentences as quidam or alii. Earlier scholars have identified them, and the Lombard sometimes quotes them verbatim. Silano omits them, unless, like Hugh of St. Victor's De sacramentis, the Glossa ordinaria on the Song of Songs, and two selections from Gratian's Decretum, they have English translations. Thus, he does not regard it as part of his remit to alert readers to the Lombard's debts, positive and negative, to Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, the Summa sententiarum, and most of Gratian and the Glossa ordinaria, not to mention the Lombard's own Collectanea, among his major sources. These omissions convey the misleading impression that Peter's only conversation partners are authorities who wrote in the ninth century or earlier.

Silano's most outstanding achievement lies in his rendering of passages where the Lombard's exposition is the most technical and where he uses a precise and consistent theological and philosophical vocabulary. Notable above all are the sections on the Trinity, Christology, and the Eucharist. Here, Silano's translations combine precision and accessibility. He also makes some less fortunate translation decisions. As cases in point: in the Lombard's expression of the modest author topos in his general prologue, he writes 'praesumpsimus,' which Silano gives...