The Making of the Historia scholastica, 1150-1200 by Mark Clark (review)

The Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor, Chancellor of Notre-Dame until around 1178, has been unjustly neglected as an exegetical masterpiece of the later twelfth century. Clark seeks to overturn an assumption made by Martin Grabmann and others that Peter Comestor should be bracketed more with so-called “biblicalmoral” teachers like Peter the Chanter than speculative theologians like Peter Lombard. Such a dichotomy, Clark argues, does a profound disservice to Peter Comestor, who he argues was a close and loyal disciple, not just of Peter Lombard, but of the Magna glosatura on the Bible, which Peter Lombard played a key role in establishing. Given the wide influence of the Historia scholastica, the task of editing and contextualising this work of exegetical synthesis is no easy task.

Clark has two principal goals: to examine the literary influences that shape the way in which Comestor identified historia that he saw as the foundational narrative of Scripture and always aimed at students in the schools, and the way in which Stephen Langton used, lectured on, and revised the Historia from before 1176 until around 1193. He argues that the Historia scholastica, dedicated by Comestor to William of Whitehands, Archbishop of Sens, sometime between 1168 and 1173, implements a Victorine conception of historia as a foundation for both allegorical and tropological readings, while selecting from a mass of glosses on Scripture that a succession of masters had compiled, following the pioneering achievements of Anselm of Laon and his immediate disciples in the early twelfth century. In particular, Clark places great emphasis on Comestor’s reliance on the Magna glosatura on most books of Scripture as it stood after the death of Peter Lombard in 1160. While only Lombard’s glosses on the Psalter and the Epistles of St. Paul are known, Clark is keenly aware of the fact, known through Stephen Langton, that Peter Lombard also lectured on much else of the Old Testament as well as on the Gospels. The Historia is one of the earliest texts to draw heavily in its exegesis on what it refers to simply as “the Gloss,” a vast collection of comments culled from the writings of the Fathers, Josephus, as well as some later masters. Comestor was thus providing an enormous aid to students of exegesis, by providing a synthesis of Scripture as a historical narrative as well as quick access to those glosses that helped expound historical matters. Given that Augustine’s approach was often allegorical, while Gregory gave most attention to its moral message, Comestor was extending the historical perspective of Hugh and Andrew of St. Victor with the wealth of information given in these glosses, above all as synthesised by Peter Lombard.

After exploring Comestor’s unpublished lectures on the Four Gospels (itself a project of major significance, given the priority often accorded by theologians to the Pauline Epistles), Clark considers not just the organizational achievement of the Historia, but the various presentations and reading of its text offered by Stephen Langton. He leaves us in no doubt that Comestor played a central role for Langton, who he argues was responsible for editing the Historia to make it accessible to students. Clark does not comment on the potential contribution of Peter of Poitiers (who took over from Comestor as teacher of theology in 1169) in closing the Historia with an influential set of genealogical diagrams, preserved in key manuscripts of the work, or the polemical claims about Lombard and Peter of Poitiers made by Walter, Prior of St. Victor, as late as 1178. Nonetheless, Clark clearly explains how Langton ensured that the Historia would be respected as an introduction to Scripture.