This leaf contains the beginning of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, introduced in red by ‘Incipit M.P. proemium’, and the chapter heading of Book 1 on the mystery of the Trinity. Peter Lombard (ca. 1096-1160) was a scholar who studied at the Cathedral Schools of Lucca, Reims and Paris. In Paris, he went on to teach at the Cathedral School of Notre Dame. Peter rose from subdeacon to bishop of Paris shortly before his death. With Peter Abelard, he was one of the most important scholastic theologians of his time.

The Four Books of Sentences (Libri Quatuor Sententiarum), Lombard’s most important work, was written around 1150. In this work, he assembled passages from the Bible and put them in dialogue with the writings of Church Fathers and medieval theologians. Divided into four books (on the Trinity, on creation, on sacraments and on Christ’s grace), this systematic compendium of biblical exegesis would become the standard textbook used in universities and numerous copies have survived.

This leaf comes from a manuscript that was probably made in Paris around 1170, shortly after Peter Lombard’s death. After the incipit is a 10-line initial with green, blue, red and gold vine tendrils. Such decoration is characteristic of the Parisian production of the 1160s and 1170s, especially in the abbey of Saint-Victor and the cathedral of Notre Dame.

The inscription in the lower margin reads ‘Dono V. Cl. Domini Aegidii Roberti Doctoris Theologi Paris, IV kal. Octobr. M.DC.LVII’ and indicates that the manuscript was given by Dr Gilles Robert to the Jesuit College of Clermont in Paris (later Collège Louis le Grand) in 1657. The later note in the upper margin confirms that it subsequently belonged to the Jesuit College in Paris. It was common for ownership inscriptions such as these to be added to the first page of a manuscript.