• Peter Lombard, the “Master of Sentences,” so called from his Libri Sententiarum . In the dedication of this work to the Church he says that he wishes “to contribute, like the poor widow, his mite to the treasury of the Lord.” The following account of him and his doctrines is from Milman, History of Latin Christianity , VIII 238:⁠— “Peter the Lombard was born near Novara, the native place of Lanfranc and of Anselm. He was Bishop of Paris in 1159. His famous Book of the Sentences was intended to be, and became to a great extent, the Manual of the Schools. Peter knew not, or disdainfully threw aside, the philosophical cultivation of his day. He adhered rigidly to all which passed for Scripture, and was the authorized interpretation of the Scripture, to all which had become the creed in the traditions, and law in the decretals, of the Church. He seems to have no apprehension of doubt in his stern dogmatism; he will not recognize any of the difficulties suggested by philosophy; he cannot, or will not, perceive the weak points of his own system. He has the great merit that, opposed as he was to the prevailing Platonism, throughout the Sentences the ethical principle predominates; his excellence is perspicuity, simplicity, definiteness of moral purpose.