Stephen Langton

The article is the most recent presentation of Stephen Langton’s Sentence Commentary which, in its turn, can be said to be the first example of a genuine Sentence Commentary. It opens with a brief sketch of Langton’s carrier and works, together with an attempt at dating these with reference to the steps of the author’s carrier. According to the guidelines provided by the general editor of the volume, the article presents in turn the way Langton’s Commentary (edited in 1958 by A.M. Landgraf) was transmitted in manuscript and, since the single manuscripts witness lack any ascription, how it was attributed to Langton by way of its strong doctrinal similarities with Langton’s other works. Langton’s Commentary originated as marginal glosses to a copy of the Sentences (composed before they were divided into “distinctiones”), then collected in a continuous text (to be read with a copy of the Sentences at hand). Before addressing some of the more characteristic doctrines found the Commentary, the article sketches briefly Langton’s theological method, which can be defined as “a technique of clarifying and elaborating upon a complex of truths already given, expressed in the Bible and in the dogmatic propositions accepted by the tradition. The task of the theologian is to show that this traditional corpus of texts, although originating in different periods and linguistic contexts, transmit a coherent message” (p. 52-53), i.e. this corpus contains no irresolvable contradictions. The goal of Langton’s theology is certainly not original, and lies indeed in a line which can traced back to Abelard’s “Sic et Non”, Peter the Chanter’s “De tropis loquendi” or William de Montibus’ “Tropi”. Differently from his predecessors, “Langton aims at constructing a formal system based on a limited number of essential elements: classes of terms, the distinction of the different semantic elements of these terms, postulates concerning the identity or the distinction between the entities signified by the terms” (p. 53). The bulk of the paper consist in exposing Langton teaching on the theological issues which were most debated between the death of Peter Lombard (1160) and the end of the 12th century, such as the Trinity, with Langton’s definition of ‘persona’, and his doctrine of the hypostatic union (aiming at avoiding the risks of the condemned “christological nihilianism” which seemed to be entailed in Lombard’s position). In conclusion, a list of cases is studied, in which Langton distantiates himself from several opinions expressed in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and also a list is given of suggested emendations to the edited text of Langton’s Commentary.