Comparing Manuscripts of the "Sentences"
Introduction: These three images depict the first page of the first book of Peter Lombard’s Sentences from three different manuscripts: the manuscript discussed above from the Fisher Library which likely originated in Paris in the late 13th century, a manuscript originating in England from between 1275-1325, and another manuscript originating in France from 1399.
Book: Note the similarities and differences between the glosses of the three copies of the Sentences. There is such great variance in the quantity of glosses for a given page from copy to copy. However, glossing was certainly a standardized practice: Especially in the second manuscript on the left, note the clearly ruled lines which have prepared the pages for glosses to be added. For the second manuscript, the subtle ruled lines are more visible in the bottom images. Also note that the scripts for the glosses are consistently different than the scripts for each standard text of the Sentences.
Conclusion:
A medieval historian named David Salomon describes glosses of medieval texts, such as the ones you have just seen, as analogous to hypertext: “Instead of using a mouse to navigate text, the medieval reader used his cognitive process to navigate and ‘link’ sections both of the texts in front of him and of texts with which he was already familiar.”[1] The widespread practice of glossing is essential to understand medieval manuscript culture: Soloman asserts that “without printed work to consult on a regular basis, manuscript culture relied more heavily on memory to catalogue one’s reading, compiling what I would term a curriculum vitae of the mind. The individual as a “living concordance” of a “living library” is an accurate reflection of a culture for which memory was the most important faculty of the mind, a culture for which the printed text, as a tangible extension of that memory, would only serve to aid the further building of that concordance.”[2] Clearly, the notes, the references to other authors and to Bible passages, the organized lists, and the countless other details contained in the glosses are a window into medieval knowledge transmission which can only be accessed through original medieval manuscripts glosses, like the Sententiarum Libri IV.