Online Conference: Qui primus legit: Studies in Sentence Commentaries on the Eighth Centenary of Alexander of Hales’s Lectures (July 11 & 12, 2024)
From 1223 to 1227, Alexander of Hales, Regent Master in Theology at the University of Paris, delivered his magisterial morning lectures based not on the traditional material — Sacred Scripture — but rather on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. This innovation changed the study of theology in European universities for the next several centuries.
Until the time of the Reformation (and considerably beyond it in some places), the Sentences would retain its place as the most important textbook for advanced study of theology and philosophy in the Latin language. Alexander subsequently joined the Franciscan Order, giving the Franciscan Friars a permanent place within the University of Paris theology faculty and a share in the common scholastic culture that included commenting on the Sentences.
On the eighth centenary of his groundbreaking Gloss on the Sentences, this conference will address this theme highlighting the genre of the Sentence commentary as a key locus for the handing on (tradere) of theological tradition, doctrinal development, and theological and philosophical debate in medieval and early modern intellectual culture.
Register here.