KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.
MS. NOTE IN A COPY OF LIBER SENTENTIARUM.
(Vol. iv., p. 188.)
Peter Lombard, Gratian, and Comestor (Vol. iv., p. 188.).—Your correspondent W. S. W. alludes to the above-mentioned worthies. I extract from Bishop Jeremy Taylor a passage or two in support of the story of their brotherhood:
"It is reported of the mother of Peter Lombard, Gratian, and Comestor, that she having had three sons begotten in unhallowed embraces, upon her death-bed did omit the recitation of those crimes to her confessor; adding this for apology, that her three sons proved persons so eminent in the church, that their excellency was abundant recompense for her demerit; and therefore she could not grieve, because God had glorified Himself so much by three instruments so excellent: and that although her sin had abounded, yet God's grace did superabound. Her confessor replied, 'At dole saltem, quod dolere non possis (Grieve that thou canst not grieve).'"—Sermon "On the Invalidity of a late or death-bed Repentance." Sermons, p. 234. Lond. 1678.
And again:
"To repent because we cannot repent, and to grieve because we cannot grieve, was a device invented to serve the turn of the mother of Peter Gratian."—Holy Dying, "Practice of Repentance in Sickness," Sect. vi. Rule 5. Lond. 1808.
RT.
Warmington.
W. S. W. (Vol. iv., p. 188.) invites attention to a manuscript note in his valuable copy of Peter Lombard's Sentences (ed. Vien. 1477), by which Lombard, Gratian, and Comestor are described as "fratres uterini."
Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, wrote about A.D. 1445. His account, therefore, of this clearly fabulous story must be somewhat earlier, as it is (at least in one particular) more curiously circumstantial. His words are (Chronic. Op., cap. vi. p. 65., ed. Lugd. 1586):