EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
MS. NOTES IN A COPY OF LIBER SENTENTIARUM.
As MS. notes in old books have been regarded as fit matter for this journal, I would contribute two or three from a copy of Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences, printed at Vienna in 1477. This has not only passed through divers hands before it came into mine, but several previous owners have left their names in it, and one of them very numerous marginal comments. Of these the earliest appears to have been Thomas Wallwell or T. Swallwell, a monk of Durham, who, from the handwriting, which is of the fifteenth century, I conclude was the marginal commentator. He has availed himself of the "Laus Deo" below the colophon to add "q' Ts. Wallwell monachus ecclesiæ cathedralis Dunelmensis." The words are abbreviated, but I have given them at length except the first, which, instead of being a q, with a comma, is a q with an oblique line through it, that I thought might baffle the printer. The comments are very scholastic, and such as would then have been considered much to the purpose. It is possible some reader of this journal may be able to supply information respecting this erudite monk.
The next owner, judging by the handwriting, which seems little, if at all, later than 1500, has thus recorded his ownership on the blank side of the last leaf:
"Istius libri verus est possessor dominus Stephanus Merleye."
He was probably a priest, but I have discovered no annotations by him; though, as there is scarcely a page without writing on it, there may be some.
However, the note to which I would more particularly invite attention is at the top of the first page, and in the handwriting, I think, of the above-mentioned monk. It is in abbreviated Latin, but read in extenso it runs thus:
"Sententiæ Petri Lumbardi fratris Graciani qui decretum compilavit, et etiam Petri Comestoris, qui scholasticam historiam edidit et alia. Iste Petrus Lumbardus fecit istud opus, edidit glossas psalterii et Epistolarum et plura alia. Fuit etiam episcopus Parisiensis. Isti tres fratres uterini erant, et floruerunt anno salutis 1154, qui fuit annus ab origine mundi 6353."
Over the word Graciani is interlined "monachi" in the same hand. In this statement two things are remarkable:—1. The allegation that these three well-known writers of the twelfth century were uterine brothers. 2. The mundane era. The former is hardly reconcileable with the generally received account of them, but it is not altogether new. Cave, writing of Gratian, adverts to a story of their having been brothers in the following words:
"Non desunt plurimi qui Gratianum, Petri Lombardi, Petrique Comestoris germanum fuisse volunt, matremque tergeminos hos fratres ex furtivo concubitu conceptos uno partu edidisse, quod quidem nullo satis gravis autoris testimonio fulcitur."—Scriptores Eccl., vol. ii. p. 216.