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Bouchard, Constance B. “Family Structure and Family Consciousness Among the Aristocracy in
the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries.” Francia 14(1986):639–58.
——.“The Migration of Women’s Names in the Upper Nobility, Ninth-Twelfth Centuries.”
Medieval Prosopography 9:2(1988):1–19.
——.“Patterns of Women’s Names in Royal Lineages, 9th-11th Centuries.” Medieval
Prosopography 9:1(1988):1–32.
Clark, Cecily. “Women’s Names in Post-Conquest England: Observations and Speculations.”
Speculum 53 (1978):223–51.
Morlet, Marie-Thérèse. Les noms de personne sur le territoire de l’ancienne Gaul du Vle au XIIe
siècle. 2 vols. Paris: CNRS, 1968.
Störmer, Wilhelm. Früher Adel: Studien zur politischen Führungsschicht im Fränkisch-Deutschen
Reich vom 8. bis 11. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1973, chap. 2.
Wenskus, Reinhard. Sächsischer Stammesadel und fränkischer Reichsadel. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1976.
Werner, Karl Ferdinand. “Liens de parenté et noms de personne: un problème historique et
méthodologique.” In Famille et parenté dans l’Occident médiévale, ed. Georges Duby and
Jacques Le Goff. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1977.
PETER COMESTOR
(ca. 1000–1178). Born in Troyes, Peter became in 1147 dean of the cathedral there.
Sometime before 1159, he went to Paris, where he studied under Peter Lombard and later
taught theology. He became chancellor of the cathedral of Notre-Dame between 1164 and
- He died in 1178 and was buried at the abbey of Saint-Victor. Although known
primarily for the Historia scholastica, Peter wrote other works, including some 150
sermons, the Summa de sacramentis (based on Peter Lombard’s Sententiae), some
quaestiones, and commentaries on the Gospels, as well as glosses on the Glossa
ordinaria, on the Magna glossatura of Peter Lombard, and perhaps on Lombard’s
Sententiae. The Historia scholastica, used in the schools and later in the university
curriculum, was a narrative presentation of biblical history from Creation through the life
of Jesus. Peter here sought to counteract what he saw as the destruction of the connected
literal-historical sense of the text through the practice of a spiritual exegesis that tended to
divide the text into brief “fragments” for symbolic interpretation. Peter not only drew
upon traditional patristic authors for the historical sense; he also used Josephus’s Jewish
Antiquities and the commentaries on the Octateuch by Andrew of Saint-Victor. In a
practical way, Peter continued the emphasis on reading Scripture according to the literal-
historical sense that had been established at the abbey of Saint-Victor by Hugh of Saint-
Victor.
Grover A.Zinn
[See also: ANDREW OF SAINT-VICTOR; BIBLE, CHRISTIAN
INTERPRETATION OF; HUGH OF SAINT-VICTOR]
Peter Comestor. Historia scholastica; Sermons. PL 198.1045–844.
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