[See also: GAUTIER DE VARINFOY; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE]
Bégule, Lucien. La cathédrale de Sens: son architecture, son décor. Lyon: Rey, 1929.
Bruand, Yves. “Église Saint-Jean de Sens.” Congrès archéologique (Auxerre) 116(1958):383–91.
Henriet, Jacques. “La cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Sens: le parti du premier maître et les campagnes
du XIIe siècle.” Bulletin monumental 140(1982):81–168.
Kurmann, Peter, and Dethard von Winterfeld. “Gautier de Varinfroy: Ein ‘Denkmalpfleger’ im 13.
Jahrhundert.” In Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. L. Griesbach and
K.Renger. Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1977, pp. 101–59, esp. 121–43.
Salet, Francis. “La cathédrale de Sens et sa place dans l’histoire de l’architecture médiévale.”
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, comptes-rendus des séances (1955):182–87.
Severens, Kenneth W. “The Early Campaign at Sens, 1140–1145.” Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 29 (1970):97–107.
——.“The Continuous Plan of Sens Cathedral.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
34(1975):198–207.
SENTENCE COLLECTIONS
. Originally, sententia was the term for a scriptural text under consideration, but it came
to mean the interpretation of that text. Sententiae is a Latin word meaning “opinions,”
and sentence collections, sometimes called florilegia (“bunches of flowers”), are
gatherings of the opinions of the church fathers, arranged around topics. Sentence
collections could be more popular than the original works, and patristic authorities might
well be quoted from these collections rather than from the complete work. Sometimes,
sentence collections feature the opinions of only one author: Gregory the Great was
popular in this respect. Early sentence collections were compiled by Prosper of Aquitaine
and Isidore of Seville.
Biblical exegesis was most commonly done book by book, following the text of any
one book straight through. But certain questions that arose out of the text could be
detached from it and continue life as separate topics, with the opinions of their patristic
authorities in attendance. Grouped together, these formed collections of sentences and are
the progenitors of the great summae, or summaries, of theology that are the characteristic
product of the scholasticism of the high Middle Ages.
Some of the famous collections of the Middle Ages are associated with Anselm of
Laon, especially the Sententiae divinae paginae and the Sententiae Anselmi, both
collected together after his death. The anonymous Summa sententiarum, probably by Otto
of Lucca, was used by Peter Lombard for his own Sententiae; but most collections are
both anonymous and more ordinary than these, for they represent the “commonplace
books” of readers and preachers, rather in the manner of books of distinctiones. Other
famous collections are the Liber Pancrisis, the Sententiae Atrebatensis, and the
Sententiae of Robert Pullen and of Rolando Bandinelli. It has been argued that sentences
are a particular production of the “School of Laon,” under Anselm, and that they form a
bridge between the output of the monasteries and the more combative work of the
schools. However, as so often in the Middle Ages, our understanding is hampered by a
confusion of terms, both modern and medieval. We may attempt to deal with centuries of
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