this process of evolution, although it has long been associated with Anselm of Laon. We
must, however, bear in mind that each biblical book or set of books has a different
exegetical history; the manner and type of glossing is not the same all the way through.
Moreover, although Laon may have had a large part to play in producing the text, it was
in Paris that many glossed Bibles of this period originate. Paris became a renowned
center for book production, and it was perhaps the quantity and quality of glossed Bibles
made here in these years that fueled its reputation.
How the Glossa was used, and what effect it had on subsequent medieval exegesis, is
still a moot point. The surge in the production of texts of the Glossa coincides with the
rise of secular schools, where reference books would be highly useful tools. The patristic
texts chosen for inclusion in the Glossa are, as far as we can tell without a modern critical
edition, conservative. We can therefore see the Glossa either as petrifying the accepted
range of interpretation of a particular passage of Scripture or as collecting the standard
exegesis and putting it to one side so that scholars could move on in other directions.
Depending on one’s point of view, the Glossa gives the fundamental norms of
interpretation, or it gives the old-fashioned approach. Its usefulness must vary according
to the knowledge and skill of its user.
After the 1170s, new copies of the Glossa become rare. They are replaced by the
Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor (a sort of digest and paraphrase of the Bible that
was immensely popular among students), the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, and later by
the biblical commentaries of Stephen Langton and the Dominican master Hugues de
Saint-Cher, whose postilla on the whole Bible were immensely successful. These, in their
way, are the Glossa ordinaria of the 13th century.
The Glossa, then, was the standard first step for biblical interpreters of the 12th
century. They might use it to produce their own exegeses of the text, whether in sermon
form or continuous commentary. The production of biblical commentaries remained the
standard form of professional development for aspiring theologians. As part of the higher
degree in theology at the University of Paris, the premier European institution for the
study of theology in the 12th and 13th centuries, every student had to “read,” that is,
lecture on, at least one book of the Old Testament and one of the New.
How was the Bible interpreted? The usual generalization is that exegesis is made
according to the “senses” of Scripture. The number and exact nature of these senses
varies with time and commentator, but the basic division is into a literal or historical
sense and a moral or allegorical sense. This dichotomy is generally linked to the
prevailing practices and theological preferences of the early Christian church at Antioch,
which held to the literal sense, and at Alexandria, which preferred allegory. In this vein,
the main early interpreters of the Antiochene school were John Chrysostom and Theodore
of Mopsuestia; the leading Alexandrine exegete was Origen.
Over time, the picture grows more complicated, with the spiritual sense dividing into
further categories, so that, for instance, John Cassian held to a ninefold sense of
Scripture. However, the classic formulation for the Middle Ages is a fourfold sense of
Scripture, enshrined in a verse attributed to Augustine of Dacia:
Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,
Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.Medieval france: an encyclopedia 232