Principia on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Exploring an Uncharted Scholastic Philosophical Genre Across Europe. Edited by Monica Brînzei and William O. Duba. Studia Sententiarum 7.1–2. Turnhout: Brepols 2024. Part 1: xvii, 699 pp., Part 2: 468 pp.

Monica Brînzei and William O. Duba have collected an impressive amount of research on university principia on the Sentences, as well as edited editions of many of the texts discussed. This project, if for no other reason than its size, recalls the three volume Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (edited by Gillian Evans and Peter Rosemann [Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002–2015]). Its focus, however, is on a less well-known genre of theological literature on the Sentences, the principium. Principia in the university context of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were inaugural sermons and debates given publicly by bachelors of theology prior to lectures on the Sentences, and sometimes afterward recorded from notes or even incorporated into later published work on the Sentences (see, for instance, Wӧllner’s chapter on inaugural speeches at Paris [vol. 1 pp. 65–107]). Because this genre was less widely established than the commentary form, and more concretely embedded into the curriculum of the theology faculty, it provides a unique window into university practices across Europe.