Peter Comestor

English

It belongs to imperial majesty to have three chambers in the palace: the hall of audience or council, in which it decrees laws; the dining-hall, in which it distributes food; the bedchamber, in which it rests. After this manner our Emperor, who commands the winds and the sea, has this world for his hall of audience, where all things are disposed at his nod — whence that word of Isaiah: I fill heaven and earth. According to this he is called Lord: whence, The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. He has the soul of the just for his bedchamber, because his delights are to rest there and to be with the sons of men: according to this he is called the bridegroom, and each soul the bride. He has holy Scripture for his dining-hall, in which he so makes his own drunk that he renders them sober: whence, We walked in the house of God with consent — being of one mind in holy Scripture. According to this he is called the householder. Of this dining-hall there are three parts: foundation, wall, roof. History is the foundation, of which there are three kinds: annals, calendars, day-books. Allegory is the wall leaning upon it, which figures one deed by another. Tropology is the roof set on the summit, which by what has been done intimates what is to be done by us. The first is plainer, the second sharper, the third sweeter.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 198, col. 1053 · pd

Notes

Why a book of Scripture begins with a narrative of events, answered by a builder's metaphor that is also a curriculum. Scripture is the Emperor's dining-hall, and the hall has a foundation, a wall and a roof: history, allegory, tropology — the first plainer, the second sharper, the third sweeter. History is the foundation, so it comes first because nothing can be built before it is laid, and the Historia scholastica is a whole book written on that principle. It is the most institutional answer on the daf: not why God began the book here, but why a master beginning to teach it must begin here. The three kinds of history — annals, calendars, day-books — are the technical vocabulary of a twelfth-century classroom. ⚠ Anchor note: a prologue, built by PLAN.md §5's specification for K2; see the file docstring.

Threads

• → echoes · Hugh of St Victor
  Two Paris prologues a generation apart, and the second answers the difficulty the first creates. Hugh has left the works of foundation to secular writings and must explain how Scripture descends through them; Comestor makes history the foundation of the building and allegory the wall that leans upon it, so that beginning with the creation is not a detour but the first course of masonry. Comestor is Hugh's pupil's pupil and the metaphor is doing structural work.
• → contests · Bereshit Rabbah
  The most complete opposition on the daf, and neither text knows the other exists. Comestor's Scripture is a dining-hall in which the Emperor makes his own drunk so as to render them sober, with a threefold curriculum built on it and a book to follow. Bereshit Rabbah's fifth section curses those who expound the work of creation for their own honour and reserves the concealed matters to the Righteous One. One tradition institutionalises the exposition; the other keeps warning itself against it — and both then produce the exposition anyway.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  Comestor says history is the foundation and that the narrative comes first because everything built on it needs it. Philo says the cosmogony comes first because the minds of those who will use the laws have to be shaped beforehand. Both make the opening a pedagogical necessity rather than a chronological one, and Comestor states as a rule of the schools what Philo states as a reading of Moses's intention.