The Commentaries on Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica of Stephen Langton, Pseudo-Langton, and Hugh of St. Cher

This article, which serves as an introduction to the commentaries of Stephen Langton, Pseudo-Langton, and Hugh of St. Cher, updates and builds upon Lacombe's introductory study of Langton's commentaries on the History. (George Lacombe, "Studies on the Commentaries of Cardinal Stephen Langton, Part 1," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 5 (1930): 5-151, at 18- 51). It shows the extent to which the History itself and these four commentaries — two by Langton, one by Pseudo-Langton, so named because his commentary is largely a conflation of Langton's two commentaries, and that of Hugh and St. Cher and the Dominicans — formed a scholarly continuum. The second part of the article examines how each commentator dealt with Comestor's novel juxtaposition of seminal texts from the opening lines of Genesis and St. John's Gospel to begin the History and suggests that this edifice of commentary on the History tended to subvert the cogency of Comestor's narrative. The last part of the article provides descriptions of relevant manuscripts and brief textual appendices supporting the claim of a scholarly continuum.