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A Lincoln treasure: Aquinas manuscript is now on Digital.Bodleian

Photo of a page from Thomas Aquinas' manuscript with handwritten notations added to the text.

Our Aquinas manuscript is now up on Digital.Bodleian, where it can be freely accessed by researchers and interested individuals.

This manuscript is one of our greatest treasures: a 13th-century Italian manuscript of St Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard Bk.1, which St Thomas wrote in Paris c.1252-56. The reason that this manuscript is so special is that it is annotated with what are thought to be lecture notes taken from Aquinas' second commentary on this work, delivered as lectures in Rome c.1265-6, which was long thought to be legendary. These notes are the only written record of this second commentary and, as they are written beside his first commentary, the reader can see how St Thomas’ thinking about Peter Lombard’s text evolved by the time he was about to write his great work, the Summa Theologiae.

View the manuscript