Peter of Poitiers

Two years later he succeeded Peter Comestor in the chair of scholastic theology at the cathedral school of Notre Dame.

[1] Part of a circle of scholars whose influence led to the foundation of the university and the formation of a theological curriculum based on the teachings of Peter Lombard, Peter of Poitiers helped introduce the technical language and methods of Aristotelian logic to the field of theology.

For a generation of theologians invested in allegorical interpretation, the exact details of historical events were essential.

Peter of Poitier’s other theological works include Distinctiones super psalterium (before 1196), one of the first of a type of commentary wherein lists of citations from church fathers are interpreted according to the four-fold mode of exegesis (literal, allegorical, analogical, tropological).

Conceived as a visual aid to learn history, it represents time as a genealogical chart, starting with Adam and Eve and ending with Christ and the Apostles.