Odo of Lucca

Odo or Otto, bishop of Lucca (Otto Lucensis), the bishop of Lucca from 1137, was an early patron of Peter Lombard, responsible, as a letter of Bernard of Clairvaux makes clear, for sending Peter to the schools of Paris.^[1]

Odo had spent several formative years studying in cathedral schools in the north of France. He had been impressed by the systemizing of theology expressed in the teachings of Anselm of Laon and Hugh of St Victor;^[2] his own systematic compilation along the lines of their work, Summa Sententiarum, left incomplete c1138, has survived in about twenty-five manuscripts, eight of which explicitly recognize Odo's authorship: it formed the basis of Peter's compilation.^[3]

Notes

1. Richard William Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe: The heroic age ([1997] 2001:138)
2. Southern notes the rubric heading mss of Odo's Summa Sententiarum explicitly crediting the basis of the work in Hugh, e.g. Opus domini Ottonis Lucensis episcopi excerptum partim ex operibus magistri Hugonis 'De Sacramentis' ; Joseph de Ghellinck had previously doubted Odo's authorship in Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle (1948:293-95).
3. Southern 2001:138, with bibliography, note 4.