This dissertation is an intellectual history of the controversy of the alleged Christological Nihilism of Peter Lombard. Peter was accused of minimizing Christ's humanity, to the point of implying that "in as much as Christ is a man he is not something." In letters, treatises and at papal councils throughout the latter half of the twelfth century the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard's Christology—the way he defined the relationship between Christ's human and divine natures—was vigorously debated. In spite of the rapid reception of his Sententiae as the preferred textbook throughout the schools of theology in Paris and beyond, its Christological legacy remained contested for many years. It was not until the Lateran Council of 1215 that Peter Lombard's Sententiae was entirely cleared of heretical content, a ruling that endorsed the text and enabled it to take its pre-eminent place in theological studies.

It was a fierce debate, as discussions of Christ's nature were almost instantly expanded into debates about authority and legitimacy. To claim to understand Christ's nature was to claim an access to Truth on an absolute level. The Christological controversies surrounding the legacy of Peter Lombard's Sententiae were consequently hard fought struggles, as the combatants battled to assert their epistemological supremacy.

This dissertation contextualizes these theological debates within their discursive and institutional frameworks. I trace the genealogy of the modes of thinking christologically in this period, and locate each protagonist in terms of their intellectual forebears.

The goal is to present a complex depiction of the intellectual life of the schools after the so-called "heroic age" of Abelard, and before the high scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas. Through the debates over Christ's nature that pervade the schools and their critics between 1160 and 1215, one can witness the elaboration of the processes that produced the bureaucratic and institutional consolidation of the schools into a University. Crucial to the developing legitimacy of the schools were their claims to theological integrity, to the reasoned apprehension of Divine Presence through logical argumentation.