Abstract

In the Christian tradition, there have always been those eager to paint the last judgment and the events leading up to it in sensational and lurid colors. Peter Lombard's simple strategy in providing a reliable account of Last Things is to stay close to the scriptural evidence. The structure of the treatise of the Sentences on Last Things is also given. Distinctions 43 and 44 address the resurrection of the dead, Distinction 44 being devoted, in particular, to the condition of the bodies of the resurrected. Distinction 45 asks what prayers, alms, and burial ceremonies can accomplish on behalf of the deceased. This chapter looks at Peter's reference to the blessed and the damned, whose respective fates in the hereafter have formed the subject matter of Book IV of the Sentences.