Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/338

330 THE MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS AT July • unsavoury compositions by him in the Bodleian MS., Rawlinson G. 109, which he expounded with true Teutonic learning and curiosity.^ From these we learn that Primas was living at Rheims some time before 1136, and that in 1144 or 1145 he was at Beauvais. At the latter date he was more than fifty years of age ; so that his birth may be placed a little before 1095. In another poem he tells how he was kicked downstairs by a Levite on whom he made a claim for some payment. He fled back to Paris, where he was a famous poet. This was written in his old age, Dr. Meyer says* after 1140,^ probably much later, Hugh's residence at Orleans must then be fitted in between his stay at Rheims before 1136 and that at Beauvais in 1144 or 1145. The notice by Richard of Poitiers may indicate his removal to Paris shortly before the latter date. But a man of fifty does not describe himself as worn out with age, and the two poems which inform us of the ill treatment he received on two different occa- sions must belong to a later time, when the elderly libertine had returned in the one case to Paris, in the other to some place unknown. Beyond this we need not explore his biography. From these facts it is plain that we cannot follow Haureau in asserting that, since Matthew of Vendome says that he lived at Orleans tempore Primatis,^ this must have been before 1142; or that as he had previously been a pupil of Bernard Silvestris at Tours (Haureau assumes for at least five years), Bernard must have been an established teacher there not later than 1136, so that Bernard cannot be the same person as Bernard of Chartres, because in 1136 the latter was settled at Paris and instructing John of Salisbury. Here again the facts are hopelessly confused. No one ever said that John was Bernard's pupil in 1136, whether at Paris or elsewhere, and John never says that he was Bernard's pupil at all. I have gone into this matter in detail, because Haureau more than once repeated his statements as definitely proved. But the evidence tells us no more than that Matthew studied under Bernard Silvestris at Tours, and was afterwards at Orleans at an uncertain date before about 1145 and remained there until perhaps some time after 1147 or 1148. Matthew's biography is a blank until he appears at Paris not earlier than 1 165 and possibly a good deal later. We learn from it not one single positive date to help us to fix the time when Bernard was engaged in teaching at Tours. The title which Matthew elsewhere gives to Bernard's book, Cosmographia Turonensis, furnishes explicit evidence that he was settled there, but we do not know whether that book » Nachrichten der Geaelischajt der WiasenachafUn in Oottingen, philos. KL, 1907, pp. 95 ff. » Ibid. pp. 152 fif. » Not. et Extr. des Manuscrits de la Bibl nat., xxix. ii. (1880) 260.