Beiträge zur Werkchronologie und Rezeption des Matthäus von Vendôme

Abstract

Since Edmond Faral's highly influential publication Les arts poetiques du XII e et du XIII e siecle (1924) scholars commonly assign the Ars uersificatoria by Matthew of Vendome to the approximate date of 1175, whereas the biblical poem Tobias is dated to about a decade later (1185). In the last years new circumstantial evidence for a more precise dating has come to light in the works of three contemporary writers: the Flores rethorici (an Ars dictandi that may be tentatively ascribed to Peter of Blois), Geoffrey of Vinsauf's still uncompletely edited Summa de coloribus rethoricis, and Ralph of Longchamp's Distinctiones a uoce. The Flores (ca. 1160-1167) not only cites verses from Matthew's comedy Milo, but also two distichs from a collection of literary descriptions that, as I surmise, precede the completion of Ars uersificatoria. In his Summa (ca. 1180-1190) Geoffrey of Vinsauf shows a very personal reaction to the powerful influence of Matthew's Ars by way of supplementing and rectifying the lacunas and defaults of his model. Ralph of Longchamp gives a quotation from Matthew's Tobias in his Distinctiones a uoce (ca. 1190-1200), thus suggesting an early date for the poem. This is corroborated by another passage from the Tobias (vv. 1877-1880) that may allude to the repeatedly postponed preparations for the Third Crusade. From the combination of these different scraps of evidence we may conclude: Matthew's Milo and the first poems of his Ars uersificatoria circulated already about 1160-1165, the Ars had been completed about 1165-1170 when Matthew taught in Paris, the Tobias originated after the publication of the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon (ca. 1178-1182), probably in the two years (1187-1189) before the launch of the Third Crusade.