Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/59

 Comestor were printed in error as by Peter of Blois.

IV. . In one of his letters (Ep. 76) Peter mentions that in his youth he had written trifles and love songs, and in Epistle 12 refers to the verses and playful pieces he had written at Tours. But in his latter years he abandoned these pursuits, and, in reply to a request from G. D'Aunai, sent him a poem in his riper style (Ep. 57). This poem Dr. Giles (iv. 337–48) has printed, on the authority of some manuscripts, as two separate poems: (1) ‘Cantilena de Luctu Carnis et Spiritus;’ and (2) ‘Contra Clericos voluptati deditos, sive de vita clericorum in plurimis reprobata.’ The latter is given in a contemporary manuscript (Bodl. MS. Add. A 44) as four separate poems (see English Historical Review, v. 326, where a collation of this manuscript and of Bodl. Lat. Misc. d. 6 is given). Dr. Giles prints five other poems which are ascribed to Peter. But the ‘De Eucharistia’ is by Pierre le Peintre, and the ‘De Penitentia’ is probably by John Garland [q. v.] (, Notices et Extraits, ii. 29, 65). The others are two short pieces, ‘De Commendatione Vini’ and ‘Contra Cerevisiam,’ from Cambridge University MS. Gg. 6.42; and a longer incomplete poem which occurs in the manuscript of the letters in Laud. MS. 650 after Epistle 111 (Ep. 148 in Giles's edition). Borel (Trésor de Recherches et Antiquités Gauloises) gives four lines of French verse professing to be by Peter of Blois; they may be either by the archdeacon of Bath or by the namesake to whom he addressed Epistles 76 and 77 (Hist. Littéraire, xv. 417).

Peter's epistles were printed in a folio volume published at Brussels about 1480, though neither the date nor place is given. Jacques Merlin edited the Epistles, Sermons, ‘Compendium super Job,’ ‘Contra Perfidiam Judæorum,’ ‘De Confessione,’ and ‘De Amicitia Christiana,’ Paris, 1519, fol. His ‘Opera’ were edited by Jean Busée in 1600, Maintz, 4to; Busée afterwards published a supplementary volume of ‘Paralipomena Opusculorum,’ Cologne, 1605 and 1624, 8vo, giving the tracts ‘Contra Perfidiam Judæorum,’ ‘De Amicitia Christiana,’ and ‘De Caritate Dei et Proximi.’ Busée's edition was reprinted in the ‘Bibliotheca Patrum,’ xii., Cologne, 1618. In 1667 Pierre de Goussainville edited the ‘Opera Omnia’ at Paris, folio; this edition was reproduced in the ‘Bibliotheca Patrum,’ xxiv. 911–1365, Lyons. In 1848 J. A. Giles published the complete works in four volumes. Goussainville's and Giles's editions form the joint basis of the edition in Migne's ‘Patrologia Latina,’ vol. ccvii. The ‘De Amiciccia Cristiana’ was printed [Cologne? 1470?], 4to, and the ‘Expositio … super Job’ [1502], 4to. The ‘Canon Episcopalis,’ together with several of the letters, is printed, under the title ‘De Vita, Moribus, et Officiis Præsulum,’ in Merlo's ‘Instructiones Selectissimæ’ (1681), pp. 488–559.

Peter of Blois was long credited with a continuation, to 1118, of the spurious chronicle of Ingulf [q. v.] According to the prefatory letter, Peter undertook the work at the request of the abbot of Croyland, at whose request he also wrote a ‘life’ of St. Guthlac. The continuation of Ingulf is a manifest forgery, and is not in Peter's style; it is printed in Fulman's ‘Quinque Scriptores,’ which forms the first volume of the ‘Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Veteres,’ Oxford, 1684. The ascription to Peter of a ‘Vita Guthlaci’ (see Acta Sanctorum, April, ii. 37) is probably equally false. Epistle 221 (, ii. 182) professes to be addressed by Peter to the abbot and monks of Croyland.

[The main facts of Peter's life are to be found only in his own letters; his exaggerated sense of his own importance makes it necessary to accept his statements with caution; but the independent allusions to him, so far as they go, corroborate the general truth of his own account without giving him a position of such prominence as he claims for himself. Some of the difficulties raised by statements made in the letters may be due to the fact that they were probably revised long after the date of their original composition. The Rev. W. G. Searle of Cambridge, from a careful study of Peter's works, is inclined to doubt the trustworthiness of many of the statements found in them; but the results of his investigations have not yet been published. Contemporary references to Peter of Blois are contained in Gervase of Canterbury's Opera, i. 306, 354, 356, 366–9, and the Epistolæ Cantuarienses (Rolls Ser.), and in the Calendar of Close Rolls, i. 108 b, 117 b; a charter, in which Peter appears as a witness in conjunction with Archbishop Richard, is given in Ancient Charters, p. 72 (Pipe Roll Soc.). See also Historia S. Augustini Cantuariensis, pp. 421–2; Materials for History of Thomas Becket (Rolls Ser.); Memorials of Ripon, i. 10, 255, ii. 253; and Memorials of Fountains, i. 133, 159–63 (Surtees Soc.) There is a very full account in the Hist. Littéraire de France, xv. 341–413. See also Wright's Biogr. Brit. Litt. Anglo-Norman Period, pp. 366–79; Stubbs's Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History; Hauréau's Notices et Extraits, &c., i. 137, ii. 29, iii. 226, iv. 125, v. 67–8, 213, 217; Church's Early History of the Church of Wells; La Lumia's Sicilia sotto Guglielmo il Buono, pp. 110–11, 230; Caruso's Bibl. Hist. Sic. ii. 287; Bourgain's La Chaire Française au Douzième