Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/336

 328 THE MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS AT July by almost every one,^ impossible. This is the more to be regretted since all that John of Salisbury tells us about the opinions of his Bernard corresponds closely with those expressed in the Cosmo- graphia of the other Bernard ; even the verses quoted by John from the one might easily be believed to be taken from the other. Still, it is the fact that Bernard Silvestris belongs to a younger generation than Bernard of Chartres, and that he was connected not with Chartres but with Tours. Matthew of Vendome informs us that he was a disciple of Magister Silvestris at Tours : Me docuit dictare decus Turonense magistri Silvestris, studii gemma, scolaris honor.^ Many years later he was once more at that place, and dedicated his Tobias to Bartholomew who was archbishop from 1174 to 1206.' Haureau sought to extract from this dedication an outline of the chronology of Matthew's life. Suggesting that the poem was finished in 1 1 75 and finding that Matthew says that he had lived ten years at Paris,* he inferred that he went to Paris at latest in 1165 ; but the argument is precarious, since though the dedication raises a presumption that the Tobias was completed near the beginning of Bartholomew's episcopate, this does not carry us very far. Matthew, says Haureau, went to Paris from Orleans, and was there no doubt about 1145. This he infers from the fact that in his Ars versificatoria, which he wrote at Orleans, he cites the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris, and the Cosmographia speaks of Eugenius III apparently as recently elected. Now Eugenius became pope in 1145, and it is natural to suppose that Bernard wrote of him some time during his sojourn in France between 1147 and 1148. Indeed a gloss in one of the manuscripts of the Cosmographia definitely states that the book was presented to the pope at that time.^ But all that follows from Matthew's citation is that he wrote some time after its publication ; it does not tell us whether it was soon or long after. Haureau then attempts to fix the date of Matthew's residence at Orleans by quoting his statement that he was there tempore Primatis. He says : Le chroniqueur Richard de Poitiers nous atteste que cet illustre farceur Hugues, d^k svu-nomme le Primal ou Primat, comme ayant eu le premier rang parmi les professeurs d' Orleans, et pour son inconduite depossede de > See Hist. litU de la France^ xii. (1763) 261. now at Munich, in the Sitzungaberichte der philua.-ph.ilol. und hist. Classe der k. B* Akademie der Wissenschaften zu MUnchen, 1872, ii. 581, U. 69, 70. ' Migne, ccv. 933. * Wattenbach, p. 582, 1. 85. Bodl. Libr.. MS. Laud. Misc. 515, fo. 188 b.
 * See the verses printed by W. Wattenbach from a Tegemsee MS. of about 1200,
 * ' In cuius presentia liber iste fuit recitatus in Gallia et captat eius benivolentiam ' t