Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/339

 1920 PARIS AND CHART RES, 1136-1146 331 should be placed in 1145 or about 1147 or 1148. The residuum is sufficient to prove that Bernard Silvestris was connected with Tours at some undefined date, probably many years before 1145, and that he was still active then or a few years later ; but it tells us no more. Bernard Silvestris then lived at Tours, very likely between 1130 and 1140. There is nothing to suggest that he was ever connected with Chartres. It is only a conjecture that brings him to Paris a little after 1140. To this point we shall recur later. At present it is enough to say that the evidence of place and time make it impossible to identify Bernard Silvestris with Bernard of Chartres. To clinch the matter, we may add that the former dedicated the Cosmographia to ' the most famous doctor Terricus ' in the second person plural, a style which it is incredible that Bernard of Chartres should have used in addressing his brother. This is rightly insisted on by Sir John Sandys in his History of Classical Scholarship} A valiant attempt was made many years ago by M. Charles V. Langlois to reconcile the data concerning Bernard of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris by arguing that when Bernard made his reputation at Tours he was naturally known at that place as Turonensis, and that going later to Chartres he was called Carnotensis} He took Silvestris to indicate the master's Breton origin. The attribute was used elsewhere of Celtic folk : Merlin was called Merlinus Silvester, Giraldus Cambrensis was Giraldus Silvestris. The ' wild ' Welshman had his counterpart in the ' savage ' Breton. In the French verse of Henry- of Andeli Bernard Silvestris became Bernardins li Sauvages.^ Now it is quite true that the use of surnames in the twelfth century was very various. John of Salisbury almost always calls Abailard the philosopher of Palais (Palatinus) ; and Gilbert bishop of Poitiers was known as of La Porree (Porretanus). These were their birthplaces. But the English or Welsh Robert is always of Melun, and another Englishman, Adam, is of the Petit Pont, because he kept a school there. Simon of Poissy John mentions also as Simon of Paris. John of Salisbury himself was bishop of Chartres only for the last few years of his life, and yet he was known as ' holy Carnotense ' as late as the fifteenth century. A surname, therefore, is indecisive. But greatly as I should desire to accept the conclusion which M. Langlois brilliantly maintained, I am afraid that it cannot stand against the evidence of the Chartres necrology and the mention of Eugenius III in the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris. » i. 534, 2nd ed., 1906. » Bibl. de VHcole dea Charles, liv. (1893) 242-7. » The Battie of the Seven Arts, 1. 328, p. 55, ed. L. J. Paetow, Berkeley, California, 1914.