Peter Helias

Abstract

Peter (Petrus) Helias (c. 1100 – after 1166) (PH). A student of Thierry of Chartres in the 1130s, he was an influential and renowned grammarian and rhetorician at Paris. About 1155, PH became a canon at Poitiers.

PH’s major work is his Summa on Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. Being both a commentary and a well-structured textbook, it is the starting point of a new current in grammar teaching. Doctrinally, PH is deeply indebted to the anonymous grammarians of the Glosulae tradition, William of Conches, and the moderate Boethian–Neoplatonistic teaching of the philosopher and theologian Thierry of Chartres. Adopting the summa model gives him the opportunity to rephrase and expound Priscian’s text and to systematically focus on major linguistic problems, for example, the explanatory principles or causes of invention, the semantic well-formedness of a sentence, the Boethian three-pronged interpretation of “substance,” the distinction between the nomen complexivum and collectivum in the discussion on equivocal nouns, the division of the grammatical accidentia into secundariae significationes and proprietates communes, the distinction between construction at word level and a construed sentence, and the assessment of the syntactic aspect of (grammatical) government against the traditional view that emphasized its semantic character.

The first part of his Summa (on Priscian, I–XVI) was widely spread during the Middle Ages, but the part on Priscian, XVII–XVIII, on syntax, was soon replaced by the summa Absoluta cuiuslibet often incorrectly attributed to him, for example, by Robert Kilwardby. In the later Middle Ages, his fame continued and several grammatical commentaries and metrical treatises were published under his name.

In rhetoric, PH composed a commentary on Cicero’s De inventione (not published); there, he followed a well-established tradition and appeared to be strongly influenced by Thierry. Other works traditionally attributed to him, are inter alia a commentary on the Auctor ad Herennium and Boethius’ De trinitate are spurious.