Texts by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz in the context of the late medieval ars poetriae

Bartosz Awianowicz

Abstract

Since the discovery of Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz (1392–after 1452) by Jaromír Černy, Grudencz's life and work have become a subject of many studies, but until recently his strictly poetic oeuvre still awaited research. The aim of the present article is to interpret Petrus' texts in the context of medieval artes poetriae, handbooks combining elements of grammar, poetics and above all rhetorics, with which the composer could have become familiar as early as in his native Prussia, and was certainly exposed to them during his long studies in Kraków (1418–30). The handbooks used the most at the Kraków University at the time were Poetria nova by Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Laborintus by Eberhard of Bremen. In the then capital of Poland, or some time later in Vienna, Petrus could have come across De arte prosayca, metrica et rithmica by Jean de Garlande.

In his work, Eberhard of Bremen offers a clear categorization of poetry into poesis metrica based on Classical poetic metres, poesis rithmica or rigmica based on rhyme and rhythm, and a less restricted form of sacred music, known as prosa. Among Petrus Wilhelmi’s 22 compositions (with an acrostic of his name) published by Jaromír Černy, and a dozen or so others identified during the last two decades only two – the composition Presulis eminenciam (I/1), which opens Černý’s edition, and canon (rotulum) Pneuma erumpnosi telluris rei – can be classified as rhythmicized prose from the perspective of the medieval ars poetriae. All the other compositions represent poesis rithmica, and none of them follows the rigours of Classical patterns. As for the works with the acrostic PETRVS, rhytmi compositi prevail, usually with the rhyme patterns abab or aab ccb. The relatively few departures from the rules of poetria can be interpreted as either products of the author's invention (the abab rhyme pattern in Probitate eminentem and the aaab cccda aeae pattern in Presulem ephebeatum) or as a result of some degree of carelessness on the part of either Petrus Wilhelmi himself or the copyist (irregular versification in Pergrata era, Pontifices ecclesiarum and Probitate eminentem). By contrast, in his longest work, titled Pontifices ecclesiarum, Petrus employs stylistic measures crucially advocated by Geoffrey of Vinsauf: ‘elaborate arrangement’ (ordo artificialis) and ‘difficult decorativeness’ (ornatus difficilis).