Hugh Primas of Orléans was a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

lyric poet of the 12th century, a scholar from

Orléans Orléans (,"Orleans"
(US) and University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. He was probably born in the 1090s and may have died about 1160. Along with his younger contemporary known as the Archpoet, he marks the opening of a new period in Latin literature.

Biography

The earliest and best-known source for Hugh Primas's life is in a passage added to the text of the ''Chronica'' of Richard of Poitiers for the year 1142: Hugh is also mentioned in the ''Chronicle'' by Francesco Pippino, and he may be "Primasso", the subject of a story in

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio ( , ; ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was s ...

's ''

Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of ...

'' (1.7). Other medieval writers say very little about his life: they knew "Primas" for his poems. Yet they rarely quoted them under his name. Modern scholars were therefore able to attribute no work to Hugh Primas until Wilhelm Meyer observed, in 1906, that one poem actually contains the name "Primas". Meyer then realised that the

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

manuscript containing this one poem includes a collection of twenty-two others that are probably by the same author, including another seven containing the internal signature "Primas". The twenty-three poems identified by Meyer, and edited by him in 1907,W. Meyer
Die Oxforder Gedichte des Primas Magister Hugo
in: ''Nachrichten der Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse'', Göttingen 1907. p. 113-175, Neuauflage 1970. are now generally accepted as the work of Hugh Primas, though A. G. Rigg has expressed doubts about some attributions.

Bibliography

Fleur Adcock Fleur Adcock (10 February 1934 – 10 October 2024) was a New Zealand poet and editor. Of English and Northern Irish ancestry, Adcock lived much of her life in England. She is well-represented in New Zealand poetry anthologies, was awarded an ...

(ed. and tr.), ''Hugh Primas and the Archpoet''. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, Cambridge Medieval Classics 2, 1994, 152 pp., Editor's page
*Francis Cairns, "The addition to the ''Chronica'' of Richard of Poitiers" in ''Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch'' vol. 19 (1984) pp. 159–161. *Christopher J. McDonough (ed. and tr.), ''The Arundel Lyrics. The Poems of Hugh Primas''. Cambridge and London:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 2010, 288 pp., *F. J. E. Raby, ''A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. ) vol. 2 pp. 82–83. *A. G. Rigg, "Golias and other pseudonyms" in ''Studi medievali'' 3rd series vol. 18 (1977) pp. 65–109.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Primas, Hugh 12th-century writers in Latin 1090s births 1160 deaths Medieval Latin-language poets Writers from Orléans University of Paris alumni French male poets 12th-century French writers 12th-century French poets