Peter Helias ( or '; – after 1166) was a medieval priest and philosopher. Born in

Poitiers Poitiers is a city on the river Clain in west-central France. It is a commune in France, commune, the capital of the Vienne (department), Vienne department and the historical center of Poitou, Poitou Province. In 2021, it had a population of 9 ...

, he became a pupil of

Thierry of Chartres Thierry of Chartres (''Theodoricus Chartrensis'') or Theodoric the Breton (''Theodericus Brito'') (died before 1155, probably 1150) was a twelfth-century philosopher working at Chartres and Paris, France. The cathedral school at Chartres promote ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

in the 1130s, also teaching

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

and

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

in his school. Around 1155 he returned to Poitiers where he later died. Through Thierry, he is meant to have been influenced particularly by

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known simply as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480–524 AD), was a Roman Roman Senate, senator, Roman consul, consul, ''magister officiorum'', polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middl ...

; other influences include William of Conches. He contributed to the theory of substance and influenced

Roger Bacon Roger Bacon (; or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the Scholastic accolades, scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English polymath, philosopher, scientist, theologian and Franciscans, Franciscan friar who placed co ...

's '' Overview of Grammar''. In

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, he is regarded as having contributed ideas key to the development of grammatical categories such as

parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

Works

* A commentary on

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

's ''

De inventione ''De Inventione'' is a handbook for orators that Cicero composed when he was still a young man. Quintilian tells us that Cicero considered the work rendered obsolete by his later writings. Originally four books in all, only two have survived into m ...

'' * c. 1150: ''Summa super Priscianum'', an updated textbook on

Priscian Priscianus Caesariensis (), commonly known as Priscian ( or ), was a Latin grammarian and the author of the ''Institutes of Grammar'', which was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle Ages. It also provided the raw materia ...

's ''Institutiones grammaticae'', edited by Leo A. Reilly, Toronto 1993

References

12th-century French philosophers 1100s births 1160s deaths 12th-century linguists Scholastic philosophers 12th-century French writers 12th-century writers in Latin {{scholastic-philosopher-stub