Abstract

The tetrad announced in the above title is well known, its components having been discovered about a century ago and subsequently edited by various scholars. The common authorship is alluded to by the poet at the end of Thaïs , which is the last element he renders from the Vitas patrum. He muses that he will wait to see if the translation pleases, and if so, he will undertake others: he would like to treat of the Antichrist and of the pains of hell seen by St. Paul. Paul Meyer, Johan Vising, and Basilides Andrew O'Connor, to identify only the principal critics before 1949, alleged that the poet's name was Henri d'Arci. More recently, M. Dominica Legge stated that a Templar “wrote a series of texts for his community at Temple Bruer. … He can no longer be identified with Henri d'Arci. … It was Miss R. J. Dean who hit upon the truth. … Henri d'Arci was a person of importance between the years 1161 and 1174.” Although registering R. C. D. Perman's edition of the minor texts, Legge did not comment on his interpretation of the authorship, which runs: “Thus we must be content with an anonymous author from Temple Bruer near Lincoln … dedicating his labours to this influential Templar. …’ In Perman's eyes the poet seems to have been a person from Temple Bruer and an anonymous author, the epithet “Templar” being abandoned