(ca. 1160/85–ca. 1236). An influential theologian, a preacher of considerable stature, and an accomplished poet, Philip was born into ecclesiastical circles: he was the illegitimate son of Archdeacon Philip of Paris and was related through his father to Bishop Étienne of Noyon (d. 1211) and Bishop Pierre of Paris (d. 1218), both of whom favored Philip’s career. After studying theology and law, he appears in the historical record no later than 1211 as archdeacon of Noyon.
As chancellor of the University of Paris, a position that he held from 1217, Philip had authority over the fledgling university. Philip’s chancellorship came in an era of discontent and controversy, and in a combative move early in his tenure (1219) he excommunicated the masters and students—a move that Pope Honorius III ordered him to reverse. During the strike initiated in 1229, Philip sided with the pope and the university against William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, and Blanche of Castile, regent during Louis IX’s minority. The papal bull Parens scientiarum of Gregory IX ended the university strike in 1231. Not long after Philip’s death, Henri d’Andeli wrote a Dit du chancelier Philippe, in which he is associated with jongleurs, chansons, and vielle playing.
As a master of theology, Philip composed a treatise on moral theology, the Summa de bono, that had considerable influence on the earliest generation of Franciscan masters. It was organized into two main parts, De bono naturae and De bono gratiae, with the latter subdivided into three: gratia gratum faciens, gratia gratis data, gratia virtutum (both theological and cardinal). Philip is also credited with 723 sermons, which reveal a preacher vigorously calling both the clergy and the laity to a just and holy way of life.
Of the fifty-eight monophonic conductus attributed to Philip, at least twenty-one texts are confirmed as his. Angelus ad virginem was made famous by Chaucer: in The Miller’s Tale, the scholarly but impoverished cleric Nicholas sings it. Medieval sources ascribe nine polyphonic conductus to Philip, and among four possible textings of conductus caudae at least Bulla fulminante (and its contrafact Veste nuptiali) and Minor natu filiu definitely can be counted as his; Anima lugi lacrima and Crucifigat omnes (which has two contrafacts: Mundum renovavit and Curritur ad vocem) are suspected of also being his. He penned the four known tropes to Pérotin’s two great organa quadrupla: Vide prophecie, Homo cum mandato dato, De Stephani roseo sanguine, and Adesse festina. Philip and Pérotin appear to have known one another and may have collaborated. Since so many of Philip’s texts were tropes or contrafacts for music that already had been composed, it would seem that he was not a composer himself. Although his defense of accumulating benefices earned him the displeasure of the Dominicans, he remained a friend of the Franciscans throughout his life and was buried in their church.
Dreves, Guido Maria, ed. Lateinische Hymnendichter des Mittelalters. Leipzig: Reisland, 1907. Analecta hymnica medii aevi. Vol. 50, pp. 528–32.
Paine, Thomas. “Associa tecum in patria: A Newly Identified Organum Trope by Philip the Chancellor.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 39 (1986):233–54.
Principe, Walter H. The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century, IV: Philip the Chancellor’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975.
Wright, Craig. Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris 500–1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 249–99.
Wicki, Nikolaus. “La pecia dans la tradition manuscrite de la Summa de bono de Philippe le Chancelier.” In The Editing of Theological and Philosophical Texts from the Middle Ages, ed. Monika Asztalos. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1986, pp. 93–104.
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