Introduction

Although it is well known that the southern Italian ars dictaminis exercised a strong influence on the shaping of chancery styles at the European level from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century, attempts to establish the exact modalities of this influence have been rare. In the case of England, an exception is represented by the pioneering studies of Ernst Kantorowicz. Kantorowicz examined the links established in the third decade of the thirteenth century between the imperial court of Frederick II of Sicily and the English court of Henry III, under the auspices of the great judge and imperial stylist Peter de Vinea. These exchanges were prolonged by a dense circulation of persons and writings, which went on uninterrupted by the political turmoils associated with the fall of the Hohenstaufen and the failure of the English candidacy to the throne of Sicily up to the first years of Angevin rule in Italy.

Kantorowicz also established a link between the presence of southern Italian clerks trained in the art of dictamen in the entourage of Edward I, and the first signs of an autonomous circulation in England of ars dictaminis texts typical of the Sicilian chancery. Many of these were gathered at this time in different versions of the Letters of Peter de Vinea. Kantorowicz drew attention to an imitation of the eulogy of Frederick II by Peter de Vinea in the third book of the standard collection of the Letters (III, 43).