Matthew of Vendôme is recognized today primarily as the author of the Ars Versificatoria (Art of Versification, circa 1175), the earliest of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century rhetorical handbooks known as the “arts of poetry.” Like Geoffroi of Vinsauf and John of Garland, both of whom wrote in the thirteenth century, Matthew saw himself as an innovator who departed from the tradition of Horace's Ars Poetica (Art of Poetry, circa 13 b.c.) to set forth a new Latin poetics. Matthew believed poetry was his true calling, and his own creative work—all of it in Latin—encompassed a variety of genres: romance, comedy, verse epistle, and biblical epic. His final long poem, the Tobias (circa 1185), based on the Apocryphal Book of Tobit in the Hebrew Bible, won Matthew considerable fame and secured his work a lasting place in the medieval school curriculum.

The few extant details of Matthew's...