Cornificians
A group named after John of Salisbury around an anonymous scholar in Paris in the late 11th or early 12th century. Out of respect for his opponent's baptismal name, Salisbury refuses to use a direct designation in its metalogicon .
Identity of the Cornificius
The expression Cornificius is taken from a commentary by Aelius Donatus on the life of Virgil ; here he appears as one of the slanderers of Virgil, which at least makes clear the metaphorical meaning of the name as a “distorter” of classical virtue and erudition. Various historians have repeatedly made suggestions as to its actual identity. Mandonnet, for example, claims to have identified Cornificius as a “Master Gualo of Paris”, who was probably active as a teacher in Paris between 1120 and 1130. Prantl, however, suspects a "Reginaldus Monachus" behind this disgraceful name. For Peter von Moos, on the other hand, Cornificius only existed as a “fictus interlocutor”, a “satyrical invention”, which allowed Salisbury to present his argument on the trivium in the form of a fictional debate (all of these references appear in the article by JO Ward (1972) , see Recommended literature).