Placentinus, Peter

, is said to have been the real name of a German author, who, tinder the fictitious one of Publius Porcius Porcellus, wrote the Latin poem entitled “Pugna porcorum,” consisting of 360 verses, in which every word begins with a P. It was published separately at Antwerp, in 1530, and is in the “Nugae venales,” &c. We have followed Baillet in- calling him Peter Placentinus, but Le Clerc says that his name was John Leo Placentius, a Dominican monk, who died about 1548, and that he composed an history of the bishops of Tongres, Maestricht, and Liege, taken out of fabulous memoirs, and several poems besides the “Pugna Porcorum.” In this last he imitated one Theobaldus,. a Benedictine monk, who flourished in the time of Charles the Bald, to whom he presented a panegyric on baldness, every word of which began with the letter C (calvities, baldness). Placentinus is said to have had another object,

satirize the sloth of the prelates, but this is not easily discoverable. Some discussion on the “Pugna Porcorum,” if our readers think it worthy of farther inquiry, may be found in our authorities. 2

2

Baillet des auteurs dcguisez. Merrick’s Tryphiodorns, Dissertation, p. 25. Gent. Ma;. XLVI. p. 511 and 602 and XLVI!. p. 70.