Muris, Johannes de [ Des Murs, Jehan ]

Lawrence Gushee, revised by C. Matthew Balensuela and Jeffrey Dean

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14237
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
updated, 10 July 2012

( b diocese of Lisieux, c 1290–95; d after 1344). French mathematician, astronomer and music theorist .
His Latin writings on musical proportions and mensural notation were authoritative for some two
centuries, constantly cited by other writers and – judging from extant manuscripts – more widely
distributed than those of any other music theorist between 1200 and 1500.

1. Life.

Some recent discoveries, particularly a manuscript with notes by Muris himself (E-E O.II.10), permit
unusual precision in dating some phases of his life, as well as revealing important personal
acquaintances, e.g. with Philippe de Vitry. In addition, Muris inserted chronologically specific
autobiographical notes into some of his writings, and there also exist letters-patent from the Avignon
popes recording his ecclesiastical career. The biography of Muris is both more complete and more sure
than that of any other musical personage of the 14th or 15th century. This summary will not cite the
particular documents providing biographical data; all, however, are cited in the works listed in the
bibliography.

Johannes de Muris was born in Normandy in the diocese of Lisieux and maintained associations with
his native region throughout his life. He was probably related to Julian des Murs, a Master of the
Children of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris about 1350 and later secretary to Charles V of France; in some
earlier studies the two men have been confused. Julian’s notarial signatures have prompted the
suggestion of ‘Jehan des Murs’ as the original French form behind ‘Johannes de Muris’, but in fact his
name is always given in Latin in the sources of his writings and in documents.

The date of Muris’s birth has usually been estimated at about 1300, but it has been learned that,
together with his father Henri, he was involved in the murder of a cleric named Andriet on 7
September 1310. It may be presumed that he was older than 10 (probably at least 14, the age of
responsibility) at the time, but since he had not yet matriculated at university he was probably under
20, and so he was most likely born in the early 1290s. On account of his conviction for the murder he
was banished to Cyprus for seven years; the severity of his crime and punishment may help explain his
restless and unsettled life and his slight official recognition.

On 13 March 1318, Muris was residing ‘pro tempore’ in Evreux, another Norman city with which he
maintained a lifelong association, but his real centre of activities by that time was Paris (where in the
same year he was a baccalaureate student in the Faculty of Arts), and remained so until about 1325. If
we can rely on the explicits of writings composed in 1323 and 1324, we can state more precisely that
he was working, if not also resident, in the Collège de Sorbonne in the rue Coupe-gueule. He was in
the Norman town of Bernay to observe the solar eclipse of 1321, and there is no reason to think that he
stayed in Paris all the time. Some of his most important writings in the various disciplines that he

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mastered date from this first Parisian period, particularly the one on music usually entitled Notitia artis
musicae of 1319 or 1321 and the Musica speculativa secundum Boetium of 1323. He attained the
academic degree of Magister in 1321.

By March 1326, Muris had moved to the renowned double monastery of Fontevrault (Maine-et-Loire),
and he was also there in August 1327. From a fragmentary account roll of the abbey we know that
Julian des Murs was also at Fontevrault as Johannes’s clerc. In 1329 Muris was granted an expectative
benefice from those nominally controlled by the abbot of Le Bec-Hellouin in the diocese of Rouen. We
should perhaps not assume that he had moved back to Normandy at this time; his designation as a
cleric of the diocese of Lisieux in the letter granting the benefice refers not to his current residence
but rather to where he first received clerical orders. It is certain, however, that he was residing in
Evreux in 1332 and 1333, styling himself in the former year ’scolaris Ebroicensis, tunc rector’.

A series of rather obscure financial notes in Muris’s own hand suggests that by 1336 he had returned
to Paris, and was in fact living in the Collège de Sorbonne where he remained for much of 1337. From
1338 to 1342 a ‘maître Jehan des Murs’ is listed among the clercs of the household of Philippe
d’Evreux, King of Navarre. It is not certain that this is the music theorist; conclusions as to his possible
residence and functions require a closer knowledge of the activities of Philippe d’Evreux.

By March or September 1342 Muris was in Mézières-en-Brenne (Indre) as one of six canons of the
collegiate church built in that small town in the 1330s by Alix de Brabant. He was there also in
September 1344, at which time he was invited to Avignon by Pope Clement VI for a conference on
calendar reform. The move to this out-of-the-way place seems odd, unless it was occasioned by the
writing of his very extensive arithmetical work, the Quadripartitum numerorum, completed in 1343.
That he really did go to Avignon is shown by his work on calendar reform (with Firmin de Beauval as
collaborator) directed to the pope and dated 1345 from the papal city. This is the last firm date in his
biography. Heinrich Besseler proposed, on the basis of an inscription to the verse dedication to
Philippe de Vitry of the Quadripartitum numerorum, in which Vitry is designated Bishop of Meaux, that
Muris must have been still living in 1351, the year of Vitry’s elevation to the episcopacy. It may also be
that two astronomical works of 1346–8 are by Muris, though further study of the authenticity of their
inscriptions or colophons is called for. There are no records, however ambiguous, from after 1351.

Muris’s career seems an atypical one; the motivation for his major moves is in no way clear. Other
musical contemporaries, such as Guillaume de Machaut and Philippe de Vitry, travelled much, but in
connection with their official posts. Muris appears much more of a free agent in the light of our
present knowledge. Certainly, the idea that he was primarily a university lecturer on music in Paris for
most of his life has received no substantiation. Muris neither knew the worldly success of Vitry nor
achieved in his scientific work the profundity of Nicole Oresme (who knew Muris’s work). The bulk of
his writings appears to come from the early 1320s in a burst of intense activity, with a subsequent gap
of some 15 or 20 years – during which, however, he continued his astronomical observations – and this
may have much to do with both his apparent restlessness and his failure to attain sustained intellectual
success.

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2. Non-musical writings.

Many uncertainties persist with respect to Muris’s work, as with that of many medieval writers on
science. This is in part the result of far less bibliographical scholarship than with the major literary
figures, in part due to the non-literary character of the writings themselves. A listing of all Muris’s
works is given by Michels, but it is far from definitive: serious problems exist with respect to correct
titles, misattributions, unauthoritative revisions and so forth. There are well over 100 manuscripts
involved, in every major collection in Europe as well as in North and South America. It does appear
from Michels’s survey that the mathematical, astronomical and related works were much less widely
distributed than the two major musical treatises. This may simply reflect the relative abstruseness or
popularity of the various disciplines.

Muris’s astronomical writings, highly regarded then and now, deal mainly with planetary and solar
cycles and eclipses, consequently involving the then current Alfonsine Tables of planetary motion, as
well as the civil calendar. The most striking aspect of Muris’s work in this area is his insistence on
testing the tabular predictions of eclipses, equinoxes and conjunctions against careful observation by
the naked eye (assisted by instruments). There are also a number of works of an astrological character,
a normal offshoot of astronomical expertise. The arithmetical works are regarded as less original. His
longest and most comprehensive book, the Quadripartitum numerorum of 1343, relies on a number of
sources including Fibonacci. It involves geometry to some extent, as might be expected of an
astronomer. Muris appears not to have written on physics or optics, or on alchemy and medicine,
although his private library included works on those subjects.

3. Writings on music.

In this area also, much doubt remains as to the authentic titles and versions of Muris’s works, though
the main outlines now seem clear. His representation in the standard anthologies of Gerbert and
Coussemaker is exceptionally misleading and philologically unreliable, perhaps more so than with any
other major medieval author, although this situation has been rectified by recent editions of the three
best-attested treatises. The references to the published texts given below should be understood in that
light.

According to Michels, Muris was the certain or probable author of five works on music. These are
listed at the end of this article, and the dates given there are those suggested by Michels; they are
susceptible to modification by a year or two in either direction. To that list may be added a treatise
apparently referred to by Muris in a list of book loans from the Escorial Manuscript (E-E), beginning
with the words ‘omnes homines’. A musical work with this incipit has survived along with other works
of Muris in only one manuscript, F-Pn lat.7378A. It consists of three books, the first on ‘Theorica
musice’, the second on mensural music and the third on discant. There appear to be connections in
vocabulary and point of view with the Notitia artis musicae as well as the Compendium, but the unique
manuscript is extremely difficult to decipher and awaits detailed study. In any event, if it is indeed by
Muris it probably belongs with the other works of his youth.

The evidence for Muris’s authorship of the first three items in the list of writings is strong; that for the
last two relatively weak. The Libellus cantus mensurabilis, for example, is found mostly in 15th-century
manuscripts of Italian origin (39 out of 47 are apparently Italian), and mostly with the sub-title

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secundum Johannes de Muris (‘according to Johannes de Muris’). The situation with the Ars
contrapuncti is similar: of 14 manuscripts, none is known to have originated outside Italy and most are
of the second half of the 15th century. The only manuscript claimed for the 14th century, presumably
on palaeographical grounds, is not obviously that early. A supposed ‘modernization’ of both works by a
certain Goscalcus of Paris in 1375, however, may be sufficient to show an authentic French origin for
the works, which would then antedate 1375 by some years. Even this would not preclude the origin of
both works as a disciple’s reverent transmission of lessons propounded by Johannes de Muris in
lectures towards the end of his career. None of these reflections, of course, permits the passing over of
the two treatises in this discussion; they do require that the question of the geographical and temporal
limits of their influence remain open.

All other works published under or associated with Muris’s name by Gerbert and Coussemaker (such
as the Ars discantus, CoussemakerS, iii, 68–113, or the Summa magistri Johannis de Muris, GerbertS,
iii, 190–248) can be shown to be misattributed, although in most cases the true author is not known.
They are, at least, evidence of the power of his reputation. The most famous misattribution to him, that
of the Speculum musice by Jacobus of Liège, was rectified in 1924, after having given rise to much
(now quite useless) scholarly discussion.

The Notitia artis musicae of 1321 – although part of it may date from 1319 – has survived in ten
manuscripts (three fragmentary), of which the earliest appear to be US-Cn 54.1 and F-Pn lat.7378A.
(Michels’s title has become standard, although Muris’s own was Summa musice – this must be avoided,
as it is identical with that of the spurious work published by Gerbert, mentioned above – and Ars nove
musice was formerly current in scholarly writing.) The quite brief preface (about 200 words)
paraphrases Aristotle’s Metaphysics – reversing its meaning at one important point – and stresses
particularly that only the theorist has sufficient wisdom to teach. No matter how well versed one may
be in the practice of an art, that does not make one a good teacher. Yet as far as the practitioner is
concerned, experience is incomplete without theory. Book 1 is not a great deal longer; it deals with
matters of vocabulary and definition (of sound in general, and musical proportions) in its first two
sections. In the next section, Muris repeated the legend of Pythagoras’s discovery of the musical
proportions (6:8:9:12) in the blacksmiths’ shop. The book then concludes with two brief proofs of a
fundamental notion of Pythagorean tuning, namely that the whole tone cannot be divided into two
equal semitones. The first presupposes no mathematical sophistication and is not really a proof; the
second is for experts. At this point a table of the three hexachords is introduced, quite without reason.
In fact, in some manuscripts it appears between the explicit of book 1 and the title of book 2.

The second book, Musica practica, is much longer, and it is expressly stated by the author to be his
principal interest. Its general subject is musical time, its measurement and notation. We would still call
it theoretical, in the sense that there is no discussion of specific works, merely of general principles.
The reader will understandably look for those things which might be termed revolutionary, in
accordance with the partly mythical musical revolution called Ars Nova. He must look carefully,
however. The tact, one might almost say deviousness, with which Muris brought in the idea of
fundamental binary relations between the four levels of note values is most striking. There is, perhaps
oddly, no explicit statement of the system of mode, tempus and prolation. In fact, the traditional
content is so great that it gives the impression of an inaugural lecture in which the new magister is
most careful to display his intimate acquaintance with received doctrine along with respect for his
masters.

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According to this interpretation, book 1 would appear to fill some kind of conventional requirement,
while book 2 represents, so to speak, the real meat of a master’s thesis. This impression receives
support from the specialized nature of the problem attacked in the second book once the philosophic
preliminaries of the definition of time are passed, namely the question of the possibility of imperfecting
the long with a semibreve, or the breve with a minim – a parte remota, to use the technical term. It is
curious that this section comes after an explicit dated 1319 in F-Pn lat.7378A, and possibly represents
the solution of a specialized problem needed for an inaugural lecture in 1321.

In book 2 of the Notitia, Muris addressed particular issues of mensural notation such as the limits of
division and the exhaustive permutations of imperfecting triple note-values. Muris maintained the
traditional (Franconian) view that perfection consists in ternary values and that the ‘imperfect’ binary
has no place in art. He was able to justify the use of duple divisions and imperfect note-values in music,
however, by showing them to be multiples of three minimae; for example an imperfect longa is made
up of two breves, each of three semibreves, each of three minims. Thus the imperfect participates in
the perfect, and order is brought out of disorder in a manner analogous to the debates of
contemporaneous philosophers and mathematicians, placing Muris’s treatment of music squarely in
that context.

The evidence for considering the Compendium musicae practicae an authentic work of Johannes de
Muris himself is its use in the Speculum musice of Jacobus of Liège, c 1325, who clearly believed his
quotations to be by the same author as the Notitia artis musicae (cf CSM, iii/7, 1973, p.26). The work is
not, in any event, widely distributed. Cast in the form of a catechism, it agrees for the most part with
the doctrine of the Notitia artis musicae, introducing certain novelties, for instance the term ‘partes
prolationis’ for the five note values, interesting definitions of music, and the term ‘cantus irregularis’ to
describe the combination of binary and ternary mensuration arising between two voice parts.

The major work of this time – transmitted to us by nearly 50 manuscripts – is the so-called Musica
speculativa secundum Boetium, viewed explicitly by Muris as a brief treatise extracted from Boethius,
in which the ‘more beautiful and essential conclusions’ are presented with clarity and evidence. It
deals in a mathematically sophisticated way with the musical proportions of the consonances and the
division of the monochord, but avoids all the confusion of Boethian octave species and Greek modes.
(Nor do Christian ecclesiastical modes enter in; they belonged at this time to a different type of
treatise, one on musica plana.) At the very end of the monochord division, Muris proposed a
polychordal instrument with 19 strings. This interpretation has been challenged but probably
incorrectly. Perhaps the most remarkable formal feature of the work – apart from its conciseness – is
the use of so-called theorems or propositions. Indeed, similar reflections of Muris’s mathematical
interests and training may be found in other of his works on music. This treatise may have been used
at the universities of Paris and Oxford, and it was often prescribed as an obligatory text in the new
eastern-European universities of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Whether or not we assume Muris’s direct authorship, the Libellus cantus mensurabilis must be a
considerably later work. In contrast to the works already mentioned, it gives a complete, if highly
condensed, exposition of the developed mensural practice of the mid-14th century. In particular, it
takes into account the theoretical work of Philippe de Vitry, the effect of which we might have expected
but did not find in the earlier treatises, e.g. the uses of red notation and the ‘time signatures’ for
perfect and imperfect modus and tempus. The work also shows, in its last two sections (on diminution

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in motets, and on color and talea) a greater interest in actual composition than before. Where Musica
speculativa and Notitia artis musicae are clearly addressed to a university audience, the Libellus
assumes no such liberal arts context but is aimed at practical musicians.

The extent of the work’s influence is shown not only in the extremely large number of extant
manuscripts, but in the existence of 15th-century translations into French and Italian, as well as a very
extensive commentary of 1404 from the Paduan mathematician and writer on music, Prosdocimus de
Beldemandis. The Libellus was still a matter of living concern in Gaffurius’s Practica musica of 1496,
but was not relevant for much longer. It can be said that what Franco did for the Ars Antiqua, Muris
did for the Ars Nova, only his usefulness was of longer duration. In both cases other writers dealt with
the same subjects, but none with the same clarity, comprehensiveness and logical rigour.

The Ars contrapuncti is a work of much less importance, consisting mostly of a mechanical exposition
of all the possible ways of rhythmically subdividing a florid counterpoint to simple tenors in longs and
breves. The preceding rules for two-part counterpoint are elementary but straightforward. The work
shares with Muris’s Notitia artis musicae a tendency to exhaust all possibilities within its frame of
reference and an ideal of musical variety. Muris did not otherwise deal with counterpoint, however, and
most scholars regard the Ars contrapuncti as the work of an anonymous writer.

One musical work by Johannes de Muris may survive: a fragmentary isorhythmic motet Per grama
protho paret/Valde honorandus est beatus Johannes (GB-Lbl Add.41667/I). The attribution, though,
depends on an illegible inscription.

4. Influence.

Johannes de Muris’s influence on the 14th- and 15th-century theory of measured music is so pervasive
that it would be more feasible to deal with those writers who show no dependence on him than with
those who do. That influence may be seen as comprising three sorts. The first is almost trivial,
involving particularly the content of the Libellus cantus mensurabilis. Such a rule, for example, as ‘the
imperfect breve of major prolation cannot be imperfected in any way, because it is not divisible in three
equal parts’ (CoussemakerS, iii, 49b; probably a development of Muris’s earlier position in the Notitia
artis musicae, CSM, xvii, 1972, pp.102–3) was repeated by most subsequent writers on mensural
notation, either in direct quotation or in much expanded discussions. Much as it may lack interest for
us, it is in fact a major problem of mensural theory.

The second sort of influence is, by its very nature, less easy to identify, but perhaps more significant:
that is, the form and the kind of language habitually employed by Muris. These reflect the norms of
Scholastic academic discourse and the preoccupations of contemporaneous mathematicians and
philosophers rather than practical musicians. The third sort is negative, involving the matters with
which Muris did not deal, that is all things having to do with plainchant and the traditional lore
(biblical and classical instances of the utility of music, classifications of music from Isidore of Seville,
etc.) often found in earlier writers. It could be suggested that his precedent made it easier for
subsequent writers at all levels to ignore traditional subject matter in favour of contemporary
mensural problems.

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Muris left untouched many matters of contemporary practical concern occasionally dealt with by other
writers of the time, such as questions of tuning or chromaticism, and the genres of musical
composition. Whether this is a reflection of the university situation or of Muris’s lack of concern with
the particulars of musical practice is not clear. It should be noted that in his astronomical work he was
one of the very first to report precisely the results of his observations and to question received ideas in
their light. In arithmetic as well he contributed to the breakdown of the separation between discrete
and continuous quantities – in modern terms, rational and irrational numbers – that led to the rise of
modern number theory in the late Renaissance. His complementary treatment of musical rhythm in
terms of the exhaustion of theoretical possibility made him stand beside Boethius and Guido as one of
the foremost auctoritates of medieval music theory.

Writings
Notitia artis musicae, 1319–21, CSM, 17 (1972), 47–107; partial Eng. trans. in StrunkSR2, ii, 152–9; book 1,
Musica theorica, GerbertS, iii, 312–15 [under the incorrect title Ars discantus], with 256–7; book 2 Musica
practica, GerbertS, iii, 292–301

Compendium musicae practicae, c1322, CSM, 17 (1972), 119–46; GerbertS, iii, 301–6 [as Quaestiones
super partes musicae]

Musica speculativa secundum Boetium, June 1323, ed. C. Falkenroth (Stuttgart, 1992); ed. in Witkowska-
Zaremba (1992), 171–248; ed. S. Fast (Ottawa, 1994); GerbertS, iii, 249–83 [according to Michels extant in two
authentic versions, the second from 1325, as well as an inauthentic 15th-century Austrian or south German
abridgement (GerbertS, iii, 249–55); other reworkings, arrangements or conflations also exist]

Libellus cantus mensurabilis secundum Johannes de Muris, c1340, ed. in Katz, 266–88;
CoussemakerS, iii, 46–58

Ars contrapuncti secundum Johannes de Muris, after 1340, CoussemakerS, 3, 59–68

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See also

Paris, §I, 3: To 1450: Music theory

Notation, §III, 3(iii): Polyphonic mensural notation, c1260–1500

Theory, theorists, §7: 14th century

Vitry, Philippe de, §1: Life, position, reputation; literary works

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