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In John Trevisa's Dialogue, the character of the Lord explains that the use of Latin as a universal academic language is one part of the 'doubel remedy' for the problem of diverse languages that prevents the communication of knowledge between 'men of ser [far] contrayes and londes'. The other remedy is translation, which overcomes the exclusivity of Latin.¹ Trevisa, who was educated at Oxford during the time leading up to the Wycliffite controversies, produced several translations of academic Latin texts into English, as well as two original pieces about motivations for translation. His work comprises a range of writings that reflect the Latin academic style of the period and participate in the academic debates of the fourteenth century. However, Trevisa's translation of the works into English also presents them to a vernacular audience, instructing vernacular readers how to conduct arguments and equipping them with the information to participate in discussions previously unavailable to them.

Spoken Discourse: Dialogus inter militem et clericum and Defensio curatorum

One group of Trevisa's works consists of those that represent the way discourse is carried out. This group includes two of his shorter works, Dialogus inter militem et clericum and Defensio curatorum, which are both based upon spoken intellectual discourse.² The Dialogus is written as an exchange between two speakers, and the Defensio is the record of a verbal defence or sermon. The academic character of these works can be better understood in the context of the nature of education at Oxford, where Trevisa entered in 1362 and remained for over eighteen years.³ Education at Oxford was conducted through oral lectures and a variety of public debates called disputations, in which students and masters posed questions and made responses, with clearly defined roles for each participant.⁴ The process of inception, by which a candidate for a doctorate in theology (Trevisa's subject) was finally awarded the degree, was also based on argumentation; the student to be awarded the degree preached two sermons and took part in disputations in which he must argue both sides of an issue with different opponents and then synthesize both sides into his own conclusion.⁵ It is not possible to definitively say how much input Trevisa had in the choice of this text for translation; his patron, Lord Berkeley, may have had influence as well, given that the Dialogus always appears in manuscripts with the Polychronicon, which clearly was commissioned by Berkeley.⁶ It is clear, however, that the discursive, almost role-playing, structure would be for Trevisa the natural way in which to express ideas.⁷ At Oxford, attainment of a degree allowed participation in the university's administration as one of the masters in the highest council of the university, the congregation, which in the fourteenth century oversaw finances, housing, academic issues, and other matters related to the university.⁸ The ability to succeed in the process of critical argumentation was what allowed a member of Oxford access to engage with the issues pertinent to the academic community.

The Dialogus inter militem et clericum is seminal among Trevisa's dialogues because it is likely that, as Ralph Hanna and Ronald Waldron both suggest, the form of this Latin Dialogus suggested to Trevisa the form of his own Dialogue, an original composition in English which prefaces his Polychronicon translation.⁹ The original Dialogus is an anonymous Latin tract of the late thirteenth century, associated with disputes between Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII about royal and ecclesiastical authority centring initially on royal taxation of the French church, hence the emphasis on church property in the Dialogus.¹⁰ The Dialogus is structured as an exchange between two speakers, the Clericus (Clerk) and Miles (Knight). The Clerk establishes the topic for discussion with a factual observation:

This sentence introduces the issue for debate, the overthrow of clerical power by governmental authorities, in the same way that an academic disputation would begin with the posing of a question.¹² The Knight's first response is to protest his own ignorance: 'Ich am a lewed man & may nou3t vnderstonde sotil & derk speche'.¹³ He draws attention to the contrast between his own lack of education and the Clerk's learnedness, an opposition which is frequently expressed in literature of the period by the words lered and lewed (in Latin, clericus and laicus). Thorlac Turville-Petre notes that lewed usually indicates 'lay, not clerical', and the two words generally correspond to two basic groups of medieval society, the clergy and the laypeople; however, the groups are mainly distinguished by knowledge or ignorance of Latin, so that even members of the clergy can in some cases be described as lewed.¹⁴ Thus, in the Dialogus the Clerk and the Knight are set up as members of two separate classes, the lered and the lewed, and 'maner of spekyng' is fundamental to the distinction between these two classes.

However, it becomes almost immediately clear that the distinction is not as straightforward as the two opening statements suggest. In response to the Knight's request for simple speech, the Clerk goes on into greater detail about the abuse of political power that he sees around him, concluding that 'a3enus al maner lawe we [clerics] suffriþ wrong', that is, that the abuses the clergy have suffered are breaches of law. The Knight then asks, 'What clepe ye lawe?', asking the Clerk to define a crucial term for his argument, and the Clerk's definition leads to a discussion about sources of authority.¹⁵ The Knight's request for a definition of terms overturns any expectation that the Knight's lewedness is an inability to present cogent argument; the Knight displays an attention to detail and to careful use of words, so that his lewedness is shown in a positive light as a preference for clear, straightforward argument.¹⁶ Throughout the Dialogus, the Knight does most of the speaking and supports his claims with examples from scripture and history, but mostly relies on literal interpretations of the Bible rather than the standard auctores of clerical polemic.¹⁷ He at once takes on the instructive role that should ordinarily belong to the lered Clerk and also demonstrates that an academic style of argument can be successfully supported by literal interpretation of scripture, avoiding 'sotil & derk speche'.¹⁸ As Ralph Hanna comments, 'the secular figure holds all the trumps', and the expected roles of the two disputers are reversed in the course of the debate.¹⁹

Thus, the Dialogus illustrates that level of education does not necessarily correlate with intellectual ability or verbal skills in a well-reasoned argument. The original Latin tract makes its point about lay intelligence from what remains a clerical, Latinate position, probably for a clerical audience, but Trevisa's English translation of the Dialogus brings the argument into English for at least a small group of lay readers. The Dialogus survives in six manuscripts, always occurring with Trevisa's translation of the Polychronicon, suggesting that it reached the same type of audience. One of these manuscripts containing both works was produced by 'scribe Delta' in London for Richard Beauchamp (Berkeley's son-in-law), the Earl of Warwick,²⁰ and the manuscripts are generally well-made with some level of ornamentation, suggesting an audience of well-to-do owners.²¹ For these lay readers, the work in its final English translation is illustrative, giving a basic picture of how intellectual discourse can be carried on in English by those without clerical education.

The Defensio curatorum is illustrative in a similar way. It is translated from a Latin account of a sermon delivered in 1357 (not long prior to Trevisa's translation) to the Pope. The speaker, FitzRalph, encountered controversy at Oxford about the mendicant friars, a debate connected to the interpretation of Christ's poverty; FitzRalph released a dialogue on the subject at Oxford, and then moved to London, preaching sermons in the vernacular, as the Defensio describes.²² The defence is presented as a speech given to the Pope, a single argument before a silent listener, like a sermon or lecture, and exhibits similar academic qualities to the Dialogus, including the habit of supporting arguments with examples from scripture and observation. FitzRalph describes how he encountered 'wise doctors' discussing mendicancy, and in response he delivered several sermons 'to þe peple in her owne tonge' (these are Trevisa's translations).²³ In preaching these vernacular sermons, FitzRalph positions himself outside the clerical debate of the doctors, taking up what Fiona Somerset calls an 'extraclerical' position, aligning himself with a lay vernacular audience and taking academic debate over a clerical issue into a public arena.²⁴ His English preaching notwithstanding, FitzRalph's Latin writing remains limited in audience to those who can read Latin; his claims for vernacularity are made for a clerical audience. It is only Trevisa's English translation of the work that allows it into the wider arena of vernacular debate.²⁵

Both the Dialogus and the Defensio move beyond simple illustration in their shifting of debate into a vernacular arena. Part of the way through FitzRalph's defence of local ordinaries rather than mendicant friars as the best confessors for parishioners, he shifts from speaking about the parishioner in the third person to quoting what a parishioner might 'skilfulliche argue in his herte' (as Trevisa translates it), an internal evaluation of the suitability of his confessor: 'why wolde þis begger sitte & here my schrifte & leue his beggyng & getyng of his lifhlode, but he hope to haue of me siche maner help […?].'²⁶ The parishioner's internal speech (in a style like FitzRalph's own sermon) uses biblical quotations to support his evaluation, and follows a logical train of thought indicated by such phrases as, 'þanne hit folewiþ', 'þerfore', and 'þis resoun is confermed'.²⁷ Like the lay characters in the Dialogus and Dialogue, here the lay figure has the ability to make cogent arguments, but the passage is more than merely illustrative. As Somerset suggests, arguments presented in the vernacular can be instructional, intended not only to exemplify but to teach good argumentation, empowering the audience to take part in the type of discourse that is being presented. In this case, a lay parishioner evaluates his confessor, and the possibility arises that other parishioners could make similar evaluations.²⁸ Trevisa's English translation of Defensio curatorum gives vernacular discourse an aggressive quality: not only is vernacular argumentation illustrated, it is taught, with the suggestion that the audience can learn from the example presented, carrying discourse out of its Latin context and into other arenas of debate. Instruction and persuasion also appear in the Dialogus, when Trevisa inserts his own commentary, prefaced by his name in the text, in the middle of a speech by the Knight. Trevisa comments on the specific words and arguments being made, and ends by saying, 'But how hit euer be of þe distinctioun þat is made bitwene þe clerk & þe kny3t, [...] take hede how þei spekiþ eiþer to oþer.'²⁹ This last comment is not on the content of the argument but on its manner, 'how they speak each to the other'. Trevisa addresses the audience of his work, pointing them to the style of argumentation being used, in a move that is 'instructional'.³⁰

Both of these works, the Dialogus and the sermon, posit in different ways that intellectual discourse need not be solely the possession of Latin. They both exhibit oral aspects like the Oxford disputations and lectures, and in presenting ideas in an academic style they realign the roles of lered and lewed so that a lay speaker is endowed with argumentative skills comparable to, or greater than, those of the clerical speaker. Both works illustrate vernacular argumentation. However, they also offer the possibility of the audience learning to employ the same skills presented. There is a persuasive aspect especially to the Defensio curatorum, for the medieval sermon inherits the tradition of classical rhetoric; where classical public oratory moved an audience to political action (praxis), the medieval sermon moves the audience to religious action.³¹ This persuasive and active goal of rhetoric implies a purpose beyond simple illustration. Defensio curatorum illustrates lay argumentation in order to persuade the audience to participate in it. This takes the Defensio out of the realm of the simply illustrative and gives it an orientation towards praxis, action by the audience. Similarly, in the Dialogus, there is an expectation that members of the audience will learn how to conduct arguments on their own using the techniques presented to them: they become not passively informed listeners, but actively educated participants.

Needful Information: The Polychronicon and De regimine principum

If the two dialectical works discussed above present methods of argumentation in the vernacular, two of Trevisa's longer translated works, the Polychronicon and De regimine principum, present 'informacion' that can be useful both didactically, teaching the audience practical virtue, and for providing historical material to support arguments.³² The original Latin Polychronicon by Ranulph Higden of Chester was written in the first half of the fourteenth century and had a wide, mainly monastic audience: extant manuscripts come from monastic and cathedral libraries in far-ranging locations including Canterbury, Westminster, Chester, Glastonbury, Gloucester and Ramsey, among others,³³ and fourteenth-century writers like Wyclif cite the Polychronicon as an historical source.³⁴ Thus, when Lord Berkeley requests an English translation, he is aiming to make an important clerical work accessible to non-Latinate readers. Fourteen manuscripts of the Polychronicon survive. Six of these manuscripts are the same as those listed above containing the Dialogus, including the one produced for Richard Beauchamp, so the readership for the Polychronicon appears to be similar.³⁵ The work was printed by Caxton in 1482, approximately a century after its translation, implying that Caxton thought it worth printing and that its readership continued at least a century after its translation.³⁶ Among Trevisa's translations, part of the importance of the Polychronicon is that it is prefaced by Trevisa's own composition, the Dialogue and companion Epistle, which both state explicitly and show by example the purpose of the Polychronicon translation as a source of 'informacion and lore' that can be used to support arguments.³⁷

The word informacioun, as defined by the Middle English Dictionary, has a range of meanings beyond the connotation of 'data' or 'facts'. It can mean 'instruction, direction, teaching', as well as 'evidence, explanation'.³⁸ In the Dialogue, Trevisa seems to use it in the first sense, especially because it is coupled with 'lore'.³⁹ Trevisa uses the word informacioun in translating the Latin information in De proprietatibus rerum, 'Þerfore diuynyte vsith holy informacioun and poesies', where the divine use of speech and physical objects signifies spiritual truths, an instructional function.⁴⁰ A similar usage is found in a fourteenth-century Bible translation: Christ had patience 'to þe informacyon of hem þat schulden lyfen to hym in-to an eferlastynge lyf', that is, Christ's patience was exemplary and didactic.⁴¹ The word in these examples indicates 'teaching', and perhaps also 'message'. The introduction to the Polychronicon itself states that in histories can be found 'trivium quoque theologicarum virtutum et quadrivium cardinalium', the theological and cardinal virtues, which Trevisa translates as 'ensaumple of leuynge, clensynge of goodness, þe metynge of þe þre waies of þe þre virtues of deuynyte, and þe metynge of foure weies of þe foure chief virtues of þewes of real cloþynge'.⁴² The 'informacion' in the Polychronicon is more than factual; its stories are ensaumples that are part of a moral framework of virtues. This function of informacioun is didactic and moral.

The second way in which informacioun functions, closer to the sense of 'evidence, explanation', is implicit in the Dialogue, shown by the way the Lord makes his argument. He uses historical precedent as support for vernacular translation, citing the translations of the church Fathers, Alfred, Bede and even Cædmon, a collection of important figures both in the church and in English history, in an argument that bears much resemblance to a similar argument made in the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible.⁴³ The case of Alfred could have been taken largely from the Polychronicon itself, which provides many of the details the Lord mentions: Alfred's English laws, his Psalter translation, Werferth's translation of Gregory's Dialogues, and his connection with Oxford.⁴⁴ The Lord has a persuasive goal related to contemporary debates on translation, but in support for his position he uses ensaumples from history, listing illustrious figures and telling the Clerk that to condemn vernacular translation he must also condemn those historical figures. Historical informacioun has provided him with a language to use in voicing his own interests. This way of using historical precedent—particularly from the Polychronicon—is found in other writings of the period. Wyclif cites the Polychronicon in an argument (like that of the Dialogus inter militem et clericum) about temporal and ecclesiastical authority: 'multi papæ irregulars per imperators depositi, ut narrat Cestrensis in suo Polychronicon, libro v'.⁴⁵ John Purvey also cites the Polychronicon in a similar way: 'Item quod christiani reges debent non solum judicare superbum episcopum Romæ, sed etiam deponere illum, per exemplum quod narrat Cestrensis, libro vi. cap. 8'.⁴⁶ Both Wyclif and Purvey are using the Polychronicon as a reference work.⁴⁷ A similar style of arguing from precedent is found in the Dialogus. The arguments are usually from Biblical or ecclesiastical history, but are used in the same way as the examples from the Polychronicon. The Knight describes the Biblical king Joas as an example of a good king who forbade the priests to extort money from the people but rather used the people's offerings for restoring the temple. The Clerk engages in the argument by objecting to this precedent because it does not reflect the current situation, because temporal authorities are spending the church's money for 'chiualrie' rather than for the church: 'þerfore þe ensaumple þat 3e bringiþ forþ is nou3t a3enus vs noþer a3enus oure werkes and dedes'.⁴⁸ Though the example is from biblical history rather than a chronicle, the incident is used as history, an ensaumple that the Knight connects to the present situation; in this case, the Clerk finds fault with the relevance of the ensaumple to present circumstances. These instances illustrate how history provides a mine of examples to be used as precedents for contemporary arguments, and can provide a frame of reference within which positions can be debated.

Trevisa's translation of the Polychronicon positions him in an instructional role as the presenter of the information. As translator, he adds his own comments to Higden's carefully initialled ones, prefacing them with his name, and sometimes even qualifying them. For example, Higden inserts a note about contradictory stories in his sources, and Trevisa inserts his own note immediately after, explaining how the contradictory accounts can be reconciled.⁴⁹ Other notes by Trevisa give explanations or definitions, for example explaining where 'Estanglond' is, or defining abacus.⁵⁰ Trevisa's most 'intrusive' notes are those that comment on the narrative, instructing the reader how to understand what is presented or giving his own retrospective comments on the real nature of what is narrated. Regarding the story of Odo, a Dane who left the 'wyldenes' of his youth and took the tonsure, eventually to become Archbishop of Canterbury, Trevisa comments that he was 'lewedliche meuede', to make himself a monk, that he became a monk 'uninformedly', because, as Trevisa explains, neither Christ nor his apostles were monks or friars.⁵¹ The narrative itself offers no such criticism of Odo, but Trevisa reads the story in light of contemporary concerns about the roles of Christ and the clergy, illustrating for his readers how the informacioun of history can be related to current debates like the ones in the Dialogus and Dialogue.

Trevisa's role as a teacher can be illustrated by the similarity of his comments to academic oral lectures and written prologues. At Oxford, 'ordinary' lectures formed the basis for the undergraduate course. The master read the text, as Trevisa translates and presents the text to his vernacular readers, and then explained it, as Trevisa comments on and explains the narrative.⁵² This way of presenting a text allows the lecturer to develop his own ideas in his commentary, not only presenting but interpreting the text.⁵³ In this way, Oxford lectures were similar to written academic prologues in both antiquity and the Middle Ages: prologues function as commentaries on and interpretations of the text presented.⁵⁴ For example, in discussing the causa finalis, the ultimate purpose of a work, the lecturer or author of the prologue is giving his own opinion about what the work's purpose is, affecting the way his students will perceive it.⁵⁵ Trevisa's comments, then, serve the same function as an academic prologue, and imply Trevisa's responsibility for presenting the text in a certain way, whether or not he explicitly announces this interpretative function.⁵⁶ Thus, Trevisa plays the role of a teacher, interpreting and mediating the work he presents, announcing his presence with his own name inserted in the text with his comments.

De regimine principum contains informacioun in the first sense cited above, 'direction, teaching'. Trevisa again plays the role of a teacher, but the work is more overtly rhetorical, concerned with praxis, public action, like the oratorical rhetoric of antiquity.⁵⁷ De regimine is a translation of a thirteenth-century French treatise in Latin on the proper way for a king to govern.⁵⁸ Its audience, as Charles Briggs demonstrates, was wide, including nobility like Thomas, Duke of Gloucester and his wife (roughly contemporary with Trevisa), as well as university clerics accessing the work both through personal copies and institutional libraries.⁵⁹ Trevisa is thus translating a work of broad and varied popularity, both clerical and lay, but which hitherto had only been translated into French. As in the Polychronicon, Trevisa positions himself as a teacher, inserting his comments into the text, though they are relatively few and are of an explanatory nature.⁶⁰ The instructional purpose of the text itself, however, is explicit and self-announced:

The word 'informed' and the pairing of 'teching and lore' that Trevisa uses in his translation echo the language used in the Dialogue, 'informacion and lore'. The text in both Latin and in Trevisa's translation envisions the audience as a princely one, but indicates that both princes and their subjects need such instruction if they are to play their societal roles properly. The practical political relevance of such a work on good governance would probably have been clear to Berkeley and Trevisa, given the absence of it under King Richard, as well as Berkeley's own personal experience with Richard's misgovernance and overstepping of authority.⁶² Berkeley's summons to parliament and time spent in London meant that he participated in political events of the time, and was thus in a position to make use of the information in De regimine principum in his advisory role, as well as in his role as a local magnate at Berkeley.⁶³ The work by its own admission teaches political wisdom directed toward praxis and demanding an active response from the audience.

De regimine, though not an historical work, also indicates the importance of knowledge of the past (the kind of knowledge provided by the Polychronicon) as relevant for current action:

Here, historical precedent is not useful so much for supporting arguments as for informing choices and action, praxis. Both the Polychronicon and De regimine, in their Latin versions, provide informacioun for teaching as well as for evidence in argumentation, and both, though they emphasize one or the other sense of informacioun, display an understanding of the word in both its didactic and its factual sense. Trevisa's role is to make these works available by translation, and by prefacing the Polychronicon with his own Dialogue, to suggest what can be done with informacioun.

Conclusion

As with any translation, the main content of the works Trevsia translates—notwithstanding his alterations—is derived from the Latin versions of his texts and cannot be considered strictly a result of his own authorship. Berkeley's patronage adds another layer of complexity, since at least the Polychronicon, possibly other works, were translated at his request. However, Trevisa's translations do represent a consistent collection of works that educate, sharing an interest in debates of the day, styles of dialogue, practical advice, and factual information. They are also works that, for the most part, already had a large circulation in their Latin versions, so that Trevisa is not promulgating obscure texts but opening up new audiences for books already popular among clerical readers. The Polychronicon translation at least is aimed at what Trevisa pictures as a general audience, those who cannot learn Latin because of 'oþer maner bysynes, som vor elde, som vor defaute of wyt, som vor defaute of katel oþer of frendes to vynde ham to scole', or for readers like the Lord, who knows some Latin but whose primary identity in relation to the text is as a vernacular reader.⁶⁵ Trevisa, and Berkeley to the extent he was involved, did not for the most part author the main content of the texts. However, his choices of which texts to translate imply a consistency of interest in creating a collection of vernacular works that reflects the kind of education carried out at Oxford and by clerical writers of the period, reworking this collection for a new vernacular audience.

Jennifer Barton, Lincoln College, Oxford

Primary Sources

Babington, Churchill ed., Polychronicon Ranulph Higden Monachi Cestrensis; Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, 9 Vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1865).

Erickson, Norma N., 'A Dispute between a Priest and a Knight', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. III, No. 5 (Oct. 1967), pp. 288-309.

Fowler, David C., Charles F. Briggs and Paul G. Remley, The Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa's Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997).

Hudson, Anne ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

Paues, Anna C., ed., A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904).

Perry, Aaron Jenkins ed., Dialogues inter Militem et Clericum, Richard FitzRalph's Sermon: 'Defensio Curatorum' and Methodius: 'Þe Bygynning of þe World and þe Ende of Worldes,' EETS 167 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925).

Seymour, M. C., Gabriel M. Liegey et al., ed., On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum. 3 Vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).

Shirley, Walter Waddington, ed., Fasciculi zizaniorum, Rolls Series 5 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858).

Waldron, R. A. ed., 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces on Translation: A Critical Edition,' Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. E. D. Kennedy, R. A. Waldron and J. S. Wittig (Wolfeboro, New Hampshire: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 285-99.

--- , John Trevisa's Translation of the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, Book IV (Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004).

Secondary and Critical Works Cited

Blake, Norman, 'Introduction,' in The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 2, 1066-1476, ed. Norman Blake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Briggs, Charles F., Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275-1525, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 5. General editors Rosamund McKitterick and Tessa Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999).

Copeland, Rita, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

--- , Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Dennison, Lynda and Nicholas Rogers, 'A Medieval Best-Seller: Some Examples of Decorated Copies of Higden's Polychronicon', in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R. B. Dobson, ed. by Caroline M. Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), 80-99.

Edwards, A. S. G., 'John Trevisa', in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 117-126.

Evans, Ruth, 'An Afterword on the Prologue,' in The Idea of the Vernacular, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), 371-378.

Evans, Ruth, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, 'The Notion of Vernacular Theory,' in The Idea of the Vernacular, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), 314-330.

Fletcher, J. M., 'The Faculty of Arts,' in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 1, ed. J. I. Catto, general editor T. H. Aston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 369-99.

Fowler, David C., 'John Trevisa and the English Bible,' Modern Philology Vol. 58, No. 2 (Nov. 1960), 81-98.

--- , John Trevisa, Authors of the Middle Ages 2 (Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1993).

--- , The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar (Seattle: University of Washington Press: 1995).

Hanna, Ralph, 'Sir Thomas Berkeley and his Patronage,' Speculum 64 (1989), 878-916.

Hachett, M. B., 'The University as a Corporate Body,' in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 1, ed. J. I. Catto, general editor T. H. Aston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 37-95.

Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Lawler, Traugott, 'On the Properties of John Trevisa's Major Translations,' Viator 14 (1983), 267-288.

Minnis, A. J., Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984).

Somerset, Fiona, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Taylor, John, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

Turville-Petre, Thorlac, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290-1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

Waldron, Ronald, 'John Trevisa and the Use of English,' Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988), 171-202.

Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans, eds., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280-1520. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999).

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NOTES

1. 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces: A Critical Edition', ed. by R. A. Waldron in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. E. D. Kennedy et al. (Wolfeboro, NH: D. S. Brewer, 1988) pp. 285-99 (289.16-17, 7-8, 290.20-26 and 289.17-290.20); Ralph Hanna, 'Sir Thomas Berkeley and His Patronage', Speculum 64 (1989), pp. 878-916 (p. 895).

2. The Dialogus inter militem et clericum is hereafter referred to as the Dialogus. It is distinct from the Dialogue and Epistle, an original composition by Trevisa prefaced to his translation of the Polychronicon, which is hereafter referred to as the Dialogue, following the convention of David Fowler in The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), pp. 90, 145.

3. David Fowler, John Trevisa, Authors of the Middle Ages 2 (Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1993), p. 4.

4. J. M. Fletcher, 'The Faculty of Arts', in the History of the University of Oxford, ed. by T. H. Aston and others, 8 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1984-2000), I (1984), 375-7, 387, 388.

5. Fowler, John Trevisa, p. 9.

6. A. S. G Edwards, ‘John Trevisa’, in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), p. 118. Ronald Waldron suggests the possibility that the Defensio curatorum was commissioned by Berkeley because of its inclusion in one Polychronicon manuscript, Manchester, Chetham’s 11379: John Trevisa’s Translation of the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, Book IV, (Heidelberg, Germany: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2004) p. xvii. For a list of manuscripts, see Fowler, The Life and Times of John Trevisa, pp. 248-9.

7. Cf. Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard Heresy (Oxford: OUP, 1988), p. 430.

8. Fletcher, 'The Faculty of Arts', p. 388; M. B. Hackett, 'The University as Corporate Body' in The History of the University of Oxford, I, 37-95 (pp. 61-2).

9. Hanna, 'Berkeley and His Patronage', p. 285; Waldron, 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces', p. 285.

10. Norma N. Erickson, 'A Dispute between a Priest and a Knight', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 111, No. 5 (1967), pp. 288-309 (288).

11. Dialogus inter miltem et clericum, in Dialogues inter Militem et Clericum, Richard FitzRalph's Sermon: 'Defensio Curatorum' and Methodius: 'Þe Bygynning of þe World and þe Ende of Worldes, ed. by Aaron Jenkins Perry, EETS 167 (Oxford: OUP, 1925), 1.1-3.

12. Fletcher, 'Faculty of Arts', p. 388.

13. Dialogus inter militem et clericum, 1.5-6.

14. Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290-1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 29; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), pp. 177-8.

15. Dialogus inter militem et clericum, 2.8, 2.9.

16. Fiona Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p. 88.

17. Erickson, 'A Dispute', p. 289.

18. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, pp. 88; see also her 'extraclerical' argument, pp. 94-6.

19. 'Sir Thomas Berkeley', p. 895; cf. Turville-Petre, England the Nation, pp. 34-36.

20. This manuscript is London, British Library, Additional 24194; see Hanna, ‘Berkeley and his Patronage’, p. 909; see also A. I. Doyle and Malcolm Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confession Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in Parkes and Andrew G. Watson, eds., Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London, 1978), pp. 163-210.

21. Perry, Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, pp. xv-xxiv.

22. Fowler, Life and Times of John Trevisa, p. 164.

23. Defensio curatorum, in Dialogues inter Militem et Clericum, Richard FitzRalph's Sermon: 'Defensio Curatorum' and Methodius: 'Þe Bygynning of þe World and þe Ende of Worldes, 39.13-16.

24. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p.13

25. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p. 99.

26. Defensio curatorum, 46.31-33, 47.10-11, 47.11-13; for a discussion of this passage, see Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p. 97.

27. Defensio curatorum, 47.18, 47.21, 47.29.

28. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, pp. 16, 98.

29. Dialogus inter militem et clericum, 7.4-7.

30. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, pp. 87, 16.

31. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), pp. 153-4.

32. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p. 68; Trevisa’s two other lengthy translated works are De proprietatibus rerum and the Gospel of Nicodemus; for discussions of these, see Fowler, The Life and Times of John Trevisa, pp. 206-212 and 120-145.

33. John Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 106. Lynda Dennison and Nicholas Rogers list copies of the Latin Polychronicon attested to in documents but still unidentified or lost, indicating that copies were owned in such locations as London, Lincoln, Wells and York; ‘A Medieval Best-Seller: Some Examples of Decorated Copies of Higden’s Polychronicon’ in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R. B. Dobson, ed. by Caroline M. Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donnington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), pp. 80-99 (pp. 96-99).

34. Taylor, p. 142-3; Churchill Babington, ed., Polychronicon Ranulph Higden Monachi Cestrensis; Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1865), Vol. 1, xlii-xlv. See below, p. 9, for some of Wyclif’s citations of the Polychronicon.

35. For descriptions, see Waldron, John Trevisa's Translation of the Polychronicon, p. xxiii-xxxviii.

36. Waldron, John Trevisa's Translation of the Polychronicon, p. xxx.

37. Waldron, 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces', 289.11.

38. Middle English Dictionary, Vol. V., ed. Sherman M. Kuhn, John Reidy et al. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1972, s.v. 'Informacioun', 1.a, 2.b.

39. 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces', 289.11, 290.33.

40. Seymour, M. C. and Gabriel M. Liegey, eds., On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, 3 Vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 41.22-3.

41. Anna C. Paues, ed., A Fourteenth Century English Biblical Version (CUP, 1904), 1 Tim. 1.16.

42. 'Also three theological and four cardinal virtues'. Babington, Polychronicon, I.2.

43. ‘Trevisa’s Original Prefaces’, 291.102-3, 292.105, 136, 140, 143; Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds., The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850), pp. 1-60 (Ch. XV, p. 59).

44. Waldron, Polychronicon, 1.17-19, 49-50, 60.

45. ‘Many wayward popes were deposed [lit. laid aside] by emperors, as Cestrensis [i.e., Ranluph Higden of Chester] narrates in his Polychronicon, book V’. Walter Waddington Shirley, ed., Fasciculi zizaniorum, Rolls Series 5 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858), p. 256.

46. ‘Likewise Christian kings ought not only to judge over the bishops of Rome, but also to depose them [lit. lay them aside], as in the example Cestrensis narrates, Book VI, Chapter 8.’ Shirley, Fasciculi zizaniorum, p. 397.

47. Taylor, The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden, p. 149.

48. Dialogus inter militem et clericum, 21-23. This is a passage that Trevisa alters in translation, changing the Latin ‘miltares tumultus et bellicosas classes’ (military confusion and warlike armies) to the milder ‘chiualrie’, softening the Clerk’s accusation; see Fowler, The Life and Times of John Trevisa, p. 149.

49. Waldron, John Trevisa's Translation of the Polychronicon, IV.17.85-9.

50. Ibid., IV.2.83-5, IV.14.49-51.

51. Ibid., IV.10.1-11.

52. Fletcher, 'Faculty of Arts', p. 375.

53. Ibid., pp. 375-6.

54. Minnis, A. J., Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press), p. 13.

55. Ibid., pp. 28-9. For a full discussion of the different types of medieval prologue, see ibid., pp. 15-29.

56. Cf. Ruth Evans, 'An Afterword on the Prologue', in The Idea of the Vernacular, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), pp. 371-378 (p. 374).

57. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation, p. 153.

58. David C. Fowler, Charles F. Briggs and Paul G. Remley, On the Governance of Kings and Princes: John Trevisa's Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), p. ix.

59. Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum: Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, c. 1275-1525, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 5, general editors Rosamund McKitterick and Tessa Webber (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), pp. 61, 93.

60. Ibid., III.ii.7, III.ii.16, and III.ii.16.

61. On the Governance of Kings and Princes, I.i.1

62. Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p. 77; Hanna, 'Sir Thomas Berkeley', p. 888.

63. Hanna, 'Sir Thomas Berkeley', pp. 880, 908; Somerset, Clerical Discourse, p. 78.

64. Fowler, On the Governance of Kings and Princes, I.ii.8.

65. 'Trevisa's Original Prefaces', 291.65-8, 290.53-4.