John Trevisa
John Trevisa (
1342 -
1402),
translator, was a
Cornishman, educated at Oxford,who became Vicar of
Berkeley, Gloucestershire, chaplain to the
4th Lord Berkeley, and Canon of
Westbury on Trym.
He translated for his patron the
Polychronicon of
Ranulf Higden, adding remarks of his own, andprefacing it with a
Dialogue on Translation between a Lord and a Clerk.He likewise made various other translations, including
Bartholomaeus Anglicus'
On the Properties of Things (De Proprietatibus Rerum), a medieval forerunner of the encyclopedia.
A fellow of
Queen's College, Oxford from 1372-76 at the same time as
John Wycliff and
Nicholas of Hereford, Trevisa may well have been one of the contributors to the Early Version of
Wyclif's Bible. The preface to the
King James Version of 1609 singles him out as a translator amongst others at that time:
"even in our King Richard the second's days, John Trevisa translated them [the Gospels] into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age". Subsequently he translated a number of books of the Bible into French for Lord Berkeley, including a version of the
Book of Revelation, which his patron had written up onto the ceiling of the chapel at
Berkeley Castle.
Father of Mary Trevisa with wife, Amicia.
* David C. Fowler,
John Trevisa, Ashgate (1993) ISBN 0860783707
* David C. Fowler,
The life and times of John Trevisa, medieval scholar, Seattle: University of Washington press (1995) ISBN 0295974273
*
John of Trevisa,
Online Companion to Middle English Literature*
John Trevisa,
Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-21) - see also the previous and following pages.
* David C. Fowler,
Piers Plowman: In Search of an Author (1988) - article proposing that a revised edition of
Piers Plowman was by the hand of Trevisa.
