WALLENSIS, i.e. 'Welshman';

four men, all of whom are mentioned in the D.N.B., bore this appellation, and it will be convenient to deal with them all under this one heading.

(1) JOHANNES WALLENSIS (fl. 1215), lecturer in canon law at the university of Bologna.

his surname is the only indication of his Welsh origin.

(2) JOHANNES WALLENSIS (died 1285?);

see under ' Johannes.'

(3) THOMAS WALLENSIS (died 1255), a Grey Friar who became bishop of S. Davids;

there is no doubt at all that he was Welsh, for we have his own statement to this effect. He was one of the first four Grey Friars to teach at Oxford, and both Roger Bacon and Robert Grosseteste spoke highly of him (Little, Studies in English Franciscan History, 194-5). He was appointed bishop of S. Davids, 16 July 1247, consecrated 26 July 1248, and died 11 July 1255.

(4) THOMAS WALLENSIS (died 1350?), a Black Friar,

who was educated at Oxford and Paris. In 1332 he was accused (by the Grey Friars) of heresy, but was acquitted. He, too, was a voluminous writer, and as he wrote on the same subjects as ' Johannes Wallensis ' - both of them being occupied with the instruction of preachers - it was not unnatural that the works of one Welshman should be attributed to the other (or that similar works by other authors should be attributed to one of these two) - see A. G. Little's book referred to above, and G. R. Owst, Medieval Preaching in England (index), which give far more prominence to Thomas than to Johannes. In 1349, Thomas describes himself as a ' poverty-stricken old man afflicted by palsy,' and it is surmised that he died in 1350.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and other books mentioned above

Published date: 1959

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