John Trevisa was influential in making the English
language an acceptable vehicle for important written
works. His translations of the Latin texts of
Ranulf HIGDEN’s Polychronicon (ca. 1385–87) and
Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum
(On the properties of things) (1398) gave common
people access to important works.
Trevisa was born at Crocadon, St. Mellion, in
Cornwall around 1342. He was a fellow at Exeter
College, Oxford, from 1362–69 and at Queen’s Hall
from 1369–79. In 1379 he was expelled, along with
two other students, for “unworthiness,” but later
reinstated. It has been speculated that the expulsion
was due to their sympathies with the doctrines
of John WYCLIFFE. (Kunitz, 522)
Prior to 1387 he became vicar of Berkeley in
Gloucestershire, as well as chaplain to Thomas,
Lord Berkeley. He also acted as a nonresidential
canon at Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol. Lord
Berkeley and his two sons remained Trevisa’s patrons
until his death at Berkeley circa 1402.
It was Lord Berkeley for whom Trevisa translated
the Polychronicon, the De proprietatibus rerum, and
the De regimine principum. In the preface to the
Polychronicon, he wrote A Dialogue in Translation
Between a Lord and a Clerk, in which he describes
how he overcame Berkeley’s reluctance about translating
books into the “vulgar tongue” and thus making
them accessible to the common people.
Trevisa finished his translation of Ranulf Higden’s
Polychronicon in the period 1385–87.Higden
(d. 1364) was a monk in Chester whose book was
a history of the world from Creation to medieval
times. Trevisa not only translated the work, but
also annotated it and updated the history through
1385–87. Additionally he included a famous description
of the English language and its various
dialects as of the year 1385.
Trevisa completed his annotated translation of
the Latin encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum in
February 1398. It was originally written by Bartholomaeus
Anglicus (Bartholomew the Englishman) in
the early 12th century. It was a 19-book work, each
volume of which dealt with a different facet of living,
such as spirituality or the natural world.
The De regimine principum (Concerning the
rule of princes) was a translation of a 1280s Latin
work by the Augustinian friar, Aegidius Romanus
(Giles of Rome). It was meant as an all-inclusive
guide to rulers.Although the translation cannot be
exactly dated, the length suggests it was written between
his other major translations.His translation
of De regimine principum was one of the sources
for Thomas HOCCLEVE’s most famous work, the
Regiment of Princes.
Trevisa’s translations are brilliant not only in
their ease of reading, but also in the conscientiousness
he showed in making them. He was careful to
translate the works as exactly as he could, and
when two interpretations were possible, he would
include both translations. Trevisa would also include
translations of entries he did not understand
with the notation “God wot what this is to mean”
(Kunitz 1952, 522–523).
Trevisa remains an important translator and
popularizer of Latin texts. His English versions of
Higden’s Polychronicon and Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s
De proprietatibus rerum were instrumental in
raising the perception of English as a language for
learned discussion.
Bibliography
Babington, Churchill, and Lumby, J. R., eds. Polychronicon
Ranulphi 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, 1865–1886.
Fowler, David C. The Life and Times of John Trevisa,
Medieval Scholar. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1995.
Kim, H. C., ed. “The Gospel of Nichodemus, translated
by John Trevisa.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington,
1963.
Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, eds. British
Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary.
New York: H.W.Wilson, 1952.
Seymour,M. C., et al., eds. On the Properties of Things:
John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus
De Proprietatibus Rerum. 3 vols. Oxford, U.K.:
Clarendon Press, 1975–1988.
Waldron, Ronald. “Trevisa’s Original Prefaces on
Translation: A Critical Edition,” in Medieval English
Studies Presented to George Kane, edited by
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and
Joseph S.Wittig.Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: D. S.
Brewer, 1988, 285–299.
Malene A. Little