GIOVANNI di GALLES (WALES, Gualensis, l'alensis). — A celebrated English theologian of the Friars Minor, born in the county of Wales in the first half of the 13th century, he died in Paris ca. 1303 (according to Little, he died on 3 April 1285). The course of G.’s academic teaching is now summarized by these fundamental dates: sixth lecturer at the Franciscan Studium of Oxford in 1259–62, in Paris ca. 1270, and regent of the Studium there in 1281–83. In October 1282 he was charged by Archbishop Giov. Pecham (v.), his disciple, with negotiating with the rebellious prince Llewelyn of North Wales. In 1283 in Paris he was one of the five examiners of the doctrines of P. Olivi; there he preached on 29 April and 1 May. He was honorifically called arbor vitae. A prolific writer, he left numerous works, very varied in subject matter but for the most part moral and ascetical, preserved in ca. 100 manuscripts (13th–15th centuries) and in several editions (12 between 1470 and 1520), which attest to their value and dissemination.
Among them are recalled: Communioquium, or Summa collationum (Brussels 1472 and elsewhere; exhortations and examples for every kind of person); Breviloquium de virtutibus antiquorum principum (published with the preceding work); Compendiloquium de vitis illustrium philosophorum... (there); Breviloquium sapientiae sive philosophia sanctorum (there); moral treatises De Poenitentia, De septem sitit, De decem praeceptis, etc.; glosses on the Apocalypse (of doubtful attribution) and on the Pauline Epistles, and other doubtful scriptural and moral works; the commentary in 4 Sententiarum, printed under his name (Lyons 1511), is also rather doubtful; nevertheless, the manuscript treatise De arte praedicandi, previously denied by some, is more properly attributed to him. In some manuscripts an Expositio regulae Ord. Minorum also circulates under his name (ed. in Firmamentum, III, Venice 1513, ff. 98–106). The Welshman is a good theologian, and rather a good moralist, with practical aims, in accordance with the ideal outlined by St. Francis in his Rule. He himself calls himself «ignorant of philosophy», but one must also take into account the great esteem in which his learning was held by his contemporaries. Four different Italian versions of one of his treatises, made in the 14th and 15th centuries, still exist.
Another G. di G., O. F. M., was promoted to master in theology in 1368 by order of Pope Urban V, and was a lecturer in London.