Gallensis, Johannes (John of Wales)

GALLENSIS, Johannes (John of Wales). - Celebrated English theologian of the Friars Minor, b. in the county of Wales in the first half of the 13th century, d. in Paris ca. 1303 (according to Little, d. 3 April 1285). The course of G.'s academic teaching is today summed up in these fundamental dates: sixth lector of the Minorite Studium of Oxford in 1259-62, in Paris ca. 1270 and there itself regent of the Studium in 1281-83. In October 1282 he received from Archbishop John Pecham (v.), his disciple, the task of negotiating with the rebel prince Llewelyn of North Wales. In 1283 in Paris he was one of the 5 examiners of the doctrines of P. Olivi; there he delivered sermons on 29 April and 1 May. He was honorifically called arbor vitae. A prolific writer, he left numerous works, very varied in subject, but for the most part moral and ascetic, preserved in ca. 100 manuscripts (13th-15th centuries) and in several editions (12 between 1470 and 1520) which testify to their value and diffusion.

Among them are remembered: 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... (ibid.); Breviloquium sapientiae sive philosophia sanctorum (ibid.); moral treatises De Poenitentia, De septem sitit, De decem praeceptis, etc.; postils on the Apocalypse (doubtful) and on the Pauline Epistles, and other doubtful scriptural and moral works; rather doubtful too is the commentary in 4 Sententiarum, printed under his name (Lyons 1511); the manuscript treatise De arte praedicandi, by some previously denied, is nevertheless better attributed to him. In some manuscripts an Expositio regulae Ord. Minorum also passes under his name (ed. in Firmamentum, III, Venice 1513, ff. 98-106). The Gallese is a good theologian, and rather a good moralist, with practical aims, according to the ideal traced by St. Francis in his Rule. He himself calls himself "ignorant of philosophy," but one must also take into account the great doctrinal esteem he enjoyed among his contemporaries. There still exist 4 different Italian versions of one of his treatises, made in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Another G. di G., O. F. M., was promoted master in theology in 1368 by order of Pope Urban V, and was lector in London.