GIOVANNI di HILDESHEIM. - German Carmelite of the fourteenth century. He studied in Paris and subsequently held for many years the office of prior at Kassel (1361) and at Marienau (from 1369).
He popularized the legend concerning the bodies of the Magi: De trium Regum corporibus Coloniam translatis (Mainz 1477, translated into several languages; most recent ed. Stuttgart 1925). Important is his philosophical treatise, Speculum fontis vitae (ms., London, Bodleian Library, cod. 1143), in which, in the style of the Neoplatonists, he deals with the emanation of the universe from God. As a historiographer he wrote, in addition to a chronicle of the Order and a collection of Carmelite legends, a Defensorium Ordinis B.M.V. de M. Carmelo (published in Daniel a Virginie Maria, Speculum Carm., I, Antwerp 1680, pp. 145-59).