Nicola of Fakenham (NICOLA DE FAKENHAM) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 1081

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

NICOLA de FAKENHAM. — An English Minorite theologian of the 14th–15th century, born probably at Fakenham, in the county of Norfolk, and died at Colchester in 1407. He was a doctor and master of the University of Oxford and provincial minister of England from 1395 to 1402.

A friend and confidant of King Richard II, he received no small number of favors from him. He was also invited by him to compose his treatise on the Great Western Schism: Determinacio pro Urbano seu Bonifacio, completed in Oxford on 5 November 1395. With prudence and learning, he reviews in it all the reasons that demanded a rapid solution to the schism and suggests various ways of achieving this end. His writing was of considerable importance because it aroused the interest of the University of Oxford and of the English in resolving the disastrous schism.

BIBL.: Wadding, Annales, ad a. 1418, n. 18; id., Scriptores, p. 177; Sbaralea, II, p. 272; G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford, Oxford 1892, pp. 70, 252-53; Fr. Bliemetzrieder, Traktat des Minoritenprovincials von England Fr. Nicolaus de F., (1395) über das grosse abendländische Schisma (presentation and text of the Determinacio), in Archivum Franc. hist., 1 (1908), pp. 577-600; 2 (1909), pp. 79-91; A. Teetaert, Nicolas de F., in DThC, XI, cols. 613-14. Giovanni Odoardi

then he returned to Vienna. He fought energetically against the heresies of Wycliff and Huss. His fame as a preacher endured for a long time, and he was hailed by his contemporaries as Lux Sueviae.

Of his numerous works (manuscripts in Vienna, Munich, Melk, and Subiaco), few have been printed, among them: Postilla evangeliorum dominicalium (Strasbourg 1496); Collecta et praedicata de Passione D. N. Iens Christi (Speyer 1473).

BIBL.: M. Kropf, Bibliotheca Mellicensis, Vienna 1747, pp. 164-187; J. von Aschbach, Geschichte der Wiener Universität, I, there 1865, pp. 430-40; Fr. Schäffauer, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl als Prediger, in Theologische Quartalschrift, 115 (1934), pp. 405-39, 516-47 (with an exhaustive bibliography).

Hermine
Hühn-Steinhausen

NICOLA di
ERMANNO (Nils
Hermansson, lat.
Nicolaus Herman-