§5. Other Writers of Latin. X. English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford. Vol. 1. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.

X. English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford.

§ 5. Other Writers of Latin.

A century before the time of Map, Godfrey, a native of Cambrai, and prior of St. Swithin’s, Winchester (d. 1107), had written Latin epigrams after the manner of Martial. He is, in fact, repeatedly quoted as “Marcial” by Gower. The 238 ordinary epigrams of his first book are followed by nineteen others, which have a historic interest, in so far as they refer to royal or ecclesiastical persons of the day. The AngloNorman poet Reginald, a monk of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury (fl. 1112), wrote a lengthy poem in leonine hexameters on the life of the Syrian hermit St. Malchus. In the next half century, Lawrence, the Benedictine monk who became prior and bishop of Durham (d. 1154), composed a popular summary of Scripture history in nine books of elegiac verse. Henry of Hunttingdon (d. 1155) has preserved in the eleventh book of his Historia Anglorum, the Latin epigrams and other minor poems that he had learnt to compose as a pupil of the monks of Ramsey. A little later, Hilarius, who is supposed to have been an Englishman, and was a pupil of Abelard about 1125, wrote in France three Latin plays on sacred themes, the earliest of their kind. The Raising of Lazarus and the Image of St. Nicholas are partly written in French; the Story of Daniel in Latin only. He is also the author of twelve interesting sets of riming lyrics, in Latin, interspersed with a few lines of French, the most graceful poem in the series being addressed to an English maiden bearing the name of Rose. About the same time the Cistercian monk Henry of Saltrey (fl. 1150), wrote a Latin prose version of the legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick. A life of Becket, now only known through the Icelandic Thomas Saga, was written by Robert of Cricklade, chancellor of Oxford (1159) and prior of St Frideswide’s, who dedicated to Henry II his nine books of Flores from the Natural History of the elder Pliny.