Walter Map

Walter Map
Miniature, 1290s Miniature, 1290s
Born	c. 1130 Welsh Marches, Wales
Died	between 1209 and 1210.
Occupations	Clergyman Writer

Walter Map (Latin: Gualterius Mappus; 1130 – c. 1209/1210) was a medieval writer. He wrote De nugis curialium, which takes the form of a series of anecdotes of people and places, offering insights into the history of his time.

Map was a courtier of King Henry II of England, who sent him on missions to Louis VII of France and to Pope Alexander III. Map became the Archdeacon of Oxford in 1196.

Life

Map claimed Welsh origins and called himself a man of the Welsh Marches (marchio sum Walensibus). He was probably born in southwestern Herefordshire. Medievalist Joshua Byron Smith suggests that Map may have begun his studies at St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester before continuing at the University of Paris, apparently around 1154, when Gerard la Pucelle was teaching there. After his return from France, Map was employed as a clerk by Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of Hereford, who was a former Abbot of St Peter's. When Foliot was translated to the Diocese of London in 1163, Map followed him.

Map then became one of the clerks of the royal household and by 1173 he was an itinerant justice. As a courtier of King Henry II of England, he was sent on missions to Louis VII of France and to Pope Alexander III, and attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179, encountering a delegation of Waldensians. On this journey he stayed with Henry I of Champagne, who was then about to undertake his last journey to the Levant.

Map held a prebend in the Diocese of Lincoln by 1183 and was Chancellor of the Diocese by 1186. He later became Precentor of Lincoln, a canon of St Paul's, London, and of Hereford, and Archdeacon of Oxford in 1196.

Map was a candidate to succeed William de Vere as Bishop of Hereford in 1199, but was unsuccessful. He was once again a candidate for a bishopric in 1203, this time as Bishop of St David's, but was not chosen. He was still alive on 28 May 1208 but died sometime between 1209 and 1210. His death is commemorated at Hereford Cathedral on 1 April.

Writings

Map was a man of the world, with a large circle of courtly acquaintances, including Gerald of Wales. Robert R. Edwards writes that "Map had a contemporary reputation as a wit and story teller." His only surviving work, De Nugis Curialium (Trifles of Courtiers) is a collection of anecdotes and trivia, containing court gossip and a little real history, and written in a satirical vein. "In its form hardly more than the undigested reminiscences and notes of a man of the world with a lively sense of humour,... it is, indeed, in some sense a keen satire on the condition of church and state in the writer's own day... [and] of considerable interest; especially noticeable are his accounts of the Templars and Hospitallers, and his sketch of the English court and kings from the reign of William II to his own time."

Along with William of Newburgh, Map recorded the earliest stories of English vampires. The French-language Prose Lancelot cycle claims "Gautier Map" as an author, though this is contradicted by internal evidence; some scholars have suggested that he wrote a Lancelot romance, now lost, that was the source for the later cycle. Others say that, since Map's supposed patron was the King of England, it would have been more likely for him to have written an English tale about King Arthur, Gawain or some other “English” hero, rather than a French one. Map was also said to have written a quantity of Goliardic poetry, including the satirical Apocalypse of Golias.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Walter Map — (Sometimes wrongly written Maps)

Archdeacon of Oxford, b. at, or in the vicinity of, Hereford, c. 1140, d. between 1208 and 1210. Belonging by birth to the Welsh Marches, he was in all probability Welsh by extraction, though the two languages through which he has become known in literature are medieval church Latin, and the so-called Norman-French spoken at the Court of Henry II of England as well as in the law courts of that age and country. At the age of fourteen Walter went to the University of Paris where he studied until 1160 under Girard la Pucelle. In 1162 he was at the Court of England. Henry made him a clerk of his household, which implies that Map had received, or was was about to receive, Holy orders. After this the road to other preferments was open to him. He was the King's representative at the Third Lateran Council (1179), where he was appointed to dispute with the Waldensians. He held various benefices and at last, in 1197, he was made Archdeacon of Oxford. An unsuccessful effort to obtain the See of Hereford brought him into contact with St. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.

The place of Walter Map, however, is rather in the history of profane literature than in ecclesiastical history. As a churchman, though his life must have been respectable enough, his conversation can hardly have tended to edification, and he was the avowed enemy of the White Monks. Giraldus Cambrensis, his friend and admirer, states that in his oath as a king's justice, to do justice to all men Map made a distinct exception of Jews and Cistercians, "who were just to none". Only one literary work can be attributed to him with certainty: "De Nugis curialium" (Courtiers' Trifings), a book of gossip, anecdote, and observation, written, regardless of form, on the suggestion of one Geoffrey, to set down his (Map's) sayings and doings that had not been committed to writing. It is also implied by Map that he wrote at the wish of Heny II, at whose court the work was composed. Besides this work in Latin, there is good reason to believe that the earliest prose "Lancelot" was based on a French poem of Walter Map (see LEGENDS, Arthur). Lastly, much of the "Goliardic" Latin satire on the clergy of that period has without sufficient reason been ascribed to him, the most noted among that class of writing being the "Confessio Goliae" from which is taken the famous bacchanalian lyric beginning "Mihi est propositum in taberna mori".

The chief original sources are the De nugis curialium and GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS, Opera. Modern authorities are: WRIGHT in Preface to his edition of De nugis curialium (London, 1850); IDEM in Preface to Latin Poems attributed to Walter Map (London, 1841); KINGSFORD in Dict. of Nat. Biogr., s.v.

Bibliography

• British History Online Archdeacons of Oxford accessed on October 28, 2007
• British History Online Chancellors of Lincoln accessed on October 28, 2007
• British History Online Precentors of Lincoln accessed on October 28, 2007
• Gransden, Antonia Historical writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (London: Routledge, 1974) pp. 242–244.
• Map, Walter, and M.R. James and C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors. De Nugis Curialium — Courtiers. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
• J.B. Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017
• G. Candela, L'offerta letteraria del De nugis curialium di Walter Map. L'anatomia dell'opera e la sua proposta estetica nel contesto culturale latino, romanzo e celtico del XII secolo, Palermo, 2019

External links

• Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries: Walter Map from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume I, 1907–21.
• Works by Walter Map at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)