JOHN OF TREVISA'S TRANSLATION OF
HIGDEN'S POLYCHRONICON
1387.
Ranulph Higden (d. 1364) was a monk of St. Werburgh's at Chester, and
has been doubtfully identified with the 'Randal Higden' who is said to
have travelled to Rome to get the Pope's consent to the acting of the
Chester miracle plays in English.
His _Polychronicon_, so called because it is the chronicle of many ages,
is a compilation covering the period from the Creation to 1352. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was the favourite universal
history; and the First Book, which deals with general geography, has
still a special interest for the light it throws on the state of
knowledge in Chaucer's day.
Two English prose translations are known: Trevisa's, completed in 1387,
and modernized and printed by Caxton in 1482; and an anonymous rendering
made in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. Both are printed,
with Higden's Latin, in the edition by Babington and Lumby, Rolls
Series, 9 vols., 1865-86.
John of Trevisa was a Cornishman. He was a fellow of Exeter College,
Oxford, from 1362 to 1365; and was one of those expelled from Queen's
College for 'unworthiness' in 1379. He became vicar of Berkeley, and at
the request of Sir Thomas Berkeley undertook the translation of the
_Polychronicon_. In 1398 he brought to an end another long work, the
translation of _Bartholomaeus de Proprietatibus Rerum_, the great
encyclopaedia of natural science at this time. He died at Berkeley in
1402.
Trevisa was a diligent but not an accurate or graceful translator. He
rarely adds anything from his own knowledge, though we have an example
in the account of the reform of teaching at Oxford while he was there.
The interest of his work depends chiefly on the curiosity of some
passages in his originals.