Edinburgh.
_John of Halifax_ (Vol. iii., p. 389.; Vol. v., p. 42.).--Since every
country has its _Holywood_, and _de Sacrobosco_ does not distinguish
Holy_wood_ from Hali_fax_, John of Halifax has been claimed both by
Ireland and Scotland, and, if I remember right, by some foreign
countries. The manuscripts of his works, as well as the earlier printed
editions, call him _Anglus_ or _Anglicus_; and he lived in a time at
which the natives of the three countries were as distinct as Frenchmen,
Spaniards, and Italians. Bale, quoting Leland, calls him Halifax; as
does Tanner: Pits gives his birth to Halifax. He was buried in the
Maturin convent at Paris, where his epitaph existed in the sixteenth
century. Pits implies that it appears from the epitaph that he died in
1256: Mæstlinus expressly affirms that it can be collected from the
epitaph, in the _Ad Lectorem_ of his _Epitome Astronomiæ_. All the
authorities believe him to be English; and Leland thought he traced him
as a student at Oxford. But had the manuscripts called him anything but
English, the other evidence would not have weighed them down; for there
are plenty of Holywoods, and there was, notoriously, a press of foreign
students to Oxford in the thirteenth century. But name and residence in
England may come in aid of the manuscripts.
The statement that he died in 1244 probably arises as follows. In the
epitaph, according to Pits, are the following lines:--
M. Christi bis C quarto deno quater anno
De Sacrobosco discrevit tempora Ramus
Gratia cui nomen dederat divina Johannis,
meaning that in 1244 a bough from the holy wood _discrevit tempora_.
This Pits calls an obscure reference to the time of his death, in the
same sentence in which he places that time in 1256. Very obscure indeed,
if a reference to his death in 1256 be intended. But if _discrevit
tempora_ refer, not to death, but to the matter of his celebrated work
_de anni ratione, seu ... computus Ecclesiasticus_, there is no
obscurity at all. And at the end of a Merton manuscript of this
_computus_, Tanner found the preceding lines inserted; the copyist
taking them to allude, of course, to the date of the book.