Peter de Gaieta was elected in the General Chapter at Assisi, c. 1340, to take the degree of B.D. and lecture on the Sentences at Oxford. When the appointment of a friar to read the Sentences at Paris was discussed in the General Chapter at Marseilles in 1343, Peter obtained many votes. In the same year the degree of Master in the University of Naples was conferred on him by the command of Pope Clement VI. He had previously lectured on the Sentences there, and been Minister of the Provinces of Apulia and Terra Laboris[1477].
John Lathbury (Bucks), said to have been a native of the Reading friary[1478], was D.D. of Oxford and flourished about the middle of the fourteenth century[1479]. The evidence for the date is found in his own most famous work[1480]; the passage may be quoted as an authentic specimen of a subject of conversation between two Oxford Franciscans:
‘Item anno domini 1343 in capitulo provinciali Londoniis celebrato, et in Oxonia plurimis vicibus prius et post in studio secum commoranti, frater Hermanus de Colonia fratri Johanni de Latthebury retulit viva voce, quod in patria sua est quedam villa que vulgariter dicatur Enger, de qua Anglia vocaliter derivatur, et prope illam villam ad distanciam unius miliarii est quedam quercus, arbor ingens et antiqua, ad quam ipse cum esset puerulus ex more patrie cum reliquis concurrebat. Nam omni nocte nativitatis Christi, quasi nocte media, quercus illa glandes grandes et perfectas subita apparicione ex se profert et producit copiose. Unde et incole illius patrie annuatim illa nocte ad illum locum turmatim ex consuetudine concurrunt, et ibi cum luminibus et lanternis vigilantes, horam solitam expectant et explorant, bibentes, edentes, ludentes et noctem insompnem ducentes, habentes secum lapides, baculos et saculos pro fructu arboris excuciendo et asportando.’
There appear to have been two contemporary Minorites of the same name and family. Bale, after mentioning the commentaries of John Ridevaus on the letter of Valerius to Rufinus and the mythologies of Fulgentius, adds[1481]:
‘Hos libros cum multis aliis Joannes Lathbury senior contulit juniori Joanni Lathbury A. D. 1348. Ex cenobio Minorum Radinge.’
The elder died at Reading at an advanced age in 1362, the younger at Northampton in 1375[1482]. It is not clear which of the two was the author.
The best known work of John Lathbury is his Commentary on Lamentations, or Liber moralium in Threnos Hieremiae, or Lectura super librum Threnorum. Inc. ‘Juxta mores modernorum.’
MSS. Oxford:—Merton Coll. 189—Exeter Coll. 27, &c.
Printed at Oxford in 1482, being one of the first books issued by the Oxford press.
Distinctionum liber theologicarum, or Alphabetum morale. Inc. ‘Abstinendum est a carnalibus delitiis.’