‘studied many years at Oxford and lectured in the theological faculty, and obtained the license of teaching in the said faculty and the honour of Master; he desired to lecture in the same faculty at Paris, and to give to his country what he had acquired elsewhere by studious labours.’
The Pope bids the chancellor admit him freely on the papal authority
‘ad legendum determinandum disputandum et ceteros actus Magistrales exercendum,’
just as though he were D.D. of Paris. The letter is dated XV Kal. Dec. Ao II. In 1370 he was sent to the Tartars by the pope, as bishop of Pekin and head of the Franciscan mission in Asia[1539]. The papal letter[1540] constituted him ruler of the Friars Minors in the lands
‘Saracenorum, Alanorum, Gazarorum, Gothorum, Schytarum, Ruthenorum, Jacobitarum, Nubianorum, Nestorianorum, Georgianorum, Armenorum, Indorum, Mochitarum.’
De eruditione Principum, by William de Prato, ordinis Praedicatorum (?)[1541].
MS. Vatican, Bibl. Reginae Sueciae, cod. 1960 (Montfaucon).
John Somer, of the Convent of Bridgwater[1542], was at Oxford in 1380[1543]. It does not appear whether he was a doctor either at this time or afterwards. He enjoyed a great reputation as an astronomer, and is said to have made use of the astronomical researches of Roger Bacon[1544]. Chaucer refers to him in his treatise on the Astrolabe[1545].
Somer is often coupled with the contemporary astronomer Nicholas of Lynn[1546], and it is possible that the following passage in Mercator’s Atlas, which is supposed by Hakluyt and others to refer to Nicholas, relates to John Somer[1547].
‘That which you see described in this table of those foure Iles is taken from the journal of James Knox of Bolduc or the Busse[1548], who reporteth[1549] that a certaine English Friar, minorite of Oxford, a Mathematician, hath seene and composed the lands lying about the Pole, and measured them with an astrolabe, and described them by a Geometrical instrument.’