‘I beg you to look out for some one competent to act as secretary to Friar Richard of Cornwall[973].’
It may then be inferred that he went to Paris in 1253, where, according to Eccleston,
‘he gave cursory lectures on the sentences and was judged a great and admirable philosopher[974].’
After lecturing in Paris, he returned to Oxford, it appears, and became regent-master of the friars (c. 1255?)[975]. It was here that he developed the ‘errors,’ the verbal subtleties, which Roger Bacon so unsparingly denounced. Writing in 1292, Bacon says[976]:
‘Et optime novi auctorem[977] pessimum et stultissimum istorum errorum[978], qui vocatus est Ricardus Cornubiensis, famosissimus apud stultam multitudinem, set apud sapientes fuit insanus et reprobatus Parisius propter errores quos invenerat et promulgaverat, quum sollempniter legebat sentencias ibidem, postquam[979] legerat[980] sentencias Oxonie, ab anno Domini 1250o. Ab illo M CC L igitur tempore remansit multitudo in huius magistri erroribus usque nunc, scilicet per quatraginta annos et amplius, et maxime invalescit Oxonie sicut ibidem incepit hec demencia infinita.’
Adam Marsh, though in somewhat general terms, gives a far more flattering account of Richard[981].
Martin de Sancta Cruce, Master of the Hospital of Sherbourne, bequeathed to him in his will dated November, 1259, unum habitum integrum, and a copy of the Canonical Epistles[982].
Assisi MS. 176 contains a compilation ascribed by a note in a late hand to ‘Master Richard Rufus of England;’ the volume was in the possession of the friars at Assisi in 1373, consists of 226 leaves, and seems to contain more than one treatise: it is not rubricated.
Inc. ‘Deus autem qui dives est in misericordia propter nimiam caritatem suam.’
6. John Wallensis was B.D. of Oxford before he entered the Order[983]. He must have become D.D. and regent master of the Franciscan schools at Oxford before 1260[984]. It was probably after this that he went as lecturer to Paris, where he was honoured with the title of Arbor Vitae[985], and where he was buried[986]. But before his death he was again in England. In October, 1282, ‘Friar John Wallensis, S.T.D.,’ was sent by Archbishop Peckham as ambassador to the insurgent Welsh[987]. In 1283 he was one of the five doctors at Paris who were deputed to examine the doctrines of Peter John Olivi[988]. He enjoyed a great reputation as a theologian, and the widespread and lasting popularity of his works is shown by the large number of MSS. and printed editions which have come down to us. His writings are specially illustrative of the practical side of the Franciscan teaching.