William de Leicester (DNB00)

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WILLIAM de Leicester, or WILLIAM du Mont (d. 1213), theologian, studied at Oxford, and afterwards proceeded to Paris, where he taught on the Mount St. Geneviève between 1170 and 1180; he seems to have taken his name of du Mont from this fact. He afterwards became chancellor of Lincoln, an office which he held in 1192 and 1200 (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 91). Here he continued his lessons with great success, numbering among his pupils Giraldus Cambrensis, whom he had previously met in Paris (Gir. Cambs. De Rebus a se Gestis, iii. 3). He died soon after Easter 1213.

Alexander Neckham has some verses in his honour in his ‘De Laude Sapientiæ.’

His works are: 1. ‘Similitudines’ (MSS. in Balliol ccxxii. and Merton cclvii. Colleges, Oxford, and Peterhouse, Cambridge). 2. ‘Summa de officio sacerdotis’ (MSS. in Caius College, Cambridge, Bodleian Library, New College xciv. f. 28, cxlv. f. 94, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ccclx. f. 100). 3. ‘Numerale’ (MSS. Balliol College ccxxii. f. 48 b., Merton College, cclvii. f. 4, and New College, Oxford, xcviii.). 4. ‘Concordantiæ.’ 5. ‘Collecta super psalterium cum scholiis’ (MS. Pembroke College, Cambridge). 6. ‘Homeliæ’ (MS. in Cambridge University Library). 7. ‘Sermones de tempore ab adventu ad Dominicam Trinitatis.’ 8. ‘Expositiones evangeliorum.’ 9. ‘Speculum pœnitentiæ’ (MS. in Pembroke College, Cambridge). 10. ‘Speculum pœnitentis’ (MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge). 11. ‘De Sacramentis Ecclesiæ.’ 12. ‘Flores sapientiæ.’ 13. ‘Proverbia et alia verba ædificatoria in ordine disposita’ (MS. in New College, Oxford, xcviii. 56 b). 14. ‘Carmen alphabetum glossatum.’ 15. ‘De adventu Domini.’ 16. ‘Expositiones epistolarum.’ 17. ‘De bonitate mulierum.’ 18. ‘Ad quasdam moniales lib. i.’ 19. ‘Introductio ad artem concionandi.’ 20. ‘De miraculis Sanctorum.’ 21. ‘De eliminatione errorum de quibusdam quæ in ecclesia cantantur et leguntur’ (MS. in Bodleian Library, Oxford). 22. ‘Distinctiones theologicæ’ (MS. in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, xliii. 1). 23. ‘De tropis liber’ (MS. New College, Oxford, 27 b). 24. ‘Quidam versus glossati.’

[Wright's Biographia Britannica Literaria; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hibern. p. 361; Budinsky's Die Universität Paris und die Fremden an derselben im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1876, p. 112; Coxe's Cat. MSS. in collegiis aulisque Oxon. Oxford, 1852.]

W. E. R.