Walter Map (fl. 1160–1196, died c. 1208–1210) was a medieval writer. He claims Welsh origin and to be a man of the Welsh Marches (marchio sum Walensibus); details in his writings suggest that he came from Herefordshire. He studied at the University of Paris, apparently around 1160 when Gerard la Pucelle was teaching there. He had encountered Thomas Becket before 1162. As a courtier of King Henry II of England he was sent on missions to Louis VII of France and to Pope Alexander III, probably attending the Third Lateran Council in 1179 and encountering a delegation of Waldensians. On this journey he stayed with Henry I of Champagne, who was then about to undertake his last journey to the East. Walter Map later became precentor of Lincoln, canon of St Paul's and, in 1196, archdeacon of Oxford.

Walter Map's only surviving work, De Nugis Curialium (Trifles of Courtiers) is a collection of anecdotes and trivia, containing court gossip and a little real history, and written in a satirical vein. The Prose Lancelot cycle claims him as an author, though this is contradicted by internal evidence; some scholars have suggested he wrote an original, lost Lancelot romance that was the source for the later cycle. Map was alleged to have written a quantity of Goliardic poetry, and along with William of Newburgh, he recorded the earliest stories of English vampires.

External links

• Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries: Walter Map from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume I, 1907–21.
• Biography from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

References

• Antonia Gransden, Historical writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (London: Routledge, 1974) pp. 242-244.

12th century births | 1209 deaths | Arthurian legend | English writers | Medieval Latin authors | Medieval literature | Welsh writers

Walter Map