Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lutterell, John

1450849Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 34 — Lutterell, John1893Charles Lethbridge Kingsford

LUTTERELL, JOHN (d. 1335), theologian, was a doctor of divinity at Oxford, and became chancellor of the university in 1317. Early in 1318 he went to the Roman court at Avignon, apparently in reference to the dispute between the university and the Dominicans, being furnished for this purpose with commendatory letters from the king. His disputations are said to have given him a great reputation at the Roman court. In January 1319 he received the prebend of Axford at Salisbury. He resigned the chancellorship at Oxford in 1323 through a dispute in which be became involved with the masters and scholars on the subject of nominalism and realism. Lutterell purposed to leave England, but was forbidden by a royal order, lest be should bring the university into ill-repute abroad. Lutterell is said to have gone to the Roman court, again in 1329. He received the prebend of Knaresborough, Yorkshire, in 1334, and died at Avignon on 17 July 1335.

Lutterell enjoyed a great reputation as a theologian, philosopher, and mathematician. He is said to have written:

  1. ‘Epistola magistri Johannis Lutterell, Anglici, doctoris sacre theologie, ad quendam D. et curie Romane disputantem [perhaps John Baconthorpe [q. v.],] de visione faciali.’ Inc. ‘Seipsum attencius supplicastis’ in a collection of tracts on the Beatific Vision in MS. Univ. Lib. Cambridge, Ii, iii. 10, ff. 91–5 a. Tanner makes two treatises of this letter.
  2. ‘Determinationes contra Ockhamum.’
  3. ‘In Vesperiis Magistrorum.’
  4. ‘Prælectiones Oxonienses.’

Louis Jacob's MS. ‘Bibliotheca Carmelitana’ improbably represents Lutterell as a Carmelite. Bale does not include him in his ‘Heliades’ (Harl. MSS. 3838, 1819).

[Bale, v. 56; Tanner Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 489; C. de Villiers's Bibl. Carmelitana, ii. 43; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, i. 391, 404–5, ed. Gutch; Le Neve's Fasti, iii. 196, 464; Maxwell Lyte's Hist. Univ. Oxford, pp. 111, 130.]

C. L. K.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.187
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page Col. Line  
296 i 26-31 Lutterell, John: for Lutterell purposed to leave . . . in 1329. read An enquiry was held at York, but was not settled much in his favour (Raine, Letters from Northern Registers). Bishop G-randison recommended him to Pope John XXL on 22 Feb. 1329. Lutterell was back in England by 12 Oct. 1829, and Grandison then next year recommended him for preferment, without much success (Reg. Grandison, i. 103, 234, 247).