Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/William of Peterborough

1006157Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 61 — William of Peterborough1900Mary Bateson

WILLIAM of Peterborough (fl. 1188), theological writer, was a native of Peterborough and a monk of Ramsey. He is improbably stated by Wood to have studied at Oxford in 1168 (Hist. and Antiquities, i. 54). Boston of Bury (Tanner, p. xl) calls him a doctor of theology, and names his ‘Commentary on the Song of Songs,’ ‘Homilies,’ ‘Distinctions,’ and ‘Euphrastica.’ These works were seen at Ramsey by Leland (Comm. de Script. Brit. p. 263), but the last alone is now known, in the Bodleian MS. Super A i. art. 44, formerly belonging to Ramsey Abbey. In his notebook (Selden MS. 64 B) Bale mentions also ‘Interpretaciones Vocabulorum,’ which he knew from a Ramsey copy.

[Tanner's Bibliotheca, p. 355; Bale, iii. 22; Pits, p. 252.]