John Trevisa
medieval English writer and translator
John Trevisa (or John of Trevisa; Latin: Ioannes Trevisa; fl. 1342–1402 AD) was a Cornish writer and professional translator.
Trevisa was born at Trevessa in the parish of St Enoder in mid-Cornwall, in Britain and was a native Cornish speaker. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and became Vicar of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, chaplain to the 5th Lord Berkeley, and Canon of Westbury on Trym.
He translated into English for his patron the Latin Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden, adding remarks of his own, and prefacing it with a Dialogue on Translation between a Lord and a Clerk. He likewise made various other translations, including Bartholomaeus Anglicus' On the Properties of Things (De Proprietatibus Rerum), a medieval forerunner of the encyclopedia. It seems likely that he was the translator of the Bible into Cornish, a language, which until recently, was thought not to have possessed a bible translation.
A fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, from 1372 to 1376 at the same time as John Wycliff and Nicholas of Hereford, Trevisa may well have been one of the contributors to the Early Version of Wycliffe's Bible. The preface to the King James Version of 1611 singles him out as a translator amongst others at that time: "even in our King Richard the second's days, John Trevisa translated them [the Gospels] into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age". Trevisa does not seem to have been a Wycliffite or Lollard, though he had some views in common about corruption.
The public source identifies “John Trevisa” as medieval English writer and translator. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Trevisa and medieval.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6261232. VIAF identifies the subject as 198588473. The Library of Congress control number is n85274554. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1342, 1402, 1372 and 1376.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Trevisa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.