Nicholas of Lynn

Nicholas was apparently born in the Norfolk (UK) port town of King's Lynn (then "Bishop's Lynn"), possibly as early as 1330, although the confirmed details of his career suggest that a date closer to 1360 is more likely. According to early 16th century literary historian John Bale, he became a Carmelite friar and moved to the university town of Oxford, where he developed a great reputation for his scientific work. In 1386, at the request of the powerful lord John of Gaunt, he published a Kalendarium of detailed astronomical tables covering the years 1387–1462.{{cite web |author=Eisner, Sigmund |authorlink=Sigmund Eisner |publisher=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20091 |title=Lynn, Nicholas (fl. 1386–1411) |date=2004 |accessdate=20 Aug 2017}} It survives in sixteen manuscripts and one printed edition.{{cite journal |author=Kuczynski, Michael P. |title=A New Manuscript of Nicholas of Lynn's ‘Kalendarium’: MS Chapel Hill 522, fols. 159r–202r |journal=Traditio |issue=43 |year=1987 |pages=299–319 |doi=10.1017/S0362152900012575}} Designed for use in the astrologically-based science of the time, the tables were very sophisticated, even including rules for synchronising medical treatment with astronomical cycles, such as the right phases of the moon for blood-letting. His contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer wrote very approvingly of Nicholas' work, and made much use of it.{{cite journal |author=Benson, C.D. |title=The Astrological Medicine of Chaucer's Physician and Nicholas of Lynn's Kalendarium |journal=American Notes and Queries |volume=22 |pages=62–66 |year=1984}} Nicholas was also supposedly an excellent musician.{{Citation needed|date=August 2017}} Later in life he moved to Cambridge, where he was promoted to subdeacon in 1410 and to deacon in 1411. The date of his death is unknown.

What he was not, as far as any early biographers were concerned, was an explorer. The identification of Nicholas as the Franciscan (Minorite) friar who wrote a text called the Inventio Fortunata, allegedly describing a voyage to Greenland and beyond, was first proposed by Richard Hakluyt, the late 16th-century historian of exploration. Hakluyt based the claim on information from mathematician John Dee who, in turn, relied on information obtained from the Dutch cartographer Gerardus Mercator.{{cite web |author=Oleson, T.J. |publisher=Dictionary of Canadian Biography |url=http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=484 |title=Nicholas of Lynn |date=1979 |accessdate=20 Aug 2017}} Nicholas, however, was a Carmelite, not a Minorite, and if Hakluyt and Dee had read Bale (rather than apparently basing their identification on Chaucer's praise for Nicholas' work with astrolabes), they would have discovered an entry about a Franciscan friar named Hugh of Ireland, who wrote "a certain journey in one volume".{{Citation

| last = Taylor

| first = E.G.R.

| author-link = Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor

| title = A Letter Dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee

| journal = Imago Mundi

| volume = 13

| issue = 1

| pages = 56–68

| year = 1956

| doi = 10.1080/03085695608592127 }}

{{Reflist}}

• "The Kalendarium of Nicholas of Lynn" by Nicholas of Lynn, edited and introduced by Sigmund Eisner. University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1980. {{ISBN|0-8203-0449-2}}
• Sykes, Egerton. Nicolas of Lynn: The Explorer of the Arctic 1330–1390. Markham House, 1969. {{ISBN|0-900993-06-5}}.

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Category:People from King's Lynn

Category:14th-century English astronomers

Category:15th-century English astronomers

Category:14th-century English writers

Category:14th-century writers in Latin