JEAN DE GARLANDE
(Johannes de Garlandia; ca. 1195ca. 1272). Born in England, Jean first studied at Oxford
shortly after 1200 and went to Paris in 1217 or 1218, first to complete his studies and
then to teach. At Paris, he lived in the Clos de Garlande, from which he derives his name.
At the close of the Albigensian Crusade, the papal legate Romain Frangipani
commissioned him to teach at the newly formed University of Toulouse (April 2, 1229),
together with the Dominican master Roland of Cremona. Jean remained at Toulouse for
only a few years. He may have returned to England during the 1230s but in any case was
again teaching in Paris by 1241.
Jean’s interests ranged primarily over the field of literary studies: etymology, rhetoric,
grammar, and poetics. One of his earliest and best-known works, the Parisiana poetria
(ca. 1220; revised a decade later), was a treatise on the art of poetry in the tradition of
Matthieu de Vendôme and Geoffroi de Vinsauf. In this work, he stresses the place of both
verse and prose composition in the arts curriculum. From this same period comes his
Dictionarius, perhaps the first word book to be so entitled. Jean also wrote a brief verse
commentary to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Integumenta Ovidii, giving interpretations
sometimes moral, sometimes scientific or historical, to the fables. Like many of his
works, the Integumenta presupposes a vast general knowledge of the subject and is not
intended for the novice.
Jean was also concerned about the moral formation of his students and wrote several
works with that aim, among them the Morale scolarium (1241), an admonition on the
values and habits of the ideal scholar, and the Stella maris (ca. 1249), in praise of the
Virgin Mary as a paragon of Christian virtue and action. A later work, De triumphis
ecclesiae (ca. 1252), is a polemic against pagans and heretics, based on his earlier
experiences in Toulouse.
Jean had a prominent reputation in the 13th century. But though his promotion of lay
piety was in keeping with the contemporary mission of the Dominicans and Franciscans,
his resistance to Aristotelian studies and to the new emphasis on logic in the curriculum
bespeak a conservatism more in keeping with the schools of the 12th century than with
the universities of the 13th.
Jean must not be confused with the musician of the same name, listed hereunder as
Johannes de Garlandia.
Mark Zier
Jean de Garlande. Morale scolarium of John of Garland (Johannes de Garlandia), a Professor in
the Universities of Paris and Toulouse in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Louis J.Paetow. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1927.
Wilson, Evelyn Faye. The Stella maris of John of Garland. Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of
America, 1946.
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