Thomas Bungay

Thomas Bungay (Latin: Thomas Bungeius or Bungeyensis;^[2] c. 1214 – c. 1294),^[3] also known as Thomas of Bungay^[4] (Latin: Thomas de Bungeya;^[5] French: Thomas de Bungeye) and formerly also known as Friar Bongay,^[1] was an English Franciscan friar, scholar, and alchemist.^[3]

Thomas was born in Bungay, a market town in Suffolk.^[6] He was educated at Oxford and Paris in the mid-13th century^[6] and, at an unknown date, entered the Order of the Friars Minor (Franciscans) at Norwich.^[7] He lectured as the 10th Franciscan "Reader in Divinity" at Oxford,^[6] certainly in the years 1270–72,^[8] before leaving to serve as the 8th Minister Provincial of the Franciscans in England during the years 1272–75.^[7][9] (He was succeeded at Oxford by John Peckham.)^[6] From around 1275^[7] to at least 1283,^[8] he served as the 15th Franciscan master at Cambridge.^[10][7] He wrote Quaestio in Aristotelis de Caelo et Mundo, a commentary on Gerard's edition^[11] of Aristotle's work On the Heavens.^[5][12] Other questions are attributed to him in MS Assisi 158, in the Palazzo Giacobetti in Assisi.^[7] He died at Northampton, England.^[7]

Despite their roughly contemporaneous studies and later legends, no real evidence of a relationship between Bungay and Roger Bacon has yet been discovered.^[13]

He is better known from later English legend, which made him Roger Bacon's sidekick in the stories that developed around that scholar's knowledge of alchemy and supposed mastery of magic.^[1][14][15] In some versions, he is killed by the German mage Vandermast.^[14]

The most famous version of the legend is the Elizabethan play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Robert Greene.

Bungay may owe his magical reputation to a separate Friar Bungay, who seems to have been a magician in the 15th century.^[16]

Bungay serves a similar sidekick role in Doctor Mirabilis, James Blish's fictional biography of Roger Bacon.

• Bungay, Thomas (1968), "Thomas de Bungeye's Commentary on the First Book of Aristotle's De Caelo", in Parker, Bernard Street (ed.), Dissertation Abstracts, Vol. XXIX, No. 5, pp. 105–281.
• "Thomas of Bungey", New Catholic Encyclopedia, Gale Group, 2003.
• Galle, Griet (2003), "The Reception of De Caelo in the Thirteenth Century", Peter of Auvergne: Questions on Aristotle's De Caelo: A Critical Edition with an Interpretative Essay, Leuven: Leuven University Press, ISBN 90-5867-322-7.
• Goad, Harold Elsdale (1979), Grey Friars: The Story of St. Francis and his Followers, Franciscan Herald Press, ISBN 9780819907790.
• Hartsiotis, Kirsty (2013), "Friar Bungay and the Fair Maid of Fressingfield", Suffolk Folk Tales, History Press, pp. 59–65, ISBN 9780752492940.
• Serjeantson, Robert Meyricke (1911), A History of the Six Houses of Friars at Northampton: The Black, White, Grey, and Austin Friars, the Friars of the Sack, and the Poor Clares, J. Tebbutt.
• Wingate, S.D. (1931), The Mediaeval Latin Versions of the Aristotelian Scientific Corpus, with Special Reference to the Biological Works, London: Courier Press.

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