Background
Thomas was born in Bungay, a market town in Suffolk.
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Thomas Bungay
Edit Profilescholars Franciscan friar Franciscan master
Education
He was educated at Oxford and Paris in the mid-13th century and, at an unknown date, entered the Order of the Friars Minor (Franciscans) at Norwich.
Career
He lectured as the 10th Franciscan "Reader in Divinity" at Oxford, certainly in the years 1270-1272, before leaving to serve as the 8th Minister Provincial of the Franciscans in England during the years 1272-1275. (He was succeeded at Oxford by John Peckham) From around 1275 to at least 1283, he served as the 15th Franciscan master at Cambridge. He wrote Quaestio in Aristotelis de Caelo et Mundo, a commentary on Gerard"s edition of Aristotle"s work On the Heavens.
Other questions are attributed to him in Mississippi Assisi 158.
He died at Northampton, England. Despite their roughly contemporaneous studies and later legends, no real evidence of a relationship between Bungay and Roger Bacon has yet been discovered.
In some versions, he is killed by the German mage Vandermast. Bungay may owe his magical reputation to a separate Friar Bungay, who seems to have been a magician in the 15th century.
Bungay serves a similar sidekick role in Doctor Mirabilis, James Blish"s fictional biography of Roger Bacon.
Bibliography
Bungay, Thomas (1968), "Thomas de Bungeye"s Commentary on the First Book of Aristotle"s De Caelo", in Parker, Bernard Street, Dissertation Abstracts, Volume XXIX, Number. 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.
Goad, Harold Elsdale (1979), Grey Friars: The Story of Saint Francis and his Followers, Franciscan Herald Press.
Hartsiotis, Kirsty (2013), "Friar Bungay and the Fair Maid of Fressingfield", Suffolk Folk Tales, History Press, pp. Wingate, South Dakot (1931), The Mediaeval Latin Versions of the Aristotelian Scientific Corpus, with Special Reference to the Biological Works, London: Courier Press.
