Jacobus Anglicus/James the Palmer

(i) Translation from L. Sandler, Omne Bonum: a fourteenth-century encyclopaedia of universal knowledge BL MSS Royal 6E VI - 6E VII (2 vols., London, 1996), I, p. 13.
(ii) Sandler, Omne Bonum, I, pp. 13, 15.
(iii) Bell, ‘A Cistercian at Oxford’, p. 70; Talbot, ‘The English Cistercians’, pp. 207-209.
(iv) Sandler, Omne Bonum, I, p. 21. Sandler’s argument turns on the equation of the compiler with the scribe, and the identity of this scribe with James the Palmer, whose copy of the Gospel Commentary of William of Nottingham is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. James was a cleric who, Sandler argues, was probably not educated in Oxford or Cambridge, but in London (see esp. pp. 16-19). Sandler raises some interesting and plausible points, including the identification of several named persons in the Omne Bonum as exchequer clerics (see pp. 24-25). She also considers important questions such as whether a clerk of the exchequer would have the time, interest, means and resources to execute a work of this size and splendour. Ultimately, the identity of the author remains rather uncertain.
(v) Cited in Sandler, Omne Bonum, I, p. 35.