Walter Map
(c. 1140 - c. 1209)
The son of two members of the court of Henry II, Walter Map was educated in Paris. In 1179 he represented the English king at the third Lateran Council; after his return to England, he held successively higher positions in the church, rising from chancellor of Lincoln to archdeacon of Oxford in a decade. Although Map was once believed to have authored various Arthurian romances, the Courtiers’ Trifles—a miscellany of satirical anecdotes and folklore—is his only known surviving work.