Ipswich Whitefriars - Ipswich Carmelite Worthies

Ipswich Carmelite Worthies

• Sir Thomas de Loudham, the supposed founder, was buried in the monastery church.
• John Paschall, of a noble Suffolk family, entered the Order at Ipswich and studied there before taking A.B. at Cambridge in 1333. Famed for his learning, speaking and volumes of over 150 sermons, he became Bishop of Scutari (1344) and Bishop of Llandaff (1347-1361).
• Friar John, a native of Bury St Edmunds, author of many commentaries on the scriptures, lived at Ipswich Whitefriars and died there soon after 1350.
• Friar Richard Lavyngham of Suffolk (d. 1383) took the habit at the Ipswich Whitefriars. He later proceeded to Oxford where he became an extremely scholarly philosopher and theologian, devoted to bringing heretics back to orthodoxy by force of argument. He was famous for his lectures, covering the entire course of study, the texts of which are contained in more than 90 volumes. His works included one on the origin of the Carmelite Order. He became Carmelite Prior at Bristol. Some authors claim that he was slain with Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1381.
• John Balsham (c. 1357-1425), formerly Bishop of Argyll, died and was buried here.
• John Barmyngham, elected Prior c. 1440, died 1448. He held doctorates from Oxford and Paris, and was considered one of the finest scholars of his time. There was a second John Barmyngham (friar), probably a relative, who died in 1458.
• Thomas Lavenham (or Lavyngham), an Ipswich Carmelite author of a Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, became one of the first fellows of All Souls College, Oxford in 1447.