DAN

See also:

• MICHEL
• MICHEL, CLAUDE
• MICHEL, FRANCISQUE XAVIER (1809-1887)

MICHEL OF NORTHGATE (ft. 1340)  , English writer, the author of the Ayenbite of Inwyt . Nothing is known of him except what can be gathered from his work . It is a literal translation in the Kentish dialect of a French treatise entitled Le Somme des vices et des values (also known as Le Miroir du monde or Le Livre des commandemens, &c.), which was written in 1279 by Laurentius Gallus, a Dominican monk and confessor to Philip III. of France . This work was translated into Flemish, Catalonian, Spanish and Italian, and appears in no less than six English translations . Dan Michel's autograph MS. is preserved in Arundel MS . 57, which states that the work was completed in the year 1340 on the eve of the apostles Simon and Jude by Dan Michel of Northgate, a brother of the cloister of St Austin of Canterbury . The value of the book is chiefly philological as an. authenticated and dated example of the southern dialect . The Ayenbite of Inwyt was edited for the Roxburghe Club by the Rev Joseph Stevenson in 1855, and for the Early English Text Soc. by Richard Morris in 1876 .