Vincent of Beauvais

c.1190-1264. Medieval French encyclopedist. Born in Beauvais, he studied at the University of Paris and entered the Dominican Order about 1220. He returned to Beauvais in 1228 and between 1247 and 1259 completed his major work, Speculum Maius, an effort to collect all the knowledge of his day in a great encyclopedia. The completed work consisted of eighty books and is the most extensive encyclopedia written during the Middle Ages. He was a close friend of Louis IX of France and became lector in the royal court about 1240. At the request of the king he wrote also a treatise on the education of princes.