Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bankyn, John
BANKYN or BANEKYNE, JOHN (fl. 1382), Augustinian friar and opponent of Wycliffe, was born in London and educated in the Augustinian monastery of that city and afterwards at Oxford, where he attained the degree of doctor of divinity. The single recorded act of his life is his presence at the provincial council of Blackfriars which condemned certain of Wycliffe's opinions in, May 1382 (Fasciculi Zisaniorum, pp. 286, 499; cf. pp. 272 sq.: ed. Shirley, Rolls Series). Bishop Bale states that Bankyn was a popular preacher and an able disputant, and that his writings comprise ‘Determinationes’ and ‘Sermones ad Populum,’ as well as a book ‘Contra Positiones Wiclevi’ (Script. Illustr. Catal. vi. 97). Of these works, however, no copies are known to be extant.
The ambiguity of the manuscript of the ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum’ (Bodl. Libr. e Mus. 86, fol. 65 b, col. 1), which ignores the distinction between n and u, has led Shirley to print the name ‘Baukinus;’ and Foxe (Acts and Monuments, i. 495, ed. 1684) anglicises it as ‘Bowkin.’ The n, however, appears in two other copies (Fasc. Ziz. p. 499, and Wilkins, Concil. Magn. Brit. iii. 158.)
[The additions which Pits (Relat. Hist. de Rebus Angl. i. 539, 161) makes to Bankyn's biography are ostensibly derived from the Fasciculi; but neither the edition nor the manuscript of this work contains anything beyond the bare name of the friar, and Pits's notice may be safely taken as a simple catholic version of Bale. The article in J. Pamphilus, Chron. Ord. Fratr. Eremit. S. August. (Rome, 1581, quarto), is equally unoriginal.]