Walter of Châtillon

Walter of Châtillon, known in Latin as Gualterus de Castellione, was a twelfth-century French writer and theologian who wrote in Latin. He studied under Stephen of Beauvais and at the University of Paris, and during his student years he probably composed Latin poems in the Goliardic manner, some of which found their way into the Carmina Burana collection. In his own lifetime he was better esteemed for the Alexandreis, a long hexameter epic on the life of Alexander the Great, which was popular and influential in the Middle Ages, was borrowed from by Matthew of Vendôme and Alan of Lille, and is now seldom read. He also wrote a dialogue refuting Jewish thought and biblical interpretation and a treatise on the Trinity. Many poems in his style were attributed to him on insufficient evidence, and he was not the author of the satirical Apocalypse of Golias. He died of bubonic plague early in the thirteenth century.