Map (less correctly, MAPES), WALTER, a great 12th-century writer, was born on the Welsh marches, perhaps in Herefordshire, about 1137. He studied at the university of Paris, became an intimate friend of Becket, was a justice-in-eyre at Gloucester assize in 1173, attended the king the same year to Limoges, and for many years later, probably as chaplain, and was sent on missions to Paris and to Rome. He enjoyed the living of Westbury in Gloucestershire, where he had a long feud for his rights with the monks of a neighbouring Cistercian convent, and became canon of St Paul's and precentor of Lincoln, but still continued his attendance on the king. In 1197, under Richard I., he became archdeacon of Oxford, and died before 1210. Map, who was Welsh, was a frank, open-hearted man, with a quick wit, bold humour, and an indignant contempt for hypocrisy. All these qualities are revealed in a number of Latin satirical poems long connected (and apparently on good grounds) with his name. Of these the chief are the Goliath series (Apocalypsis Goliae, Predicatio, Confessio, &c.). In the latter occurs the famous 'Meum est propositum in taberna mori,' which is far more a stern satire by self-revelation than a jovial drinking-song, as often understood. In Bishop Goliath the writer has realised by creative imagination a type of the ribald priest, and upon his head he pours out the vials of his wrath and scorn, with humour rich, bold, sometimes coarse, but always honest. Map seems to have kept well the secret of his authorship, for even his friend Giraldus Cambrensis did not know their origin, as we find him, with the churchman's proverbial dislike to see the humorist point out the stains upon his cloth, denouncing Goliath as a foul-mouthed scuffer.
Sir Galahad, the stainless knight, was Map's creation, and there is the best reason, with M. Paulin Paris, to count him the heart and soul of that contemporary work of Christian spiritualisation which systematised and gave a meaning to the detached Arthurian romances. He wrote most probably the Latin original of Robert Borron's introductory romance of the Saint Graal, and certainly Lancelot of the Lake, the Quest of the Saint Graal, and the Mort Artus. M. Paris confines his direct work to the two Graal romances and the opening of Merlin.
Thomas Wright edited for the Camden Society Map's Latin Poems (1841) and the De Nugis Curialium (1850), an interesting kind of note-book of the court-gossip and events of the day, interspersed with theological polemics, anecdotes, and accounts of miracles, fairy legends, or apparitiones fantasticæ, and the dissuasion against marriage sent by Valerius to the philosopher Rufinus.