Ralph Niger

Who was Ralph Niger?

Ralph Niger, Latin Radulphus Niger or Radulfus Niger, anglicized Ralph the Black, was an Anglo-French theologian and one of the English chroniclers. He was from Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and became Archdeacon of Gloucester.

From around 1160 to 1166, Niger studied in Paris, where he was a student of John of Salisbury and Gerard la Pucelle, and, at some point in his life, probably also in Poitiers. At Paris, he may also have been a teacher of rhetoric and dialectics.

Niger was part of Thomas Becket's entourage during the latter's exile in France in the early 1160s and played an important role in connecting the exiled archbishop with Pope Alexander III's German ally Conrad of Mainz. After the reconciliation between Henry II and Becket, he was employed by the king, but he left England for France after Becket's murder in 1170. After Henry's death in 1189, he returned to England, where he became a canon in Lincoln.