When John of Wales, OFM (d. c. 1285), began work on his Summa collectionum siue communiloquium (henceforth Communiloquium), probably sometime in the early to mid- 1260s prior to his move to Paris in c. 1270, he certainly had in mind his recent role as lector of the Oxford Franciscans (c. 1259–1262). It was the second and longest of his four major works, going on to become the most widely circulated of them all. Close to 150 manuscripts and two incunable recensions in several editions are known to survive. As the author tells us, its chief purpose was as a manual for preachers, providing materials suitable to instruction of all parts of society in any circumstance from formal preaching to informal conversation. As a committed pedagogue, John was aware that not all Franciscan students had access to the scale of library materials that Oxford or Paris could provide. He was anxious to produce a compilation of classical, biblical, and medieval quotations that furnished instructive moral exempla and equipped friars with conversation materials for the dining tables of the elite. His intellectual emphases earned him a place among Beryl Smalley's ‘classicizing friars’, and he has garnered recognition in some circles as a promoter of the work of John of Salisbury through his extensive citation of the Policraticus (1156–1159), from which he evidently drew inspiration. But his importance as an independent thinker and as a transmitter of knowledge on moral political questions has not yet been fully appreciated.