EYMERICH, NICOLÁS. - Dominican inquisitor and writer, b. at Gerona (Spain) around 1320, d. there on 4 January 1399. He became a religious in his homeland on 4 August 1334, and in 1357 succeeded Nicolás Rossell as inquisitor general of Aragon. For his zeal he had much to suffer, until he was exiled. He accompanied Gregory IX to Rome, where he stayed for two years (1376-78).
When the schism arose, because of the difficulty of discerning the true pontiff, he sided with Clement VII and then with Benedict XIII. In 1378 he returned to Aragon but, being warned by the Lullists, he had to take refuge in Avignon with the Pontiff. Here he devoted himself to writing, until in 1397, by then old, he was able to return to his homeland.
An intrepid inquisitor and intransigent defender of the truth, he devoted his energies particularly to combating the errors of R. Lull, whose doctrine he gathered into articles and condemned as suspected of heresy. He wrote various works of a hagiographic, dogmatic, exegetical, philosophical and polemical character, all of which are still preserved in manuscript. Of his works only the Vita de B. Dalmazio Moveri, his master of novitiate, was published (in F. Diago, Historia provinciae Aragoniae, I, Barcelona 1399, pp. 259-65; 2nd ed. in Anal. Ball., 31 (1912), pp. 49-81) along with his most important work: Directorium inquisitorum, Barcelona 1393. It is a manual for inquisitors that E. wrote, or at least finished writing, at Avignon in 1376. The work was widely circulated and subsequently had various editions. Fr. Peña, in 1578, at Rome prepared a second edition of it, adding a vast commentary; in another edition, in 1587, he also prefaced it with a notice of the author's life. It was later published again at Venice 1591, Rome 1597, Venice 1607.
Bibliography7 works
Alfonso D'Amato