RICHARD KNAPWELL (and not of CLAPWELL). — English Dominican theologian, one of the first to introduce Thomism to Oxford between 1284 and 1286, not without strong opposition from his confrere Robert Kilwardby (v.) Pecham (v.).
Author of a *Quodlibet* and several *Quaestiones disputatae*, he defended the Thomistic doctrine of the unity of the substantial form in man, a doctrine which was then the subject of a fierce and noisy debate; condemned as a heretic by Pecham, he left England for Bologna, where he died in 1288. It seems certain that the *Correctorium Quare*, a response to William de la Mare’s *Correctorium fratris Thomae*, is to be attributed to him.
BIBL.: P. Glorieux, *Le Correctorium corrup. Quare*, Paris 1927; M. D. Chenu, *La première diffusion du thomisme à Oxford*, in *Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge*, 3 (1928), pp. 185-200; F. Pelster, *R. von Kn. O. P. Seine Quaestiones disputatae und Quodlibet*, in *Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie*, 52 (1928), pp. 473-91; W. A. Hinnebusch, *The Early English Friars Preachers*, Rome 1951 (see onomastic and special indices, pp. 389-91). Bruno Nardi