RICCARDO FITZRALPH (Richardus Armacamus, Hibernicus). — Theologian and archbishop, b. ca. 1295 at Dundalk (County Louth), d. at Avignon on 20 Dec. 1360.
Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1330–31) and of Lincoln Cathedral (1334), in 1337 he became dean of the cathedral chapter of Lichtfield. In 1147 he was appointed by Clement VI archbishop of Armagh (Ireland).
Before becoming chancellor of the University of Oxford, he wrote a commentary on the Sentences, of which an ordinatio (revised by the author) and a reportatio are preserved (Gwynn was preparing its edition): therein he displays an Averroist tendency. After 1334 he resigned as chancellor and departed for Avignon, where, having come into contact with the Armenian bishops who had arrived there for the union of their Church with the Apostolic See, he concerned himself with their theological opinions, composing the celebrated Summa in quaestionibus Armenorum, in 19 books (Paris 1511), particularly important for knowledge of the errores Armenorum (especially of a sacramental and ecclesiological nature), condemned by Benedict XII (Denz-U, 532–49) and by Clement VI (ibid. 308–24).
Having returned to his homeland, after his elevation to the episcopate,
he took an active part in the distressing struggle against the privileges of the Mendicant Friars through speeches and treatises (Propositio... adversus Ordines Mendicantes, unpublished; De pauperie Salvatoris libri 7 [the first 4 books edited by Poole, J. Wycliffi de dominio divino, London 1800]), an original work containing some erroneous notions, later developed by Wycliffi; Defensio curatenum contra eos qui privilegiatos se dicunt [Paris 1496]). Summoned to Avignon, he died before the trial had ended. In England and Ireland he was regarded as a saint. Of the unpublished works, Tanner (Bibliotheca britannico-hibernica, London 1748, p. 284) indicates the manuscripts. Particularly noteworthy are the Quarctiones de imagine (on man’s likeness to God), contained in cod. Vat. Ott. 179, fols. 76–87, and in cod. A. 3, 308, fols. 98–103 of the Bibl. naz. of Florence.