RICHARD FITZRALPH (Richardus Armacamus, Hibernicus). - Theologian and archbishop, b. ca. 1295 at Dundalk (county of Louth), d. at Avignon on 20 Dec. 1360.

Chancellor of the University of Oxford (1330-31), of the cathedral of Lincoln (1334), in 1337 he became dean of the cathedral Chapter of Lichfield. In 1347 he was appointed by Clement VI archbishop of Armagh (Ireland).

Before being chancellor of the University of Oxford he wrote a commentary on the Sentences, of which an ordinatio (revised by the author) and a reportatio (Gwynn was preparing its edition) survive: there he displays Averroist tendencies. After 1334 he resigned as chancellor and left 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 occupied himself with their theological opinions, drafting the celebrated Summa in quaestionibus Armenorum, in 19 books (Paris 1511), particularly important for the 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 vexatious struggle against the privileges of the Mendicant Friars with 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 adversus Ordines Mendicantes, unpublished; De pauperie Salvatoris libri 7 [the first 4 books edited by Poole, J. Wycliffi de dominio divino, London 1800]) a work original in some erroneous points, later developed by Wycliffe; Defensio curatenum contra eos qui privilegiatos se dicunt [Paris 1496]). Summoned to Avignon, he died before the trial had ended. In England and in Ireland he was held to be a saint. Of the unpublished works Tanner (Bibliotheca britannico-hibernica, London 1748, p. 284) points out the manuscripts. Particularly noteworthy are the Quarctiones de imagine (on man's likeness to God), contained in cod. Vat. Ott. 179, ff. 76-87 and in cod. A. 3, 308, ff. 98-103 of the Bibl. naz. of Florence.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: Hurter, II, coll. 631-33; E. Amann, s. v. in DThC, XIII, coll. 266-68; A. Gwynn, R. F., Archbish. of Armagh, in Studies, 22 (1923), pp. 389-405; id., Archbish. R. F. and the Friars, ibid., 26 (1937), pp. 50-67; G. Meerseman, La défense des Ordres mendicants contre R. F. par B. de Bollardhem, in Arch. Fratr. Praedic., 3 (1935), pp. 124-173; L. Hammerich, The beginning of the strife between R. F. and the Mendicants, Copenhagen 1938; M. De Wulf, Storia della filos. mediev., trad. it., III, Florence 1940, pp. 160-62, 186.

Antonio Piolanti

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Richard FitzRalph (Richardus Armacamus, Hibernicus)

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