GILBY, THOMAS

English Dominican theologian, author, editor; b. Birmingham, Dec. 18, 1902; d. Cambridge, Nov. 29, 1975. Gilby was a member of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, when he chose to become a Dominican in 1919. After ordination in 1926, he did graduate work at Louvain in philosophy. He was a lector at Hawkesyard Priory (Staffordshire) and Blackfriars, Oxford; until 1935, he served as editor and frequent contributor for Blackfriars. At this time, he published his Poetic Experience (1934), and Marriage and Morals (1936, pseudonym I. G. Wayne; repr. 1952).

From 1939 to 1948, Gilby served as chaplain in the Royal Navy. With the experience of naval warfare behind him, he then acted as a representative of the British government, lecturing in American universities. During the war he wrote one book on logic, Barbara Celarent (1949) and another on epistemology, The Phoenix and the Turtle (1950). From 1948 until his death, Gilby lived in Black-friars, Cambridge, where he served several terms as prior and published several books: Between Community and Society (1953); Principality and Polity (1958; U.S. title, Political Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas ); Up the Green River (1955), and a military history, Britain at Arms: A Scrapbook from Queen Anne to the Present Day (1953).

Gilby completed his greatest work acting as editor, translator, annotator, and commentator of St. Thomas Aquinas's writing. He began modestly with an arrangement, translation, and annotation of St. Thomas Aquinas, Philosophical Texts (1955) and St. Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts (1955). The English-Latin edition of the Summa theologiae (60 v., 1965-76) occupied him until his death. He translated, edited, and annotated vv. 1, 5, 8, 16, 17, 18, 28, 36, 43, 44, and 59 and, as general editor, handled each page of copy in all of the 60 volumes. Throughout his life, Thomas Gilby was dedicated to his quiet convert apostolate: reconciling the strayed and counseling the anguished. The greatest of his theological contributions remain in the pages of "the Gilby Summa."

[t. c. o'brien]