RICHARD OF KILVINGTON

English philosopher, theologian, and controversialist; b. Diocese of York; d. London, by 1362. He was educated at Oxford (M.A. by 1331; B.Th. by 1335; D.Th. by 1350); canon of York, 1353; canon of St. Paul's, London, 1354; and dean of St. Paul's, 1354. In July of 1339, he was one of the envoys sent to negotiate with King Philip VI of France; between 1342 and 1344 he was, with his friend richard fitzralph, a member of the household of richard of bury, Bishop of Durham. As Fitzralph's ally in the antimendicant campaign of 1356 and 1357, he took a leading part in his controversy with the Franciscan Roger of Conway on evangelical poverty, but the treatises on this subject attributed to him seem to be no longer extant (Pro Armachano contra fratres, Contra Rogerum Conway, Contra mendicitatem otiosam ). Also attributed to him are Questiones de generatione et corruptione, a Commentary on the Sentences, Tractatus de intencionibus et remissionibus potenciarum, Sophismata, Sermo de adventu Domini, and probably Decem questiones morales super X libros Ethicorum Aristotelis. He is buried at St. Paul's.

Bibliography: a. b. emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to a.d. 1500, 3 v. (Oxford 1957–59) 2:1050–1051. c. l. kingsford, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 63 v. (London 1885–1900) 11:353; f. stegmÜller, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, 2 v. (Würzburg 1947) 1:347, where he is wrongly described as an Austin friar. On Kilvington's part in the antimendicant controversy, see a. gwynn, "Archbishop Fitzralph and the Friars," Studies 26 (1937): 50–67. On Kilvington as philosopher, see a. lang et al., eds., Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters, 2 v. (Münster 1935).

[t. p. dunning]