RICHARD FITZRALPH

Archbishop, theologian, controversialist whose views influenced John wyclif; b. Dundalk, Ireland, c. 1300; d. Avignon, Nov. 10, 1360. After studies at Oxford, Fitzralph spent a short period at Paris. He was chancellor of Oxford University (1332–34). Thereafter he held a series of benefices, and in 1346 became archbishop of Armagh. He was well known at Avignon (see avignon papacy), preached several times before the papal court, and took part in current controversies about the beatific vision, the Armenians, and the privileges of the mendicant orders. As archbishop he quarreled with the friars and was cited to Avignon after a series of outspoken sermons against them in London (1356–57), but he died before the case was decided. A canonization process, begun in 1399, was dropped, but a shrine and cult to "St. Richard of Dundalk" are found as late as 1545.

Bibliography: Sources. r. fitzralph, Defensorium curatorum (Louvain 1475?); Summa … in questionibus Armenorum (Paris 1512); De pauperie Salvatoris, in Iohannis Wycliffe de dominio divino, ed. r. l. poole (London 1890). Literature. r. l. poole, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 63 v. (London 1885–1900) 7:194–198. e. amann, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 v. (Paris 1903–50) 13.2:2667–2668. a. gwynn, Studies 22 (1933): 389–405, 591–607; 23 (1934): 395–411; 24 (1935): 25–42, 558–572; 25 (1936): 81–96; 26 (1937): 50–67. l. l. hammerich, The Beginning of the Strife between R. Fitzralph and the Mendicants (Copenhagen 1938). a. b. emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to a.d. 1500, 3 v. (Oxford 1957–59) 2:692–694. g. leff, R. F.: Commentator of the "Sentences" (Manchester, Eng. 1964).

[m. b. crowe]