Richard Wilton

Died December 21, 1239. He was a medieval scholar of whom little is known except that he was an Englishman who joined the Trinitarians. His works included a commentary on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, a treatise in five books against the heresies of his own age, commentaries on Genesis and the prophecy of Jeremias, three books of quodlibets, a treatise on the immortality of the soul, and four books on Divine grace. All current information is derived from the statements of Oldoinus in his "Athenaeum Romanum", published at Perugia in 1676; but the facts given will not bear examination. Thus it is said that he was nominated Archbishop of Armagh by Innocent III; but he certainly never became archbishop. He is said to have been created cardinal by Gregory IX with the title of St. Stephen on the Caelian Hill, but his name is not found in the lists of cardinals compiled by de Mas Latrie, or the more recent researches of Conrad Eubel. The additional statement that he was a doctor of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris is intrinsically impossible, at least so far as Cambridge is concerned.

OLDOINUS, Athenaeum Romanum (Perugia, 1676); LELONG, Bibliotheca Sacra (Paris, 1723), giving the date of his death as 1439; FABRICIUS, Bib. Med. AEt., VI (Hamburg, 1746), giving date of his date as 1339, by an obvious misprint; HURTER, Nomenclator Litcrarius (Innsbruck, 1899).

Edwin Burton.