Kilvington, Richard (d. 1361)

Richard Kilvington, an English philosopher and theologian, was born near the beginning of the fourteenth cantury and died in 1361. His academic career in Oxford (1320–38) was followed by diplomatic service and an ecclesiastical career that culminated in his serving as dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. His known works (besides a couple of sermons) are commentaries or ‘questions’ (philosophical inquiries) regarding three works by Aristotle, a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (a standard academic requirement for theologians in the later Middle Ages) and the Sophismata. Only his Sophismata has been edited, translated and studied. An ordered collection of philosophical puzzles designed to raise and settle issues in natural philosophy and epistemology, it is one of the earliest and subtlest contributions to the literature associated with the Oxford Calculators.