Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Arthur, James

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ARTHUR, JAMES (d. 1670?), divine, was born at Limerick, and professed himself a Dominican friar in the abbey of St. Stephen, Salamanca. He was professor of divinity at Salamanca University for many years. He went thence to Coimbra, but after the separation of Portugal from Spain in 1640 was expelled for refusing an oath imposed upon all the professors to defend the immaculate conception of the Virgin. In 1642 he retired to the convent of St. Dominic in Lisbon, and there, according to Quetif and Echard, died on 1 Feb. 1644. Ware says that he survived till about 1670, referring to Nicolas Antonio, who,in the ‘Bibliotheca Hispana Nova’ (1672), says that he died ‘non dudum.’ The first volume of a commentary by Arthur upon the first part of Aquinas's ‘Summa’ was printed in 1655; another volume had been completed, but seems never to have been printed. Arthur was also preparing at the time of his death a commentary on the whole of Aquinas's work in ten volumes.

[Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, p. 160; Quetif and Echard's Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum, ii. 536 b; N. Antonius, Bibliotheca Hispana, (1672) ii. 358, (edition of 1688) ii. 368.]