Brinkley, Richard

Richard Brinkley was a Franciscan theologian at the University of Oxford in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Probably at the request of his superiors, he undertook an attack on nominalism and conceptualism, resulting in his best-known work, Summa logicae (Synopsis of Logic). Other works include a commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, which survives only fragmentarily and in a student's shortened version. Brinkley had a significant influence on several generations of Oxford logicians and Parisian theologians. Brinkley was active at Oxford University sometime between 1350 and 1373. His successors called him Doctor Bonus or Doctor Valens (the 'Good Doctor' or 'Capable Doctor'). His principal surviving philosophical work is the lengthy Summa logicae (Synopsis of Logic) comprising over one hundred manuscript folia (roughly equivalent to 500 ordinary printed pages). Brinkley's extant theological works include fragments of his Commentum super Sententias, a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which also survives in a shortened version (abbreviatio) by Stephen Gaudet, who delivered his own commentary on the Sentences in 1361-2 (Kaluza 1989: 181-88). The same manuscript in which Gaudet's abbreviatio is found also contains Quaestiones magnae and Quaestiones breves (Long Questions and Short Questions) on various philosophical issues in theological contexts, probably also by Brinkley. Lost works by Brinkley include a Distinctiones scholasticae (Scholastic Distinctions) listed by John Bale in the sixteenth century, and a Quaestiones theologicales Biligam et Brinkel (Theological Questions of Brinkley and [Richard] Billingham) (probably a student's compilation), mentioned in an old Prague University library catalogue. The Lectura super Sententias (Lecture on the Sentences) mentioned by Bale is very likely identical with the Commentum. Bale also mentions a Determinationes (Determinations), but this work is probably by William of Foville, a Franciscan of Cambridge University.