Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1300 – 26 August 1349) was an English cleric, scholar, mathematician, physicist, courtier and, very briefly, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a celebrated scholastic philosopher and doctor of theology, he is often called Doctor Profundus (medieval epithet, meaning "the Profound Doctor").
Life
Sources vary about Bradwardine's early life before receiving his degree in 1321. His exact date of birth is unknown but sources point to a date between 1290 and 1300. His place of birth is also unknown but some sources point to it being near Chichester, Sussex, or Harfield. The first concrete sources of his do not appear until he received his degree in 1321 from Balliol College, Oxford. Thomas Bradwardine became a Fellow of Merton College in Oxford, and was awarded his B.A. in August 1321. Bradwardine stayed at Merton College until 1333, when he was appointed Canon of Lincoln, and in 1337 he was appointed the chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral. His involvement with the ecclesiastical began in September 1333, when he was made the Canon of Lincoln, it is less corroborated by sources but it is stated that Bradwardine may have been the Bishop of Durham between 1335 and 1337. It is rumoured that this move to Durham helped put him into contact with King Edward III, which would lead to his eventual appointment of Chaplain of Old St Paul's Cathedral in London.
He acquired several degrees from Oxford, it is presumed he acquired them on these dates: B.A. by August 1321, an M.A. by 1323, a B.Th. by 133, and a D.Th. by 1348.
Bradwardine was a precocious student, educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a fellow by 1321; he took the degree of doctor of divinity, and acquired the reputation of a profound scholar, a skilful mathematician and an able theologian. He was also a gifted logician with theories on the insolubles and in particular the liar paradox.
Bradwardine subsequently moved to Merton College, Oxford on a fellowship. He was afterwards raised to the high offices of chancellor of the university and professor of divinity. Bradwardine (like his contemporary William of Occam) was a culminating figure of the great intellectual movement at Oxford that had begun in the 1240s.
Bradwardine helped revive Augustinian Theology during his time in the fourteenth century. Writing documents on several different subjects that included but were not limited too, speculative arithmetic, geometry, and memory of the human mind. Bradwardine would later write on and reject the belief the God is able to know future events and contingents to those events, rejecting William of Ockham's belief to the contrary. Bradwardine was a theologian along with his studies of natural philosophy. Accepting the idea of predestination, he suggested that all evil acts of [Human] will are due to God. Stating that providence goes hand in hand with predestination theory, he rejected the idea that humans would be able to due any good on their own volition but rather they act according to God’s will. Bradwardine would go on to write that free will and predestination theory are not mutually exclusive but rather that they can co-exist with each other, and do in fact co-exist in each other but only according to the will of God. This goes along with the theory of Augustinian Theology.
Bradwardine was an ordinary secular cleric, which gave him intellectual freedom but deprived him of the security and wherewithal that the Preaching Orders would have afforded; instead he turned to royal patronage. From being chancellor of the diocese of London as Dean of St Paul's, he became chaplain and confessor to Edward III, whom he attended during his wars in France at the Battle of Crécy, where he preached at the victory Mass, and at the subsequent siege of Calais. Edward repeatedly entrusted him with diplomatic missions. On his return to England, he was successively appointed prebendary of Lincoln and dean (1348). In 1349 the canons of the chapter at Canterbury elected him Archbishop following the death of Archbishop John Stratford, but Edward III withheld his consent, preferring his chancellor John de Ufford, perhaps loth to lose his trusted confessor. After Ufford died of the Black Death, 2 May, Bradwardine went to receive confirmation from Pope Clement VI at Avignon, but on his return he died of the plague at Rochester on 26 August 1349, forty days after his consecration. He was buried at Canterbury.