Background
Thomas Bradwardine was born about 1290 either at Hartfield in Sussex or at Chichester, United Kingdom.
Thomas Bradwardine was born about 1290 either at Hartfield in Sussex or at Chichester, United Kingdom.
He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, where he took the degree of doctor of divinity, and acquired the reputation of a profound scholar, a skilful mathematician and an able divine.
From being chancellor of the diocese of London, he became chaplain and confessor to Edward III. , whom he attended during his wars in France. On his return to England, he was successively appointed prebendary of Lincoln, archdeacon of Lincoln (1347), and in 1349 archbishop of Canterbury. He died of the plague at Lambeth on the 26th of August 1349, forty days after his consecration.
His great work is a treatise against the Pelagians, entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum, edited by Sir Henry Savile (London, 1618). He wrote also De Geometria speculativa (Paris, 1530); De Arithmetica practica (Paris, 1502); De Proportionibus (Paris, 1495; Venice, 1505); De Quadratura Circuli (Paris, 1495); and an Ars Memorativa, Sloane manuscripts No. 3974 in the British Museum.
Chaucer in his Nun's Priest's Tale ranks Bradwardine with St Augustine.