Arthur, James

Arthur, James (1587/8–1654), Dominican priest, was a son of William Arthur, member of a leading merchant family in Limerick, and his wife, Beatrice (née Creagh). He entered the Irish college, Salamanca, on 5 November 1606 (NS), aged eighteen, and, after entering the Dominican order, studied at the University of Salamanca (1610–16). During the 1620s he held academic positions in Spain, including (c.1626) that of lector in theology at León and (temporarily, in 1627 or 1628) that of professor of theology at the University of Salamanca. On 15 November 1630 he was instituted regent of the Collegio di San Tommaso in Naples. Soon he was back in Spain as regent of the studium generale of Avila and then as regent of studies at the premier theological postgraduate college of San Gregorio, Valladolid. He was nominated to the principal chair of theology at Coimbra University by Philip IV in 1640 and seems to have remained in Portugal until his death.

He was proposed unsuccessfully for two Munster bishoprics: in 1626 for Cashel and in 1630 and 1632 as co-adjutor to the bishop of Limerick, Richard Arthur (d. 1646), presumably a kinsman. Arthur was a devoted Thomist and author of ‘Commentaria in totam fere S. Thomae de Aquino Summam’ (part of which was published in 1665); he and John Baptist Hackett (qv) were ‘easily the most renowned Irish Dominican theologians in this epoch’ (Flynn). James Arthur died at Lisbon on 1 February 1654 (NS) (not 1644 or 1670 as stated in some sources). Another James Arthur, also a Dominican priest from Limerick, was chaplain to the Portuguese embassy in London for many years and returned to Limerick as prior before his death in 1689.