Franciscan Studies

FRANCIS E. KELLEY IN MEMORIAM FRANCIS E. KELLEY 1930-1988 Frank Kelley's sudden death on October 9, 1988, at the age of 58, was a great loss to the Franciscan Institute, to St. Bonaventure University and to the study of the history of medieval philosophy. At the time of his death Frank was involved in three important scholarity projects. He was translating William of Ockham's Quodlibets , he was collaborating on the edition of John Duns Scotus's Metaphysics commentary, and he was completing a revised edition of the Tractatus de principas theologiae. Born September 12, 1930, in Providence, R.I., Frank came to the study of medieval philosophy as a Dominican. After receiving his A.B. from Providence College in 1953, Frank attended the Dominican Theological College where he was awarded an S.T.B. (1956) and an S.T.Lic. (1958). He began his teaching career at the Dominican College in Dover, Massachusetts, where he was a colleague of William A. Wallace, O.P. As a promising scholar, Frank was sent to Oxford for further studies, where he was awarded a B.Litt. (subsequently designated an M.Litt) in 1966. Frank's work for the B.Litt. was supervised by Lorenzo Minio-Palluelo and Fr. Daniel Callus, O.P. Frank worked most closely with Fr. Callus; he owed some of his interest in Thomas Sutton, O.P. to Callus. Frank's dissertation was on "The Place of Thomas Sutton in the Development of Aristotelianism and Thomism at Oxford." From 1959 until 1966, Frank was a professor at the Dominican House of Philosophy in Dover, Massachusetts. After obtaining his degree, he joined the faculty at Merrimack College, where he taught from 1967 to 1972. He left the Dominican Order and married Judith M. Geary in 1969. In 1972, Frank and Judy moved to St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands where Frank began a novel on political intrigue in the Caribbean. But the influence of Oxford and the Dominicans proved decisive. Frank brought Judy back to the mainland where he joined the faculty REGA WOOD at Christian Brothers College, Memphis, in 1973 and resumed the study of medieval philosophy. He began revising a portion of his B.Litt. dissertation, an edition of Thomas Sutton's continuation of Aquinas' De generatione commentary. It was published by the Bavarian Academy in 1976. In 1975, Frank joined the Franciscan Institute at the recommendation of William Wallace and James Weisheipl, O.P. At the Franciscan Institute, Frank began a long and fruitful collaboration with Jerry Etzkorn. Together they wre responsible for Guillelmi de Ockham, Opera theologica, volumes four, six and eight. Though Frank worked full time in the Franciscan Institute for only four years, he and Jerry edited more than 1700 pages in less than ten years. Shortly before coming to the Franciscan Institute, Frank began work on his Oxford D.Phil. His D.Phil was supervised by Fr. James Weisheipl, O.P., and examined by Beryl Smalley and R. W. Hunt in 1977. Other scholars who influenced Frank during his second residency were R. W. Southern and Jeremy Catto. The title of the D.Phil, dissertation was "The Thomists and their Opponents at Oxford in the Last Part of the Thirteenth Century." Part of that dissertation, a revised edition of Knapwell's De unitate formae, was published by the Bibliothèque thomiste in Paris and the Medieval and Renaissance Texts Society, in Binghamton, New York. Frank's Knapwell edition was warmly applauded by the great Dominican historian of theology, M. Chenu. Chenu's enthusiasism for "a document of the first importance" helped gain for Frank a subvention from the French National Ministery of Education, a grant seldon awarded to foreigners as Frank's publisher warned him before applying. Coming to the Franciscan Institute broadened Frank's interests to include the history of Franciscan philosophy and theology. Frank wrote several articles on William of Ockham. His last work was on Scotus's formal distinction, a paper prepared for the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy in Helsinki (August 1988). One major intellectual theme that Frank discussed in his articles was Christian freedom and scholarity neutrality in theological debates. He emphasized the...