- Edward Ambrose Burgis
Edward Ambrose Burgis was an English Dominican historian and theologian.
Biography
He was born in England c. 1673. When a young man he left the
Church of England , of which his father was a minister, and became a Catholic, joining theDominican Order at Rome, where he passed hisnovic eship in the convent of Saints John and Paul on theCoelian Hill , then occupied by the English Dominicans. After his religious profession (1696) he was sent toNaples to the Dominican school of St. Thomas, where he displayed unusual mental ability. Upon the completion of his studies he was sent to the Flemish university of Louvain, where for nearly thirty years he taught philosophy, theology, Sacred Scripture and church history in the College of St. Thomas, established in 1697 for the Dominicans of England through the bequest ofCardinal Thomas Howard ,O.P. He was therector of the college from 1715 to 1720 and again from 1724 to 1730. In the latter year he was elected to the office ofprovincial superior ; in 1741 he becamePrior of the English Dominican convent atBornhem , and in 1746 he was appointedVicar-General of the English Dominicans in Belgium. He died in Brussels on 27 April, 1747.Works
He published a number of pamphlets of considerable merit containing theses written in Latin on Scriptural, theological and historical subjects. It was as a writer of English that he excelled, especially along historical lines; his style is easy and pleasing, and he is accurate in his statements. In 1712 he published in London "The Annals of the Church", a volume embracing the period from A.D. 34 to 300. As stated in the preface it was his intention to bring the annals down to his own time in a work of nine volumes, but he abandoned this plan, rewrote the first period and published "The Annals of the Church from the Death of Christ", in five octavo volumes (London, 1738), the first work of the kind written in English by Catholic or Protestant. The book entitles "An Introduction to the Catholic Faith", by Father Thomas Worthington, O.P. (London, 1709), was completed by Father Burgis, although his name does not appear in connection with it.
ource
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03065a.htm Catholic Encyclopedia]
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