Robert Kilwardby was an English Dominican. He was a master of arts at the University of Paris between 1237 and 1245 and a student and master of theology at Blackfriars, Oxford, between 1248 and 1261. He then became prior provincial of the English Dominicans and in 1273 he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. In 1278 he entered the papal service as cardinal-bishop of Porto and Santa Rufina; he died in Viterbo in 1279.

Kilwardby had a profound influence on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Scholasticism. In general he tried to promote the philosophical views of Augustine in a time when Aristotle's influence was becoming more and more important. As archbishop of Canterbury he even tried to suppress Aristotelian views by condemning thirty errors in philosophy in the so-called Oxford condemnation of 1277.

His most important and long-lasting influence, however, was in logic. During his Paris years he commented on the whole Organon...