Anthony Terill (born 1623,

Canford Canford Magna is a village in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole district, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. The village is situated just south of the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour and lies between the towns of Wimborne Minst ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

– died 11 October 1676,

Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...

(present-day Belgium) was an English Roman Catholic

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

theologian. Born in 1623 as Anthony Bonville to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, in his 15th year, he was received into the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

and left England, taking the surname ''Terill''. He studied for about three years at the English College of St. Omer, and then began his studies for the priesthood at the

English College, Rome The Venerable English College (), commonly referred to as the English College, is a Catholic seminary in Rome, Italy, for the training of priests for England and Wales. It was founded in 1579 by William Allen on the model of the English Colleg ...

, where he was ordained on 16 March 1687. Two months later he entered the Jesuit

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

at St Andrea. After his noviceship, he was successively

penitentiary A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state, usually ...

at Loreto, professor of philosophy at

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, professor of philosophy and scholastic theology at

Parma Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...

, director of theological studies and professor of theology and mathematics at the English College,

, and for three years rector of the same college where he died with a reputation for "extraordinary piety, talent, learning, and prudence".

Works

Terill wrote ''Conclusiones philosophicæ'' (Parma, 1657), ''Problema mathematico-philosophicum de termino magnitudinis se virium in animalibus'' (Parma, 1660), ''Fundamentum totius theologiæ moralis, seu tractatus de conscientia probabili'' (Liège, 1668), and ''Regula morum'', which was published shortly after his death (Liège, 1677). His reputation as a moral theologian was established by these last two works. In the ''Fundamentum'' he ably defended the doctrine of probabilism and in the ''Regula morum'' refuted the objections brought against his first work by the Dominican Concina, the Jesuit

Miguel de Elizalde --> Miguel is a given name and surname, the Portuguese and Spanish form of the Hebrew name Michael. It may refer to: Places * Pedro Miguel, a parish in the municipality of Horta and the island of Faial in the Azores Islands * São Miguel (disam ...

(1617-1678) and other exponents of the Rigorist School. Amort speaks of him as "eruditissimum et probabilistarum antsignanum".

References

*Foley, ''Records of the English Province, S. J.'', III (London, 1878), 420 *

Carlos Sommervogel Carlos Sommervogel (8 January 1834 – 4 March 1902) was a French Jesuit scholar. He was author of the monumental ''Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus'', which served as one of the major references for the editors of the Catholic Encyclo ...

, ''Bibliotheque de la Campagnie de Jesus'', VII (Brussels, 1896) *

Hugo von Hurter The von Hurter family belonged to the Swiss nobility; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries three of them were known for their conversions to Roman Catholicism, their ecclesiastical careers in Austria and their theological writings. Friedric ...

''Nomenclator'', II (Innsbruck, 1893), 275–276. *''This article incorporates text from the 1913 ''

Catholic Encyclopedia ''The'' ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'', also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedi ...

'' article " Anthony Terill (Bonville)" by Edward C. Phillips, a publication now in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Terill, Anthony 1623 births 1676 deaths Date of birth unknown Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism 17th-century English Jesuits English theologians People educated at Stonyhurst College