JOHN PECHAM (IOANNES PECKAM, PECKHAM, Peccamus, Pechamus). — Franciscan theologian and philosopher, b. at Patcham (in Sussex, England) c. 1215-20, d. 8 Dec. 1292. Around 1250 he entered the Order of Friars Minor at Oxford. In Paris he became “magister in theologia” and then “regens in scholis” (1260-71), was in contact with St Thomas Aquinas, and took an active part in the struggle between the secular clergy and the mendicant orders with his apologetic work De perfectione evangelica, directed against Gergory of Abbeville and, in the final chapter, against William of St-Amour.
Returning to England, in 1272 he introduced at Oxford, it seems for the first time, the quodlibetal disputes. Elected provincial minister by the English Franciscans in 1274, he took part in the General Chapter of Padua (1276) and in the same year or shortly after became, the first Franciscan, master of the Sacred Palace. Promoted to the archiepiscopal and primatial see of Canterbury on 28 Jan. 1279, he carried out intense pastoral activity, summoning councils, reforming convents, preaching the Crusade, and strenuously defending the liberty of the Church against encroachments by civil power. In scholasticism he is known as the “Doctor ingeniosus.”
His writings are very numerous. Among his scriptural works may be mentioned: Collectanea Bibliorum (Paris 1513, 1514; Cologne 1541); Postilla in Cantica Canticorum (injectio); Postilla in Lamentat. Ieremiae (ed. in Opera omnia Bonaventurae, VII, Quaracchi 1897, pp. 615-51); De numeris seu De mystica interpretatione numerorum in S. Scriptura (the first five chapters are edited in Tractatus de anima Ioannis P., Florence 1928, pp. 138-44) and various other biblical commentaries. More noteworthy are his philosophical and theological works: Perspectiva communis, which has had many editions, having been adopted as a textbook in universities (an illustrated Italian edition [Venice 1593] was edited by G. P. Gallucci); Tractatus spherea; the commentary on Book I of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (unpublished, except for certain questions); Summa de esse et essentia (Florence 1928); four Quodlibets (only the so-called Roman one is edited [Rome 1938]); of the many disputed questions, those of a psychological nature have been published (Münster 1918), to which the Tractatus de anima (Florence 1948) is related in subject. Of particular interest for Franciscan spirituality, besides the already noted De perfectione evangelica, are the Canticum pauperis (in Biblioteca ascetica francescana medii aevi, IV, Quaracchi 1905, pp. 133-205); the Tractatus contra R. Kilwardby (Naples and Aberdeen 1910) and the questions: De pueris oblatis (Quaracchi 1925) and De paupertate (Münster 1917), and according to F. Delorme (cf. Studi francescani, 3rd series, 4 [1932], p. 49 and more fully Collectanea franciscana, 15 [1945], pp. 7-12) also Ecclesiae regulae Fratrum Minorum, previously attributed to St Bonaventure and published among his works (VIII, Quaracchi 1898, pp. 391-437). Besides various poetic compositions and the acts of his episcopate (Registrum Ioannis P., ed. in The Canterbury and York Society, London 1908), his three volumes of Registrum epistolarum (ibid. 1882-85) are of interest for the history of the period.
P. is recognized as one of the best representatives of the Augustinian current in scholasticism, faithful to the directives of Alexander of Hales and St Bonaventure. In 1284 he reconfirmed the condemnation, already issued by his predecessor R. Kilwardby, against Thomistic Aristotelianism, and on 30 Dec. 1286 in London he censured other “damned errors.” In theodicy P. admits the immediate evidence of the existence of God, acknowledges the validity of St Anselm’s ontological argument, and denies the possibility of creation