John Peckham

Johannes (John) Peckham ( Pecham ) OFM (c. 1220/1225 in Patcham, Sussex, † December 8, 1292 in Mortlake Manor, Surrey ) was an English theologian (Doctor ingeniosus ).

He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and Oxford and joined the Franciscan Order in 1250 in a. 1257 to 1259 he studied theology in Paris, where he became in 1269 a doctorate. After that, he worked for about two years (1269-1271) Rector of the University of Paris. 1275 he was Provincial of the Order in England.

1279 he was appointed as the successor of Robert Kilwardby Archbishop of Canterbury and selected English Primate.

Peckham wrote books about numbers ( Tractatus de numeri ) and optics ( Tractatus de Perspectiva, likely 1269-1277, De Perspective communis, in 1278, to 1665 11 editions). In optics, he dealt, inter alia, the refraction in lenses, the rainbow and the perspective and follows essentially Al- Haitham. His De Perspectiva communis was in the Middle Ages as a standard work on optics.

Peckham is attributed to the medieval Augustinianism. In Paris, Peckham was a conservative ' opponent of Thomas Aquinas, and fought with this among other things in 1270 to the question of whether humans, the spiritual soul is the only principle of life (which Peckham against Thomas denied ). In the Rectorate of his sentencing of 13 Averroistic errors fell (10 December 1270) by the Archbishop of Paris Étienne Tempier (see Siger of Brabant). From November 10, 1284, a letter dated of John Peckham, in which he noted on Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia with satisfaction that the two had been in Italy a miserable end.