John Peckham, or Pecham, the English philosopher and theologian, and defender of Augustinian doctrines, was born in Patcham, near Brighton, Sussex. Educated at the monastery at Lewes, he continued his studies at Oxford and Paris, and sometime during the 1250s he joined the Franciscan friars at Oxford. Subsequently he became a master of theology in Paris in 1269 and returned to Oxford in 1272. Peckham was provincial of the English Franciscans from 1275 to 1277 and then lectured at the papal court for two years. In 1279 he was appointed archbishop of Canterbury and held this office until his death.

Peckham's philosophical career represents a concentrated effort to counteract the growing allegiance to Aristotle through a return to the thought of Augustine. There seems little doubt that he was motivated to take this stand by the Lenten sermons of St. Bonaventure, who in the late 1260s had...