John Pecham

Archbishop of Canterbury (1279-1292)

• Born: c. 1230
• Birthplace: Probably Patcham, Sussex, England
• Died: December 8, 1292
• Place of death: Mortlake, Canterbury, England

Pecham was a scholar whose writings ranged from Augustinian theology to optics. As archbishop of Canterbury he vigorously sought to remove abuses and to maintain the Church’s independence from lay interference, resulting in confrontations with the king as well as with his own bishops and abbots.

Early Life

John Pecham (PEHCH-uhm) was born sometime around 1230, probably in Patcham, near modern Brighton. Nothing is known of his ancestry, but he received his early education from the monks of Lewes Priory, after which he proceeded to Oxford University. There, he read for the degree of master of arts, joined the Franciscan order, and was influenced by the great scholar Adam Marsh. Oxford during the thirteenth century hosted a brilliant band of Franciscan thinkers and teachers, and it was surely in the Franciscan house there that the seeds of Pecham’s future commitment to scholastic philosophy, scientific enquiry, and the Franciscan life of preaching and apostolic poverty were sown.

In 1250, he moved from Oxford to Paris, where he studied theology (Saint Bonaventure was among his teachers) and eventually obtained his doctorate, perhaps around 1269. For nearly twenty years, he studied, lectured, and wrote in what was then the intellectual capital of Christendom. He entered with enthusiasm into the famous disputations of the schools, debating among others the English Dominican Robert Kilwardby, and he played a notable part in defending the Mendicant orders against their detractors among the secular clergy. He won the esteem of the queen of France, Margaret of Provence, and came to know personally the great Saint Thomas Aquinas. By the time he left Paris, he was regarded as one of the leading scholars of the age.

In 1270, he returned to Oxford as regent master of theology, and again he clashed in debate with Kilwardby, now provincial prior of the Dominicans. Kilwardby, however, left Oxford in 1272, having been chosen by Gregory X (1271-1276) as the archbishop of Canterbury. Meanwhile, in 1275 or 1276, Pecham was elected provincial prior of the English Franciscans, on whose behalf he attended a general council of the order in Padua, traveling the entire way on foot in order to obey the order’s rule against riding. By now, so great was his fame that Nicholas III (1277-1280) summoned him to Rome to become lector sacri palatii (lecturer in the school attached to the papal palace). He was the first holder of the appointment, and his public lectures aroused such enthusiasm that they were attended by cardinals and bishops.

Whether in Paris, Oxford, or Rome, Pecham had been writing extensively on subjects ranging from theology to mathematics and physics. His commentaries on the Scriptures and on Peter Lombard’s Sententiarum libri IV (1148-1151; The Books of Opinions of Peter Lombard, 1970; better known as Sentences) and his collections of quaestiones (a genre of theological literature in the form of questions and answers) were devoured by contemporary students. His Perspectiva communis, on optics, and his Tractatus de sphera placed him firmly within that tradition of scientific inquiry for which the Oxford Franciscans were then renowned. Among so considerable a body of academic texts, his religious poem “Philomela, praevia,” formerly attributed to Saint Bonaventure, stands somewhat apart, as do several other poems of which he may have been the author.

In 1278, Canterbury fell vacant, for Kilwardby had been summoned to Rome and a cardinalate. As had happened prior to Kilwardby’s nomination as archbishop, Edward I (1272-1307) strongly urged the claims of his trusted counselor, Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, but once again the pope rejected the suggestion out of hand. Instead, Nicholas III named Pecham (much against his will, it is said) and consecrated him in February, 1279. On his way across France, Pecham had a meeting with Edward at Amiens, where the latter was in conference with Philip III. Whatever resentment the king felt regarding the rejection of his candidate, he received his new archbishop in a friendly manner, and when Pecham was enthroned in Canterbury cathedral in October, 1279, Edward was present.

Life’s Work

Pecham lived at a time when the Papacy claimed an absolute supremacy over all temporal rulers as the embodiment of a universal monarchy divinely ordained. With such a claim Pecham was in complete sympathy. It would have been strange had he felt otherwise. The Mendicant orders were the spiritual shock-troops of the thirteenth century Papacy, and although the Spiritual Franciscans were soon to become alienated from the Curia, Pecham does not seem to have been influenced by their teachings. He was, nevertheless, wholly committed to the Franciscan ideal of apostolic poverty, and both his everyday life as a friar and his public stand as primate of England bear out David Knowles’s observation that “the English Minors, though showing little inclination towards the eremitical life of the Italian Spirituals . . . were, as a body, more united than any other province in their resolve to preserve the first purity of the rule.” In any case, he never feared a fight, and as archbishop he upheld the Mendicants against the secular clergy, just as he defended the Church as a whole from lay interference and championed the authority of Rome against the particularism of the Ecclesia Anglicana. Clearly, Nicholas III had known well what he was doing when he chose Pecham for Canterbury. As Knowles writes of Pecham, “Contrary to what might have been expected from a lifelong student and teacher, he appears as a man of prompt decision, great practical ability and grasp of detail. He never feared to take the initiative in action, nor did he shrink from conflict.”

Pecham’s first action on arriving in England was to summon a provincial council to meet at Reading in July, 1279. Such councils had been prescribed annually by the Lateran Council of 1215, but they were comparatively rare in England. It seems likely, therefore, that Nicholas III had specifically instructed Pecham to initiate regular councils. At Reading, Pecham reissued the canons of the four previous councils that had been held during the thirteenth century, laying stress on those of 1268, in particular. To these some additions were made, especially with respect to the sin of pluralism (that is, a cleric being in possession of two or more benefices simultaneously). Pluralism was very common throughout the English church, and the issue was one that was bound to place the archbishop in direct conflict with some of his own suffragans.

Pecham then had Magna Carta read out and gave orders that new copies were to be posted in every cathedral and collegiate church. Finally, he had the Church’s canons on the subject of excommunication read to the assembly, with instructions that these were to be explained by the parish priests to their congregations every week in order that everyone should be familiar with the consequences of disregarding spiritual authority. The Reading agenda was an implicit criticism of the government and its officials, who had shown themselves hostile to the rights and liberties of the Church. Thus, it was a challenge, and as such it was taken up in the parliament that met in Westminster at Michaelmas of that same year. This was the parliament that passed the statute of Mortmain, forbidding the transfer of land to the Church without regard for the existence of prior rights and obligations. It was not an assembly favorably disposed toward ecclesiastical pretensions. Pecham was compelled to withdraw three of the canons of excommunication proclaimed at Reading and to rescind his instructions with regard to Magna Carta. Not long afterward, in January, 1280, the king exacted from the clergy a tax of one-fifteenth for three years. Edward had won the first round, but Pecham was not easily quelled.

In 1280, the archbishop resolved to exercise his rights of visitation over the Royal Peculiars, royal chapels that enjoyed exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. In Pecham’s eyes, this was an intolerable anomaly and so, in the spring of 1280, he embarked on a visitation of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, where several were located. Not surprisingly, he uncovered rampant pluralism. He also met with resistance. As a result, he proceeded with suits against the deans and canons of the royal chapels of Derby, Shrewsbury, and Tettenhall and excommunicated the dean and canons of Wolverhampton. He was coming close to trespassing on royal preserves. Following Reading and the matter of the Royal Peculiars, strong undercurrents of tension between Pecham and the government surfaced whenever issues arose that, in Pecham’s opinion, touched on the honor or the rights of the Church. It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that, still unchastened, he summoned a provincial council to Lambeth in October, 1281, to reaffirm his position on excommunication and other contentious matters. This time, however, as Sir Maurice Powicke puts it, Edward

wisely refrained from reprisals. Probably he had taken the archbishop’s measure and realized both the value of his good-will and the advantages of a conciliatory attitude towards clerical grievances. After all, in any particular issue, the last word lay with the Crown.

With regard to his administration as metropolitan, Pecham’s financial situation was exceptionally trying. This state of affairs was a result of the actions of his predecessor, Kilwardby. Setting out for Rome in 1278, Kilwardby had become involved with an appeal by the entire English clergy against the proceedings of the resident papal nuncio. Kilwardby needed large sums of money; thus, before leaving, he had transferred to the king the annual rents and income from the Canterbury estates in return for a lump sum of cash, which he had taken with him to Rome, together with some of his cathedral’s vestments and ornaments, and all the registers and judicial records. Because of this, the Lambeth Palace records today begin with the tenure of Pecham. Kilwardby had left the archiepiscopal household virtually penniless, but Pecham had financial troubles of his own. As a friar who had no personal possessions, he had been forced to borrow heavily in Rome to pay for his consecration and the journey to England, where, he discovered on arrival, there was nothing with which to pay the debt he had incurred. In consequence, he was to be haunted throughout his administration by lack of funds and the difficulties of paying creditors. On the positive side, his need taught him to become a practical and frugal manager of the Canterbury estates.

The only Franciscan and the last friar to become archbishop of Canterbury, Pecham was not particularly well disposed toward the high ecclesiastics with whom he had to deal, many of whom, while possessing outstanding qualifications and real ability, were unashamed pluralists. Additionally, though his own life was humble enough, he set great store on the dignity of his office. As a result, he quarreled almost immediately with the new archbishop of York, William Wickwane (1275-1285), over matters of precedence, although the pope had expressly ordered him not to. In 1284, there was a similar contretemps with the bishop of St. David’, Thomas Bek. Pecham’s confrontations with those whom he regarded as pluralists were acrimonious, as in the case of Anthony Bek, the future bishop of Durham, and John Kirkby, the royal treasurer. Even fiercer was the quarrel with Thomas de Cantilupe (1218?-1282), the aristocratic bishop of Hereford.

Pecham’s visitations did not stop with the secular clergy but were also extended to the regulars, and he was said to have been especially ill-disposed toward the Benedictines. There is no doubt that he strictly investigated the great monastic houses of Glastonbury, Reading, and Christ Church, Canterbury. Pecham’s relations with the abbot of Westminster were particularly cool, and in 1290, as a result of a quarrel between the Westminster monks and the Franciscans, he placed the abbey under an interdict. If Pecham tended to be hostile to the monks, his attitude reflected that of the Mendicant orders as a whole. By contrast, he was a warm supporter of the Dominicans, the Carmelites, and the Austin friars, while showing the greatest favor to his brother Franciscans, to whom he granted the right to hear confessions and give absolution.

In his later years, he became embroiled in an unprofitable squabble with the Dominicans, having in 1284 formally condemned certain erroneous doctrines taught in the schools at Oxford, with which the Dominicans were identified. In so doing, he seemed to be casting aspersions on the teachings of his old master, Aquinas. A vicious pamphlet war followed and so great a storm was raised that Pecham felt compelled to write to several cardinals in Rome to defend himself.

His last years were marked by failing health. He died at Mortlake on December 8, 1292, after a long illness, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

Significance

Pecham possessed the quintessential virtues of the Franciscans. He was austere and devout, dedicated to the vita apostolica (apostolic life) and the saving of souls prescribed by the order’s founder. Also in the tradition of the thirteenth century Mendicants, he was a man of formidable intellect and wide learning, which ranged from biblical exegesis to the wonders of creation. He would perhaps have been happier had he been able to pass his entire life within strictly academic circles, and there is clearly a bifurcation between the scholar’s life, which he lived prior to 1279, and his later years as archbishop. Pecham’s fourteen years at Canterbury were not an unqualified success. That he was forceful and sincere in his dedication to reform cannot be doubted, and even his enemies acknowledged his personal honesty. Yet he was too angular and argumentative, alienating laymen and churchmen alike, king, barons, bishops, and abbots.

At his best, however, Pecham embodied some of the strongest currents in the spiritual life of his century, in his commitment to apostolic poverty and the Franciscan ideal, to preaching and learning, and to the service of the Papal Curia. Ironically, both during his life and posthumously, he was always more admired and better appreciated in Paris and Rome than in his own country.

Bibliography

Cross, F. L., and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Along with Hook’s Lives, one of the few standard sources on the archbishops of Canterbury.

Douie, Decima L. Archbishop Pecham. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1952. An outstanding, full-length study of Pecham, and one of the best biographies of a medieval prelate.

Hook, Walter Farquhar. Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. 12 vols. London: R. Bentley, 1860-1876. The venerable and still authoritative compendium archiving the biographies of the archbishops since Anglo-Saxon times.

Johnstone, Hilda. “Archbishop Pecham and the Council of Lambeth of 1281.” In Essays in Medieval History/Middle Ages Presented to Thomas Frederick Tout, edited by A. G. Little and F. M. Powicke. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1925. An essay covering one of the central episodes in Pecham’s career as archbishop.

Knowles, M.D. “Some Aspects of the Career of Archbishop Pecham.” English Historical Review 57 (1942): 1-18, 178-201. An absorbing account of Pecham’s scholarly activities, placing him squarely within the intellectual setting of his age.

Pecham, John. John Pecham and the Science of Optics. Edited by David C. Lindberg. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. An edition and translation of Pecham’s Perspective Communis.

Powicke, Frederick M. The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1953. Chapter 10 contains an excellent overview of the state of the English church, with Pecham very much at center stage.

Rossignol. Rossignol: An Edition and Translation. Edited by J. L. Baird and John R. Kane. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1978. Pecham’s poem “Philomela, praevia” is translated into English and discussed in relation to its genre.

Sharp, Dorothea E. Franciscan Philosophy at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1930. Discusses the Franciscan roots of Pecham’s scholarship.

Smith, Jeremiah J. The Attitude of John Pecham Toward Monastic Houses Under His Jurisdiction. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1949. A study of one aspect of Pecham’s archiepiscopal administration.

Witney, Kenneth. The Survey of Archbishop Pecham’s Kentish Manors, 1283-85. Maidstone, England: Kent Archaeological Society, 2000. A translation of the fifteenth century Latin copy in the Canterbury Cathedral Library of the full survey, supplemented by a translation of the Kentish section of a thirteenth century summary of the survey.