Philosophers From England

"The feeling of the country had... become fanatical in its hatred of the Jews; and the House of Commons, in 1290, demanded that the whole race should be banished the kingdom. Edward I was one of the greatest of our sovereigns, but he was not sufficiently great to resist the spirit of the age, when it accorded with his own religious convictions, and, at the same time, with his worldly interests. Human nature is always the same. Fools are always numerous, and sometimes powerful, and wise men are not infrequently weak. We are not required to enter into a description of the measures which were adopted; for though Peckham, harsh, severe, and intolerant, was sure to be on the side of what are called strong measures, he did not take a prominent part in the proceedings against the Jews. We need only, therefore, mention, that the king, probably for their protection, first directed that they should be imprisoned; then made them pay for their liberation; and finally, banished them from the kingdom. Edward was enriched, at the time, by the confiscation of the property of the Jews; but... the country suffered more by their expulsion, than the Jews themselves, and the court itself eventually suffered, as the annual tax, which they had hitherto paid for protection, was now withdrawn."

"Although Peckham affected much humility, discharging for himself many acts, which his predecessors had hired servants to perform; and although, to mark his humility, he still called himself Friar John; he was, nevertheless, a pompous little man, both in his gait, and in his manner of expressing himself."

"Peckham's visitations naturally included the monastic houses, and his 'Register' contains a considerable number of injunctions and ordinances for the correction of abuses. ...The charge that he was actuated by enmity to the monks had perhaps no better ground than the fact that he was a friar."

"When the General of the Franciscans [ Nicolas IV ] ascended the papal throne, one of the first things he did, was to name as cardinal, Matthew Aquasparta, General of the Dominicans. No advantage of a personal character accrued to brother John from this event. But Matthew of Westminster sarcastically remarked, that the brothers of the Franciscan or Minorite order, regarded the pope as the sun, and the Archbishop of Canterbury as their moon. They thus set up their horn on high, and spared no order or rank in the Church of England."

"On his going to Rome, he received an appointment from the pope, being made Causarum Auditor, or Lector Palatii. The two titles describe one office. Being now both a theologian and a lawyer, he was well qualified to dispute with those heretics, who were summoned to Rome; and this, for the two years that he held the office just described, appears to have been his duty."

"The king, indeed, soon found cause to regret the consent that he had given, to the appointment of a friar to the primatial see of his realm. Peckham was not a true hearted Englishman, and was, invariably, engaged in furthering the interests of the pope, in opposition to those of the king of England and the Country."

"The archbishop, on the 2d of November, 1281, addressed a letter to the king, which, still further, proved the impolicy of permitting a friar to occupy the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury. He affirmed that Catholic emperors had submitted to the laws of the papacy, and abolished any local laws which were contrary to the same. Peckham... openly declared that whatever oaths he may have taken, he should feel himself absolved from them, if they interfered with his duty to the pope."

"Follow the Constitutions... which consists of the Lambeth Canons, ix—xiii. They run in the name of the Archbishop, who begins by stating his desire to remedy present evils, and his hope to make progress in that direction, by the favour of Christ, and with the assistance of his brethren and bishops. Ignorance on the part of the clergy is the source of error in the people whom they are bound to guide. Therefore he directs that every priest shall explain to his people simply and clearly, four limes a year, the Creed, the ten commandments, the two precepts of the Gospel, viz., love to God and man, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven sacraments of grace. Furthermore, lest any priest should put forward the excuse of ignorance, he (the Archbishop) will explain briefly in what these things consist. And a short and simple exposition of the elements of faith and practice, completes this division of the Canons of the Council of Lambeth."

"[There was a] long standing contention between the sees of York and Canterbury as to the right of either metropolitan to bear his cross erect in the province of the other. ...Peckham, on hearing that his brother [ William of Wickwane, Archbishop] of York had returned from abroad, and was intending to pass through his province with his cross erect, wrote a letter forbidding the clergy to show him any mark of respect, ordering them to shut the church-doors in his face, and threatening all persons, clerical and lay, with excommunication, who ventured to supply him with food, or render him the slightest service."

"Peckham was a stern man; intolerant of those, who differed from him in opinion, or who ventured to disobey his orders. But, if he was harsh to others, he was, at the same time, severe to himself. If he was rigid in exacting, from others, a strict observance of their vows, he himself was an example of the obedience which he enforced."

"It has been observed that as Wycliffe displays a bias against prelates and friars, so does Peckham against the secular clergy, and this is shown by his Lambeth Canons. But that monks came equally under his lash when they deserved it, is proved..."

"The Minorites [ Franciscan Order of Friars Minor] went forth, in their long grey coats and hooded cloaks, with their rope girdles and bare feet, to preach the gospel, with more sincerity, perhaps, in their humble days when Peckham was their provincial minister, than ever afterwards."

"While he sometimes associated the Dominicans in advantages sought for his own order, he denied their claim to superiority, and asserted that the Franciscans, following the example of the apostles in their poverty, led a holier life than any other order in the church."

"There are engravings of the [tomb] monument in Parker's De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ and Dart's History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, the latter of which was published in 1726. Both are apparently from the same plate. ...There are more recent engravings in Blore's Monumental Remains of Noble and Eminent Persons, 1826, and in Britton's Cathedral Antiquities vol. i., p. xviii. The tomb must have been expensive, and funeral magnificent, for archbishop Parker tells us that Peckham left 5,305l. 17s. 2¼d., and when his executors rendered their accounts... 5s. 6d. was all the surplus they could show."

"Peckham, with Roger Bacon, contended against the narrow views of certain of the superiors of the order, who dreaded learning, and forbade the formation of a library. A library was eventually formed, in spite of their opposition, and the room to contain it was erected at the expense of the far-famed Whittington."

"We have a more pleasant scene presented to us, when the archbishop revisited the place of his early education, and showed his affectionate respect to the aged men, once his superiors, now placed under his jurisdiction. The archbishop arrived at Lewes. The chapter of the priory went out to meet him. They experienced the strange feeling, which old men often experience, when they pay obeisance to one, whom they have whipped when a boy. The Archbishop of Canterbury, arrayed in his pontificals, and in great state, joined the procession as it perambulated the town of Lewes. He preached in the great church; he granted indulgences; he sang the mass at the high altar. Having thus done all that he could do for the honour of the priory; having kept a high festival and feasted the poor; Brother John, as he is called in the "Diary," put off his splendid attire, and in his grey coat, rope-girdle, bare of foot, he entered the refectory, and partook, with his usual moderation, of the simple fare of the delighted monks. To receive such a mark of respect from a friar, usually the opponent of the monks, was an honour highly appreciated."

"The Perspectiva is a clear and concise summary of the science of light at the time... a popular text on optics until the seventeenth century... used and cited by many medieval and Renaissance scholars, including Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Kepler."

"The difference between Pecham's Tractatus de perspectiva and his Perspectiva communis is striking. The former has significant religious content and was apparently intended as a devotional aid. The latter deals exclusively with optics, and reveals neither biblical nor theological influence."

"Following Ibn-Haytham [ and his Book of Optics with regard to the Moon illusioin ] Pecham supports the intervening objects theory. However, the interposition of vapours is also thought to produce enlargement by refraction. This work probably predates Pecham's Perspectiva communis (1275)."

"In the realm of psychology (in the medieval sense), Pecham's writings are extensive. ...each soul is created singly and "daily" by God. The soul... is everywhere in its little world as God is everywhere in the the bigger world. The soul is united to the body as a form is to matter. ...The human will is free and cannot be coerced by anything else. ...The will is free to the extent that it can withhold consent to the dictates of practical reason."

"In the study of light, he said, the argument proceeded both from the effect to the cause and from the cause to the effect, and he prayed God, the light of all, to help him. He arranged his work as a structure of theory built up from a set of empirical facts and the rules of geometry, with the argument sometimes ascending inductively to a 'common nature' and the grasping of a universal, and sometimes descending deductively by 'composition' to consequences by means of which a theory could be verified or falsified by experiment."

"Giambattista della Porta, who seems to have been the first to try combinations of lenses to form a microscope, based his optical work almost entirely on that of Roger Bacon, Witelo, and Pecham."

"There were many natural philosophers, particularly in the West, who looked to al-Kindi for support in their defense of a combined intromission-extramission theory. Grosseteste, an early defender of such a combined theory, was in all likelihood familiar with al-Kindi's De aspectibus and probably had al-Kindi in mind when he wrote: "However, mathematicians and physicists, whose concerns is with those things that are above nature, ...maintain that vision is produced by extramission." Later in the thirteenth century Roger Bacon and John Pecham also appealed to the authority of al-Kindi to support their contention that rays issue from, as well as enter, the observer's eye."

"Pecham's Perspectiva was published in as many as nine editions, one in Italian, between 1482 and 1627."

"[Perspectiva communis was written to] compress into concise summaries the teachings of perspective, which [in existing treatises] are presented with great obscurity."

"Light from a concave luminous body is received most powerfully at the centre. The reason for this is that, for every point of a concave body, perpendicular rays, which are stronger than others, converge in the centre. Therefore the virtues of celestial bodies are incident most powerfully in and near the centre of the world."

"Among all the studies of natural causes and reasons, light most delights the contemplators; among the great things of mathematics, the certainty of its demonstrations most illustriously elevates the minds of its investigators; perspective must therefore be preferred to all human discourses and disciplines, in the study in which radiant lines are expounded by means of demonstrations and in which the glory is found not only of mathematics, but also physics: it is adorned with the flowers of one and the other."

"Formerly the Church with its prelates of old time, was golden in wisdom, silver in cleanness of life, brazen in eloquence, which are three things needful to a preacher; that is, brightness of wisdom, cleanness of life, and sonorousness of eloquence. But of the feet, the last, that is the modern prelates, part is iron through their hardness of heart, and part is clay by their carnal luxury."

"Another Oxford writer who appreciated experimental science was John Pecham... In his Perspectiva Communis Pecham gave a very clear and concise summary of contemporary optics, based largely on Alhazen, Witelo, and pseudo-Euclid's De Speculis. His book contained nothing original but it remained a popular text book until the seventeenth century."

"And therefore, Sire, altho' I am ready, so far as is in me, to dedicate the place for the Cistercian monks at Meynan, yet I could not do it without the full assent of the bishop and of his chapter, and of the parson of the place, who, with plenty of other people, have a very great horror of the approach of the forsaid monks. For though they may be good men, if God please, still they are the hardest neighbours that prelates and parsons could have. For where they plant their foot, they destroy towns, take away tithes, and curtail by their privileges all the power of prelacy."

"Bacon's scientific interests were also shared by John Pecham, future Archbishop of Canterbury, who may have been among his students in his days as a secular master, and who certainly lived with him in Paris in the 1260s and 1270s. Pecham's later work on optics, astrology and astronomy was influenced by Bacon."

"As you see double if you push the eye out of its place with your finger; so prelates, through evil counsel, judge a priest to be worthy of two benefices, when he ought to be contented with one."

"The Pelagians produce such Scriptures as these: 'The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you' (2 Chron. xv. 2). 'Turn ye, ...and I will turn unto you' (Zech. i. 3) From which they would infer, that the grace of God is proportioned to the merits of men. But all this would be to no purpose, if they would but compare one Scripture with another; for example: 'Turn us, O God of our salvation' (Ps lxxxv. 4); and, 'after that I was turned, I repented' (Jer. xxxi. 19); and, 'turn us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned' (Lam v. 21)"

"Undoubtedly, such expressions as, 'Turn yourselves,' &c. relate to the free power which every man has to will; but if Pelagius had half an eye, he might see that God, in giving the precept which directs us to turn unto him, influences also the human will, and excites it to action; not, indeed, in opposition our free choice, but the reverse, as I have all along maintained. Hence it is written, 'Without me ye do nothing.' And again, 'I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which with me.' And lastly, 'I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and shall be clean; and I will cleanse you from your idols. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will put within you; and I will take away the stony heart, and will give you a heart of flesh.'"

"In 1525 he filled the office of proctur in the university [Oxford]. His great work "concerning the cause of God against the Pelagians," was first delivered in the form of lectures at Oxford. These he afterwards, while chancellor of the diocese of London, at the request of the students of Merton, enlarged and polished. The publication of this book earned for its author the highest reputation. It was speedily in the hands of nil the learned men both in England and on the continent; and Bradwardine was thenceforward known by the title of "the profound doctor." His subject was treated with a mathematical accuracy, and his reasoning was pursued in one connected series of arguments, very different from the discursive remarks of the divines who had preceded him."

"St. Paul says, that God commendeth his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: and that when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. St. Paul was in a peculiar manner a child of grace: with gratitude, therefore, he honours and extols its efficacy in all his epistles; and particularly in his epistle to the Romans throughout he defends his doctrines with great precision and copiousness. 'Every mouth,' says he, 'must be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified. Man must be justified freely by his grace. By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.'"

"St. Augustine confesses that he himself had been formerly in a similar mistake. 'I was once,' says he, 'a Pelagian in my principles; I thought that faith towards God was not the gift of God, but that we procured it by our own powers, and that then, through the use of it, we obtain the gifts of God; I never supposed that the preventing grace of God was the proper cause of our faith, till my mind was struck in a particular manner by the apostle's argument and testimony: What hast thou that thou hast not received, and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' In this whole business I follow the steps of Augustine."

"God gives his grace freely, in the strictest sense of the word, and without merit on the part of man. For if God did not bestow his grace in this perfectly gratuitous manner, but on account of some subordinate contingent uncertain cause, he could not possibly foresee how he should bestow his free gifts."

"The word grace evidently implies that there is no antecedent merit. And in this way the apostle to the Romans appears to argue, when he says, 'And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.' All this is perfectly intelligible, even in the conduct of liberal and magnificent human characters. They frequently bestow their gifts from a pure spirit of liberality, without the smallest previous claim on the score of merit. And shall not God, whose perfections are infinite, do more than this?"

"When I heard those parts of the Scriptures read in the Church which extol the grace of God, and lower the free-will of man, for example, 'It is not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy,' and many similar passages,—this doctrine of grace was very disagreeable to my ungrateful mind. But afterwards I began to perceive some few distant rays of light respecting this matter. I seemed to see, but by no means clearly, that the grace of God is prior, both in nature and in time, to any good actions that men can possibly perform; and I return thanks to God, from whom proceeds every good thing, for thus freely enlightening my understanding."

"Bradwardine was solicitous to employ the many talents now entrusted to him to the glory of his divine Master. It was his care to mitigate as far as possible the impetuosity of the king's temper, when immoderately fired with warlike rage, or unbecomingly elated with the advantages of victory. And so much meekness and persuasive eloquence mingled with his addresses to the army, that the soldiers, wrought upon by his earnest admonitions, were more than ordinarily restrained from practising the excesses attendant upon war. In fact, so truly did Bradwardine sustain amid arms the character of an ambassador of peace, and so influential was the spirit which evidently swayed him, that some of the writers of that time do not hesitate to attribute the conquests of the English king rather to the virtues and holiness of his chaplain than to his own conduct, or the prowess of his troops."

"O great and wonderful Lord our God, thou only light of the eyes, open, I implore thee, the eyes of my heart, and of others my fellow-creatures, that we may truly understand and contemplate thy wondrous works. And the more thoroughly we comprehend them, the more may our minds be affected in the contemplation with pious reverence and profound devotion. Who is not struck with awe in beholding thy all-powerful will completely efficacious throughout every part of the creation? It is by this same sovereign and irresistible will, that whom and when thou pleasest thou bringest low and liftest up, killest and makest alive. How intense and how unbounded is thy love to me, O Lord! whereas my love, how feeble and remiss! my gratitude, how cold and inconstant! Far be it from thee that thy love should even resemble mine; for in every kind of excellence thou art consummate. O thou who fillest heaven and earth, why fillest thou not this narrow heart? O human soul, low, abject, and miserable, whoever thou art, if thou be not fully replenished with the love of so great a good, why dost thou not open all thy doors, expand all thy folds, extend all thy capacity, that, by the sweetness of love so great, thou mayest be wholly occupied, satiated, and ravished; especially since, little as thou art, thou canst not be satisfied with the love of any good inferior to the One supreme? Speak the word, that thou mayest become my God and most enviable in mine eyes, and it shall instantly be so, without the possibility of failure. What can be more efficacious to engage the affection than preventing love? Most gracious Lord, by thy love thou hast prevented me, wretch that I am, who had no love for thee, but was at enmity with my Maker and Redeemer. I see, Lord, that it is easy to say and to write these things, but very difficult to execute them. Do thou, therefore, to whom nothing is difficult, grant that I may more easily practise these things with my heart than utter them with my lips. Open thy liberal hand, that nothing may be easier, sweeter, or more delightful to me, than to be employed in these things. Thou, who preventest thy servants with thy gracious love, whom dost thou not elevate with the hope of finding thee?"

"The mischievous Pelagians maintain that this sort of grace is not given freely by God but is to be obtained by preceding merits. I myself was once so foolish and empty, when I first applied myself to the study of philosophy, as to be seduced by this error."

"The marked superiority of Ibn al-Haytham's treatise did not necessarily cause interested readers, even those of intelligence, to reject the Optics out of hand. On the contrary, it was precisely among the most avid disciples of Ibn al-Haytham in the West—the so-called Perspectivists, whose members included Roger Bacon, Witelo, and John Pecham—that Ptolemy's Optics found the most eager audience."

"If I were to grasp once, in emulation, work of the absolute, origin-creating mind, its opus est, conclusive otherness, the veil of certitude discovered as itself that which is to be resolved, I should hold for my own, my self-giving, my retort upon Emerson's 'alienated majesty', the De Causa Dei of Thomas Bradwardine."

"Witelo seems to have used the Optics more sparingly than Bacon, and this trend continues with John Pecham, whose Perspetiva communis reveals no unequivocal borrowings and has only a handful of possible ones."

"In 1278 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Nicholas III., in spite of the attempts made by Edward I. to gain the preferment for his chancellor, Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells; but was not consecrated till the spring of the following year. He was well received by the king and showed himself a strong prelate, a determined foe of pluralists, and quite ready to champion the cause of ecclesiastical reform against the king himself, when need arose."

"In the four mediaeval documents which form the text of this volume, we have an interesting survival of the efforts of three of the earliest of the English Reformers. For John de Thoresby and John Peckham, the Northern and the Southern Primates, no less than John de Wyclif, the Oxford scholar and leader, deserved that title. All three men were anxious, before everything else, to amend the carelessness and the inconsistency of the clergy, and the consequent ignorance and corruption of the laity of their day."

"Like Thoresby in the following century, he was most assiduous in his endeavours to improve the education and the discipline of the clergy of his province; and to this end mainly, summoned the Council which sat at Lambeth, from the 7th to 10th of October 1281."

"Lux was probably Grosseteste's ingenious substitute for the immaterial pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the 'animal spirits' of medical writers."