ABSTRACT
The object of this paper is to recover some aspects of the attitude of John Pecham (or Peckham) to the crusades on the basis of one of his most spirited poems. It will be useful to begin with a biographical sketch of the poet drawn in part from my own research, but mostly from Benjamin Thompson’s fine entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which itself draws carefully from Decima Douie’s pioneering work of 1952.1 John was born around the year 1230 in the Sussex village of Patcham, whence, it is supposed, his family took their last name. The family was modest, certainly not of very great standing, although a couple of kinfolk made careers that have left a number of documentary traces. Like many bright boys whose talent in general and whose aptitude for languages in particular came to the attention of local clerics or aristocrats, he probably received sufficient support or patronage to go to Paris to pursue his studies at a relatively young age, perhaps as an adolescent in the 1240s. There he seems to have come under the influence of Roger Bacon, though whether Bacon was his teacher is uncertain. John was most interested in physics at this stage in his life and, reflecting this interest, authored works eventually on optics and astronomy.
