Note 26 — Chapter I

John Peckham was a Franciscan friar, and was nominated to the see of Canterbury by Nicholas III. in 1279. He had spent much time in the convent of his Order at Oxford, and there is a legend connecting him with a Johannes Juvenis or John of London, a youth who had attracted the attention and benevolence of Roger Bacon. This Johannes became one of the first mathematicians and opticians of the age, and was sent to Rome by Bacon, who entrusted to him the works which he was sending to Pope Clement IV. There is no reason for this view beyond the fact that both were called John, and distinguished in the same branches of learning. The Perspectiva Communis was his principal work; it does not deal with perspective as now understood, but with elementary propositions of optics. It was first printed in Milan in or about 1482.