Wodeham, Adam (c.1298–1358)

An English Franciscan theologian, Wodeham was preoccupied with logical and semantic questions. He lectured for about a decade on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, first at London, then at Norwich and finally at Oxford. His lectures emphasized the dependence of the created world on God and the contingency of nature and salvation.

John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham exerted the most important influences on Wodeham. He regarded Scotus as a vigorous thinker and respected him enough to accept his opinion in case of doubt. Proud to have learned logic from Ockham, Wodeham devoted considerable time to defending Ockham’s views from Walter Chatton, whom he saw as someone whose errors in logic arose from malice as well as ignorance. However, despite Wodeham’s reservations about Chatton, he was considerably influenced by him. Similarly, Wodeham modified his own opinion about sensory illusions in response to Peter Aureol, whom he saw as skilled and prudent but often mistaken, sometimes as a result of faulty logic.