Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Goddam, Adam
GODDAM or WOODHAM, ADAM (d. 1358), Franciscan, was born towards the end of the thirteenth century, and attended Ockham's lectures on the ‘Sentences’ of Peter Lombard at Oxford, where he was presumably a member of the Franciscan convent. His studies under Ockham must have ended in the first years of the fourteenth century, when his master went to Paris, and Goddam, who became a doctor of divinity, resorted to the theological teaching of Walter Catton [q. v.], the minorite of Norwich. It may be confidently conjectured that Goddam entered the Franciscan convent of that city, and it is supposed that he spent most of his life there, though the reference made by John Major to his residence in the king's palace in London suggests that his services were for a time employed by the court. He is said by Pits to have died in 1358, and to have been buried at ‘Babwell,’ near Bury.
His only published work is a commentary ‘Super IV libros Sententiarum,’ printed at Paris in 1512, and extending to 152 leaves. An earlier edition, cited by Sbaralea as printed by Henry Stephanus in 1510, is not mentioned by Panzer; and the book in question is probably the commentary on the first book of the ‘Sentences,’ which was published by Stephanus in that year, and is the work of the Scottish doctor of the Sorbonne, John Major, who edited Goddam's book in 1512. But the latter work itself, though published under Goddam's name, is avowedly not the actual commentary which he wrote, but an abridgment of it made by Hendrik van Oyta, a divine who taught at Vienna in the latter part of the fourteenth century and died in 1397 (see concerning him Aschbach, Geschichte der Wiener Universität, i. 402–7, 1865). The commentary enjoyed a very high reputation, and John Major, its editor, in his work ‘De Gestis Scotorum’ (Hist. Maj. Brit. p. 188, ed. Edinburgh, 1740), judged the author to be ‘vir modestus, sed non inferioris doctrinæ aut ingenii quam Ockam.’ Other works assigned to him by Bale are a commentary on the canticles (mentioned also by Leland, Collectanea, iii. 50), ‘Postilla in Ecclesiasticum,’ ‘De foro pœnitentiario fratrum,’ ‘Contra Ricardum Wethersete’ (a younger contemporary divine, probably at Cambridge), ‘Sententiæ Oxoniensis Concilii,’ and ‘Determinationes XI.’ To these Sbaralea adds a ‘Collatio’ and ‘Postilla de Sacramento Eucharistiæ.’
A confusion between Goddam and ‘Adam Anglicus,’ who wrote against the doctrine of the immaculate conception, has been discussed in the latter article, supra. Another identification with ‘Adam Hibernicus’ proposed by Ware lacks evidence or probability.
The name ‘Goddam’ is that offered by the printed edition of his commentary on the ‘Sentences,’ but it is a manifest ‘classical’ adaptation of Wodeham or Woodham, derived from one of the five places of that name in England. Pits's suggestion that the Wodeham in question is in Hampshire rests evidently upon a mistake.
[John Major's Vita, prefixed to Goddam's commentary Super Sententias; Leland's Comm. de Scriptt. Brit. pp. 269, 377; Bale's Scriptt. Brit. Catal. v. 98, p. 447 (cf. xii. 19, pt. 2, 82 f.); Ware, De Scriptoribus Hiberniæ, p. 66 (1639); Pits, De Angl. Scriptt. p. 482; Wadding's Scriptt. O. M. p. 1, ed. Rome, 1806; Wharton's App. to Cave's Hist. Liter. 30 f., ed. 1743; Quétif and Echard's Scriptt. O. P. i. 739 b, Paris, 1719; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 329; Sbaralea's Suppl. to Wadding's Scriptt. O. M. 2 f.]