  This line of argument came to seem increasingly old-fashioned as the thirteenth century progressed. The growing influence of Aristotle’s theory of cognition, as developed in particular by the Dominican friars Albert the Great (c.1200–1280) and his student, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), offered an impressive picture of how human beings might be able to achieve certain knowledge despite the changeability of mind and matter. These developments struck many Franciscans as a betrayal of Christianity. John Pecham (c.1225–1292), in a letter dating from 1285, writes