Introduction

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Introduction

Master Robert Grosseteste, even long before his rise to the episcopate, shone forth in the eminence of his merits and his learning and was adorned with excellence. After he was raised by God to the highest dig- nity of episcopal office, he did not cease to demonstrate the fervent zeal which he had for the cure of souls in the effective execution of his episcopal office, so setting himself up as a wall for the house of the Lord.1 In his pastoral care for all the needy, and particularly in defence of ecclesiasti- cal liberties, he proved publically, in the strenuous execution of his office, that he should be described as a good pastor.2

In 1288, Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln 1280–1299, wrote to the pope, urging him to consider an inquiry to establish grounds for the canonisation of Robert Grosseteste. In the years after his death, many testified to his enthusiasm for pastoral care: that is to the extent of his oversight of the spiritual life of the men and women over whom the Church had given him jurisdiction, and his duty to guide them to heaven.3 Other letters in the same dossier – from the dean and chapter of Lincoln, from the local abbey of Bardney and from the then bishop of Worcester, Godfrey Giffard – also spoke of Grosseteste’s zeal in his care for the men and women of his diocese and their souls. His immediate posthumous reputation was, then, that of a good pastoral bishop in the pat- tern laid down by the great Church council of 1215, now known as the Fourth Lateran Council. Robert Grosseteste was not, however, a bishop focused solely upon the practical work involved in ensuring the salvation of his flock. He was also a man

1 “Murum pro domo Israel”. See Ezekiel 13: 5 ‘You have not gone up into the breaches, or built up a wall for the house of Israel, that it might stand in battle in the day of the Lord’. This also appears in Grosseteste’s statement delivered before the Council of Lyon in 1245, see The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, ed. F.A.C. Mantello and J. Goering (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), no. 127, p. 422 (Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi quondam Lin- colniensis Epistolae, ed. H.R. Luard (Rolls Series, 1861), 417) addressed to the dean and chapter: ‘the bishop is a wall set up between the souls, collectively and singularly entrusted to him, and the attacking enemy’ which he goes on to describe as vices and demons. 2 This quotation is from Lincoln Cathedral, Dj/20/2a, mem. 1; for detailed (though not per- fect) calendars of these letters see R.E.G. Cole, ‘Proceedings relative to the canonization of Robert Grosseteste bishop of Lincoln’, Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports and Papers 33 (1915), 1–28. 3 Lincoln Cathedral, Dj/20/2a, mems 1, 2; see again Cole, ‘Proceedings relative to the Canoniza- tion of Robert Grosseteste bishop of Lincoln’, 1–28.

2 Introduction of learning, a scholar who participated in the intellectual concerns of the academic elite of his day. The surviving material written by him, or issued in his name, which dealt with pastoral care includes scholarly and practical works for the guidance of the clergy and the laity, as well as sermons addressed both to lay and clerical audiences. He left a collection of notes from his lectures and sermons, compiled by Grosseteste himself, now known as his Dicta; his letter collection, also possibly compiled by the bishop; his Tabula, a collection of references from biblical and patristic works, arranged thematically; and the rolls created by his central administration during his episcopate.4 The records and writings of his contemporaries also bear witness to his pastoral intentions. These middle years of the century, when Grosseteste was bishop of Lincoln, were a period in which the influence of the movement for interna- tional Church reform, renewed and redirected through the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, should have been at work in English dioceses, encouraging a concentration upon the pastoral care and salvation of the individual. Gros- seteste’s academic and practical work provides an opportunity to see this in practice in one English diocese. Grosseteste himself – his science, his philosophy, and his theology – has been the focus of much academic work5 and his pastoral handbooks and guidance are well known. There has been, however, no full, detailed examina- tion of his pastoral theory and practice; the cause to which he claimed to be dedicated. Leonard Boyle’s seminal article about Grosseteste’s pastoral care, published in 1976, built upon a shorter, earlier piece by James H. Srawley in 1955, which was included in the essays published to celebrate the seven hun- dredth anniversary of Grosseteste’s consecration as bishop.6 However, these

4 For recent editions of the letters, Tabula and rolls see The Letters of Robert Grosseteste (Epistolae Grosseteste); Philipp W. Rosemann, ‘Roberti Grosseteste Tabula’, in Opera Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis Volumen Primum (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 130, 1995), 235–320; Robert Grosseteste as Bishop of Lincoln: The Episcopal Rolls, 1235–1253, ed. Philippa M. Hoskin (Woodbridge: Lincoln Record Society Kathleen Major Series 1, 2015). The Dicta have not yet received a modern edition. 5 Many of these volumes will be referred to in this book: amongst the most central are James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) and R.W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: the Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). On Grosseteste’s theology see Southern, ibid., and James Ginther, Master of the Sacred Page: a study of the theology of Robert Grosseteste ca. 1229/30–1235 (Aldershot: Routledge, 2004). On Grosseteste’s science a good introduction is still A.C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956) though see too later in the introduction for a reassessment of Crombie’s view of Grosseteste’s experimental science. For reassessment of particular sources see too the work of the Ordered Universe Project, Durham University (http:/ordered-universe.com). 6 Leonard E. Boyle, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Pastoral Care’, in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies summer