Theological Education at the Oxford Studium in the Thirteenth Century: A Reassessment of Robert Grosseteste's Letter to the Oxford Theologians

Theological Education at the Oxford Studium in the Thirteenth Century: A Reassessment of Robert Grosseteste's Letter to the Oxford Theologians In the modern study of the life and works of the scholar and bishop, Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1170-1253), most scholars have portrayed this original thinker as a conservative theologian.1 Historians have cast him as one of the more prominent individuals who opposed the introduction of speculative theology in the schools. His practice of theology, it is said, was completely absorbed in the exegesis of the Scriptures and any other source would be, in his mind, an unnecessary intrusion. In other words, we may easily place Grosseteste in the biblical-moral school that had also housed earlier luminaries such as Peter the Chanter, William de Montibus, and Stephen Langton.2 1THe most recent biography of Grosseteste is Richard W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), although Francis Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste: Bishop of Lincoln (London: Macmillan, 1899), is still of some use. See also the discussion of Grosseteste's life and writings in Daniel Callus, "The Oxford Career of Robert Grosseteste," Oxoniensia 10 (1945): 42-72; and idem, "Robert Grosseteste as Scholar," in Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop Essays in Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of His Death, ed. D.A. Callus, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955) 11-69. Some of Callus' conclusions have been updated in James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) 3-48; while others have been challenged by Southern, Robert Grosseteste, esp. pp. 3-25, 63-82. Also indispensable is S H Thomson, The Writings of Robert Grosseteste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940). 2Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 32-48, went so far as to suggest that Grosseteste was anti-scholastic in his thinking. See also, Peter Raedts, Richard Rufas of Cornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) 122-137. The notion of a biblical-moral school as a category of scholastic theology was first suggested by Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols. (1909-1911, rprt: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957) 2.467-501, and accepted (although with some revision) by Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, third edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) 197-199. Recently, this model of explanation has been subject to more penetrating investigation by Joseph W. Goering, William de Montibus, (ir. 1140-1213): The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, Studies and Texts, 108 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992) 36-42. 83 Franciscan Studies, 55 (1998) 84JAMES R. GINTHER This representation is not without its documentary foundations. The text most often employed to support Grosseteste's conservatism is a letter he wrote to the faculty of theology sometime in the 1240's. In the letter, Grosseteste admonishes the faculty not to place non-foundational elements into the bedrock of theological study at the Studium. As builders of the house of God, the bishop reminded the masters, they ought to place only the proper foundation stones in the foundation, and these were the books of the Prophets, Moses, the letters of the Apostles, and of course the Gospels. In practical terms, this meant that the masters were to reserve their morning lectures, the time when they lectured magisterially (legere ordinarie), for lectures on the Bible. To do anything else would be disastrous: the wrong stones would be placed in the foundation; the natural order of things would be contravened because the wrong thing would happen at the wrong time; and such a practice would be manifestly against the example of the Fathers and past masters, and against the custom of the faculty of theology at Paris.3 Francis Stevenson almost a century ago was the first to employ this letter as an indicator of Grosseteste's theological disposition, and in this century the late Marie-Dominique Chenu, James McEvoy, and Sir Richard Southern all followed suit.4 Building on this interpretation, R. James Long suggested that this letter was not only a rejection of the new methods in theology, but was also a subtle rebuke of the Dominican theologian, Richard Fishacre (d. 1248), who attempted to introduce the...