GROSSETESTE, grös'test, ROBERT: Bishop of Lincoln; b. in Suffolk c. 1175; d. at Buckden (4 m. s.w. of Huntingdon), Huntingdonshire, Oct. 9, 1253. He was of humble birth, but studied at Oxford and Paris. On his return to England he entered the service of William de Vere, bishop of Hereford, on whose death in 1199 he went to Oxford as teacher, becoming later rector scolarum, and in 1224 the first rector of the Franciscans at Oxford. During the Oxford period he held .several preferments, including two prebends in Lincoln, and the arch-, deaconries of Wilts., Northampton, and Leicester. In 1235 he became bishop of Lincoln, then the moat extensive see in England. His episcopal administration was marked by zeal in advancing its spiritual interests, and not seldom by the use of arbitrary and high-handed measures. He attacked the corruption and condemned the incompetency of the clergy, and instituted a systematic visitation of his diocese. With the monastic institutions he was especially severe, removing in the first year seven abbots and four priors. His vigorous course aroused such opposition that in 1237 an attempt was made to poison him. In 1239 began his long quarrel with the Lincoln chapter, which denied him the right of visitation. Finally he suspended the dean, excommunicated the prior, and went to Lyons to secure a papal decision of the case, which was decided entirely in his favor by a bull of Innocent IV., Aug. 25, 1245. Groaseteate returned to England as an obedient agent of the pope; but his attitude toward papal claims soon underwent a complete change. In 1250 he again visited the pope at Lyons. Here on May 13 he delivered a celebrated sermon, in which he declared that the papal court was the origin of all the evils in the Church, and urged the necessity of appointing competent pastors. On his return to his diocese he assailed the Italian ecclesiastics who were fleecing English parishes. He found by computation that the annual incomes of the foreign clerks in England appointed by Innocent amounted to seventy thousand marks, more than three times the clear revenue of the king. For refusing to admit an Italian ignorant of English to a rich benefice in his diocese he was suspended temporarily in 1251. Early in 1253 he refused pointblank to induct Frederick of Lavagna into a canonry at Lincoln, to which he had been appointed by his uncle, Innocent IV. In a plain but respectful letter the bishop told the pontiff that it was his duty to make appointments for the edification, not for the destruction, of the Church (Epist., caxviii.). This letter has done more to perpetuate G`rosse. testes fame than any of his other works.

Groaseteste's relation to the state was one of independence. He rebuked ecclesiastics for holding civil offices, and asserted that to St. Peter belonged both swords, and that a bishop did not in any sense derive his authority from the civil power. He not only .dared to refuse to execute the royal commands in his diocese, as the one regarding the legitimization of children born before wedlock, but told the king the plainest truths, and on more than one occasion refused to install his appointees in office, threatening even to excommunicate the royal offender.

Like Luther, previous to the Diet of Worms, Groeeeteste had trusted in the pope, and hoped for relief from Rome for the ecclesiastical corruption of England. Once undeceived, he was drifting rapidly away from all veneration for the pontiff, when death overtook him. In a conversation on his death-bed with the scholarly cleric and physician, John of St. Giles, he gave a definition of heresy, and asked whether the pope did not fulfil it. "He was the open rebuker of both the pope and the king, censor of prelates, corrector of monks, instructor of clerks, and unwearied examiner of the books of Scrip-

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ture, a crusher and despiser of the Romans," re ports the chronicler Matthew Paris. He was buried with great pomp at Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury and several bishops being present at the funeral. This seems to disprove the statement that the pope had excommunicated him. Miracles were reported at his grave, but in vain did prelates and King Edward I. (1307) apply for his canonization. Grosseteste has been called a "harbinger of the Reformation," and he was the first link in the chain of the Reformation in this sense, that Wychf appealed to him, and quoted his protest against Rome, as, later, Luther quoted Huss, and Huss learned from Wyclif. In his impetuous and fear less temper he resembles Luther. Not only Wyclif, but others, like Bishop Hall, delighted to find in the Bishop of Lincoln a support for their Scriptural views, or, like Richard Field, to use his name against the claims of the pope to supreme authority in the Church (Of the Church, iv. 384 sqq.). Grosseteste was one of the most learned men of his time and a voluminous author. His writings include works on theology, commentaries on Aris totle and Boethius, essays on physical and mental philosophy, translations from Greek authors, also French poems, and even works on husbandry. A list of his works given in Pegge's Life covers twenty five closely printed quarto pages.

D. S. Schaff.

Bibliography: The best sources for a life are: his own Epistolle, ed. H. R. Luard, no. 24 of Rolls Series, London. 1861; Matthew of Paris, Chronica majora, and Annales monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, no. 36 of Rolls Series, 5 vols., London, 1864-69. Lives have been written by: S. Pegge, London, 1793; R. Pauli, Tübingen, 1864; G. G. Perry, London, 1871; G. V. Lechler, Leipsic, 1884; J. Felten, Freiburg, 1887; and F. s. Stevenson, London, 1899. Consult further H. Wharton, Anglia sacra, ii. 325-348, London, 1891; J. H. Overton, The Church in England, i. 231-243, ib. 1897; W. R. W. Stephens, The Evlglash Church (1086-1,870, ib. 1901; M. Creighton, His torical Lectures and Addresses, pp. 116-149, ib. 190.3; DNB, xxiii. 275-278.