GROSSETESTE
37
GROSSETESTE
When, however, the Council of Trent defined the
CathoHc doctrine of justification, he at once submitted
to its decision. In the meantime the archbishop him-
self gradually abandoned the Catholic faith and allowed
the new doctrines to be preached in his diocese. He
engaged Bucer and, later, Melanchthon to draw up
plans for a complete reformation of the diocese on
Protestant principles. In this critical moment Crop-
per published his " Antididagm.a seu christianae et
catholicaj religionis propugnatio" (Cologne, 1544),
in which he vigorously defends the Catholic Faith and
refutes the errors of the reformers, at the same time
requesting the deposition of the archbishop from his
see. With this Paul III complied on 16 April, 1546,
and as his successor in the electorate of Cologne
appointed the coadjutor archbishop Adolph III of
Schauenburg, who, with the assistance of Cropper,
succeeded in expelling from the diocese the Protestant
preachers and restoring the Catholic religion. In
recompense for his services to the Church, the pope
appointed Cropper Provost of Bonn. In 1551 he
accompanied his archbishop to the Council of Trent,
where he assisted at numerous sessions and delivered
the discourse, "De appellationum abusvi" (Cologne,
1552). On 20 Jan., 1556, Paul IV created him Car-
dinal-Deacon of Santa Lucia in Silice. This honour
he accepted with great reluctance; neither did he
proceed to Rome till the Protestant-minded John
Gebhard of Mansfeld was appointed archbishop in
1558. His death occurred at Rome, and the pope
himself preached the funeral oration. Among Crop-
per's other publications may be mentioned: "Formula
examinandi designatos sen priesentatos ad ecclesias
parochiales" (Cologne, 1552); "Manuale pro adminis-
tratione sacramentorum"etc. (Cologne, 1550); " Vonn
warer, Wesenlicher vnd Pleibender Gegenwertigkeit
des Leybs vnd Bluts Christi nach beschener Conse-
cration" (Cologne, 1548).
Allgem. deutsche Biogr., IX. 734-740; Liessem, Johann Croppers Leben (Cologne, 1S76); Varrentrapp, Hermann von Wied (Leipzig:, 1878); van Gulik, J. Gropper xtnd seine Thatig- keit im Furslentum Koln his zum J. 15lo (Munster, 1902); HuRTER, Nomenclator: Schwarz in Hist. Jahrb., 1886, VII, 392-423, 59S-60S; ibid., 1897, XVIII, 821 sqq.
Joseph Schroeder.
Grosseteste, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln and one of the most learned men of the Middle Ages; b. about 1175; d. 9 October, 1253. He came from Stradbroke in the county of Suffolk. Little is known of his family, but it was certainly a poor one. His name is probably a family name. The first definite date which we can connect with his life, is that of a letter written in 1199 by Giraldus Cambrensis to recommend him to the Bi.shop of Hereford. Giraldus spoke of his knowledge of the liberal arts and of literature, and of his excel- lent character and industry. We may also gather from this letter, that he was acquainted with law and medicine. If he was in 1199 a "master" of such distinction he must have gone to the young, but al- ready very flourishing. University of Oxford not later than 1192 or 119.3. That he afterwards .studied and taught theology in Paris is intrinsically probable, and is indirectly confirrred by a local tradition, by his intimacy with a number of French ecclesiastics and with the details of the Paris curriculum, and perhaps, for a man of his origin, by his knowledge of French. One of the most popular of the many writings attri- buted to him was a French religious romance, the "Chasteau d'Amour". He was back, however, at Oxford fairly early in the thirteenth century, and, with the possible exception of a second visit to Paris, he seems to have remained there till his election as bishop in 1235. Dignities and preferments soon be- gan to flow in upon the most distinguished of the Oxford masters. He was for a time (the exact dates are uncertain) head of the university, either as chan- cellor or with the more modest title of " master of the
schools". His practical abilities led to his being ap-
pointed successively to no less than four archdeacon-
ries. He held several livings and a prebend at
Lincoln. Pluralism of this kind was not uncommon
in the thirteenth century, but an illness which came
upon him in 1232 led to his resigning all his prefer-
ments except the Lincoln prebend. He was moved to
this act mainly by a deepened religious fervour which
had aroused his scruples and by a real love of poverty.
In 1235 he was freely elected to the Bishopric of Lin-
coln, the most populous diocese in England, and he
was consecrated in the abbey church of Reading, in
June of the following year, by St. Edmund Rich,
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Grosseteste was a man of such varied interests and his career was so many-sided that it will be better to touch separately on his numerous activities than to at- tempt a chronological account of his life. His work as a teacher, a philosopher, and a man of learning, is naturally more especially connected with his Oxford career, but his episcopal duties, so zealously performed, did not diminish his scholarly interests, while the fact that Oxford was in his diocese, and in a sense under his government, kept him in the closest touch with the university. He repeatedly intervened in imiversity affairs, settled questions of discipline and administra- tion, and contributed to those early regulations and statutes which determined the constitution and char- acter of Oxford. It is not easy to define exactly Grosseteste's position in the history of thirteenth- century thought. Though he was from many points of view a schoolman, his interests lay rather in moral questions than in logical or metaphysical. In his lectures he laid more stress on the study of Scripture than on intellectual speculation. His real originality lay in his effort to get at the original authorities, and in his insistence on experiment in science. It was this which drew from Roger Bacon the many expressions of enthusiastic admiration which are to be found in his works. In the "Opus Tertium" he says: "No one really knew the sciences, except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know, and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity." In theology proper we have the titles of between two and three hundred sermons and discourses of Grosseteste and of more than si.xty treatises. There are commentaries on the Gospels, and on some of the books of the Old Testa- ment, as well as an interesting collection of " Dicta ", or notes for lectures and sermons. His Aristotelean studies were considerable. His commentaries on the logical works were repeatedly printed in the sixteenth century. His most valuable contributions, however, to the knowledge of Aristotle and to medieval phil- osophy were the translations which he procured from the original Greek. The " Eudemian Ethics" he com- mented on while at Oxford, and in the last years of his life he was occupied with a translation of the " Nicomachean ".
More original still were his studies in Christian an- tiquities. He had translations made of the "Testa- ments of the Twelve Patriarchs" and of some of the ■writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, though no doubt he thought that in both cases the attributions were genuine. His translation of the Epistles of St. Ig- natius is a work of permanent value, so important indeed as to lead a recent writer, James (Cambridge Modern History, I, 587), to date from Grosseteste's studies the first beginnings of the " Christian Renais- sance". In addition to this knowledge of Greek, he was also partly acquainted with Hebrew, a rare ac- complishment in the thirteenth century. Besides being learned in the liberal arts, Grosseteste had an
