Grosseteste, Robert [addendum]
Since the mid-1970s, further research into Grosseteste's biography has produced more uncertainty than any new detail. His putative birth date and his humble beginnings are unquestioned, but the first twenty years of his life remain obscure. How he became learned in the liberal arts is open to speculation. Doubtless he was a magister in artibus by 1190, but there is no evidence that he studied (or taught) at either Oxford or Paris during this time. His association with Hereford may explain his lifelong interest in natural philosophy, although no evidence has emerged supporting a subsequent teaching career there, nor anywhere else, between 1198 and 1225. The scholarship is divided as to whether Grosseteste actually studied theology at Paris between 1209 and 1214 because of a compelling case made recently that he may have studied there between 1225 and 1229.
This latter dating would certainly explain how Grosseteste gained access to the commentaries of Averroes that were disseminated in Paris soon after 1225. It has been well-established that the 1220s was a highly productive period when he began to engage seriously the writings of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators. Some scholars have also called his Oxford chancellorship into question: The documentary evidence is open to interpretation and can be read as if he never were chancellor; or if he were, he was not the first. After 1229 or 1230, the first documented date of Grosseteste as a teacher, the biographical evidence is more abundant and the chronology from this point until his death is unchallenged.
Aristotle; Averroes.
Bibliography
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Rossi, Pietro, ed. Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum libros Firenze: Olschki, 1981.
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