9 OCTOBER

Today is the anniversary of the death of Robert Grosseteste who was chancellor of Oxford, head of Greyfriars College and Bishop of Lincoln. Bishop Grosseteste was one of the most learned men of the 13th century and is considered "the first mathematician and physicist of his age." More to the point for this notice he was also noted for his great holiness. After his death there were reported miracles at his tomb, pilgrimages were made, and a successor of his as bishop of Lincoln granted indulgences to such pilgrims. His cause for canonisation was introduced more than once, although nothing ever came of that.

Some have considered him something of a prototype of what traditionalists of our day should be as he was a great reformer in his diocese, fighting not only home-grown abuses but also those which came from the Rome of his day. One of his principal aims was to ensure that his clergy were well-educated, living upright lives, and that they should be living amongst and ministering to their people. The great abuse of the day was the practice of appointing clergy to offices for which they received the income but for which they did not do the work. By a special papal privilege he was eventually able to secure an exception to this practice for his own diocese. But even then exceptions were made to the exception. A papal nephew was appointed to a vacant canonry at Lincoln and Grosseteste refused to allow the nephew to be appointed to the benefice. In the course of a visit to Pope Innocent IV, he laid before the pope a document in which he outlined and explained his belief that most of the evils of the Church were owing to "the malignant influence of the curia." This won him no friends in Rome.

At the same time he was resisting the corruption of the curia, he was resisting the encroachments upon the Church of the secular power in the person of King Henry III.

Never disloyal to the king and always faithful to the supremacy of the pope, Robert Grosseteste insisted that the king could not command obedience in areas that were the provenance of the Church and the pope could not command obedience in areas "not consonant with the teaching of Christ and the Apostles."

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Bishop Grosseteste will repay reading.