Later today, Giles Gasper will be talking on Robert Grosseteste and the early Franciscan community at Oxford, as part of the series on the English Franciscans, organised by Dr Lydia Schumacher and her team at the Authority and Innovation in Early Franciscan Thought (c.1220-1245) project. This is the last webinar in a fascinating series, and also features Professor Rega Wood on the ‘The Powers of the Soul and the Origins of the Formal Distinction.’ The talks are at 10am and 11am (EDT/New York)/ which is 3pm and 4pm (London time); and 4pm and 5pm (Berlin time), and will be chaired by Riccardo Saccenti, a researcher on the ERC early Franciscans project. It is still possible to book onto the event using the embedded link.
‘How to Teach the Franciscans’: Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253), polymath and sometime bishop of Lincoln, was between about 1229 and 1235 the first lector to the newly established Franciscan community at Oxford. This paper will explore what Grosseteste may have taught them, based on 1) the work of the Ordered Universe project on Grosseteste’s scientific works, 2) Grosseteste’s correspondence, theological works, Dicta, and his Anglo-Norman poem Le Chateau d’amour, and 3) the Franciscan core of the Lanercost Chronicle and Thomas of Eccleston’s De adventu (on the arrival of the Franciscan’s in England). The paper will discuss the effects of Grosseteste’s lectureship and what it is possible to know about its details, especially from narrative sources.