Grossetete, Robert
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
Bishop of Lincoln from 1235, and generally known as Robert of Lincoln. Among his many accomplishments he is said to have numbered some proficiency in the art of magic. Born of poor parents, he was early compelled to earn his own living, and even at times to beg for bread. He was at length "discovered" by the Mayor of Lincoln, who was attracted by his appearance and the shrewdness of his remarks, and had him sent to school, where his remarkable capacity for study so helped his advancement that he was enabled to complete his education at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris. The illustrious Roger Bacon characterised him and his friend, Friar Adam de Marisco, as the most learned men of their time. He was well skilled in the sciences of mathematics and astronomy, and a master of Greek and Hebrew. As a member of the clergy he distinguished himself chiefly by his vigorous denunciation of the abuses in the court of Rome, and particularly of the pope, Innocent IV., whose rule added but little lustre to the church. Grossetête did not hesitate to point out the misdeeds of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, many of whom had never even visited their various sees. And he openly pronounced Innocent to be the Antichrist. His essays in necromancy include (Gower tells us) the making of a brazen head, which would answer questions and foretell the future. However, this would appear to be no unique accomplishment, as both Pope Silvester II., and Roger Bacon are credited with it.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The Encyclopaedia of Occultism put Grosseteste in 1920 among the makers of brazen speaking heads, a legend it took from the poet Gower and shared out with Roger Bacon and Pope Silvester II. Modern scholarship has dropped the necromancy entirely and rebuilt him as one of the first European thinkers to insist on mathematics and experiment in the study of nature: A. C. Crombie's 1953 study Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science made the case, and since 2010 the international Ordered Universe project has been editing and translating his scientific writings, including De luce, whose expanding-light cosmology is now routinely compared with Big Bang models. The rest of the old account holds up well — he was bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to his death in 1253, he did know Greek and Hebrew and translated Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and he did defy Innocent IV over papal appointments to English benefices. What has not happened is canonisation: repeated medieval and modern campaigns to make him a saint have never succeeded, and the rags-to-scholarship tale of the Mayor of Lincoln is treated as legend.
Written for this edition, 2026.