Thomas Gascoigne and Robert Grosseteste: Historical and Critical Notes

Abstract

There of the may University be more of than Oxford, one reason Thomas why Gascoigne, that scholarly had a Chancellor particular of the University of Oxford, Thomas Gascoigne, had a particular devotion for his predecessor Robert Grosseteste1 . Beryl Smalley suggested that it was St. Jerome who linked both Chancellors together over the gap of two centuries.2 As a matter of fact, Gascoigne' s program for the University in the mid-fifteenth century was a patristic revival which proposed an effective and authentic reform of the clergy. It was to bring them to a more learned and less scholastic, more biblical and less financial involvement in their ministry, particularly in preaching. It seemed to him that the combination of scholarship and spiritual interpretation of the Bible found in Jerome's works, was the ideal that ought to be imitated. In his day Gascoigne could not find anyone who came so close to Jerome's spirit as Grosseteste. Odd to say, it was precisely the unscholastic strain of Grosseteste's exegetical writings, which to his contemporaries appeared obsolete and archaic, that gained him the grateful sympathy of Gascoigne. These general and correct statements may be further illustrated by various circumstances and by referring to the background. According to his own words Gascoigne started collecting materials for his principal work, the Dictionarium theologicum , in 14343. That same year he had