Robert Grosseteste - Works

Works

Grosseteste wrote a number of early works in Latin and French while he was a clerk (see biography above), including one called Chasteau d'amour, an allegorical poem on the creation of the world and Christian redemption, as well as several other poems and texts on household management and courtly etiquette. He also wrote a number of theological works including the influential Hexaëmeron in the 1230s. He was also a highly regarded author of manuals on pastoral care and produced treatises that dealt with a variety of penitential contexts, including monasteries, the parish and a bishop's household.

However, Grosseteste is best known as an original thinker for his work concerning what would today be called science or the scientific method.

From about 1220 to 1235 he wrote a host of scientific treatises including:

• De sphera. An introductory text on astronomy.
• De luce. On the "metaphysics of light." (which is the most original work of cosmogony in the Latin West)
• De accessu et recessu maris. On tides and tidal movements. (although some scholars dispute his authorship)
• De lineis, angulis et figuris. Mathematical reasoning in the natural sciences.
• De iride. On the rainbow.

In 1242, having been introduced to the Greek work by John of Basingstoke, Grosseteste had the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs brought from Greece and translated it with help of a clerk of St. Albans, "for the strengthening of the Christian faith and the confusion of the Jews", who were said to have deliberately hidden the book away "on account of the manifest prophecies of Christ contained therein."

He also wrote a number of commentaries on Aristotle, including the first in the West of Posterior Analytics, and one on Aristotle's Physics, which has survived as a loose collection of notes or glosses on the text.