ABSTRACT
Sometime in the year 1229/30, Robert Grosseteste, a man now in his late fifties, stood before an Oxford audience composed of all regent masters and their students and began his inaugural sermon as a new master of theology. His inception into this guild of masters – the universitas magistrorum – would signal the beginning to a highly productive period in his life. We may surmise that uppermost in his mind that day was the new task at hand: to be a professional theologian. His inception sermon followed the standard rhetorical requirements, namely to praise sacred Scripture, the focal point of his future theological work. At the same time, Grosseteste took this opportunity to sketch out – either for his own sake or for the sake of his future students – how he envisaged combining his past experience as a natural philosopher with this new responsibility. Grosseteste left his audience with an assurance that he was not another philosopher masquerading in theologian’s clothing; rather, he demonstrated an awareness that his new tasks demanded a change in his intellectual interests.1 That was not a difficult transition to make, as Grosseteste had been deeply involved in the literature and practice of the pastoral care for more than ten years. Now, as a master of the sacred page, as well as the first lector to the Franciscans at Oxford, Grosseteste had the privileged opportunity of developing his pastoral interests within the larger context of the theological enterprise of a university. His sermon acted as the starting pistol for five or six years of intensive work, which would see him at his most creative to date.
