Abstract

Although Grosseteste's scientific writings have been more adequately studied, particularly of recent years, than any other part of his vast literary legacy, scholars have reached little agreement on even the essentials of their chronology. The reasons for this are not far to seek. The course of Grosseteste's life up until 1225 is almost completely unknown and hence there exists no firm, ready-made structure into which the sequence of his surviving writings can be inserted. In addition to this, few of his works have been adequately edited, with the result that promising chronological indications may upon occasion turn out to be merely corruptions of the text; one reference to Averroës, which would of itself have sufficed to date a work after 1230, proved to have several variants, including “Augustinus” and “Avicenna”!