Note 34 — Bishop Grosseteste, the Reformer 1235–1253

A well-known passage in Matthew Paris, vol. v, gives the monk’s point of view of Grosseteste, the reformer:—“At this time the Bishop of Lincoln made a visitation of the religious houses in the diocese. If one were to tell all the acts of tyranny he committed therein, the bishop would seem not merely unfeeling but inhuman in his severity. For amongst other things when he came to Ramsey he went round the whole place, examined each one of the monks’ beds in the dormitory, scrutinized everything, and if he found anything locked up destroyed it. He broke open the monks’ coffers as a thief would, and if he found any cups wrought with decoration and with feet to stand on he broke them to pieces, though it would have been wiser to have demanded them unbroken for the poor. He also heaped the terrible curses of Moses on the heads of those who disobeyed his injunctions and the blessings of Moses on those who should observe the same.... And it is believed all this he hath done to restrain from sin those over whom he hath authority, and for whose souls he must give account.” This was written in 1251, when Grosseteste had been sixteen years at Lincoln.