Abstract

The chapter examines the employment of scientific examples in the commentary on Deuteronomy by Thomas Docking, the seventh regent master of the Oxford Minors in the early 1260s, who might have been one of the followers of Robert Grosseteste or, more likely, of the latter's friend and collaborator, Adam Marsh. Docking dwells on scientific discussions in his exegetical works by quoting from Grosseteste's works; and this makes him a good candidate for testing whether and how Grosseteste's scientific ideas were applied in English Franciscan theological writings in the second half of the thirteenth century. This study proposes a comparison of the three masters’ exegesis of Ecclesiasticus 43: 4, in which they all address the problem of heat on mountains, and challenges both Docking's real commitment to Grosseteste's methodology and Roger Bacon's empathy with Docking's use of science for theology.

Keywords: Adam Marsh, Robert Grosseteste, Oxford, Roger Bacon, science, Servus Gieben, Thomas Docking

Many years ago, when I enjoyed the privilege of meeting Bishop Moorman for the first time, I was eager to tell him that I was doing research on Robert Grosseteste. The bishop did not seem to share my enthusiasm. He gently told me that, in his opinion, Grosseteste had rather ruined the Franciscan order. His authoritative animadversion deeply impressed me and, to be honest, it remained concealed in the background of my thought as a source of unease which, one day, I would have to face openly. Much later I found that Dr Moorman had expressed his opinion on Robert Grosseteste more in detail in his admirable book Church Life in England in the Thirteenth Century. Yet the heart of the matter was the same as in our conversation: ‘Looking at the question’, he writes, ‘solely from the point of view of St Francis and his immediate friends, Grosseteste did the order a bad turn when he became its tutor and encouraged it in its academic life and work.’