Biographical appendix

Summary

Adam Marsh (de Marisco) (c.1200–59)

A Franciscan friar and devoted friend of Grosseteste from boyhood. He was taught by Grosseteste at Oxford and went on to become a highly respected Biblical scholar. He was buried next to Grosseteste in Lincoln Cathedral. See Adam Marsh, The Letters of Adam Marsh, edited and translated by C. H. Lawrence. 2 vols. Oxford Medieval Text (Oxford, 2006).

Alexander Hales (c.1185–1245)

A highly important scholastic philosopher of the Franciscan School. John de la Rochelle was his pupil and later collaborator. See Christopher M. Cullen, ‘Alexander of Hales’ and Gérard Sondag, ‘John de la Rochelle’, in Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by J. E. Gracia and T. B. Noone (Oxford, 2006), pp. 104–08 and pp. 334–35.

Boniface of Savoy (1206/7–70)

The Archbishop of Belley in France before he was given the see of Canterbury. He was also the uncle of Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry III. The King tried to have him elected to the see of Winchester and when this was unsuccessful he was nominated to Canterbury, which the Pope approved in order to placate Henry. He was consecrated at Lyon personally by the Pope in 1245 but he did not take up his position in England until 1249. After his death he was regarded as something of a saint on the continent, in England he was less celebrated, his later reputation resting largely on Matthew Paris's assessment of him as a violent, greedy and neglectful foreigner. See Leland E. Wilshire, ‘Boniface of Savoy, Carthusian and Archbishop of Canterbury, 1207–1270’, Analecta Cartusiana 31 (1977), 4–90.

Constantina

Probably the daughter of Michael Acominatus, Archbishop of Athens. Matthew Paris tells us that John de Basingstoke spoke of a nineteenyear- old girl whose knowledge exceeded that of his own acquired at the University of Paris. It is Basingstoke who made Grosseteste aware of the existence of the Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs. Paris also tells us that he had knowledge of a Greek numbering system based on a system of strokes. See M. de Jonge, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs’, Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 42 (1991), 115–25.

Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) (c.1146–1220)

A priest and author, his, Topographia Hibernica (1186–87) was an account of his travels in Ireland.