THE SCHOOLMEN This fresco from the upper church of St Francis in Assisi shows Pope Innocent III approving the rule of the Fransciscan Order Robert Grosseteste and Albert the Great The three innovating impulses of the thirteenth century—the reception of Aristotle, the development of the universities, and the inXuence of the mendicant orders—can all be seen at work in the career of a remarkable Englishman, Robert Grosseteste, (1170?–1253), who became bishop of Lincoln in 1235 He studied at Oxford and was one of the Wrst chancellors of that university From 1225 to 1230 he taught in the Oxford schools In 1230 he moved to the newly founded Franciscan house and was lecturer there for Wve years before his appointment to the episcopate Besides writing a number of original philosophical and scientiWc works, he composed the Wrst commentary on the Latin version of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, and comparatively late in life he learnt Greek and made his own translation of the Nicomachean Ethics 57