Medieval: November 2018

Academics & Churchmen ..

Canterbury
William Courtenay - Archbishop of Canterbury - 1396
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Courtenay

Simon Sudbury - Archbishop of Canterbury - 1381
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sudbury

Prison of Archbishop of Canterbury in The Peasants' Revolt Of 1381
https://youtu.be/4kq9sbtFCR8?t=29m10s

Gloucester
Walter Froucester (died 1412), was abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester (1382-1412).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Froucester

Lincoln
Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) academic, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-1253)
https://mittelzeit.blogspot.com/2019/01/academics-churchmen.html .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste .

Norwich
Henry le Despenser (c. 1341–1406), Bishop of Norwich, 'Fighting Bishop', suppressing Peasants' Revolt in East Anglia, defeating the peasants at the Battle of North Walsham (summer of 1381)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_le_Despenser

York
Alexander Neville - 1374 to 1386
George Neville - 1464 to 1471

https://mittelzeit.blogspot.com/2019/03/neville-alexander-george-neville.html .

Monarch, clergy, nobles ..

Academics & Churchmen ..
Adelard of Bath ..
Bacon, Roger ..

English Heraldry .. Heraldry ..
The Lords Appellant .. Lords Appellant ..
Neville .. ? Neville ? .
Richard II and Plantagenets ..

Adelard of Bath

Adelard of Bath: When Adelard's influence on the study of philosophy is considered, it is clear that his ideas most notably manifested in the later works of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. While his work in natural philosophy is probably overshadowed by Aristotle, it still helped lay the foundations for much of the progress that was made in the later centuries. His work surrounding Euclid’s Elements, for example, was of great help in providing training that would help future scholars understand the relationships between demonstrative and geometrical proofs. While his original writings demonstrate that he had a sincere passion for the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy), his work in Quaestiones naturales illustrated a more encompassing dedication to subjects such as physics, the natural sciences, and possibly even metaphysics. His influence is also evident in De philosophia mundi by William of Conches, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Isaac of Stella's Letters to Alcher on the Soul. He introduced algebra to the Latin world and his commentaries in Version III of Euclid's Elements were extremely influential in the 13th century. Adelard also displays original thought of a scientific bent, raising the question of the shape of the Earth (he believed it round) and the question of how it remains stationary in space, and also the interesting question of how far a rock would fall if a hole were drilled through the Earth and a rock dropped through it, see center of gravity. Campanus of Novara probably had access to Adelard's translation of Elements, and it is Campanus' edition that was first published in Venice in 1482 after the invention of the printing press. It became the chief textbook of the mathematical schools of Western Europe until the 16th century.

Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe .

History of Non-Euclidian Geometry - The Great Quest > .

History of Non-Euclidian Geometry - Sacred Geometry > .History of Non-Euclidian Geometry - Squaring the Circle > .

History of Non-Euclidian Geometry - A Most Terrible Possibility > .
History of Non-Euclidean Geometry >> .
Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the aether's existence > .

Arabic Science >> .
The Weird Truth About Arabic Numerals > .
MathHistory: A course in the History of Mathematics - njwildberger >> .

Abbot of Gloucester - Walter Froucester

The Abbot of Gloucester was the title of the head of Gloucester Abbey in Gloucester, England. The Benedictine abbey was founded about 1022 and was dedicated to Saint Peter. It is recorded that the abbey lost about a quarter of its complement of monks in 1377 due to the Black Death.

Walter Froucester (died 1412), was abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester (1382-1412).

Froucester had previously officiated as chamberlain of the monastery. On the death of John Boyfield (1377-82) in January 1382, Froucester was elected his successor, being the twentieth abbot. Boyfield's rule had not been successful; he was weak and was in continual trouble with rival ecclesiastics, who, to the disadvantage of his monastery, generally got the better of him. Froucester, on assuming the direction, applied himself to the improvement of the brotherhood's position with marked success, taking and keeping the upper hand over all rivals, and yet without giving offence. By the prudence and economy of his domestic administration he succeeded in wiping off the greater part of the vast debt with which he found the monastery encumbered. From his private purse he supplied the church with ornaments of all kinds, books, vestments, and silver plate.

He is best known for having brought to completion at great expense the beautiful cloisters, the building of which had been begun in Horton's (abbot 1351–77) time, and left unfinished for several years. With the view of securing for his monastery full title to some of its possessions he despatched to Rome one of the brotherhood, William Bryt by name, who, after a stay of some years, succeeded in getting appropriated to the monastery the churches of Holy Trinity and St. Mary de Lode, Gloucester, and that of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. Froucester also obtained from Pope Urban, through the influence of the Duke of Gloucester, the privileges of wearing the pontifical mitre, ring, sandals, and dalmatic, which his predecessor had requested in vain. The occasion chosen by Froucester for his investment with these ornaments was 10 April 1390, the day on which the remains of St. Kyneburgh the Virgin were translated to St. Peter's, the ceremony being celebrated by the Bishop of Worcester and Froucester, and a number of ecclesiastics, in the presence of the Duke of Gloucester and many noblemen and ladies. He also obtained from the pope a dispensation allowing the brotherhood of St. Peter's to eat flesh from Septuagesima to Quinquagesima inclusive. By Froucester's orders the registers of the monastery were compiled afresh, and the history of St. Peter's was probably re-edited at the same time. It has sometimes been supposed, but unwarrantably, that this history, early copies of which exist in Queen's College Library, Oxford, and among the Cottonian MSS., was written by Froucester, because the chronicle closes during his abbacy; internal evidence shows that it was compiled from time to time. Froucester died in 1412, and was buried beneath an arch in the southwest portion of the choir of St. Peter's. Sir Robert Atkyns calls him Trowcester.

In 1540, the abbey was dissolved by King Henry VIII, and it became Gloucester Cathedral the following year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbot_of_Gloucester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Froucester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamberlain_(office)

Abbot of Gloucester - Wikipedia

Bacon, Roger

Bacon's Realism: On the Way to Late Medieval Nominalism? .

Bacon on Body, Soul and Mind: Early Works .

Bacon on Body, Soul and Mind: Later Works .

Resources
Bacon, Roger. Opera Majoris, Pars Quarta, Mathematicae in Divinas Utilitas (Mathematics in the Service of Theology), Herbert M. Howe trans., maintained by the History of Cartography Project.
Related Entries
Al-Farabi | Al-Kindi | Aquinas, Saint Thomas | Aristotle | Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | Aristotle, Special Topics: natural philosophy | Augustine, Saint | Bacon, Francis | Cicero | Duhem, Pierre | Duns Scotus, John | form vs. matter | Giles of Rome | Grosseteste, Robert | Ibn al-Haytham | Ibn Rushd [Averroes] | Ibn Sina [Avicenna] | individuals and individuation | Kilwardby, Robert | logic: ancient | natural philosophy: in the Renaissance | nominalism: medieval versions of | Ockham [Occam], William | properties | realism | Richard the Sophister [Ricardus Sophista, Magister abstractionum] | semiotics: medieval | Seneca | soul, ancient theories of | substance | William of Auvergne

Roger Bacon OFM Latin: Rogerus or Rogerius Baconus, Baconis, also Frater Rogerus; c. 1219/20 – c. 1292), also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited (mainly since the 19th century) as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by Aristotle and by Arab scientist Alhazen.

His linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of a universal grammar. However, more recent re-evaluations emphasise that Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker, with much of his "experimental" knowledge obtained from books in the scholastic tradition. He was, however, partially responsible for a revision of the medieval university curriculum, which saw the addition of optics to the traditional quadrivium. A survey of how Bacon's work was received over the centuries found that it often reflected the concerns and controversies that were central to his readers.

Bacon's major work, the Opus Majus, was sent to Pope Clement IV in Rome in 1267 upon the pope's request. Although gunpowder was first invented and described in China, Bacon was the first in Europe to record its formula.

Bacon’s rejection of the blind following of earlier authorities and his view of personal experiments as the ideal seems to be much more in tune with Newton’s era than the medieval world, but Bacon was truly a product of his times. In 1178 there were reports of a bright light appearing on the Moon, which some think could have been due to a meteor collision. Gervase of Canterbury saw the event, but also collected the observations of five monks who also witnessed the event. Gervase didn’t simply trust his own eyes, but gathered data to confirm his observations. In the early 1200s, Vincent of Beauvais wrote about the Earth as a spherical globe, and noted that gravity pulled everywhere toward its center. He even speculated on what would happen if you dropped a stone into a hole going through the globe."

http://briankoberlein.com/2015/08/22/the-shoulders-of-giants/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Science_in_the_Middle_Ages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geomagnetism
https://crev.info/scientists/roger-bacon/

Adelard of Bath and Roger Bacon: early English natural philosophers and scientists
http://www.medievalists.net/2011/09/05/adelard-of-bath-and-roger-bacon-early-english-natural-philosophers-and-scientists/

Long article
http://bartholomew.stanford.edu/authors/rogerbacon.html

Bacon, Roger

Roger Bacon

In the Questiones altere super libros prime philosophie Aristotelis (1240s), Bacon takes up and develops the well known treatment of knowledge, science, and intuition presented in Grosseteste's Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics

Bacon holds that scientific knowledge is twofold: first, there is the “imperfect and confused knowledge” by which the mind is inclined to the love of the good and of truth. This implicit knowledge is innate. Second, there is explicit rational knowledge. One part of this has to do with the knowledge of the principles of science; the other is the knowledge of conclusions. This latter is complete knowledge though it is not exhaustive. Bacon's account of sense, memory, and experience is more extensive than that found in Grosseteste's Commentary and reflects his own reading of Avicenna, the medical tradition, and works on optics. Bacon distinguishes experientia from experimentum. Experience (experientia) is the distinct knowledge of singular things, and all animals have this distinct knowledge of singulars. But not all animals have experimentum, that is, a science of principles based on experience. As he puts it, “ experience is the distinct reception of singulars under some aspect of universality, as is stated in the text [of Aristotle], but only the universal is grasped by the intellect. Therefore, only humans and not other animals have experience [experimentum] ([OHI, XI], 16). Many animals have an image (imaginatio) of singular things and live by innate art and industry, naturally knowing how to adapt to changing weather conditions. Human art, however, is acquired and is a science of principles based on experience (experimentum principium).

One can express Bacon's position as follows: experimentum is the universal source for our discovery of scientific principles. Scientific knowledge, once established, proceeds by demonstration. Experientia designates the simple perception of singulars. Only in a very loose sense can it be used of scientific knowledge. Sometimes, however, these two terms about experience are used interchangeably. In this account, Bacon has not yet come to his later notion of a scientia experimentalis, and the experimental verification (certificatio) of the conclusions of demonstrative knowledge (ca. 1267). He is dealing only with experience as the source of the principles of our knowledge of art and science. [cf. 3.1.4 The Syllogism in Particular]

In other words, at this stage, Bacon is mainly concerned with Aristotle's definition of experience in the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics, although one already notices that he relates the Aristotelian subject matter to the discussion in Alhacen's Perspectiva. Nevertheless, it is also important to note that these Aristotelian concerns with Experimentum are repeated in 1267 at the beginning of Opus majus, Part Six on exprimental science, and thus, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Posterior Analytics and Meteorology together with the Optics of Ibn al-Haytham will form the necessary philosophical background for Bacon's later c. 1266 notions of the experimental sciences.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacGroKnoSciInt
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacMat
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacGroKnoSciInt
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacUniInd
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacReaWayLatMedNom
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacBodSouMinEarWor
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacBodSouMinLatWor

Resources
Bacon, Roger. Opera Majoris, Pars Quarta, Mathematicae in Divinas Utilitas (Mathematics in the Service of Theology), Herbert M. Howe trans., maintained by the History of Cartography Project.
Related Entries
Al-Farabi | Al-Kindi | Aquinas, Saint Thomas | Aristotle | Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | Aristotle, Special Topics: natural philosophy | Augustine, Saint | Bacon, Francis | Cicero | Duhem, Pierre | Duns Scotus, John | form vs. matter | Giles of Rome | Grosseteste, Robert | Ibn al-Haytham | Ibn Rushd [Averroes] | Ibn Sina [Avicenna] | individuals and individuation | Kilwardby, Robert | logic: ancient | natural philosophy: in the Renaissance | nominalism: medieval versions of | Ockham [Occam], William | properties | realism | Richard the Sophister [Ricardus Sophista, Magister abstractionum] | semiotics: medieval | Seneca | soul, ancient theories of | substance | William of Auvergne

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-farabi/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-kindi/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-sina/

Roger Bacon OFM Latin: Rogerus or Rogerius Baconus, Baconis, also Frater Rogerus; c. 1219/20 – c. 1292), also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited (mainly since the 19th century) as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by Aristotle and by Arab scientist Alhazen.

His linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of a universal grammar. However, more recent re-evaluations emphasise that Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker, with much of his "experimental" knowledge obtained from books in the scholastic tradition. He was, however, partially responsible for a revision of the medieval university curriculum, which saw the addition of optics to the traditional quadrivium. A survey of how Bacon's work was received over the centuries found that it often reflected the concerns and controversies that were central to his readers.

Bacon's major work, the Opus Majus, was sent to Pope Clement IV in Rome in 1267 upon the pope's request. Although gunpowder was first invented and described in China, Bacon was the first in Europe to record its formula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon

Bacon’s rejection of the blind following of earlier authorities and his view of personal experiments as the ideal seems to be much more in tune with Newton’s era than the medieval world, but Bacon was truly a product of his times. In 1178 there were reports of a bright light appearing on the Moon, which some think could have been due to a meteor collision. Gervase of Canterbury saw the event, but also collected the observations of five monks who also witnessed the event. Gervase didn’t simply trust his own eyes, but gathered data to confirm his observations. In the early 1200s, Vincent of Beauvais wrote about the Earth as a spherical globe, and noted that gravity pulled everywhere toward its center. He even speculated on what would happen if you dropped a stone into a hole going through the globe."
http://briankoberlein.com/2015/08/22/the-shoulders-of-giants/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Science_in_the_Middle_Ages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geomagnetism
https://crev.info/scientists/roger-bacon/

Adelard of Bath and Roger Bacon: early English natural philosophers and scientists
http://www.medievalists.net/2011/09/05/adelard-of-bath-and-roger-bacon-early-english-natural-philosophers-and-scientists/

Long article
http://bartholomew.stanford.edu/authors/rogerbacon.html

Roger Bacon | CEH

William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury

William Courtenay (c. 1342 – 31 July 1396) was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury after the murder of Simon Sudbury during the Peasants' Revolt. Courtenay had previously been Bishop of Hereford and Bishop of London.

Courtenay was a younger son of Hugh de Courtenay, 10th Earl of Devon (d. 1377), and through his mother Margaret, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, was a great-grandson of Edward I.

Having been made prebendary of Exeter, of Wells and of York, he was consecrated bishop of Hereford on 17 March 1370, was translated to the see of London on 12 September 1375, and became Archbishop of Canterbury on 30 July 1381, succeeding Simon of Sudbury in both these latter positions.

As a politician, the period of Courtenay's activity coincides with the years of Edward III’s dotage, and with practically the whole of Richard II's reign. From the first he ranged himself among the opponents of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; he was a firm upholder of the rights of the English Church, and was always eager to root out Lollardry. In 1373 he declared in convocation that he would not contribute to a subsidy until the evils from which the church suffered were removed; in 1375 he incurred the displeasure of the king by publishing a papal bull against the Florentines; and in 1377 his decided action during the quarrel between John of Gaunt and William of Wykeham ended in a temporary triumph for the bishop.

Wycliffe was another cause of difference between Lancaster and Courtenay. In 1377 the reformer appeared before Archbishop Sudbury and Courtenay, when an altercation between the duke and the bishop led to the dispersal of the court, and during the ensuing riot Lancaster probably owed his safety to the good offices of his foe. Having meanwhile become archbishop of Canterbury Courtenay summoned a synod, in London, the so-called "Earthquake Synod", which condemned the opinions of Wycliffe; he then attacked the Lollards at Oxford, and urged the bishops to imprison heretics.

Courtenay was for a short time chancellor of England during 1381, and in January 1382 he officiated at the marriage of Richard II with Anne of Bohemia, afterwards crowning the queen. In 1382 the archbishop's visitation led to disputes with the bishops of Exeter and Salisbury, and Courtenay was only partially able to enforce the payment of a special tax to meet his expenses on this occasion. During his concluding years the archbishop appears to have upheld the papal authority in England, although not to the injury of the English Church.

Courtenay protested against the confirmation of the statute of provisors in 1390, and he was successful in slightly modifying the statute of praemunire in 1393. Disliking the extravagance of Richard II, Courtenay publicly reproved the king; and, after an angry scene, the royal threats drove him for a time into Devon. In 1386, he was one of the commissioners appointed to reform the kingdom and the royal household, and in 1387 he arranged a peace between Richard and his enemies under Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Courtenay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sudbury

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Archbishops_of_Canterbury#After_the_Norman_conquest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_London#Post-Conquest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Hereford#Norman_conquest_to_the_Reformation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chancellor#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chancellors_of_the_University_of_Oxford .

Academics & Churchmen

Churchmen, academics - Philosophers, Natural Philosophers

Great Minds of the Medieval World | Professor Dorsey Armstrong > .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR_-gm1KLu8 .

• Anicius Boethius, the Roman politician and philosopher whose work established a template of academic education that endures in the modern world;

• Alhacen, the Islamic scholar who pioneered core theories of optics and is considered the father of scientific methodology;

• Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher and jurist whose writings remain a core element of Jewish law and culture; and

• Alfred the Great of England, a monarch who sought to better his world by spearheading an ambitious educational program of preserving and translating important texts.

Churchmen, England, 13th to 15th century ..

Gloucester, Abbot
Walter Froucester (died 1412), was abbot of St. Peter's, Gloucester (1382-1412).

Canterbury
William Courtenay - Archbishop of Canterbury - 1396
Simon Sudbury - Archbishop of Canterbury - 1381 (executed by rebels during Peasants' Revolt)

Lincoln
Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) academic, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-1253)

Norwich
Henry le Despenser (c. 1341–1406), Bishop of Norwich, 'Fighting Bishop', suppressing Peasants' Revolt in East Anglia, defeating the peasants at the Battle of North Walsham (summer of 1381)

York
Alexander Neville - 1374 to 1386
George Neville - 1464 to 1471

Robert Grosseteste, Latin: Robertus Grosseteste; c. 1175 – 9 October 1253 was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, scientist and Bishop of Lincoln. He was born of humble parents at Stradbroke in Suffolk. Upon his death, he was almost universally revered as a saint in England, but attempts to procure a formal canonization failed. A. C. Crombie calls him "the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition".
....
As a master of the sacred page (manuscripts of theology in Latin), Grosseteste trained the Franciscans in the standard curriculum of university theology. The Franciscan Roger Bacon was his most famous disciple, and acquired an interest in the scientific method from him. Grosseteste lectured on the Psalter, the Pauline epistles, Genesis (at least the creation account), and possibly on Isaiah, Daniel and Sirach. He also led disputations on such subjects as the theological nature of truth and the efficacy of the Mosaic Law. Grosseteste also preached at the university and appears to have been called to preach within the diocese as well. He collected some of those sermons, along with some short notes and reflections, not long after he left Oxford; this is now known as his Dicta. His theological writings reveal a continual interest in the natural world as a major resource for theological reflection and an ability to read Greek sources (if he ever learned Hebrew, it would be not until he became bishop of Lincoln). His theological index (tabula distinctionum) reveals the breadth of his learning and his desire to communicate it in a systematic manner. However, Grosseteste's own style was far more unstructured than many of his scholastic contemporaries, and his writings reverberate with his own personal views and outlooks.
.....
It has been argued that Grosseteste played a key role in the development of the scientific method. Grosseteste did introduce to the Latin West the notion of controlled experiment and related it to demonstrative science, as one among many ways of arriving at such knowledge.[19] Although Grosseteste did not always follow his own advice during his investigations, his work is seen as instrumental in the history of the development of the Western scientific tradition.

Grosseteste was the first of the Scholastics to fully understand Aristotle's vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning: generalising from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". So, for example, looking at the particulars of the moon, it is possible to arrive at universal laws about nature. Conversely once these universal laws are understood, it is possible to make predictions and observations about other objects besides the moon. Grosseteste said further that both paths should be verified through experimentation to verify the principles involved. These ideas established a tradition that carried forward to Padua and Galileo Galilei in the 17th century.

As important as "resolution and composition" would become to the future of Western scientific tradition, more important to his own time was his idea of the subordination of the sciences. For example, when looking at geometry and optics, optics is subordinate to geometry because optics depends on geometry, and so optics was a prime example of a subalternate science. Thus Grosseteste concluded, following much of what Boethius had argued, that mathematics was the highest of all sciences, and the basis for all others, since every natural science ultimately depended on mathematics. He supported this conclusion by looking at light, which he believed to be the "first form" of all things, the source of all generation and motion (approximately what is now known as biology and physics). Hence, since light could be reduced to lines and points, and thus fully explained in the realm of mathematics, mathematics was the highest order of the sciences.
......
Grossesteste is now believed to have had a very modern understanding of colour, and supposed errors in his account have been found to be based on corrupt late copies of his essay on the nature of colour, written in about 1225 (De Luce). In 2014 Grosseteste's 1225 treatise De Luce (On Light) was translated from Latin and interpreted by an interdisciplinary project led by Durham University, that included Latinists, philologists, medieval historians, physicists and cosmologists. De Luce explores the nature of matter and the cosmos. Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory, Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallisation of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth. De Luce is the first attempt to describe the heavens and Earth using a single set of physical laws. The 'Ordered Universe' collaboration of scientists and historians at Durham University studying medieval science regard him as a key figure in showing that pre-Renaissance science was far more advanced than previously thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chancellors_of_the_University_of_Oxford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Lincoln
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Sherwood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Vere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Franciscan_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Science_in_the_Middle_Ages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_head
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars,_Oxford

Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich

Henry le Despenser (c. 1341–1406) was a 14th-century English nobleman and Bishop of Norwich whose reputation as the 'Fighting Bishop' was gained for his part in suppressing the Peasants' Revolt in East Anglia and in defeating the peasants at the Battle of North Walsham in the summer of 1381.

Henry le Despenser was the youngest son of Edward le Despenser (1310–1342), by his wife Anne Ferrers (died 1367), daughter of Sir Ralph Ferrers of Groby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_le_Despenser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_le_Despencer,_1st_Baron_le_Despencer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_le_Despenser,_1st_Earl_of_Gloucester

Peasants' Revolt

During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, rebels from Kent and Essex marched to London and, once admitted to the city, managed to capture the Tower of London. King Richard, who had promised to agree to all the demands of the peasants, met the rebels outside the city, where the leader of the peasants Wat Tyler was killed and the rebellion was ended. The king's promises were retracted.

The rebellion quickly spread to other parts of England, including the diocese of Norwich, where it lasted for less than a fortnight. On 14 June a group of rebels reached Thetford and from there the insurrection spread over south-western Norfolk towards the Fens. At the same time the rebels, led by a local dyer, Geoffrey Litster, moved across the north-eastern part of the county, urging insurrection throughout the local area. Over the next few days, the rebels converged on Norwich, Lynn and Swaffham. Norwich, then one of the largest and most important cities in the realm, was taken and occupied by Litster and his followers, who caused considerable damage to the property and possessions of their enemies once they managed to enter the city. The Norwich rebels then travelled to Yarmouth, destroying legal records and landowners' possessions; other insurgents moving across north-east Norfolk destroyed court rolls and taxation documents; there were numerous incidents of pillage and extortion across the whole county.

Despenser first heard news of the rising in his own diocese at a time when he was absent at his manor of Burley in Rutland, 100 miles (160 km) west of Norwich. Armed, he hastened back to Norfolk via Peterborough, Cambridge and Newmarket, with a company of only eight lances and a small body of bowmen. His followers increased on the way, and by the time he reached North Walsham, near the Norfolk coast, he had a considerable force under his command. There he found the rebels entrenched and defended by makeshift fortifications. According to Thomas Walsingham, in the Battle of North Walsham the bishop himself led the assault and overpowered his enemies in hand-to-hand fighting. Many were slain or captured, including the rebels' leader, who was hanged, drawn and quartered soon afterwards. Despenser personally superintended Litster's execution. In the following months he proceeded to deal with other rebels in his diocese. But the rigour with which he put down the rebellion made him highly unpopular in Norfolk and in the following year a plot was organised to murder him. The scheme was betrayed in time by one of the conspirators, and the plotters were dealt with by the authorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_North_Walsham

As a young man he studied at Oxford University and held numerous positions in the English Church. He fought in Italy before being consecrated as a bishop in 1370. Parliament agreed to allow Despenser to lead a crusade to Flanders in 1383, which was directed against Louis II of Flanders, a supporter of the antipope Clement VII. The crusade was in defence of English economic and political interests. Although well funded, the expedition was poorly equipped and lacked proper military leadership. After initial successes, a disastrous attempt to besiege the city of Ypres forced Despenser to return to England. Upon his return he was impeached in parliament. His temporalities were confiscated by Richard II of England, but were returned in 1385, the year he accompanied the king northward to repel a potential French invasion of Scotland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despenser%27s_Crusade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_V

Despenser was an energetic and able administrator who staunchly defended his diocese against Lollardy. In 1399, he was among those who stood by Richard, following the landing of Henry Bolingbroke in Yorkshire towards the end of June. He was arrested for refusing to come to terms with Bolingbroke. The following year, he was implicated in the Epiphany Rising, but was pardoned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_Rising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollardy

Soon after returning from Flanders, the bishop was impeached in parliament, on 26 October 1383, in the presence of the king. The chancellor Michael de la Pole accused him of not mustering his troops at Calais, as had been agreed; not recruiting a high enough number of armed men; refusing to certify properly who his military leaders were; deceiving the king by not allowing a secular lord to command the expedition to Flanders; and disbanding his forces prematurely. Despenser denied all the charges, insisting that enough men had assembled at Ypres, that he had chosen his commanders well and that he had not refused to obey the king's orders. After de la Pole declared the bishop's replies to be insufficient, Despenser requested another hearing to defend himself still further, which was granted. In this hearing Despencer proceeded to blame his own commanders for forcing him to retreat from Ypres and then evacuate the garrisons. All his arguments were refuted and he was blamed for the failure of the expedition. His temporalities were confiscated and he was ordered to repay any costs taken from money gained from the French.

Despenser's fall from grace did not last long. Following Scottish incursions into England, it was decided that the 18-year-old King Richard should lead an army into Scotland, marking the start of his military career. In 1385 every magnate of consequence, including Despenser, joined the immense host that advanced north with the king,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_de_la_Pole,_1st_Earl_of_Suffolk

The le Despenser family originated from the lords of Gomiécourt in north-eastern France. Henry's grandmother Eleanor de Clare was a granddaughter of Edward I of England.

Henry's great-grandfather Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester (1262–1326) and grandfather Hugh Despenser the Younger (1286–1326), who was a favourite of Edward II, were both exiled and later executed after the rebellion of Queen Isabella and her lover Mortimer against Edward II of England. Hugh le Despenser had become Edward II's adviser, holding power until the king's defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn, but he was later restored to favour. His son was appointed the king's chamberlain and enjoyed a still larger share of royal favour. The barons were hostile to the Despensers, due to their acquired wealth and perceived arrogance, and in 1321 they were banished. Their sentences were soon afterwards annulled and from 1322 they played an important role in the governing of the country, but in 1326 Isabella acted against them and both men were tried and executed.

In 1375, Despenser's nephew Thomas le Despenser, 1st Earl of Gloucester succeeded his father Edward. Thomas was captured and killed following the attempt to restore Richard II in the Epiphany Rising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_Rising

Henry was born around 1342, the year that his father was killed at the siege of Vannes. He and his three brothers all grew up to become soldiers. His eldest brother Edward le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer (around 1335–1375) was reputed to be one of the greatest knights of his age: he and Henry fought together for Pope Urban V in his war against Milan in 1369. Comparatively little is known of his other siblings: Hugh le Despenser fought abroad and died in Padua in March 1374, Thomas fought in France and died unmarried in 1381 and Gilbert le Despenser died in 1382. Their sister Joan was a nun at Shaftesbury Abbey until her death in 1384.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_le_Despenser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Norwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Norwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_North_Walsham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbishop_of_Canterbury

Henry le Despenser - Wikipedia

Diderot, Laplace, Phlogiston, Lavoisier, Priestley, Fourier

Εnlíghtenment: Diderot, Laplace, Phlogiston, Lavoisier, Priestley, Fourier

History of Science - CrashCourse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjGgFgnYIA&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNppY8ZHMPDH5TKK2UpU8Ng .

Chemistry - CrashCourse
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtPHzzYuWy6fYEaX9mQQ8oGr

Rise of Modern Science:
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/birth-modern-science/

Educational Routes circa 1000

Education ~ 1000 — monastery, noble's court, cathedral school, apprenticeship - SeSc > .

Cathedrals, Colleges, Universities ..

Collegial Evolution - First Universities ..

Educational Routes circa 1000 ..
Formal Education in the Middle Ages ..
Héloïse and Abelard ..
Learning, Work ..

Medieval Universities ..

Scholasticism ..
Scholasticism (2) ..
Student Life in the Medieval University ..
Scholasticism, Natural Philosophy, Universities ..
Universities - Medieval ..

University - Medieval ..

Galileo, Bacon, Descartes 1

Francis Bacon > .
Rene Descartes > .
Scientific Revolution > .
History of Science - CrashCourse >> .

Baconian Science ..

Rise of Modern Science:
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/birth-modern-science/

Ibn al-Haytham’s scientific method:

The two medieval European scholars who were actually the main predecessors of Galilee are Robert Grosseteste (d.1253), and Roger Bacon (d.1294).

Robert Grosseteste was the teacher of Roger Bacon, whose sources for optics were Euclid, Ibn Sina’s Al- Qānūn, and al–Kindī’s Optics: Libre de aspectibus, the Arabic text of which is not extant. The Latin translation by the Spanish Gerard of Cremona was carried out in the 12th c. Robert propounded his theory of falsification of causes , i.e. experimental proof of testing rival hypotheses or mathematical models.

Roger Bacon’s main scientific work was in optics, with the title Opus Maius , and in the sixth chapter of which Roger exemplified the Scientia Experimentalis, i.e., his theory of science and scientific method. His sources were al–Kindi (d. ca.873) , Ibn Sīnā, Ibn al–Haytham , Ibn Rushd (d. 1198). According to Crombie (Robert Grossteste, and the Origins of Experimental Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1953), “ Ibn al-Haytham’s few optical writings were translated anonymously [already] at the end of the 12th / beginning of the 13th century”.

Galileo, Bacon, Descartes 2

Galileo, Bacon, Descartes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQreBq6MOY
Francis Bacon
https://youtu.be/UdQreBq6MOY?t=6m
Rene Descartes
https://youtu.be/UdQreBq6MOY?t=9m5s

Scientific Revolution
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/1RdTCYyFa9s

History of Science - CrashCourse
https://plus.google.com/118077931144377065433/posts/TP6RuZyhkgM

Rise of Modern Science:
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/birth-modern-science/

Galileo Galilei: Father of Modern Science > .

Grosseteste, Robertus

Robert Grosseteste, Latin: Robertus Grosseteste; c. 1175 – 9 October 1253 was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, scientist and Bishop of Lincoln. He was born of humble parents at Stradbroke in Suffolk. Upon his death, he was almost universally revered as a saint in England, but attempts to procure a formal canonization failed. A. C. Crombie calls him "*the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition*".

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As a master of the sacred page (manuscripts of theology in Latin), Grosseteste trained the Franciscans in the standard curriculum of university theology. The Franciscan Roger Bacon was his most famous disciple, and acquired an interest in the scientific method from him. Grosseteste lectured on the Psalter, the Pauline epistles, Genesis (at least the creation account), and possibly on Isaiah, Daniel and Sirach. He also led disputations on such subjects as the theological nature of truth and the efficacy of the Mosaic Law. Grosseteste also preached at the university and appears to have been called to preach within the diocese as well. He collected some of those sermons, along with some short notes and reflections, not long after he left Oxford; this is now known as his Dicta. His theological writings reveal a continual interest in the natural world as a major resource for theological reflection and an ability to read Greek sources (if he ever learned Hebrew, it would be not until he became bishop of Lincoln). His theological index (tabula distinctionum) reveals the breadth of his learning and his desire to communicate it in a systematic manner. However, Grosseteste's own style was far more unstructured than many of his scholastic contemporaries, and his writings reverberate with his own personal views and outlooks.
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It has been argued that Grosseteste played a key role in the development of the scientific method. Grosseteste did introduce to the Latin West the notion of controlled experiment and related it to demonstrative science, as one among many ways of arriving at such knowledge.[19] Although Grosseteste did not always follow his own advice during his investigations, his work is seen as instrumental in the history of the development of the Western scientific tradition.

Grosseteste was the first of the Scholastics to fully understand Aristotle's vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning: generalising from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". So, for example, looking at the particulars of the moon, it is possible to arrive at universal laws about nature. Conversely once these universal laws are understood, it is possible to make predictions and observations about other objects besides the moon. Grosseteste said further that both paths should be verified through experimentation to verify the principles involved. These ideas established a tradition that carried forward to Padua and Galileo Galilei in the 17th century.

As important as "resolution and composition" would become to the future of Western scientific tradition, more important to his own time was his idea of the subordination of the sciences. For example, when looking at geometry and optics, optics is subordinate to geometry because optics depends on geometry, and so optics was a prime example of a subalternate science. Thus Grosseteste concluded, following much of what Boethius had argued, that mathematics was the highest of all sciences, and the basis for all others, since every natural science ultimately depended on mathematics. He supported this conclusion by looking at light, which he believed to be the "first form" of all things, the source of all generation and motion (approximately what is now known as biology and physics). Hence, since light could be reduced to lines and points, and thus fully explained in the realm of mathematics, mathematics was the highest order of the sciences.
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Grossesteste is now believed to have had a very modern understanding of colour, and supposed errors in his account have been found to be based on corrupt late copies of his essay on the nature of colour, written in about 1225 (De Luce). In 2014 Grosseteste's 1225 treatise De Luce (On Light) was translated from Latin and interpreted by an interdisciplinary project led by Durham University, that included Latinists, philologists, medieval historians, physicists and cosmologists. De Luce explores the nature of matter and the cosmos. Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory, Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallisation of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth. De Luce is the first attempt to describe the heavens and Earth using a single set of physical laws. The 'Ordered Universe' collaboration of scientists and historians at Durham University studying medieval science regard him as a key figure in showing that pre-Renaissance science was far more advanced than previously thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chancellors_of_the_University_of_Oxford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Lincoln
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Sherwood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Vere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Franciscan_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Science_in_the_Middle_Ages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_head
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars,_Oxford

Robert Grosseteste - Wikipedia

Heytesbury, William

William of Heytesbury, or William Heytesbury, called in Latin Guglielmus Hentisberus or Tisberus (c. 1313 – 1372/1373), was an English philosopher and logician, best known as one of the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, Oxford, where he was a fellow.

Heytesbury had become a fellow of Merton by 1330. In his work he applied logical techniques to the problems of divisibility, the continuum, and kinematics. His magnum opus was the Regulae solvendi sophismata (Rules for Solving Sophisms), written about 1335.

He was Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the year 1371 to 1372.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Heytesbury .

The Oxford Calculators were a group of 14th-century thinkers, almost all associated with Merton College, Oxford; for this reason they were dubbed "The Merton School". These men took a strikingly logico-mathematical approach to philosophical problems. The key "calculators", writing in the second quarter of the 14th century, were Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead and John Dumbleton. These men built on the slightly earlier work of Walter Burley and Gerard of Brussels.
The advances these men made were initially purely mathematical but later became relevant to mechanics. They used Aristotelian logic and physics. They also studied and attempted to quantify every physical and observable characteristic, like heat, force, color, density, and light. Aristotle believed that only length and motion were able to be quantified. But they used his philosophy and proved it untrue by being able to calculate things such as temperature and power. They developed Al-Battani's work on trigonometry and their most famous work was the development of the mean speed theorem, (though it was later credited to Galileo) which is known as "The Law of Falling Bodies". Although they attempted to quantify these observable characteristics, their interests lay more in the philosophical and logical aspects than in natural world. They used numbers to philosophically disagree and prove the reasoning of "why" something worked the way it did and not only "how" something functioned the way that it did.

The Oxford Calculators distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasizing kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They first formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels the same distance as an accelerated body in the same time if its velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Calculators .

William Heytesbury (c. 1313–1372/3), a member of Oxford’s Merton College and the School of “Oxford Calculators”, was most likely a student of Richard Kilvington, who was a younger contemporary of John Dumbleton. Heytesbury developed the works of Thomas Bradwardine and Richard Kilvington, and he was also influenced by Walter Burley, William Ockham, and Roger Swyneshed (or Swineshead). He authored a popular textbook Regulae solvendi sophismata and several other collections of sophisms. He linked interests in logic, mathematics, and physics. He formulated the Mean Speed Theorem offering a proper rule for uniformly accelerated motion, later developed by Galileo. His works anticipated nineteenth-century mathematical analyses of the continuum. He influenced logic in Britain and Italy (where several late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century editions of his texts were printed) and his influence lasted until the sixteenth century when the debates he participated in declined.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heytesbury/ .

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Churchmen, England, 13th to 15th century ..