Greathead Grosseteste, Or Greathead (Lat. Capito), Robert, a British theologian, born at Stradbrooke, Suffolk, about 1175, died at Buck-den, Oct. 9,1253. He was educated first at Oxford and Paris, became a professor in the latter university, was appointed archdeacon of Chester in 1210, and was successively archdeacon of Wilts, Northampton, and Leicester, prebendary of Clifton, lecturer on divinity in the first Franciscan school at Oxford, and chancellor of the university (rector scholarum). In 1232 he resigned all his preferments except the prebend of Clifton, and wrote a work in defence of the Jews. In 1235 he was consecrated bishop of Lincoln, and opened in his residence a school for young noblemen, for whom he-composed the book entitled Be Moribvs Pueri ad Mensam. He removed all scandalous and inefficient pastors, and refused institution to pluralists, to clergymen employed in courts of judicature or in the collection of the revenue, and to all who were unable to reside on their benefices. Besides the harassing and ex pensive lawsuits arising from his reforms, he was compelled to go to Rome in 1245 to plead his own cause against the complaints of his chapter, sustained by Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury. He succeeded there, and after his return to England his chapter submitted, and he visited the convents and monasteries, deposing negligent or inefficient superiors, and enforcing the observance of monastic rules.

He opposed the royal extravagance and favoritism, contended in parliament against the exactions of the king, and resisted the intrusion of foreigners into English livings. On a second visit to Lyons in 1250, he presented to Innocent IV. a memorial on the evils of the church, which the pope ordered to be read in the consistory of cardinals. Returning to England, Robert was dissuaded by his friend Adam de Marisco from resigning his bishopric, and soon afterward he refused to induct into a rich benefice an Italian ignorant of English, while he excommunicated an unworthy nominee of the king's, and placed an interdiction on the church to which he had been nominated. In the parliament of London, Oct. 13, 1252, the king having presented a demand for a new subsidy, backed by a papal bull, Grosseteste united the entire body of the clergy in opposition to it. He also addressed an appeal to the lords and commonalty to suppress by statute the appointment of foreigners to preferment within the kingdom. One of his last acts was to refuse carrying out a provision sent him by the nuncio, promoting to a prebend in the church of Lincoln Frederick of Louvain, the nephew of Innocent IV. The story, says Lingard, that Grosseteste died under an ecclesiastical sentence rests on questionable authority.

The catalogue of his works contains treatises on almost every branch of science; it fills 23 closely printed quarto pages in Pegge's "Life of Grosseteste" (4to, London, 1793). No complete collection of his works exists. Among the principal are: Ruperti Lincolaiensis Opuscula dignissima (fob,Venice, 1514); Compendium Sphoeroe Mundi (Augsburg, 1483; fol., Venice, 1518; and several other editions; translated into English); " Testament of the XII. Patriarchs" (12mo, London, 1577, with woodcuts; several times reprinted); "A Treatyse of Husbandry," or "The Buke of Husbandry," according to Wynkin de Worde's edition; De Cessatione Legalium (4to, London, 1652; 2d ed., 8vo, 1658); "Castell of Love," edited by Weymouth (1804); and "Letters and Treatises," edited by II. R. Luard (1862). A life in Latin verse by Ricardus Barderiensis is to be found in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. See also his "Life and Times," by G. G. Perry (London, 1871).