Philip Perry's Essay on the Life and Manners of the Venerable Robert Grosseteste presents us not only with a high standard of biographical scholarship but also a fine example of English eighteenth-century polemical writing. Grosseteste was a formidable thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln who, because of his insistence upon the primacy of Scripture and his apparent wrangling with the papacy, had long been claimed as a type of proto-Protestant in the English post-Reformation historical tradition. Perry sets out in his Essay a vivid account of Grosseteste's life and achievements to advance his cause as a worthy saint and to recover his reputation as a loyal son of the Roman Church. His frank discussion of the abuses that Grosseteste opposed and the controversies in which he engaged put his text beyond the limits of what a Catholic priest could advisably print in eighteenth-century England. The manuscript remained unpublished for fear of causing scandal, and now sees its first printed edition.

"This book should be of particular value to those interested in eighteenth-century Catholicism and those concerned with developments in historical method, especially scholarship on the middle ages." - JOURNAL FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES

"Who would benefit from this book? Primarily, ecclesiastical historians focussed on prereformation England, but also those studying the emancipation of Catholics in the eighteenth century." - FACHRS