Robert Grosseteste

"This is a study of the intellectual development and influence of one of the most independent and vigorous Englishmen of the Middle Ages -- a medieval Dr. Johnson in his powers of mind and personality. Like Dr. Johnson he was of humble birth, lived for many years in obscurity, and emerged only late in life as a national figure, at once deeply conservative and profoundly critical of the contemporary world. As a scientist, theologian and pastoral leader, he was rooted in an English tradition going back before the Norman Conquest, and he looks forward to such disturbing characters of the later Middle Ages as Piers Plowman and John Wycliffe, though with a wider range of intellectual interests than any of them."