A Dazzling Mind and Magna Carta: Professor Giles Gasper (1215)
In this thought-provoking episode of Travels Through Time we explore the year 1215 in order to understand some of the most significant political, religious and intellectual developments of the medieval period.
As Professor of High Medieval History at Durham University, and specialist in intellectual culture, it is fitting that our guest, Giles Gasper, chose to explore this momentous year through three, era-defining documents it bore witness to – Magna Carta, the Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, and an astronomical treatise written by Robert Grosseteste.
Grosseteste is the most intriguing figure to emerge in this episode. A polymath and scholar whose influence on the development of scientific knowledge in the West has continued to impress modern scholars even today, although little is known about his life.
His life and works have been the inspiration for the creation of an interdisciplinary academic group called the Ordered Universe Project, of which Giles Gasper is the Principal Investigator.
The group brings together medieval specialists and modern scientists to understand, translate and contextualise Grosseteste’s writings. Through their work they have been astounded by his capacity to describe the physical world around him imaginatively and mathematically, truly setting him apart from other medieval thinkers.
For example, Grosseteste was the first person that we know of to correctly identify refraction as the phenomenon that produces a rainbow, rather than it being reflection, as Aristotle thought. The Ordered Universe Project has also been able to show how Grosseteste’s writings illustrate a nascent understanding of the theory of a multiverse, and also of the Big Bang.
Giles exploration of this lesser known figure, alongside his analysis of such famous historical events, such as the creation of Magna Carta and the meeting of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, is what makes this episode so illuminating in understanding medieval history.
Explore the Ordered Universe Project.
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Show notes:
Scene One: June 1215, the Magna Carta is drawn up and sealed (not signed!) by King John after a dispute between his nobles over the rights of the King.
Scene Two: November 1215, The Lateran Palace, Rome. 71 patriarchs and metropolitan bishops, 412 bishops, 900 abbots and priors as well as the representatives of various monarchs meet for the Fourth Council of the Lateran where, amongst many issues, the doctrine of transubstantiation is made official.
Scene Three: 1215, somewhere in England. Robert Grosseteste composes his On The Sphere, an astronomical treatise which seeks to understand the movement of the stars.
Momento: The lost annotated copy of Abu Maʿshar’s writing on astrology which Robert Grosseteste glossed.
People/Show notes
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Professor Giles Gasper
Producer: Maria Nolan
Titles: Jon O
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What you will learn in this episode:
• The global political significance of 1215
• The development of kinship in the medieval period, and of the evolving boundaries between the power of the nobility and the monarch
• The expansion of papal power and evolution in sacramental theology
• The life and works of Robert Grosseteste, a remarkable thinker and philosopher, and the work that is being done by modern scholars today to continue understanding his work.
Video produced by the Ordered Universe Project on the Medieval Cosmos, based on the writings of Robert Grosseteste
Robert Grosseteste
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