Since the mid-1970s, further research into Grosseteste's biography has produced more uncertainty than any new detail. His putative birth date and his humble beginnings are unquestioned, but the first twenty years of his life remain obscure. How he became learned in the liberal arts is open to speculation. Doubtless he was a magister in artibus by 1190, but there is no evidence that he studied (or taught) at either Oxford or Paris during this time. His association with Hereford may explain his lifelong interest in natural philosophy, although no evidence has emerged supporting a subsequent teaching career there, nor anywhere else, between 1198 and 1225. The scholarship is divided as to whether Grosseteste actually studied theology at Paris between 1209 and 1214 because of a compelling case made recently that he may have studied there between 1225 and 1229.

This latter dating would certainly explain how Grosseteste gained access to...