Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175–1253) was bishop of Lincoln for eighteen years (1235–53). He carried on an extensive correspondence with popes, kings and many lesser figures of Church and State. Only a fragment of what must have been his vast epistolary output survives – most of it in a letter collection from the first eleven years of his reign. Scholars have made considerable use of the Latin edition of the letters – published by H. R. Luard in the Rolls Series in 1861 – to study not only the life of Grosseteste, but also his attitudes and perspectives as representative of the English clergy of his day. Grosseteste experts will find new emendations of Luard's edition here, while a broad audience of medievalists and church historians will find much more in this fluid English translation.

As Goering and Mantello note, the unifying theme of this letter collection is the importance of the clergy's duty of pastoral care. One might imagine such a theme limiting, but pastoral care was for Grosseteste the central mission of the Church, and so the letters address a wide range of issues of Church and State. Many of the letters prophetically denounce common practices of the medieval Church that Grosseteste believed threatened quality pastoral care. Grosseteste attacks clerical pluralism, the assignment of benefices to incompetent clerics, the influence of the king over ecclesiastical matters (including episcopal elections) and clerical service in government. The translators convincingly argue in their introduction that the original letter collection, because it contains no letters from the last seven years of his episcopate, was completed in 1246, and probably arranged by Grosseteste himself. Although scholars have found it easier to treat the letters as reliable documentary evidence, they can now no longer ignore the fact that the letter collection was a self-conscious attempt by Grosseteste to craft his image as an Old Testament prophet risking everything to stand up to the powerful. Grosseteste spared no one when rejecting unsuitable candidates for benefices in his diocese, rebuffing king, pope and magnate alike. In fact, in a letter that circulated separately from the letter collection (but was added by Luard and translated here) during the Middle Ages, Grosseteste rejected a papal provision to a benefice in his diocese in the strongest language: out of obedience to the apostolic see, he must disobey, oppose and rebel against the provision of the pope's nephew. This letter, frequently copied by admiring clerics beginning in the thirteenth century, was the basis of his heroic reputation among medieval reformers from Franciscans to Wycliffites, and is a colourful introduction to the thought of Grosseteste and the concerns of reform-minded clerics of the period. The footnotes and up-to-date bibliography will lead the reader to the secondary literature and studies of individual letters. Indices of Grosseteste's biblical, classical, patristic and medieval quotations are a welcome tool; Luard had noted source quotations but many more are included here.