Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/130

 BISHOP GROSSETESTE AND HIS TIMES.

I.

 to bring Grosseteste before you as a typical Englishman, an example of that quality for which his countrymen have always been conspicuous—I mean devotion to duty at all costs and in spite of every kind of difficulty. Besides this, Grosseteste was not only a man of learning, but he illustrates a very important period of English history, a period with marked characteristics of its own. Still, to me the great interest of his life lies in the fact that he earnestly tried to do his duty, to speak and to act in defence of truth and righteousness, during a life spent amidst difficulties and quarrels that were not of his own seeking.

The period in which he lived is one of exceptional interest, because it was then that the Papacy exercised its greatest influence in England. I will not enter into the question of the origin of the papal power; it is enough at present to say that it rested upon a noble idea, upon a conception of Europe as one commonwealth, and the Church as a Universal Church under one earthly and visible head. To this conception of a united Europe, national feeling was entirely