The Bishop's Eye: Robert Grosseteste and the Architecture of Light

This paper examines the influence of the writings on light by the thirteenth century Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste. on the architecture and iconography of Lincoln Cathedral. It argues that Grosseteste's ideas, in the fields of optics and cosmology, provided an important point of reference for developinga redemptive notion of vision. This was to influence the emergence of a perspective understanding of space in the Middle Ages that assumed as its ‘raison-d’ être’ the existence of an omnipotent and merciful God. Light constituted the principal metaphysical realm in this relationship, defining a measurable, and therefore communicable, domain analogous to the celestial hierarchy.