Pseudo-Grosseteste (fl. c.1265–75)

‘Pseudo-Grosseteste’ is the name given to the unidentified author of a philosophic encyclopedia written in England in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. Like other encyclopedias of that time, the Summa philosophiae (Summa of Philosophy) marshals an astonishing array of facts, principles and arguments in every field of philosophic interest, from accounts of truth or cosmologies through analyses of rational and animal souls to the properties of minerals. The Summa is distinguished not by its range of interests, but by its clear sense of its own purposes. The author intends to arrange the history and the particular doctrines of philosophy within a hierarchy built according to Augustinian principles.