Tra biblioteca in frammenti e laboratorio di scrittura: i marginalia di Roberto Grossatesta nelle testimonianze di Tommaso Gascoigne e Guglielmo di Alnwick

This study examines two key sources that illuminate the role and significance of marginal writings in Robert Grosseteste’s intellectual practice. The first is the set of numerous references – many of them marginalia themselves – inserted by the theologian and Oxford chancellor Thomas Gascoigne (d. 1457) into manuscripts bequeathed by the Bishop of Lincoln to the library of the Franciscan convent in Oxford. These notes help identify Grosseteste’s hand in glosses and indexing marks scattered across the theological and biblical manuscripts he once owned. The second source is a notable testimony by the Franciscan master William of Alnwick (d. 1333), who offers a detailed account of Grosseteste’s working method involving marginalia and cedulae. He provides specific insights into the structure of one of Grosseteste’s philosophical works, the Commentary on the Physics, which he describes as a striking example of a text assembled from autograph glosses. According to Alnwick, these additions included not only genuine interpretive notes but also passages he characterizes as ‘inauthentic’ or ‘non-authoritative’. Taken together, these testimonies demonstrate how glosses and marginalia served as essential instruments in Grosseteste’s scholarly activity – as an author, commentator, and translator.