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LEARNING AND EDUCATION 531
English schoolrooms. Even so, the grammar schools of the
country soon came to depend largely upon the universities for
their better
qualified schoolmasters, and the grammar schools
of Oxford to be noted for their masters. John Cornwall (fl.
1345) and Richard Pencridge (f. 1365) were credited with
having brought English back into the schools in place of
French. It was said ofJohn Leland (d. 1428) 'ut
rosafosjlorum,
sic Leland grammaticorum .
The importance ofclassical studies, including a knowledge
of Greek and Hebrew was appreciated by Robert Grosseteste
(d. 1253), first chancellor of Oxford and founder of its Euro->
pean reputation for the study ofphilosophy and theology. But
there were few after him, as Roger Bacon complained, who
followed his lead. Besides Bacon himself, William de la Mare,
also a Franciscan, deserves to be remembered as a thirteenth^
century student of Hebrew. The Convocation of Canterbury
in 1320 gave orders for the carrying out of the decree of the
council of Vienne (1311) that the leading universities should
make provision for the teaching of Greek and Hebrew; Wor^
cester priory is known to have complied with this order by con^
tributing its quota towards the salary of a magister grecorum at
Oxford. Latin translations, and indifferent ones at that, were
accepted as adequate media for the introduction ofthe greater
of the works of Aristotle and his Arabian comx
knowledge
mentators that revolutionized
philosophical and theological
studies in the universities in the course ofthe thirteenth century.
St. Edmund of Abingdon, later archbishop of Canterbury, is
credited with having been the first to lecture on Aristotle's
Sopbistici Ekncbf at Oxford. Not much later (c. 1209) John
Blund was lecturing on the 13m mturales. But at Paris the
opinions of Aristotle soon came under suspicion; public
lectures on his Wm naturaks and Metaphysics were banned by
1210. Nevertheless the
'reception' of Aristotle continued to
make progress at Oxford, greatly
to the benefit of the studies of
Oxford masters in arts and theology. In this development, as
in many others, the potent influence of Grosseteste is discern^
ible. The first surviving list of works set for the arts course at