Grosseteste was already an elderly man, with an established reputation, when he became a bishop. As an ecclesiastical statesman, he showed the same fiery zeal and versatility of which he had given proof in his academic career; but the general tendency of modern writers has been to exaggerate his political and ecclesiastical services, and to neglect his performance as a scientist, an astrologer, and scholar. The opinion of his own age, as expressed by Matthew Paris and Roger Bacon, was very different. His contemporaries, while admitting the excellence of his intentions as a statesman, lay stress upon his defects of temper and discretion. Grosseteste was known to be somewhat critical towards everyone, and was known to often express his opinions regardless of status. Some of these conflicts involve the King, Abbot of Westminster and Pope Innocent. His morals were high and he recognised that even those of the church could be corrupt and worked to fight against that corruption. But they see in him the pioneer of a literary and scientific movement; not merely a great ecclesiastic who patronised learning in his leisure hours, but the first mathematician and physicist of his age. He anticipated, in these fields of thought, some of the striking ideas to which Roger Bacon subsequently gave a wider currency.