 Southern’s important study had the salutary effect of forcing a reexamination of the assumptions upon which earlier accounts of Grosseteste’s life rested, but his conclusions remain contentious. Joseph Goering, after looking closely at the content of Grosseteste’s writings and the documentary evidence, concludes that “the evidence intimates that he was on the continent along with the bishop of Hereford and other English Churchmen in exile before 1215, that he returned to the diocese of Hereford when the interdict was lifted, and that he continued his diocesan service and his teaching as a master of arts, at Hereford or elsewhere, into the 1220s” (Goering 1995, 26).  Yet Goering thinks that the sources used in Grosseteste’s theological writings, as well as Grosseteste’s known ties with important Parisian thinkers, best support the view that Grosseteste’s study of scholastic theology—a casual and gradual process in his view—included at least some time studying in Paris in the 1220s, possibly around 1225 after receiving his substantial prebend in Abbotsley, which made (and perhaps was intended to make) such a course of study possible. Goering observes that there is no concrete evidence that Grosseteste taught at Oxford prior to the late 1220s or that his teaching in the secular schools at Oxford was in theology rather than the arts.  Grosseteste’s association with Oxford and chancellorship may indeed have only been in the late 1220s as a master of arts—the fact that he was a master in the lower faculty of arts, not the higher faculty of theology, would perhaps explain why he was not permitted to be called chancellor.