Colet, John (1466–1519)

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COLET, JOHN
(1466–1519)

John Colet, the Christian humanist and English educator, was the founder of St. Paul's School for Boys, leader of the "Oxford Reformers" Sir Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus, and chief transmitter of Florentine Platonism from Italy to such English Renaissance figures as Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton. The son of a London lord mayor, Colet took a master's degree from Oxford (1490) and then explored Plato, Plotinus, and Origen in Latin translation. From 1493 to 1496, he traveled in France and Italy. The appealing tradition that he studied in Florence under Marsilio Ficino was shattered in 1958 when Sears Jayne discovered correspondence between Colet and Ficino in a copy of Ficino's Epistolae (1495) at All Soul's College, Oxford. This correspondence shows that Colet never visited Florence or met Ficino.

Upon his return to Oxford in 1496, Colet delivered Latin lectures on St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians. The visiting Erasmus and others applauded as Colet, frequently quoting the Florentine Platonists, propounded a new "historical approach" to the study of Scripture. In 1504 Colet was appointed dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, where, contrary to custom he preached frequently and in English. His congregation included the young lawyer Thomas More.

Colet's penchant for controversy is illustrated by his Convocation Sermon (1512), in which he wrathfully condemned his own bishops for their moral laxness. Charges of heresy provoked by this sermon were dismissed by his friend Archbishop Warham, but Colet was soon again involved in controversy. He attacked the war policy of Henry VIII and was summoned to court; but Henry, after hearing Colet's arguments, was so dazzled that he made the dean a royal chaplain.

Colet's chief contribution to philosophy was his remarkably successful attempt to blend pagan and Christian thought. In practice Colet followed the approach of St. Augustine, who argued that pagan philosophy, when properly controlled, is a useful handmaiden for Christianity. By pagan philosophy, Colet understood especially Florentine Platonism, a weird conglomeration of original Platonism, later Neoplatonism, and private Florentine speculation on man, love, beauty, and mystical union. Much of this speculation came to Colet through Ficino's Theologia Platonica (1482) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Heptaplus (1489), both of which he admiringly quoted or paraphrased in his scriptural treatises.

Despite his debt to the Florentines, Colet avoided the heretical Florentine approach which proclaimed that pagan philosophy and Christianity are equal and even identical. Instead, Colet was careful, as was his model Augustine, to purge pagan views of heretical "errors" before merging them with Christian doctrine. For example, Colet favored the Platonic soul-body terminology over Paul's spirit-flesh, but rejected Plato's dictum that the soul alone comprises the total personality. Again, Colet accepted the Neoplatonic view that Creation was a merging of form and matter, yet he was careful to emphasize that this form is not an emanationist overflow from God's essence, but rather an entity created by God outside himself. In the realm of redemption, Colet accepted Plato's position that only a harmonized soul can govern the body, but he deviated from Plato in insisting that such harmonization can come only from the Holy Spirit's infusion of sanctifying grace. Even in the delicate area of mysticism, Colet borrowed from the Symposium the view that love transforms the lover into the object loved.

Whether Colet was as successful in adhering to Catholic as to generally Christian doctrine is a controversial issue. A doctrinal cleavage between Colet and More would seem to be reflected in the Dialogue on Tyndale (1529), where More strongly rebuts a form of religion (described in words almost identical to Colet's Exposition of Romans ), which condemns, as mere shadows, all types of external religion such as sacraments, vestments, and ritual. A comparative study of Colet and More suggests that Colet might have found himself in grave difficulty with Catholic authorities had he lived until the doctrinal reformation of 1534.

Bibliography

During the period 1867–1876, Joseph Hirst Lupton issued five volumes in which he edited Colet's Treatise on Sacraments and translated the remainder of Colet's extant Latin works: two treatises on the Hierarchies of the pseudo-Dionysius (c. 490–550); the lectures on St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians; a similar series on the Epistle to the Romans; a Genesis commentary in the form of Letters to Radulphus ; an exposition (never given as lectures) on the first five chapters of Romans; and On Christ's Mystical Body, the Church. Lupton's translations have been out of print since 1893, but Bernard O'Kelly began modern translations with John Colet's Enarratio Primum S. Pauli Epistolam ad Corinthios (Oxford, 1963). Colet's only English works, the Convocation Sermon and the Right Fruitful Monition pamphlet, are printed in the appendix to Lupton's A Life of John Colet (London: Bell, 1887), still the indispensable biography. Another biographical classic is Frederic Seebohm's The Oxford Reformers (London: Longmans Green, 1867). Colet's influence as educator is detailed in M. F. McDonnell's The History of St. Paul's School for Boys (London, 1909).

Since World War II there has been a revival of interest in Colet's thought, as evidenced by Eugene Rice Jr., "John Colet and the Annihilation of the Natural," in Harvard Theological Review 45 (July 1952): 141–163; Albert Duhamel, "The Oxford Lectures of John Colet," in Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (October 1953): 493–510; Ernest William Hunt, Dean Colet and His Theology (London: Church Historical Society, 1956); Leland Miles, John Colet and the Platonic Tradition (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1961; London, 1962), and Sears Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).