John Colet
born 1467, London
died Sept. 16, 1519, Sheen, Surrey, Eng.
theologian and founder of St. Paul’s School,
London, who, as one of the chief Tudor
Humanists, promoted Renaissance culture in
England.
The son of a prosperous merchant who had been
Lord Mayor of London, Colet studied mathematics
and philosophy at Oxford and then travelled and
studied for three years in France and Italy. He
returned to England c. 1496 and was ordained in
1498. He lectured at Oxford University, to which
he invited Desiderius Erasmus, the brilliant
Humanist of the northern Renaissance. In
addition to Erasmus, Colet collaborated with and
influenced such prime Humanists as Sir Thomas
More and Thomas Linacre, prototype of the
scholar-physicians of the Renaissance. Colet was
appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1504
and founded St. Paul’s School c. 1509.
Colet’s devotion to Humanism was diversely
expressed. His insistence that the classics be
taught diffused a sounder knowledge of Greek and
Latin and of ancient life and thought. He
revered the 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus,
founder of the Neoplatonist school; Marsilio
Ficino, one of the leaders of Renaissance
Platonism; and Dionysius the Areopagite,
allegedly an early Christian convert regarded as
the author of The Mystical Theology of the
Celestial Hierarchies, on which Colet wrote a
treatise. His contempt for contemporary
ecclesiastical abuses was so intense that his
denunciation of the sins of the clergy caused
him to be suspected of heresy.
Colet’s works, mainly unpublished until the
19th-century editions of J.H. Lupton (1867–76),
include commentaries on Romans and Corinthians
and treatises on the sacraments and the church.
With Erasmus and John Lily, he wrote a Latin
grammar that was widely used for many years.
