Colet, John

Colet, John (kŏ`lĭt), 1467?–1519, English humanist and theologian. While studying on the Continent (1493–96), Colet became interested in classical scholarship and in theories of education. After his residency at Oxford as a lecturer, in 1505 he became dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. He planned the new St. Paul's School (1509) and endowed it from his private fortune. With William Lily, the school's first headmaster, and Erasmus, he collaborated on a Latin grammar that was later called the Eton grammar and used by generations of schoolboys. Colet did not, himself, break with the Roman Church, but his ideas on church reform were influential later. Most of his writings were unpublished until the late 19th cent.

Bibliography

See biography by J. H. Lupton (2d ed. 1961); F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (1913, repr. 1971).

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Colet, John

(born 1466/67, London, Eng.—died Sept. 16, 1519, Sheen, Surrey) British theologian. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Oxford and extended his studies abroad. Returning to England, he became ordained, sometime before 1499. He was appointed dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1504 and founded St. Paul's School around 1509. One of the chief Tudor humanists, he promoted Renaissance culture in England and influenced such humanists as Desiderius Erasmus, St. Thomas More, and Thomas Linacre.

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Colet, John 

Born about 1467; died Sept. 16,1519, in Sheen, Surrey. English humanist and theologian; one of the forerunners of the Reformation.

Colet is known as the head of the Oxford circle of humanists. He gave a critical interpretation of Biblical texts in the course of lectures delivered beginning in 1497 at Oxford University which were devoted to the epistles of St. Paul. Colet exerted a significant influence on the formation of the world views of Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam. In 1505 he became the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. In 1509 he opened a school connected with the cathedral; the school was founded on humanistic principles of education. In 1513 he became the chaplain at the court of Henry VIII. Without breaking with Catholicism, Colet exposed the morals of the clergy and opposed secret confession, the worship of icons, clerical celibacy, and monasticism.