Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/328

 of the same year, states that Colet was his junior by two or three months. He was the eldest child of eleven sons and eleven daughters, all of whom died before 1498. His father, Sir Henry Colet [q.v.], was twice lord mayor of London. His mother was Christian, daughter of Sir John Knevet of Ashwellthorpe by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Constantine de Clifton, second baron Clifton. She lived to a great age, and was alive as late as 1520, the year following her surviving son's death ( Opera, iii. 455). Colet frequently mentions her with great tenderness in his letters, and took his friends to visit her at Stepney.

It is probable that Colet was for a time a scholar in St. Anthony's school in Threadneedle Street. About 1483 he went to Oxford, but the date of his matriculation is lost, and his college has not been identified with certainty. Several of his surname are described by Wood as students at Magdalen College near the close of the fifteenth century, and it has been thence inferred that Colet was a Magdalen scholar. After seven years of severe study Colet is stated to have proceeded M. A. at Oxford, but the exact date is not known. At an early age Colet resolved to enter the clerical profession, and in accordance with a common contemporary practice his father and other wealthy relatives conferred on him a number of benefices while he was still in his minority, and before his ordination. On 6 Aug. 1485 Sir William Knevet and Joan his wife, relatives of his mother, instituted him to the rectory of St. Mary Dennington, Suffolk, which he held till his death. About the same time Sir Henry Colet's influence at Stepney procured for his son the rich vicarage of St. Dunstan and All Saints ; the rectory of St. Nicholas, Thurning, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire, which was in Sir Henry's gift, was conferred on him on 30 Sept. 1490, but Colet resigned this benefice three years later. On 5 March 1493-4 Colet became prebendary of Botevant at York, and the prebend of Goodeaster in the collegiate church of St. Martin-le-Grand and the free chapel of Hilberworth, Norfolk, were presented to him in early life.

Although Colet doubtless benefited by the emoluments of these preferments, there is no reason to suppose that he performed any of the duties attached to them, for none of which was he at the moment legally qualified. His studies absorbed all his attention. There was no part of mathematics in which 'he was not seen above his years,' and he read, besides the ordinary scholastic philosophy, all the classical literature to which a knowledge of Latin gave him access. Cicero was the favourite Latin author of his youth, but he explored Plato and Plotinus in recently published Latin translations, 'conferred and paralleled them, perusing the one as a commentary to the other.' About 1493 his zeal for learning induced him to undertake a continental tour, resembling that undertaken very shortly before by the Oxford tutors, Grocyn and Linacre. He went through France to Italy, and although no details of the journey are known, we learn that he mastered, while sojourning in foreign universities, the works of the fathers, and formed a decided preference for Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite, Origen, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome, over St. Augustine, Duns Scotus, Aquinas, and the other mediaeval schoolmen who were still in vogue in the English universities. He also studied canon and civil law, together with all the books on English history and literature that came in his way, and probably made his first acquaintance with Greek. Colet told Erasmus that he met in Italy 'certain monks, of true wisdom and piety ;' he was obviously impressed by the strange contrast which their lives presented to the prevailing ecclesiastical corruption, and it has been suggested that he visited Savonarola at Florence. The sympathetic intimacy which he subsequently exhibited with the writings of two other contemporary Florentines, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, supports the inference, but there is no positive evidence to confirm it. On returning to England Colet stayed at Paris, and met there the French historian, Gaguinus, author of 'De Origine et Gestis Francorum,' 1495. Through Gaguinus Colet first heard of Erasmus, who was also in Paris at the time ; but the two scholars, who became the closest friends a few years later, failed to meet on this occasion.

About the spring of 1496 Colet was again in England. On 17 Dec. 1497 he was ordained deacon, and on 25 March 1497-8 priest, but he did not confine himself to ecclesiastical work. He took up his residence at Oxford, and there delivered, in a voluntary capacity, a remarkable course of public lectures in Latin on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. They were probably begun in Michaelmas term 1497. His ease as a speaker and his originality as a commentator rapidly brought a large audience around him, includingthe most distinguished tutors at the university. Colet abandoned the scholastic and allegorical interpretation of scripture sentence by sentence or word by word, for a free critical exposition of the obvious meaning of the text as a whole. He illustrated the apostle's personal character; compared St. Paul's references to the state of Roman society with Suetonius ; rejected much of the recognised doctrine of verbal inspira-