Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/330

 cussions on the schoolmen followed, and the warmth of Colet's attacks upon them and his illustrations of their fatuity directly contributed to Erasmus's distrust of them and later hostility. Late in 1498 the two scholars talked at length of Christ's agony in the garden, and each gave a different explanation. Colet adopted St. Jerome's view, that the agony was not to be confounded with human dread of death, but was Christ's sorrow for the fate of his persecutors. Erasmus contended that Christ's human side was for a time dissociated from the divine, and, while defending his view in a letter written later, adopted the scholastic theory, that scripture was capable of a multiplicity of interpretations. The enunciation of this doctrine called forth strong disapproval on the part of Colet, who insisted on the unity of the Bible's meaning ( Disputatiuncula de Tædio Jesu, in Opera, v. 1265-94). Erasmus's opinion of Colet, although in details they were at times at variance, grew with increase of intimacy. He compared his conversation to Plato's, and represents him as the centre of the little band of Oxford scholars and reformers at the beginning of the sixteenth century which included Grocyn, Linacre, and Thomas More. Much to Colet's regret, Erasmus refused to actively join him in his Oxford labours, and left England for Paris early in 1500.

In the five succeeding years Colet continued his lectures on the New Testament, although few if any of them have reached us. In 1504 his position underwent a great change. Robert Sherborne was translated from the deanery of St. Paul's, London, to the see of St. David's, And Henry VII conferred the vacant deanery on Colet. He had hitherto held all the preferments granted him in his youth, with the exception of the rectory at Thurning and the addition of a prebend in the church of Salisbury, in which he was installed in 1502. But on 26 Jan. 1503-4 he resigned the prebend at St. Martin-le-Grand, and on 21 Sept. 1505 the Stepney vicarage. He proceeded D.D. at Oxford in 1504, and on 5 May 1505 nearly a year after he had settled in London he received the temporalities of the deanery of St. Paul's, together with the prebend of Mora in the same church. Colet led in London the simple life that had characterised him at Oxford. He continued to wear a plain black robe instead of the rich purple vestments of his predecessors; he was frugal in his domestic arrangements, and preached frequently in the cathedral and often in English. His sermons resembled his Oxford lectures, and were often delivered in continuous courses. Colet's removal to London brought him into closer relations with Thomas More, who henceforth called him his spiritual director. Erasmus wrote to congratulate hjs friend on his elevation, sent him a copy of his 'Enchiridion,' which included an account of their discussion on Christ's agony, and expressed a desire to study with him. In 1570 Cornelius Agrippa studied with Colet at the deanery.

The death of his father in October 1505 made Colet the master of a vast fortune, but in the spirit of his tract ' Concerning a good Christian Man's Life,' which he wrote about this date, he contemplated the devotion of his money to public purposes. Meanwhile he improved the services at St. Paul's; invited Grocyn and others to deliver divinity lectures there ; reformed the statutes (28 April 1507) of the mediaeval guild of Jesus, which was associated with the cathedral ; and instituted an inquiry into the history of the numerous chantries at St. Paul's.

By 1509 Colet had resolved to apply a portion of his wealth to the foundation of a new school in St. Paul's Churchyard, where 153 boys, without restriction as to nationality, who could already read and write and were of good capacity, should receive a sound Christian education and a knowledge of Greek as well as of Latin. The site, which he had probably inherited from his father, was at the eastern end of St. Paul's Cathedral, occupied in 1505 by a number of bookbinders' shops. Colet busily superintended the erection of the school house, which embraced a large schoolroom, a small chapel, and dwellings for two masters—a head-master and a sur-master. Facing the street he placed the inscription 'Schola catechizationis pueroruni in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis literis. . . anno Verbi incarnati .' Colet obtained royal license to transfer to the company of the Mercers, with which his father had been identified, a large estate in Buckinghamshire, of the value of 53l. a year, for the masters' salaries (12 July 1511), and to this he added much house property and land in London in 1514 for the provision of a chaplain to teach the boys divinity in English and for other school purposes. He expended in all a sum equivalent to 40,000l. of the money of our own day. Colet wrote some simple precepts for the guidance of the schoolmasters and scholars, and also drew up an English version of the creed and other prayers. The story told by Erasmus of the cruelty with which an unnamed teacher of his acquaintance treated his pupils has been applied to Colet wholly without warrant, and there is every reason to believe that Colet discountenanced severe punishments. The founder chose his friend and the friend of More, William Lilly, to be the first head-master ; induced a sound scholar,