John Colet and Sir Thomas More - Part One Transcript Date: Tuesday, 9 June 2009 - 1:00PM Location: Barnard's Inn Hall Dean John Colet & Sir Thomas More Professor Tim Connell We are commemorating John Colet and Sir Thomas More this year because of their links with the Mercers' Company, which both of them joined in 1509. They were first-class City men: Colet was the son of Sir Henry Colet, who was twice Lord Mayor of London and, of course, he became Dean of St Paul's. More was the son of a judge, a student at Lincoln's Inn, and undersheriff from 1510 to 1518. He also lodged for four years with the Carthusians in the Charterhouse near the Barbican. But if Sir Thomas was a man for all seasons, then Colet was one of the greatest men of his age. The two were close friends (Colet was actually More's confessor) and they made a massive contribution to the times in which they lived, a contribution indeed which has survived to this day. More, of course, could add diplomacy, government service and the world of letters to his many attributes, not to mention his time as Speaker of the House of Commons, a highly respected position (in those days at least). Colet studied at Oxford, as did More, who was high steward for both ancient universities, so it is not surprising that he should hold strong views on education, as of course did Colet, whose great achievement of founding St Paul's School we are also recognising today. And More was a great proponent of a sound education, for girls as well as boys. His daughter, usually known by her married name of Margaret Roper, became not only a highly qualified scholar in Latin and Greek as well as theology, but she was also one of the first women in England to appear in print. She was also, may I add, a translator of great skill, who should perhaps be better known in her own right, and not just as someone who was determined to keep the memory of her father alive, and who indeed dealt with the critical final years of More's life with dignity, tact and courage. More and Colet would have been great men in any period of history, so it is hardly surprising that they met and became friends with the other great spirits of the age. Of these, Erasmus must stand out most clearly, as his thinking on matters of theology was perhaps more advanced (and even far-reaching) than that of either the young scholar whom he met at Oxford (Colet) or the young lawyer (More) whom he met a couple of years later in London. He was introduced by his old tutors William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, educationalists and thinkers who also merit greater recognition and esteem than I think is normally accorded to them. Also important was William Lilye, a pioneer of Greek learning (and author of a Latin primer that was to stay in print for three centuries) and who was to become the first High Master of St Paul's. The common denominator in all of this was the Renaissance, and Humanist thinking, which revolved around the study of Greek, with all the possibilities that this offered in terms of novel fields of study, the re-discovery of the Classics - and the impact that this would have on the Reformation and all their lives. Linacre is critical as he may have been the first scholar of Greek in England, and he actually taught Erasmus.[i] Lilye is also a key figure: slightly older than the others (he was born in 1468), he went on a pilgrimage to Rome and visited Rhodes on his way back. There he came into contact with the many Greek scholars who had been displaced by the capture of Constantinople in 1453. He then studied in Rome and Venice and so brought a wealth of learning back with him.[ii] These men were living in an age of massive change and no little danger, a time when so much had been ground down by war and lengthy conflict: the Wars of the Roses and the fall of the Plantagenets were a recent memory, and Perkin Warbeck was not executed until 1499.[iii] Thomas More was even brought up in the house of a man who was a veteran of the wars himself.[iv] Not only was the system of government reeling from rivalry and Civil War (not unlike the Labour party today), but much of the old order was in decay with the rise of the trade guilds which affected commercial life as well as foreign relations. Change was in the air across Europe and beyond: the Portuguese were in the process of opening up trade to the East, thereby challenging the former hegemony of the Venetians, already greatly weakened and threatened by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The Spanish were making momentous discoveries in the West; Pope Alexander VI (himself a Spaniard and also known to history as the first of the Borgia popes) divided the world between Portugal and Spain in 1494 with his Treaty of Tordesillas. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera's De Orbe Novo was not published in full until 1530, but his first publication dates from 1511 when he was made chronicler to the Council of the Indies. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Dominican friar who informed the world of the suffering of the Indians with his Breve Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias ('Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies'), was pivotal in creating the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty in the New World, and which was pounced upon by Protestant states as proof of Catholic iniquity.[v] This heady and seemingly endless range of new discoveries and intellectual challenges in a period of unprecedented change had an inevitable impact on the position of the Catholic Church across Europe: Savonarola was executed for condemning corruption in the Church in 1498; Luther's 95 Theses appeared in 1517, at about the same time as Ulrich Zwingli became the driving force behind Protestantism in Switzerland. These trends may perhaps be seen as the culmination of a process going back to the Czech theologian Jan Huss who was burned at the stake in 1415, not to mention the longstanding history of the Lollards in England, who had been persecuted since the time of Henry IV. [vi] A key element in the growing ferment for change was the advent of printing. The spread of new ideas was undoubtedly helped by the speed with which ideas could be communicated, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Geneva became a centre for religious change as well as printing. In England, the key issue was the translation of the Bible by John Wycliffe into English as far back as 1382, and more importantly for the era of More and Colet, the Tyndale Bible of 1526 [vii]. It is of particular significance as it drew on both Greek and Hebrew sources, in much the same way as the great Polyglot Bible of Cardinal Cisneros at Alcalá de Henares is printed with Aramaic, Latin, Greek and Hebrew in parallel columns.[viii] Colet himself began to translate parts of the New Testament from the Greek, which he then read from the pulpit at St Paul's Cross to crowds which were said to number 20,000. This brought him into conflict with his own bishop Richard Fitzjames and at one point there was even concern that he could be charged with heresy, though this may have been triggered more by his unpopularity for attempting to reform the day- to-day running of the cathedral than any deeper matters of theology. More, it should be remembered, was no mean translator himself. In fact, he came to prominence at an early age with a masterful translation of Pico della Mirandola[ix]. However, as Chancellor he relentlessly pursued heretics and in particular those who were responsible for the clandestine distribution of Tyndale's Bible, and he engaged in bitter disputes with Tyndale in matters of theology. Both men published accusations and refutations in fiery language (at times almost literally, considering the fate of some of the people caught with the Bibles). More's bitter opposition to heresy and fundamental change in the Church may seem strange in the light of the more moderate views expounded in Utopia, where freedom of conscience is tolerated. However, it would appear that More could not in all conscience abandon the old ways and he viewed both dissent within the Church and conflict between Christian kings with equal concern because of their threat to stability and the established order. This outlook perhaps harked back to folk memories of the recent wars and the suffering of so many people on the Continent of Europe in the name of religion. John Colet did not live long enough to have to face that dilemma. He died in 1519 of the sweating sickness, but not without having seen the successful launch of his school, which had widespread support, ironically perhaps, as it supported the New Learning, encouraged the study of Greek, and laid the foundation for the many great schools which were to emerge in the sixteenth century. It is worth reflecting briefly on how he (and indeed, any of us) might react to a situation in which there was no option to take sides or even make a stand. What would any of us do if politics in this country came to the point where UKIP and the BNP were the only parties we could vote for? It is a dilemma which may perhaps be summed up by Foxe's Book of Martyrs on the one hand and, on the other, the canonisation by Pope Paul VI in 1970 of the Forty English Martyrs.[x] Someone to admire in this context is a near contemporary of both Colet and More: John Feckenham, the last mitred abbot of Westminster Abbey to sit in Parliament.