A Small Echo of Italy
We should not be surprised that the passionate scholarship of Italy in the age of Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, with its classical culture and art, found only a small echo in England. English merchants paid little attention to literature and books, and the nobles felt no shame in being illiterate. By Thomas More's estimate, forty percent of the English people could read at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Church and its dependent universities were still the only patrons and shelters of scholars.
It is to England's credit that in these conditions, amid the great disorders and anxieties of war, men such as Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer and Colet arose, in whose hearts the fire of Italy took hold. They carried so much of its warmth and light to England that when Erasmus, the absolute ruler of the European world of letters, set foot on the island in 1499, he felt at home.
Critics and Defenders
The humanists, who devoted themselves to the study of Christian and pagan culture, were criticized by a few born "Trojans" who feared what these "Greeks" brought from Italy. But great churchmen came boldly to their defense: William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester; William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester; and later Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Travelers to Italy
From the time Manuel Chrysoloras came to England (1408), young English scholars caught a fever whose cure, they felt, was study or revelry in the cities of Italy.
- Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, returned from Italy with an endless passion for collecting manuscripts, and gathered a library that later passed to the Bodleian.
- John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, studied at Ferrara under Guarino of Verona and at Florence under John Argyropoulos, and brought home more books than morals.
- William Tilley, a monk of Selling, studied at Padua, Bologna and Rome (1464–1467). He returned with many classical, pagan works and taught Greek at Canterbury.
Thomas Linacre
One of Tilley's eager students was Thomas Linacre. When Tilley went to Italy again in 1487, Linacre went with him and stayed there twelve years. He studied under Poliziano and Chalcondyles at Florence, edited and published Greek works at Venice for Aldus Manutius, and on his return to England was so accomplished in every science that Henry VII called him to court to teach Arthur, Prince of Wales.
Linacre, Grocyn and Latimer created an "Oxford movement" for the study of classical languages and literature. Their lectures inspired John Colet and Thomas More and even drew the attention of Erasmus himself. Among the English humanists Linacre was the most comprehensive and best known. He knew Latin and Greek as well as his mother tongue. He translated Galen, advanced scientific medicine, founded the Royal College of Physicians, and left his fortune to endow chairs of medicine at Oxford and Cambridge. Erasmus says that through him the new learning was so firmly established in Britain that the English no longer needed to go to Italy to acquire it.
William Grocyn
William Grocyn was forty when he joined Linacre at Florence. In 1492 he returned to England, rented rooms at Exeter College, Oxford, and began teaching Greek daily, despite protests from conservatives who feared that the original text of the New Testament might undermine the thousand-year-old authoritative Latin translation of Jerome, the Vulgate.
Grocyn was certainly a man of orthodox faith and spotless moral life. In the humanist movement in England there never arose, as with some scholars of the Italian Renaissance, anti-Christian ideas, even in hidden form. The English humanists valued the Christian heritage above all intellectual refinement and rational training, and the greatest of them felt no anxiety about being dean of St. Paul's.
John Colet
John Colet was the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, a rich merchant with twenty-two children who twice served as Lord Mayor of London. At Oxford, under the teaching of Linacre and Grocyn, young Colet caught the humanist fever. He "eagerly devoured" the works of Plato, Plotinus and Cicero. In 1493 he traveled to France and Italy. In Paris he met Erasmus and Budé, in Florence the teaching of Savonarola stirred him, and in Rome the frivolity and licentiousness of the cardinals and Pope Alexander VI shocked him.
When he returned to England, his father's wealth had passed to him. With it he could have risen high in politics or commerce, but he preferred the "scholar's" life at Oxford above all. He ignored the tradition that only priests were entitled to teach theology and lectured on the Epistle to the Romans. He replaced scholastic philosophy with criticism, correction and exposition of the Vulgate.
His countless listeners and readers were revived by his new style of exposition and his stress that true theology is a life well lived. Erasmus, who met him at Oxford in 1499, describes him as a saint constantly exposed to temptations of lust and luxury who nevertheless "never cast off the crown of purity until his death." Colet rebuked the lax monks of his day and gave his wealth to charitable and religious purposes.
A Loyal Critic of the Church
He was a faithful opponent of the Church, loving it despite its faults. He revered the literal and historical truth of the Book of Genesis but did not doubt that the Bible was inspired. He held the authority of Scripture above the traditions of the Church. He did not think scholastic philosophy harmful to Christianity in itself, set no value on priestly confession, and viewed Christ's real presence in the bread of the Eucharist with doubt. In these respects he was a model and forerunner of the later religious reformers.
Colet rejected the worldliness of the clergy. He wrote that if the highest bishop, whom we call pope, is a worthy and approved bishop, he does nothing of himself except by the divine will within him. But if he acts on his own will, he is a poisonous creature. For years things had gone on in this way, until now all members of the Church of Christ were poisoned. Unless Christ himself helps, our shattered Church is not far from death. He lamented the wicked impiety of shameless priests, of whom his age was full, who fear no God and rush from the embrace of harlots to the Church, to Christ's house of worship, and to the worship of God. One day, he warned, the hand of divine vengeance would fall on them.
Dean of St. Paul's
In 1504 Colet was appointed Dean of St. Paul's. From the high pulpit of that church he spoke against the sale of bishoprics and against one man holding several benefices. His sermons aroused furious opponents, but Archbishop Warham took him under his protection.
Linacre, Grocyn and More, whom Erasmus's visit had inspired, free of conservatism and of the scholastic philosophy of Oxford, now settled in London, and before long they were supported by the young Prince Henry, later Henry VIII. Everything seemed ready for an English Renaissance, one that, together with a religious reform movement, was quiet and without noise.