John Colet

John Colet (* 1467 in London, † September 18, 1519 in London) was a British Catholic priest and then a prominent London theologian who was a translator of the New Testament into English, the pioneer of the Reformation in Britain. As a close friend of the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, he founded the Oxford School for the education and formation of Catholic theologians in the spirit of humanist tolerance.

Life

Colets father was the nobleman Sir Henry Colet, who served as mayor twice the official London. His eldest son John was educated in Oxford at St. Anthony's school and at Magdalen College. After graduating with a Master of Arts, he decided to become a priest. Through family connections he was Rector bodies, etc in Dennington, Suffolk, St. Dunstan's, Stepney, and Thurning, Hunts.

1493 to 1496 he undertook a study trip to France and Italy. Here he acquired a basic knowledge of Greek and studied canon and civil law and patristic. During his travel he learned Budaeus ( Guillaume Budé ), know some writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam and the teachings of Savonarola.

After his return to England in 1496 he was ordained and received a position as Dean of London's St Paul's Cathedral. There he read the New Testament in English, which the church had at that time strictly prohibited. He moved so that within six months, tens of thousands audience in and outside of the church building in its spell.

At the same time he lectured at Oxford, his residence, on the Epistles of Paul. Here he solved the usual purely text -based scholastic exegesis, the only annotated single site and tried to compensate each other, in favor of an overall image of the personality of Paul and the intention of his letters. He rejected the favored of the Catholic Church allegorical interpretation of the Bible and represented the other hand, the view that the sense of Scripture is simple and universally translatable, so that even uneducated crowds could understand him.

1498 Erasmus held a guest lecture at Oxford. Colet became friends immediately with him and influenced him in his distance to the traditional Catholic interpretation of the Bible. For five more years continued Colet continued his lectures on the New Testament, until it was made in 1504 for community leaders ( Dean ) of St. Paul. There he led to three days each week, a regular theological lectures in the church. During this time he became a close friend and spiritual adviser of Thomas More.

1505 his father died and bequeathed him a large fortune, which he donated for public tasks. In 1509 he began the construction of the Oxford School for aspiring priests who should be educated there after his humanistic ideas. For this, he used all his remaining assets. Greek was a compulsory subject equal rank with Latin, the former Catholic church language at this school. Colet wrote several textbooks and even oversaw the curriculum under the headmaster William Lilly.

1512 school building was completed. In the same year Colet was reported by his superior bishop at the Vatican for its modern views. But the archbishop Warham hit the display down. Despite his confrontation with conservative church leaders to Colet understood as orthodox and presented his work at the service of the Church.

1514 Colet made ​​a pilgrimage to Canterbury. For the introduction of Bishop Wolsey as cardinal, he preached the sermon. He also served as chaplain to King Henry VIII

In 1518 he completed a new school constitution. The following year, he died on "Welding fever ". He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. On his grave in the south choir of the nave is a stone slab, in which only his name is engraved.

The Oxford School remained at the original location until it moved in 1884 to Hammersmith to a larger building.

Importance

With his English translation of the New Testament Colet was a crucial figure in the Reformation in England. He rejected the clerical hierarchy, but intended it - as well as most subsequent continental reformers - no formal break with the Catholic Church. With its powerful way to preach, he won an enormous popularity even for that time. Because of the back cover under the London aristocracy, he managed to introduce the humanist movement in England without being arrested as a heretic and condemned.

By Thomas Linacre influenced Colet created the first Greek grammar, which was printed in England, but also found on the continent of Europe -wide distribution. His public lectures broke in English on the New Testament humanist and Reformation ideas in England Railway. The breakthrough of the Lutheran Reformation did not live Colet but themselves.

Works

• Convocation Sermon of 1512
• Absoliaissimus de octo orationis partium constructione libellus (Antwerp 1530)
• A righte fruitfull admonition Concerning the order of a good Christian man's life ( 1534)
• Joannis Coleti Theological olim Decani Divi Pauli Aeditio (1527 ): a Latin grammar that was most Latin textbooks of the 16th and 17th centuries to reason and often reprinted was
• Rudimenta Gram Matices (London 1539): a first Greek grammar, also often reprinted
• Two treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius (1869 )
• An Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans ( ed. 1873)
• An Exposition of St. Paul 's first Epistle to the Corinthians ( ed. 1874)
• Letters to Radulphus ( ed. 1876)
• Statutes of St. Paul's School ( 1518, often reprinted )