COLET, JOHN. - English theologian, humanist, and educator, b. 1467 (?), d. 1519. A desire to escape medieval constraints led him, before he was thirty, to travel to the Continent, where he came into contact with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Guillaume Budé, and in Florence with Savonarola. This experience strengthened his religious convictions and broadened his cultural horizons, which he demonstrated shortly after his priestly ordination in 1496 through a series of public lectures on the Pauline Epistles, delivered at Oxford according to exegetical methods aligned with the new directions in New Testament studies.
Later, he became dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and founded St. Paul’s School, where his educational methods—admired for their originality even by Erasmus—were put into practice. Convinced of the need for reform, he nonetheless rejected the idea of breaking with the Church of Rome, to which he remained steadfastly loyal; an accusation of heresy, stirred up by some malcontents, was not pursued by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was well aware of Colet’s perfectly orthodox intentions. His writings were first published collectively in London by J. H. Lupton (1867–76). His historical significance lies chiefly in having, together with John Fisher, Thomas More, and other scholars, initiated the humanist movement in England.