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Sapientia and Stultitia in John Colet's Commentary

on First Corinthians

Jamie A. Gianoutsos

To cite this article: Jamie A. Gianoutsos (2019) Sapientia and Stultitia in John Colet's
Commentary on First Corinthians, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 21:2, 109-125, DOI:
10.1080/14622459.2019.1612979

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2019.1612979

Published online: 13 May 2019.

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REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW
2019, VOL. 21, NO. 2, 109–125
https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2019.1612979

Sapientia and Stultitia in John Colet’s Commentary on First

Corinthians
Jamie A. Gianoutsos
Mount St Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
While John Colet, friend of Erasmus and founder of St Paul’s School, John Colet; 1 Corinthians;
London, was himself widely read in Classical and pagan authors, he humanism; reform; wisdom;
famously characterized pagan books as having the ‘savour of the Augustine
Demon’ and exhorted minor clergy to reject human or secular
wisdom. This article seeks to resolve the apparent tension
between Colet’s disparagement of human wisdom in his
commentary on First Corinthians and his own use of pagan
learning and humanist activities. Through a close analysis of
Colet’s understanding of human and divine wisdom and human
stultitia (foolishness) in the commentary, the article argues that
Colet’s principal concern in reproaching human wisdom (sapientia)
was the moral purity of his audience. The article concludes by
considering how Colet’s view of secular wisdom, thus conceived,
represented an early expression of his commitment to religious,
ecclesiastical and moral reform.

Introduction
‘Next Monday, at the usual time and place, John Colet will try to expound, as best he can
with God’s help, St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.’1 At Oxford in the late 1490s,
Colet (c.1467‒1519) presented a series of lectures on the Pauline epistles, including
Romans and First Corinthians. Colet’s public biblical exegesis was in many ways distinc-
tive for its time. He presented his lectures for free to the public and in a homiletic rather
than academic or scholastic style. Endeavouring to discover the original intent of Paul’s
teaching for first-century Christians, Colet’s exegesis stressed the literal and historical
sense of Scripture.2 This method had been privileged by some biblical interpreters as
early as the twelfth century, and found increasing support from anti-scholastic and huma-
nist reformers in the sixteenth century.3 Colet never published his lectures, although
prompted to do so by friends such as Erasmus.4 Only his detailed notes survived,

CONTACT Jamie A. Gianoutsos gianoutsos@msmary.edu

1
Quoted in Jayne, Colet and Ficino, 130: ‘Divi Pauli epistolam quae est prima ad Corinthios Jo[annes] Colet die lune
proxime sequente quam melius poterit deo aspirante conabitur expl[an]are, loco et hora solita.’
2
In a later letter, he emphasized that the Holy Scriptures bring forth ‘one only sense, and that the truest.’ See Hunt, Dean
Colet and his Theology, 91. Cf. Adams, Better Part of Valor, 21; Gleason, John Colet, 108‒9.
3
For discussions of the tradition of biblical exegesis in this period and prior, see McKim, ed., “Biblical Interpretation,” 26.
For Colet, see Arnold, Dean John Colet, 25‒6; Hunt, Colet and His Theology, 89.
4
Erasmus, Letter to John Colet, 1504, in Erasmus, Opus epistolarum, vol. 1, 404.

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

110 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

discovered in the ‘most secret place of his library’ after his death in 1519.5 The above
reminder, which Colet had scribbled at the bottom of a flyleaf in his copy of Marsilio
Ficino’s Epistolae, is one of the few extant indicators of where his lectures, now called
his Commentary on First Corinthians, originated.
Scholarship on Colet’s theology has historically centred upon debates concerning his
proto-Protestant or Catholic credentials, beginning as early as the sixteenth century
when John Foxe and Thomas Harding disputed his religious legacy.6 Contemporary
scholarship mostly has laid this debate to rest by deeming Colet a traditionalist, pre-
Reformation Catholic and a pious Christian humanist, but lingering questions remain
over Colet’s activities and theology as an ‘evangelical,’ ‘modernist,’ or ‘reformer.’7
While these contested labels have brought new focus on Colet’s sermons and their
call for ecclesiastical piety and reform at St Paul’s Cathedral, scholars interested in
Colet as a Christian humanist have more often focused on his relationships with
Erasmus and Thomas More and his founding of St Paul’s School with its Erasmian stat-
utes.8 Colet spent roughly twenty years connected with university life, obtaining Bach-
elor and Masters of Arts degrees at Cambridge, and then spending nine years lecturing
and studying divinity at Oxford.9 Between Cambridge and Oxford, he travelled to
France and Italy, where Erasmus claimed he devoted himself ‘entirely to the study of
the sacred writers.’10 In 1504, after completing his academic studies and lectures, he
was appointed Dean of St Paul’s, where he remained until his death in 1519. Colet
founded St Paul’s School around 1509 and afterward delivered several sermons, his
most famous being the Convocation Sermon of 1511/12 that attacked heresies within
the Church through the text, ‘Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind.’11
In view of Colet’s dedication to the university, his circle of friends, and his later found-
ing of a humanist school, the apparently anti-intellectual content of his Commentary on
First Corinthians has appeared unusual. In the commentary, Colet attacked human
wisdom by focusing on Paul’s question: ‘Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the
world?’12 He postulated a steep divide between human wisdom, characterized as secular
and even false, and divine wisdom, which he deemed true and absolute. Moreover,
Colet’s Commentary denigrated the use of ratio for understanding Christian mysteries
and disparaged any mixture of pagan philosophy and scriptural understanding
Do not become readers of philosophers and companions of demons. All that belongs to
the truth is contained in the splendid, the plentiful table of Holy Scripture. The mind

5
John Bale, Illustrium maioris Brittanniae scriptorium summarium (1548), fol. 214v, quoted by O’Kelly in Colet, Commentary
on First Corinthians (hereafter cited as CFC), “Introduction”, 10.
6
Arnold, Dean John Colet, 3‒7.
7
An excellent account of the historiography is by Nodes, “Personal, Societal, and Literary Reform,” 547‒51.
8
For sermons, reform, and St Paul’s, see ibid., 552‒70; Arnold, “John Colet, Preaching and Reform”; Kaufman, “Colet’s
Opus de sacramentis.” For Colet’s friendships, see Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers of 1498; Kaufman, “John Colet and
Erasmus’ ‘Enchiridion’.” Lochman, “Colet and Erasmus”; Porter and Thomson, Erasmus and Cambridge, 14‒22. For
Colet as humanist, see Fulton, “The Politics of Renaissance Historicism,” 87‒112; Clebsch, “Colet and the Reformation”;
Hunt, Colet and His Theology, 1‒17; Rieger, “Erasmus, Colet, and the Schoolboy Jesus”; Simon, Education and Society, 67‒
80.
9
Gleason, John Colet, 39‒40.
10
From Erasmus’s account of Colet, quoted in Lupton, Life of Dean Colet, 57.
11
Text from Romans 12:2; for a description of the sermon, see Adams, Better Part, 65‒6; Lupton, Life of Colet, 179‒80.
12
I Corinthians 1:20b. All English biblical citations are from the King James Version.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 111

craving for something to feed on beyond the truth is surely far from healthy, and a
Christless mind.13

Within these claims, Colet appeared to support an anti-rational, fideist theology, positing a
strict divide between reason and revelation, nature and grace. Yet, Colet’s own religious
scholarship within and especially beyond the Commentary on First Corinthians reflected
a partial indebtedness to pagan writers such as Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, Cicero, Ovid, and
Virgil.14 In An Exposition of St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, for example, delivered also as a
series of Oxford lectures in the late 1490s, Colet relied heavily upon Suetonius to recon-
struct the historical conditions surrounding Paul’s famous passage in Romans 13 concern-
ing obedience to secular authorities. As he contended, Paul in this passage ‘covertly teaches
what sort of men the rulers of states ought to be’ and instructs Christians in obedience, for
Paul foresaw that should the wicked magistrates ‘have ever chanced to read his Epistle, it
follows readily that they must needs have been strongly induced to deal mercifully with the
inoffensive Christians, and allow them to remain in the state without injury.’15 Through
historicizing Paul, Colet concluded that the Apostle’s words should be read according
to their rhetorical function in this particular context rather than their literal meaning.
Among studies of Colet as English Catholic reformer and humanist, scholars have paid
inadequate attention to understanding his denigration of human or secular wisdom in the
Commentary, and at times have even misconstrued his view. For instance, Joseph Lupton
and Leland Miles conceded that ‘Colet does not appear at his best’ when disparaging
heathen literature.16 Bernard O’Kelly conjectured:
Perhaps the fascination of a linguistic preoccupation is here influencing [Colet’s] good
sense … What is not dominicum [of the Lord] is demonicum [of the Devil]; a little less impa-
tience with the careful distinctions of Aquinas and other Schoolmen would have helped Colet
here.17

After studying Colet’s marginalia in Ficino’s Epistolae, Sears Jayne concluded that Colet’s
criticism of philosophy was reactionary, spawned by Colet’s realization of the acute differ-
ence between his and Ficino’s point of view.18 Jonathan Arnold has suggested that Colet
did not practice what he preached, for he emphasized the ‘evil of secular literature’ while
reading non-Christian authors himself. More recently, he has highlighted Colet’s

13
‘Nolite fieri vos philosophorum lectores, socii demoniorum. In lauta et copiosa mensa Sacrarum Litterarum continentur
omnia que sunt veritatis. Animus qui avet aliquid quo vescatur preter veritatem certe parum est sanus et sine Christo.’
CFC, 219.
14
In his introduction to Colet’s Opuscula quaedam, Lupton listed the authorities cited by Colet in his Pauline commentaries,
and their frequency: Origen (7), Augustine (6), Jerome (5), Chrysostom (3), Ignatius of Antioch (2), Ficino (2), and one
each for Pico, Batista Mantuanus, Cicero, Ps.-Dionysius, Lactantius, Macrobius, Philo, Plato, Plotinus, Suetonius and
Virgil. In his biographical survey, which considered Colet’s reading across his career, Trapp cited Cicero (‘whom he
devoured, according to Erasmus’), Ovid, Suetonius … Terence, Varro, and Virgil, as well as Macrobius, Aquinas,
Anselm, Durandus, Gratian, Pseudo-Ivo of Chartres, and Leo I. O’Kelly also mentioned Aristotle as influential, and strongly
cautioned in relation to Lupton that the ‘simple parading of names would, of course, be extremely misleading if from it
the naive inference were drawn that Chrysostom, let us say, has somehow more to do with the nature of Colet’s thought
than Ficino or Pico, or that Virgil and the Pseudo-Dionysius have equal parts in it.’ O’Kelly argued that Colet had surely
read and been influenced by writers such as Abelard, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Ockham,
Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, or at least by some of them. See Colet, Opuscula quaedam, 66‒8; Trapp, “Colet, John (1467‒
1519)”; CFC, “Introduction” by O’Kelly, 17.
15
Colet, An Exposition, 95‒8, esp. 98. For further discussion of Colet’s historicism and its influence on Erasmus, see Fulton,
“The Politics,” esp. 90‒7.
16
Lupton, Life of Colet, 76. See also Lupton’s introductory remarks in Colet, An Exposition, xxxii; Miles, John Colet, 25.
17
CFC, “Introduction” by O’Kelly, 34.
18
Jayne, Colet and Ficino, 54.
112 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

ambivalence towards the practice of humanist rhetorical eloquence, and emphasized

Colet’s passion for preaching.19 And whereas others have passed over these remarks,
Eugene Rice, as part of his depiction of Colet as essentially Augustinian in his theology,
accepted Colet’s intransigence as literal and capitalized upon it. He claimed that Colet sep-
arated himself from the ‘incipient secularisms of Renaissance humanism’ through his ‘fear’
of the natural and his insistence on ‘the weakness and depravity of man.’20
This essay focuses on this question of sapientia [wisdom] and stultitia [foolishness] in
Colet’s Commentary on First Corinthians, and throughout it seeks to resolve the apparent
tension between Colet’s disparagement of sapientia hominis21 and his many humanist
activities, including his reliance upon pagan and historical scholarship, his friendships
with Erasmus and More, and his founding of St Paul’s School. By explicating Colet’s
dichotomy between human and divine wisdom, the essay seeks to further our understand-
ing of Colet as a humanist and reformer. Despite his strong statements in the Commentary
on First Corinthians, Colet warned not against human or secular wisdom itself, but against
the improper use of pagan and non-scriptural writings. Particularly, he disparaged morally
impure individuals who sought heathen insights instead of pursuing the true knowledge of
God. While discussing wisdom, Colet’s primary concern was moral, not intellectual as
such.22 The first section highlights this concern by focusing on Colet’s various definitions
of sapientia hominis and the emphasis he placed on human moral shortcomings in them.
The second section contrasts sapientia hominis with sapientia divina, exploring this
definition alongside Colet’s description of human ascent to God and considering briefly
Colet’s use of the term stultitia. Subsequently, the essay argues that, through his
account of the ascent to God and ecclesiastical ministry, Colet restored a relationship
between sapientia hominis and sapientia divina by instructing individuals to primarily
concern themselves with Christian purity. This view in many ways could align with the
writings of humanists such as Erasmus. The essay concludes by demonstrating how
Colet’s view of human wisdom, thus conceived, represents an early expression of his com-
mitment to ecclesiastical and moral reform.

Sapientia hominis
Although scholars most often focus on Colet’s metaphor of the banquet table to decry
pagan literature, the cleric did not offer just one definition of sapientia hominis throughout
his Pauline exegetical commentaries, nor did he always equate such wisdom with reason-
ing. His definition of human wisdom shifted according to the particular Pauline text and
to the specific corrupt human practices he was critiquing. At times Colet described sapien-
tia hominis as the incorrect application of intellectual resources, such as attempts to
ground church doctrine upon human ingenuity; at other times he equated human
wisdom with pagan philosophy; and in another departure, he defined it as being built
upon human reason. Each of these definitions shared a common theme – namely that
19
Arnold, Dean John Colet, 79; idem, “John Colet, Preaching and Reform,” 205.
20
Rice, “Colet and the Annihilation of the Natural,” 141.
21
Throughout the Commentary, Colet employs a number of terms to describe the type of wisdom that is human, secular,
worldly, and so not divine, including sapientia secularis [secular wisdom] and sapientia huius mundi [wisdom of this
world]. Throughout this piece I will be using the term sapientia hominis [wisdom of mankind] to refer generally to
this type of wisdom, while maintaining Colet’s variations when providing closer analysis.
22
This sentiment is in agreement with Jayne, Colet and Ficino, 71‒2.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 113

they described human limitation in the understanding of divine wisdom and reaching
salvation.
Colet’s first definition of human wisdom referred to using the native endowments of the
mind and wit (ingenium) in inappropriate and especially ecclesiastical settings. In the First
Corinthians commentary, Colet specifically emphasized the damage that could result from
applying human ingenuity to the Church: it could lead to the adoption of false doctrine, to
practices unfit for Christians, and to multiplicity rather than unity of belief. Colet’s
example of this failing was the Corinthian church as described by Paul. The Church in
Corinth, ‘still in its infancy and not yet firmly formed,’ had been led astray by a few
men ‘of little humility but much arrogance.’23 Colet described these local church leaders
as motivated by jealousy, pride, and personal gain and as led astray partially through
the influence of the pagan Greeks:
For there were some of little humility but much arrogance who began to think of profit for
themselves, setting this well ahead of God, and Christ, and his Apostles. Reassured by their
natural wisdom, which has always been of great influence among the Greeks, they began to
seek for themselves authority among the people, and at the same time, to belittle the prestige
of the Apostles, and especially of Paul … These men – their identity is uncertain – were
jealous and impatient of the praise given Paul, and they were in love with their own praise
and glory. They tried to bring new things into the Church, as these occurred to their
minds, testing them by their own wisdom and intellectual resources24

For Colet, this example demonstrated the improper use of human invention. First, the
men who used their own reasoning and invention had faulty motivations – arrogance, a
desire for fame, and jealousy. Second, these corrupted motivations led them to apply
human wisdom incorrectly to the church. Their false preaching resulted in practices
‘that were altogether repugnant to the institutions of Paul.’25 As a result, the people in
the church ‘readily looked back to their worldly ways and wistfully turned their eyes to
wealth, power, and secular wisdom.’26 The incorrect practice of these men in authority
thus corrupted the entire church. Third, these men formed ‘parties and factions’ that
led to dissidence in the church. Whereas, in Colet’s description, the church should be
united in purpose and faith through the Spirit of God, the Corinthian church was breaking
apart in ‘strident wranglings.’27 The arrogance of a few sowed discord among the many.
This example highlighted not only a problem that Paul had described in First Cor-
inthians, but also one that Colet recognized in the minor clergy of English secular cathedrals.
Recent scholarship has suggested that, in general, the minor clergy in England were in urgent
need of behavioural discipline just before the Reformation. Surviving visitation records for
collegiate churches, such as Southwell Minster (Nottinghamshire), describe negligence,
drunkenness, violence and philandering as consistent problems around 1500.28 In his

23
CFC, 76‒7.
24
Ibid.: ‘Fuerunt enim quidam parum modesti, idemque non parum arrogantes, qui Deo et Christo et Christi Apostolis non-
nihil posthabitis, ceperunt de lucro suo cogitare, ac freti sapientia seculari, que semper plurimum potuit apud Grecos, in
plebe sibi autoritatem querere, simulque apostolorum opinionem, maxime Pauli, derogare … At illi nescio qui, invidi et
impatientes laudis Pauli, et suam laudem ac gloriam amantes, attemptaverunt aliquid institutionis in ecclesia, ut eis
venerat in mentem utque sua sapientia et opibus probare potuerint.…’
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.: ‘ … et oculos in opes, potentiam, et sapientiam secularem coniecit.’
27
Ibid. Christian unity is a central theme throughout Colet’s commentary, especially in relation to his depiction of the mys-
tical body of Christ. See CFC, 71, 73, 93, and 125.
28
Rex, Henry VIII, 47; cf. Arnold, Dean John Colet, 74; Swanson, “Problems of the Priesthood,” 845‒69.
114 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

lectures, Colet delivered invections against such irresponsible church leadership and
immoral activity, his audience being young divinity students and minor clerics. Colet
later had the authority to form his sentiments into precepts for the clergy at St Paul’s.
Although infractions concerning clerical behaviour at St Paul’s may have been relatively
minor during Colet’s tenure, he appears to have desired to hold clergy to very high
standards.29 He presented his concerns in 1506, with one of his specific requirements
being that minor clergy should have adequate learning in literature and doctrine.30 The
weight of Colet’s requirement rested upon the study of doctrine, and presumably, only
with literature associated with or supportive of it. Colet’s statute was intended to protect
the Church’s practices and witness from corruption by clergymen who followed their
own wisdom instead of the higher doctrine of the Church ‒ a problem resembling that of
the Corinthian Church forsaking the teaching of Paul.
Colet’s second definition of human wisdom related specifically to knowledge of pagan
philosophy. Scholars have cited this characterization most frequently for its staunch and
wholly inflexible language. In the tenth chapter of his commentary, Colet expounded upon
Paul’s warning that ‘ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils’ to assert a
stark division between ‘demonical’ authors and the Scriptures.31 He warned,
at other tables, in other books – those of the pagans where there is nothing with the savor of
Christ and nothing without the savor of the Demon – no Christian man ought to seat himself,
unless he should wish to appear a guest of the Demon.32

Beyond the mere appearance of being a demon’s guest, Colet cautioned believers that
reading pagan literature would cause them to lose sight of Christian principles.33 He
ended this passage by disparaging pagan literature to the point of claiming that ‘all that
belongs to the truth is contained in the splendid, and plentiful table of Holy Scripture.’34
Thus, ‘feeding on’ literature outside the truth of Scripture or relying upon pagan books to
help understand Scripture, demonstrated a lack of faith and a distrust of grace.35
Colet drew his final definition of sapientia hominis from Paul’s characterization of the
Gentiles, particularly the Greeks, and their inability to accept the wisdom of Christ due to
their reliance upon human reasoning and their love of worldly success and power.36 Colet
drew this example from 1 Corinthians 1, which described how God had made ‘foolish the
wisdom of the world.’ Paul explained: ‘For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after
wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the
Greeks foolishness.’37 Colet’s lecture emphasized that the Gentiles judged not only the cru-
cifixion, but also the incarnation, to be unreasonable.38 He employed the imagery of light
and dark to highlight this failing in human wisdom. The Gentiles failed to ‘rise above their

29
Arnold, “Preaching and Reform,” 216.
30
‘Sufficientiam litteratum et doctrinam,’ quoted in Arnold, Dean John Colet, 78.
31
I Corinthians 10:21a.
32
CFC, 217.
33
Ibid., 219.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid.
36
Paul seems to have used the terms ‘Greeks’ and ‘Gentiles’ interchangeably throughout this passage. In the Greek New
Testament, he used Ἕλληνες in verses 22 and 24, and ἔθνεσιν in verse 23. This was also reflected in the Vulgate with
Graeci appearing in vv. 22 and 24, and gentes in v. 23.
37
1 Corinthians 1:22‒3.
38
Colet, CFC, 83‒5.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 115

own darksome wisdom,’ hence they ‘were conscious of no taste of wisdom in anything that
had not been brought down [descenderat] to their own reasoning [ratio].’39 In contrast,
Colet described that ‘which is on high, far above reasoning’ as the light of divine revelation.
The Gentiles could not perceive this higher light because it was visible through revelation
alone and could only be seen with the ‘piercing eye of faith.’40
In this connection, Colet warned that the mind not thoroughly cleansed of the prin-
ciples and dispositions of ‘this world’s power and wisdom’ would not accept nor could
not receive the principles of divine wisdom.41 The Gentiles, who lacked the faith and dis-
position to receive divine wisdom, misunderstood it as ‘unreasonable and stupid’ and out
of arrogance believed that they could discern wisdom unaided.42 These ‘reasoners,’ Colet
argued, were put to shame by Paul’s preaching of the power of God; moreover, Paul in his
ministry willingly appeared ‘foolish’ and ‘weak’ by the standards of human wisdom, so that
no one would think he should believe ‘because of human persuasiveness instead of the
power of God.’43 Such ministry required not only the abandonment of sapientia
hominis but the sacrifice of worldly power:
Our early Church, therefore, set up by God’s drawing, had its origin and increase from the
despised and the lowly. No one entered unless he either had no share of this world’s power
and wisdom, or laid down what he had to become foolish and have wisdom from God.44

In contrast, the arrogance of the Gentiles, built upon human reasoning and power, hin-
dered their understanding of the truth.
In these definitions of sapientia hominis throughout his commentary, Colet denied the
capacity of human reasoning or ingenuity to discover truth or bolster the Christian faith.
His separation of reason and revelation, especially in the second definition, appears to
reflect an anti-rational, fideist, theological tradition stretching from ‘William of
Ockham to Tertullian, ultimately to the Pauline Epistles, which stressed the uniqueness
of revealed knowledge, available only through grace, over against human knowledge, avail-
able only through reason,’ as Brendan Bradshaw has described.45 This fideist position,
however, posed great obstacles for the practices of Christian humanists in the late-
fifteenth- and early-sixteenth century, and accordingly received significant criticism
from Erasmus in his Antibarbari (first penned 1494/95; printed in 1520). In Antibarbari,
Erasmus countered fideism by defending the relationship between reason and revelation
(and relatedly, nature and grace) as one of harmony rather than conflict, arguing that
the humanist quest for perfection through natural reason, particularly through the
revival of the intellectual heritage of ancient antiquity, could form an integral part of
the Christian quest for perfection through grace.46 Scholars who take seriously Colet’s
descriptions of sapientia hominis may initially assume that his theology followed a

39
Ibid., 83. ‘Quibus cecis, omnia sunt ceca, et falsis, falsa. Qui non emergentes ex caliginosa sapientia eorum senserunt nihil
habuisse saporem sapientie nisi quod ad eorum rationem descenderat.’
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid., 89, 95.
42
Ibid., 83.
43
Ibid., 89.
44
‘Quapropter prisca nostra ecclesia, que Dei attractu constitit, ex contemptis et abiectis huius mundi exorta et aucta est. In
qua nemo ingressus est nisi qui vel nihil habuit huius secularis sapientie et potentie, vel habitam deposuerit, ut, stultus
factus, sapiat ex Deo.’ Ibid., 93.
45
Bradshaw, “Christian Humanism of Erasmus,” 415.
46
Ibid., 419‒20.
116 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

fideist position in opposition to the humanist proposition of virtuous rationality presented

by Erasmus. Indeed, this is the position Eugene Rice attributed to him.47 The next two sec-
tions will test Colet’s apparent fideism by considering his accounts of divine wisdom and
revelation in his First Corinthians commentary.

Sapientia divina and stultitia

While distinct, the three definitions of human wisdom presented in Colet’s commentary
shared many similarities, for each described human wisdom as hindering the knowledge of
divine wisdom and the practices of Christian belief. In the first example, envious men
employed human invention to lead the Corinthians to false doctrine; in the second,
those deficient in their faith turned to pagan philosophy to dispel their distrust; and in
the third, human reasoning along with the pursuit of worldly power blinded the Greeks
from realizing their need of divine wisdom and salvation. Noticeably, in these examples
Colet portrayed the pursuit of human wisdom as motivated by, or characteristic of, a
lack of faith and as resulting from a moral failure. The first two examples involved Chris-
tians relying upon human wisdom due to insufficient faith, while the third entailed non-
believers dismissing Christian precepts altogether due to their heavy dependence on
human reason; the insufficiency of faith in the first example resulted from jealousy and
arrogance, the complete lack of faith in the third example resulted from pride. In all
these definitions, moreover, reliance upon sapientia hominis as a consequence of
human moral failure would cause ‘multiplicity’ amongst human communities as well as
‘impurity, meanness, and malice,’ Colet argued.
In his commentary, Colet emphasized this relationship between the moral condition of
the individual and his potential to receive divine wisdom through expressing the principle
that ‘that which is received is received according to the measure of the receiver.’ Thus, he
contended not only that ‘the Gentiles were stupid toward the good news of Christ, and
judged it to be stupidity,’ but also that ‘to the fool all things are folly … To the blind, all
things are blind, and to the false, all things are false.’48 Should jealousy, arrogance, insuffi-
cient faith, the desire for worldly power or other moral deficiencies plague one seeking
divine wisdom, that wisdom would not be found.
In contrast, Colet depicted divine wisdom as affording unity, harmony, and simplicity
within the Christian church and in its revelation of Christian truths, such as the unified
Godhead.49 He defined divine wisdom as the message and reality of salvation, and
indeed, in chapter seven, he named Christ himself ‘Dei sapientia incarnata’ through
which humans receive mediation with God.50 The incarnation is the ‘wonderful commu-
nicating of the creator of the human race,’ Colet explained, for God sent his Son, the
mediator, ‘the true power and wisdom of God,’ to become ‘our wisdom and justice, our
sanctification and our redemption.’51 In this passage, Colet adopted the language of the
first chapter of John describing Christ as the Word of God, who from spirit became
flesh, descended, and dwelt among men ‘that he might instruct toward heavenly things
47
Rice, “Annihilation of the Natural,” 154. See also Miles, Colet and the Platonic Tradition, 131‒2.
48
CFC, 81‒3.
49
Ibid., 93, 95, 147. For discussion of multiplicity and unity, see Hunt, Colet and His Theology, 106‒12.
50
CFC, 153.
51
Ibid.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 117

men of the earth’; that he ‘might advance them and carry them off; might at last deify with
himself and with his God.’52 Because Christ ‘descended only to ascend’ and to show the
way to heaven, sapientia divina entailed for Colet both the path to salvation and also
the knowledge of things divine.53
What did this ascent to salvation and divine wisdom entail? For an answer, Colet
turned to ‘Dionysius the Areopagite,’ whom he believed to be an apostle of Paul and
whose writings offered a method for reading Pauline Christianity through the lens of
Neoplatonism. Dionysius’s writings had enjoyed a revival of interest in the late-
fifteenth century following Ambrose Traversari’s first printed Latin translation in
1480, which was republished by Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples in 1498. Like most of his pre-
decessors and contemporaries, including Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino, Colet
never expressed doubt concerning the Areopagite’s authenticity or authority even as
Erasmus and Lorenzo Valla questioned it.54 Apart from his seeming authority as a
Pauline apostle, Dionysius’s writings likely appealed to Colet due to his historical inter-
est in the Early Church and its practices, and to his desire to reform corrupt church
practices and correct lax piety.55
Following Dionysius’s three-fold formula, Colet expressed the process of the human
ascent to God in the divine and angelic activities of ‘purifying, illumining, and perfect-
ing.’ Many of Colet’s concepts closely followed these three stages, such as the ecclesias-
tical hierarchy, the gifts of the Spirit, and the order of the theological virtues. With this
upward ascent, Colet understood the world to be cast off for the divine, the flesh to be
denied for the spirit. Hence, the bottom rung of the ascent entailed purgation, the
casting off of worldly vices.56 In Colet’s account, purgation allowed one to gain the
theological virtue of hope, to have the expectation of God’s promises; through hope
one could begin to withdraw ‘from the world and from all worldly things’ until being
‘in God only.’57 Once on this path of ascent, one could reach the second stage, illumi-
nation, which instilled the believer with faith. Colet understood faith as that ‘which
enlightens to the knowledge of revelation.’58 It was at this stage, he argued, that scientia
was revealed: a knowledge of things divine, which forms only a part of wisdom. Colet
claimed that ‘we must be taught, and we must believe what we are taught’ to have this
knowledge.59
After purgation and illumination, the final stage of ascent was to reach unity with God.
Colet believed charity was realized in this final level and that it perfected the other virtues
from the earlier stages: ‘hope purifies to oneness, simplicity and steadfastness; faith
enlightens to the knowledge of revelation; but both are false, vain, and deceptive

52
Ibid., 153‒5. From the Vulgate: ‘In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum’ (John 1:1).
53
CFC, 165.
54
Following tradition, Colet believed Dionysius to be the ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’ (Acts 17:34), and considered him a
disciple of the Apostle Paul. Lorenzo Valla (1407‒57) had expressed his doubts about the apostolicity of Dionysius’s writ-
ings, but this view did not gain currency until Erasmus edited Valla’s manuscript, Collatio Novi Testamenti, and had it
printed as Adnotationes in novum testamentum (1505). William Grocyn also lectured on the matter at Oxford. Now attrib-
uted to ‘Pseudo-Dionysius,’ these works probably originated in Syria in about AD 500. See Colet, On the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy, “Introduction” by Lochman, 12‒13, 20‒3; Trapp, “Erasmus on Grocyn and Ps.-Dionysius,” 295‒6. See also Dio-
nysius Areopagita, Pseudo-Dionysius, 200‒59; Hunt, Colet and His Theology, 104; Arnold, Dean John Colet, 30.
55
See Colet, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, “Introduction” by Lochman, 23.
56
CFC, 167.
57
Ibid., 149.
58
Ibid., 257.
59
Ibid., 151.
118 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

without the perfection of charity.’60 In this final stage, the knowledge of revelation, now
perfected through charity, could become divine wisdom.61 This description of ascent
clarifies the earlier definition of divine wisdom as both the path to heaven and knowledge
of things divine. Colet claimed that along this path to heaven, made possible by the incar-
nation and crucifixion of Christ, individuals received knowledge of things divine and,
eventually, attained divine wisdom and salvation.
Which individuals did Colet believe were most likely to ascend to God? The
definition of stultitia provides a partial answer to this question. By closely explicating
Paul’s discussion of wisdom and foolishness in First Corinthians, Colet employed the
term stultitia to denote, first, how foolish divine wisdom could seem to non-believers,
such as the Greeks, and second, how foolish human wisdom could seem when com-
pared with divine wisdom.62 Colet claimed that those who seem foolish in relation to
the world, who were ignorant of human reasoning and powerless in worldly ways,
were more likely ascend to God through purgation than the worldly wise. He offered
an analogy to stress this point: the worldly wise were like fish dwelling near the
ocean floor who least experienced the sun’s rays due to their proximity to earth
instead of air.63 These ‘fish,’ according to Colet, are drawn to the earth from ‘divided
souls and scattered thoughts’ and from ‘wills and appetites twisted by malice and weak-
ness,’ a condition which makes them ‘prone to evil.’64 Meanwhile, Colet described the
surface-swimming ‘fish’ as fit for Christ’s mysteries and less ‘entangled in the nets of
the wicked world, that is, the worldly life, wisdom, and power.’65 These believers bask
in the light of Christ, all the while being considered foolish by those swimming
below. From this analogy, Colet held that, most of the time, those untarnished by
human wisdom and the ways of the world would be ‘more suited, in the true judgment
of God, to be entrusted with His mysteries and to be formed by the divine wisdom and
will, so that all their knowing and willing [sciant omnia et velint] may be from God
alone.’66
This analogy resonated with the stark contrast Colet drew between human and divine
wisdom and underscored his understanding of justification as initiated by God alone.67
While those considered foolish and powerless in the world more often swam willingly
near the light of Christ, however, Colet recognized that God at times called men
endowed with secular learning, such as Dionysius and Paul, to ‘both receive and bring
to others the truths of His wisdom.’68 The worldly foolish and weak most frequently
sought the light of Christ, being unhindered by worldly cares; Colet urged that those
endowed with worldly wisdom and power must, through the power of God, abandon
their moral impurity and reliance upon human reason to ascend:

60
Ibid., 257.
61
Ibid., 211.
62
Specifically in relation to 1 Corinthians 1:18‒31 and 2:1‒16.
63
Colet’s example echoes his hierarchy of the elements: 1. Lowest Earth; 2. Earth; 3. Water, Earth; 4. Water; 5. Air, Water;
6. Air, etc. See CFC, 249.
64
Ibid., 93.
65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.
67
Ibid., 189. Jarrott has helpfully summarized Colet’s soteriology: ‘Although God’s initiative always begins the process of
justification, man’s active response of love, interior reformation, and good works is necessary for his eventual salvation.’
See Jarrott, “Colet on Justification,” 72; See also Rice, “Colet and the Annihilation of the Natural,” 150‒1.
68
CFC, 89.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 119

O wretchedness and lost state of men! Still, everything is as foreknowledge knows it will be,
and God knows which men are the more fit for His mysteries. These are the men who are not
held so fast by the sticky snares of this world, not so much entangled in the nets of this wicked
world, i.e., the worldly life, wisdom, and power.69

For Colet, the acquisition of divine wisdom required the ascent to God through a purged
soul, a faithful intellect, and a charitable will.70

Wisdom and moral perfection

For Colet, the foundation of wisdom was moral purity sought through Christ. The
definitions of sapientia hominis, sapientia divina, and stultitia presented in the First Cor-
inthians commentary illustrate this emphasis upon moral living over and above intellec-
tual activity. As we will see, it likewise mapped on to Colet’s description of the work of
Christian ministers.71
When he discussed 1 Corinthians 12 on the spiritual gifts and the body of Christ, Colet
arranged the spiritual gifts into a hierarchical scheme paralleling that of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy and the stages of the human ascent to God. These hierarchies follow the struc-
ture of Dionysius’s Caelestis hierarchia and Ecclesiastica hierarchia; for Colet they were
also highly clericalist, strictly separating the priesthood from laity.72 The ecclesiastical
hierarchy included the articulation of ten levels, with Christ, the head of the body,
being the tenth; the levels ranged from the bottom triad of deacons’ spiritual gifts, the
middle triad of priests, and the top triad of bishops, including the gifts of ‘teachers’
who have ‘faith and trust in God’; ‘prophets’ who speak ‘with knowledge’; and at the
top, ‘apostles’ through whom the ‘Spirit speaks … with wisdom.’73 Here Colet employed
the term ‘apostle’ more generally, describing major Christian leaders in his own time,
the early Christian Apostles of the New Testament, and those men of secular erudition
whom God, at times, called to ministry, such as Paul and Dionysius.74 Colet emphasized
that these ministers ‘revolve fully in Christ, moving far and wide in charity, efficacious in
their power, outshining others by their light, wonderful in their goodness.’75 Because they
had been elevated by their charity and goodness, and because they had been brought to an
understanding of knowledge and wisdom, Colet believed such people could be trusted to
employ some human reasoning and pagan learning with discernment.
Throughout his commentary, Colet delineated, at length, the responsibilities of those
called to the Christian ministry. He charged all clergymen to follow Paul’s example: the
Apostle desired ‘perfection among men,’ yet realized and grieved that all men ‘cannot
be as perfect as the Christian religion demands’; hence, he encouraged individuals to
69
Ibid., 92‒3: ‘O misera hominum et perdita condicio. Sed quodque est ut providetur fore, ac novit Deus probe qui sunt ad
sua mysteria magis idonii. Qui quidem sunt hii qui minus visco huius mundi tenentur, qui minus plagis huius seculi
nequam irretiuntur, vita scilicet, sapientia, et potentia seculari.’
70
Colet defined the human soul as consisting of two faculties, the intellect and the will: ‘By our intellect we are wise, by our
will we have strength to do things.’ CFC, 79.
71
See Jayne, Colet and Ficino, 71‒2.
72
Arnold, Dean John Colet, 30,196, n. 2; Arnold, “Preaching and Reform,” 222.
73
See Colet’s extensive diagram, CFC, 235.
74
Note that Paul does not apply the term ‘apostle’ to this gift of the Spirit. In his account, it is a manifestation of the Spirit
possibly given to anyone in the body (1 Corinthians 12:7‒8). Colet, however, assigned wisdom only to ‘apostles’ at the
top rung of ecclesiastical leadership.
75
CFC, 243: ‘et sunt apostoli, primi in ecclesia, in Christo ample volutantes ac longe lateque caritate delati, potentia
efficaces, prestantes luce, bonitate mirabiles.’
120 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

pursue ‘the greatest good that can be and the least possible amount of unavoidable evil.’76
In this strain, Colet explained that Christian ministers, or ‘spiritual physicians’ as he later
called them, should not only provide general counsel for all to follow to the best of their
ability, but they must provide individual counsel through particular precepts, indulgences
and prohibitions.77 The nature of the instruction offered in these instances and the stan-
dard of moral living required of each individual was based upon the individual’s stage in
the ascent and their particular level of purity.
To demonstrate how, according to Colet, the highest echelon of the ecclesiastical hier-
archy could employ human wisdom, one may return to Colet’s principle that all things are
received according to the measure of the receiver. Although defined negatively in his com-
mentary in relation to the false or the blind, Colet equally believed that, for those
sufficiently close to God, all things could be godly. His comments to this effect can be
found in marginalia of his copy of Ficino’s Epistolae, which he was studying and glossing
just before his lectures on First Corinthians.78 On the topic ‘Philosophy produces wisdom’
in Epistolae, Book IV, Colet remarked, ‘It is by good usage that goods are goods; and the
same argument applies to evil things: by bad usage evils become worse and goods evil.’79
Throughout this passage, Colet mused about the ability of good people to pray and to
rightly approach wisdom, even human wisdom, and the inability of the wicked. From
this difference between morality and immorality, Colet claimed, ‘you may see the value
of wisdom and philosophy.’80 He concluded:
The perfect priesthood consists in philosophy, in the desire for wisdom, in prayers, in hope,
and in the love that is wisdom itself, so that by vows, sacrifices, and prayers it may obtain
knowledge of good and evil, so that it may use well those evils which cannot be avoided;
and so that because of its goodness no evil can befall it – not even those evils which
because of its goodness it converts to good. They are truly ministers of Christ who are pos-
sessed of a unique wisdom, and try to bring it about that others become wise.81

These passages go a long way toward resolving the apparent tension in his Corinthians
commentary between human and divine wisdom, and they provide a fuller perspective
as to why Colet stressed the vices and shortcomings of humans in his account of
wisdom; for ‘wisdom’ aligned with the moral state of the individual. They further
explain why Colet delivered such sharp exhortations against pagan philosophy throughout
his lectures, for he believed that only moral purgation could lead to true wisdom. As div-
inity students and young or future clergymen constituted Colet’s main audience for these
lectures, the ability to rely on intellectual reasoning in ministry, rather than a contrite
heart, could be especially tempting. Only those who had been properly purged and

76
Ibid., 139.
77
Ibid. A precept instructs an individual in what actions he must do, as best he can, for salvation; an indulgence allows for
imperfections based on an individual’s struggle; and a prohibition completely forbids an individual from lapsing in the
ascent to God.
78
The shelf mark of Colet’s copy of Epistolae held at All Souls Oxford is h. infra I.5. I prefer Jayne’s dating in Colet and
Ficino, 31 to Gleason’s scheme in John Colet, 91‒2.
79
Quoted in Jayne, Colet and Ficino, 115.
80
Ibid., 116.
81
Ibid., 116‒17: ‘In philosophia ergo desiderioque sapientie et petitione et expectatione et amore perfectum sacerdotium
et quae ipsa sapientia est consistit: ut votis, sacrificii[s], precibus assequatur; ut sciat quid bonum et malum; ut malis quae
fugere nequit bene uti; ut pro sua bonitate nihil ei malum accidat, nec ipsa quidem mala quae sua bonitate decoquit ad
bonum. Hii vere sacerdotes Christi qui sapiunt soli faciuntque ut alii sapiant.’
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 121

received illumination, and who had risen through the ranks of the ecclesiastical and moral
hierarchy, could rightly employ human wisdom.
Moreover, this view of wisdom helps resolve the question of whether Colet through his
commentary should be viewed as a fideist who believed in the strict separation of revealed
wisdom from human knowledge, a view which was greatly at odds with the intellectual
work of humanists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As in Erasmus’s argument
in Antibarbari, Colet’s writings appear to align the religious pursuit of holiness with the
philosophical pursuit of wisdom as a quest for truth and justice.82 Colet, perhaps more
than Erasmus however, expressed the warning that secular learning can complement
and serve as an ally for revealed truth only through the intellectual activities of pure ser-
vants of God: purity and faith must be present before seeking understanding. Colet’s pos-
ition appears congruent with the Augustinian tradition which held that revelation
furnishes the knowledge with which reason works. St Augustine had described the recep-
tion of the classical heritage by invoking the image of ‘spoiling the Egyptians,’ acquiring
what is valuable from the pagan heritage for the benefit of Christianity. Erasmus, in con-
trast, had expressed reserve and even cautious criticism for Augustine’s views while betray-
ing great enthusiasm for St Jerome and his metaphor of the freeman who marries the
captive slave to obtain her freedom. Christianity, Erasmus affirmed following Jerome,
had wed itself to the classical heritage to enhance and liberate it from its ‘pagan ethos
by which its intellectual and moral perceptions are ultimately bound.’83
The Augustinian tradition of faith seeking understanding had a wide variety of advo-
cates and diverse articulations, but Colet’s position seems most closely associated with
Augustine’s own.84 In his Confessions, Augustine related how, after vainly trying to find
truth through studying the Manicheans and Platonists, he finally discovered that by ‘the
gift of grace’ humans could be shown how to see God and to follow his path; Augustine
claimed that the Platonists could not follow this path to God because they lacked charity –
charity built upon the humility of Christ.85 However, once converted, Augustine reinter-
preted Plato and Plotinus’s conceptions of the relationship between soul and body, intel-
lectual knowledge and sense knowledge, and the doctrine of reminiscence through
distinctly Christian categories.86
Colet likewise employed these Platonist concepts to aid his description of the divine,
while stressing that such philosophy on its own cannot produce true charity. As Leland
Miles has highlighted, Colet adopted Augustine’s illuminative theory that the infused
grace of God allows the soul to see all truly intellectual objects: ‘God is the Intellectual
Light in Whom and from Whom and by Whom shine intellectually all things that do intel-
lectually shine.’87 However, unlike some of the others in the Augustinian tradition, Colet

82
Thus Bradshaw, “Christian Humanism of Erasmus,” 422.
83
Ibid., 424.
84
Etienne Gilson included Anselm, Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, Ramon Lull, Nicolas Malebranche and Vincenzo Gioberti in
the ‘Augustinian family,’ See Gilson, Reason and Revelation, 22. The full scope of Augustine’s influence on Colet, even
concerning this one issue, is too complex to explore here. I suggest a comparison between Augustine and Colet to
further demonstrate Colet’s understanding of divine wisdom and to make a point of departure with the view of
Colet in Rice, “Annihilation of the Natural,” 131‒2. Some scholarship has already connected Colet and Augustine in
relation to other theological issues, including voluntarism and illumination; but this is an underdeveloped and poten-
tially fruitful area of research. See Miles, Colet and the Platonic Tradition, and Kaufman, Augustinian Piety, 52‒4, 69‒70.
85
Augustine, Confessions, 155‒6.
86
Augustine, City of God, VIII:5, 304; Miles, Colet and Platonic Tradition, 4; Gilson, Reason and Revelation, 23.
87
Miles, Colet and the Platonic Tradition, 131.
122 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

did not relish composing philosophical treatises based upon revealed knowledge, like the
incarnation and the Trinity. His concern was with the primacy of faith and with using
human wisdom only as it aided spiritual pilgrims in their ascent to God.

Conclusions and outcomes

Colet’s disparagement of human wisdom, then, should be understood as a call for purga-
tion. From this perspective, we can consider how his lectures illuminate his own humanist
activities and his later emphasis on moral reform.88 As the dean of St Paul’s Cathedral,
Colet delivered many sermons on piety and moral reform, continued his academic inquir-
ies through conversations and letters with friends including Erasmus, and founded St
Paul’s School. In each arena, whether addressing spiritual or learned leaders, Colet stressed
that the ascent to God and divine wisdom must be entered through humility, faith, and
purity alone.
One later sermon in which we find themes resonating with the account of wisdom and
purgation in the First Corinthians commentary is the Convocation sermon delivered in
1511/12. In this, Colet depicted contemporary clergy much as he had the Gentiles in
Corinth, who were ‘blynded with the darkness of this worlde’ so that ‘they se nothynge
but erthly thynges.’89 Likewise, he claimed that a ‘naughty life’ was more destructive
and perilous than the ills of ‘peruerse teachynge,’ since the former had to be repented
for the reform of the latter. The passage in the Convocation sermon most strongly
echoing Colet’s earlier lectures, however, followed from his discussion of who should be
admitted into the holy orders. Colet contended that too many priests were ‘vnlerned
and euyll.’ ‘Hit is nat inough,’ he argued,
for a priste … to put forth a question, or to answere a sopheme; but moche more a good, a
pure, and a holy life … metely lernynge of holye scripture, some knowlege of the sacramentes;
chiefly … the feare of God and loue of the heuenly lyfe.90

If priests did not devote themselves to a holy life and learn the laws and benefices of the
Church, ‘euyl heresies’ would be introduced to the people.91 As with his commentary,
Colet here emphasized the importance of purgation for minor priests low on the ecclesias-
tical hierarchy. Their area of study should be church doctrine passed down from the
bishops, not their own scholarly or theological disputations.92
Colet’s view of wisdom also sheds further light on his close relationship with Erasmus.
The two encouraged each other in theological endeavours and spurred each other on in
debate. An early example is the debate they had concerning the interpretation of
Christ’s ‘agony’ in the Garden of Gethsemane, where their opposition stemmed from
complex assumptions about scriptural interpretation and the nature of Christ.93 Referen-
cing Proverbs 27:17: ‘Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his
friend,’ Colet framed their argument over Christ’s agony as the search for truth, ‘not

88
Arnold, “Colet, Preaching and Reform,” 212.
89
“The Sermon of Doctor Colete, Made to the Conuocacion at Paulis,” reproduced in Lupton, Life of Dean Colet, 298.
90
Ibid., 300.
91
Ibid.
92
Arnold, Dean John Colet, 116. For the context of the sermon, see Colet, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, “Introduction” by
Lochman, 10‒11.
93
Lochman, “Colet and Erasmus,” 79.
 REFORMATION & RENAISSANCE REVIEW 123

the defence of a mere point of view … as argument meets argument, truth will shine forth’
like ‘steel … upon steel.’94 This focus on discovering truth through discussion continued
throughout their friendship. In several later letters, Colet directed Erasmus to focus on
Christ and on moral purity, rather than less pious intellectual endeavours. For instance,
Colet warned Erasmus about studying Johannes Reuchlin’s De arte cabalistica (1514), for
there is no end to books or to knowledge. But our lives are brief, and there is nothing we can
do with them better than to live them in innocence and holiness, and daily spend our efforts
to the end that we may be purified, and enlightened, and made perfect.95

Here, as elsewhere, Colet stressed that the path to sapientia was not human wisdom
learned through the studying of books, but ascension to God. Once purified by grace
and illuminated by faith, one could then rightly employ human wisdom.
Likewise, when Colet founded St Paul’s School, his concerns appear to have been spir-
itual rather than civic. In recognition of the miracle in John 21:11 where Simon Peter
pulled 153 fish from the ocean, Colet admitted exactly 153 boys to his school and con-
structed a timetable with 153 holidays and half-holidays.96 He crafted his school to
guard children from wicked influences and to equip them with the skills needed to
rightly pursue wisdom and an advanced education in divinity. According to Erasmus,
Colet believed that significant moral reform must arise from the new, uncorrupted gener-
ation; ‘finding his own age deplorable,’ Erasmus explained, Colet ‘fixed on tender youth as
the new bottles to which he would entrust the new wine of Christ.’97 Colet framed his
school’s curriculum, then, around the Christian catechism, the accidence of grammar,
and ‘Romayne eliquence joyned withe wisdome specially Cristyn auctours that wrote
theyre wysdome with clene and chast laten other in verse or in prose.’ The school curri-
culum intended ‘specially to increase knowledge and worshipping of god and oure lorde
Christ Jesu and good Cristen lyff, and maners in the Children.’98 Within the statutes Colet
directed students to learn the purified Latin of classical writers including Cicero, Sallust,
Virgil, and Terence; these non-Christian models must be mediated, though, by Christian
writers of the classical style: Lactantius, Prudentius, Proba, Sedulius, Juvencus, and Bap-
tista Mantuanus. From this foundation, the children could develop grammar and rhetori-
cal skills, while being shielded from the corrupting influence of pagan authors and from
the temptation of putting faith in human wisdom over God. The five poems that
Erasmus wrote in honour of St Paul’s School reflected Colet’s concern that children
have a correct attitude toward learning: ‘Know Me [the Boy Jesus] first, boys, and strive
after pure manners; / Then add to these God-fearing literature.’99 Snagging his pupils,
or ‘fish,’ from the depths of the worldly ocean, Colet could direct them in the human
ascent to God and make them eventual fishers of men (Mt. 4:19).
Colet’s view of human wisdom, insofar as it encompassed reason and the knowledge of
classical philosophy, should not be dismissed as an untenable and contradictory position
or as a demonstration of his anti-intellectualism. Rather, the Commentary on First Cor-
inthians should be understood as Colet’s earliest known expression of what would
94
Ibid.
95
Quoted in CFC, “Introduction” by O’Kelly, 15.
96
Gleason also highlighted the numerology of 153 as it related to the Trinity; see Gleason, John Colet, 223.
97
Quoted ibid., 224.
98
“Statutes of St Paul’s School,” in Lupton, Life of Colet, 279.
99
Rieger, “Erasmus, Colet, and the Schoolboy Jesus,” 190.
124 J. A. GIANOUTSOS

become his moral and religious creed: that the object of human life was the ascent to God,
and that through this ascent one could gain true wisdom. From this perspective, labelling
Colet as a ‘humanist’ or ‘anti-humanist’ overstates or misrepresents his true concern. Colet
wished believers to seek moral and spiritual purity before facility in pagan scholarship. He
supported learning in the bonae litterae insofar as it equipped clergy for this purpose.

Notes on contributor
Jamie Gianoutsos completed postgraduate studies at Queen’s University, Belfast and at the Uni-
versity of Cambridge before earning her doctorate at John Hopkins University, Baltimore. She is
assistant professor of British History in the College of Liberal Arts at Mount St. Mary’s University,
Emmitsburg, Maryland, USA.

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Kaufman, Peter Iver. Augustinian Piety and Catholic Reform: Augustine, Colet and Erasmus.
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Rieger, James Henry. “Erasmus, Colet, and the Schoolboy Jesus.” Studies in the Renaissance 9
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Seebohm, F. The Oxford Reformers of 1498: Being a History of the Fellow-Work of John Colet,
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