So immanent that absent? Christology of Erasmus of Rotterdam

The article is devoted to the Erasmus’ Christology, depicted in two of his works: Disputatiuncula de taedio, pavore, tristicia Iesu (1499) and Apologia ad Iacobum Fabrum Stapulensem (1517). Erasmus in his vision of Christ as an incarnated God, puts special emphasis on his humanity that made him an adequate exemplar for man to imitation. John Colet and Lefèvre d’Étaples, with whom Erasmus quarreled and insisted on his divinity. Erasmus argued that his interpretation accords not only with the practices of the Christian piety, but also with the interpretation of Church Fathers; the opposite is exposed to the risk of falling into the docetic heresy.

Marvellous Foolishness

This chapter examines how the English bishops demonstrated the indispensability of their jurisdiction by launching a campaign to eradicate heresy. There is no doubting the seriousness with which heresy was taken in early Tudor England, or the determination of church leaders to see it eradicated. In February 1512, John Colet reminded the Fathers of Convocation that the realm was nowadays ‘grieved of heretics, men mad with marvellous foolishness’. His suggestion that the wicked lifestyle of priests itself represented a kind of heresy was calculated to concentrate minds on the problems facing the Church of England, and the weight of moral demand on those charged with addressing them. In England, the people accused of heresy were known as Lollards. The chapter first considers the heretics' link to reformation of the Church before discussing the inner worlds of Lollardy.

Spiritus, ecclesiae anima: Colet, Linacre, and a Galenic Mystical Body

John Colet knew Thomas Linacre for approximately three decades, from their mutual residence in Italy during the early 1490s through varied pedagogical, professional, and social contacts in and around London prior to Colet’s death in 1519. It is not certain that Colet knew Linacre’s original Latin translations of Galen’s therapeutic works, the first printed in 1517. Yet several of Colet’s works associate a spiritual physician—a phrase linked to Colet himself at least since Thomas More’s 1504 letter inviting him to London—with Paul’s trope of the mystical body. Using Galenic discourse to describe the “physiology” of the ideal mystical body, Colet emphasizes by contrast a diseased ecclesia in need of healing by the Spirit, who alone can invigorate the mediating “vital spirits” that are spiritual physicians—ministers within the church. Colet’s application of sophisticated Galenic discourse to the mystical body coincided with the humanist interest in Galen’s works evident in Linacre’s translations, and it accompanied growing concern for health related to waves of epidemics in London during the first two decades of the sixteenth century as well as Colet’s involvement in licensure of London physicians. This paper explores the implications of Colet’s adaptation of Galenic principles to the mystical body and suggests that Colet fostered a strain of medical discourse that persisted well into the sixteenth century.

John Colet and Polydore Vergil: Catholic Humanism and Ecclesiology

This paper examines the relationship between two early modern Catholic humanists who both wrote extensively on the need for ecclesiastical and clerical reform. Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s (1505–19), and Vergil, Archdeacon of Wells (1508–46), were well acquainted and both members of Doctors Commons. Their written works demonstrate a considerably critical stance on clerical behaviour, notably Colet’s sermons and lectures as well as Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum and Adagia. Drawing upon original manuscript and primary sources, I argue that these texts demonstrate a shared desire for a highly clerical, perfected Church that could be immune from lay criticism and that they both entertained conciliarism as a possible solution to the Church’s problems, for which both men received vehement opposition. Although both were ultimately disappointed in their ambitions, I suggest that they held true to their belief that the Church could be morally and spiritually renewed without the need for a Reformation.

C. S. Lewis, St Jerome, and the Biblical Creation Story: The Background of a Recurring Misattribution

C. S. Lewis frequently quoted a testimony, supposed to be St Jerome’s, in which it is suggested that the biblical account of Creation was ‘poetic’ or ‘mythical’. However, it seems Lewis had confused his authors and was ascribing to St Jerome a passage actually by the Renaissance humanist John Colet. At the same time, Lewis was certainly aware of St Augustine’s similar – and perhaps more relevant – views on the subject; indeed, along with one of his references to Jerome, Lewis briefly mentioned St Augustine too. It remains to be seen precisely which (if any) early Christian authors might have been cited to back up Lewis’s point.

Personal, Societal, and Literary Reform in John Colet'sEcclesiastical Hierarchy

The English cleric John Colet (ca. 1467–1519) composed a commentary on theEcclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysius, the legendary disciple of Saint Paul. Colet approached the Dionysian text not as an artifact belonging to another time and place but as a living document, much as he approached St. Paul's Letters in his commentaries. His goal was to critique lapses in ecclesiastical virtue and to instill a spirit of personal and institutional reform by comparing the sacramental and hierarchical practices of the sixth-century Dionysian Church with those of his Church in England. This essay suggests a new path to understanding the distinctiveness of reforms advocated by Colet. By referring to specific elements, including the practices of baptism and the eucharist and the nature of the office of bishop, Colet was able, via Dionysius, to reveal alternative possibilities of reform by adopting patristic and, although perhaps unwittingly, Eastern Orthodox thought and practice. What has not been appreciated thus far is that Colet'sEcclesiastical Hierarchyproduces for a Latin readership in England a neo-Patristic blueprint that resembles in significant details the living ecclesiology of the Christian East, which was coming to light in the West through the humanist restoration of patristic texts and debates among scholars in Italy over Union and Conciliarism.