John Colet Biography

John Colet was an English priest, theologian, scholar and an educational pioneer. He is believed to be a major force in the promotion of Renaissance humanism and culture in England in the late 15th and early 16th century. His father, Sir Henry Colet, was a merchant and had been the Lord Mayor of London twice (1486 and 1495). Sir Henry had 21 other children in addition to John but none of them grew up to see adulthood. John attended St. Anthony’s School before graduating with a M.A. degree from Magdalen College, Oxford. After Oxford he studied civil and canon law in France and Italy for three years before returning to England where he was ordained a deacon and then a priest. Oxford University appointed him as a lecturer and Colet mainly lectured on the epistles of St. Paul. He despised the old scholastic method of interpretation and implementation, as it failed to generate the concept of humanism in the readers, and preferred to pay careful attention to the context of St. Paul’s letters. He left Oxford to become the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and nearly a decade later founded the St. Paul’s School with the money he had inherited. The school was built in London and is one of the leading schools in the country even today