A Life of John Colet

John Colet (1467-1519) was Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and founder of St. Paul's School, London. Colet lectured at Oxford on St. Paul's Epistles, introducing a new treatment by abandoning the purely textual commentary then common, in favor of a study of the personality of St. Paul and of the text as a whole. In 1498 he met Erasmus at Oxford, with whom he immediately became intimate, arousing in him especially a distrust of the later school men. Colet's lectures on the New Testament continued fo