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Colet, John c.1467-1519
English scholar and theologian

Born in London, the son of Sir Henry Colet, he studied at Oxford. In Italy (c.1493) he became acquainted with the views of Savonarola. Returning to England in 1496, he was ordained a priest, and became a lecturer at Oxford on the Epistles of St Paul (1496-1504), in which he opposed the interpretations of the scholastic theologians. He was a colleague of both Sir Thomas More and Erasmus while at Oxford. In 1505 he was made Dean of St Paul's, and continued to deliver controversial lectures on the interpretation of Scripture, and to preach against ecclesiastical abuses. Charges of heresy were brought against him, but Archbishop William Warham refused to support them. With the large fortune he inherited from his father he endowed St Paul's School in 1509-12.

Bibliography: J H Lupton, Life of John Colet (1887)