On the return of Grocyn and Linacre from Italy full of the new learning, Colet had apparently caught the contagion. For we are told he ‘eagerly devoured Cicero, and carefully examined the works of Plato and Plotinus.’[37]
When the time had come for him to choose a profession, instead of deciding to follow up the chances of commercial life, or of royal favour, he had resolved to take Orders.
Sets out on his travels.
The death of twenty-one[38] brothers and sisters, leaving him the sole survivor of so large a family, may well have given a serious turn to his thoughts. But inasmuch as family influence was ready to procure him immediate preferment, the path he had chosen need not be construed into one of great self-denial. It was not until long after he had been presented to a living in Suffolk and a prebend in Yorkshire, that he left Oxford, probably in or about 1494, for some years of foreign travel.[39]
The little information which remains to us of what Colet did on his continental journey, is very soon told.
Colet studies the Scriptures in Italy.
He went first into France and then into Italy.[40] On his way there, or on his return journey, he met with some German monks, of whose primitive piety and purity he retained a vivid recollection.[41] In Italy he ardently pursued his studies. But he no longer devoted himself to the works of Plato and Plotinus. In Italy, the hotbed of the Neo-Platonists, he ‘gave himself up’ (we are told) ‘to the study of the Holy Scriptures,’ after having, however, first made himself acquainted with the works of the Fathers, including amongst them the mystic writings then attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. He acquired a decided preference for the works of Dionysius, Origen, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome over those of Augustine. Scotus, Aquinas, and other Schoolmen had each shared his attention in due course. He is said also to have diligently studied during this period Civil and Canon Law, and especially what Chronicles and English classics he could lay his hands on; and his reason for doing so is remarkable—that he might, by familiarity with them, polish his style, and so prepare himself for the great work of preaching the Gospel in England.[42]
What it was that had turned his thoughts in this direction no record remains to tell. Yet the knowledge of what was passing in Italy, while Colet was there, surely may give a clue, not likely to mislead, to the explanation of what otherwise might remain wholly unexplained. To have been in Italy when Grocyn and Linacre were in Italy—between the years 1485 and 1491—was, as we have said, to have drunk at the fountain-head of reviving learning, and to have fallen under the fascinating influence of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Platonic Academy—an influence more likely to foster the selfish coldness of a semi-pagan philosophy than to inspire such feelings as those with which Colet seems to have returned from his visit to Italy.[43]
But in the meantime Lorenzo had died, the tiara had changed hands, and events were occurring during Colet’s stay in Italy—probably in 1495—which may well have stirred in his breast the earnest resolution to devote his life to the work of religious and political reform.
Ecclesiastical scandals.