Before the spring of 1512 was passed, Colet’s Sermon to Convocation was printed and distributed in Latin, and probably in English[412] also; and as there was an immediate lull in the storm of persecution, he may possibly have come off rather as victor than as vanquished, in spite of the seeming triumph of the persecuting party in Convocation.
The bold position he had taken had rallied round him not a few honest-hearted men, and had made him, perhaps unconsciously on his part, the man to whom earnest truth-seekers looked up as to a leader, and upon whom the blind leaders of the blindly orthodox party vented all their jealousy and hatred.
Completion of Colet’s school.
Jealousy against Colet’s school.
He was henceforth a marked man. That school of his in St. Paul’s Churchyard, to the erection of which he had devoted his fortune, which he had the previous autumn made his will to endow, had now risen into a conspicuous building, and the motives of the Dean in building it were of course everywhere canvassed. The school was now fairly at work. Lilly, the godson of Grocyn, the late Professor of Greek at Oxford, was already appointed headmaster; and as he was known to have himself travelled in Greece to perfect his classical knowledge, it could no longer be doubted by any that here, under the shadow of the great cathedral, was to be taught to the boys that ‘heretical Greek’ which was regarded with so much suspicion. Here was, in fact, a school of the ‘new learning,’ sowing in the minds of English youth the seeds of that free thought and heresy which Colet had so long been teaching to the people from his pulpit at St. Paul’s. More had already facetiously told Colet that he could not wonder if his school should raise a storm of malice; for people cannot help seeing that, as in the Trojan horse were concealed armed Greeks for the destruction of barbarian Troy, so from this school would come forth those who would expose and upset their ignorance.[413]
No wonder, indeed, if the wrath of Bishop Fitzjames should be kindled against Colet; no wonder if, having failed in his attempt effectually to stir up the spirit of persecution in the recent Convocation, he should now vent his spleen upon the newly-founded school.
But how fully, amid all, Colet preserved his temper and persevered in his work, may be gathered from the following letter to Erasmus, who, in intervals of leisure from graver labours, was devoting his literary talents to the service of Colet’s school, and whose little book, ‘De Copiâ Verborum,’ was part of it already in the printer’s hands:—
Colet to Erasmus.[414]
‘Indeed, dearest Erasmus, since you left London I have heard nothing of you....
‘I have been spending a few days in the country with my mother, consoling her in her grief on the death of my servant, who died at her house, whom she loved as a son, and for whose death she wept as though he had been more than a son. The night on which I returned to town I received your letter.
A bishop blasphemes Colet’s school.