John Colet and Polydore Vergil: Catholic Humanism and Ecclesiology

This paper examines the relationship between two early modern Catholic humanists who both wrote extensively on the need for ecclesiastical and clerical reform. Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s (1505–19), and Vergil, Archdeacon of Wells (1508–46), were well acquainted and both members of Doctors Commons. Their written works demonstrate a considerably critical stance on clerical behaviour, notably Colet’s sermons and lectures as well as Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum and Adagia. Drawing upon original manuscript and primary sources, I argue that these texts demonstrate a shared desire for a highly clerical, perfected Church that could be immune from lay criticism and that they both entertained conciliarism as a possible solution to the Church’s problems, for which both men received vehement opposition. Although both were ultimately disappointed in their ambitions, I suggest that they held true to their belief that the Church could be morally and spiritually renewed without the need for a Reformation.