of the three oldest institutions in the university.^6 In the first half of the
sixteenth century some of the most renowned members of the university
came from Merton, and Merton itself was highly inimical to the new
learning of Renaissance humanism. Merton had, by conservative likes,
the inauspicious honor of being John Wyclif’s college. The century
following Wyclif the college reacted with a strong orthodoxy, highlighted
by the tenure of Richard Fitzjames as warden. Fitzjames became warden
in 1501, having been the bishop of Rochester since 1497, was
successively translated to Chichester in 1503 and then London in 1505,
resigning his post as warden of Merton in 1507. Fitzjames had cultivated
a medieval piety at Merton, and also had taken a hard line against the
studium humanitatis. The latter is most clearly seen not only at Merton
per se, but in his denunciations of John Colet, the dean of St Paul’s
cathedral. Fitzjames charged Colet with heresy before archbishop
Warham, as Colet maintained some things that appeared drawn from
Wyclif, and thus guilty of Lollardy. Further, per Erasmus’s letter to Jonas
Jeremiah, Colet was accused of opposing the worship of images. The
strength of Colet’s friends, who included Sir Thomas More and the
Mercer Company of London, who had underwritten the costs of Colet’s
foundation of St Paul’s school, certainly spared him any real difficulties.^7
Fitzjames, as the Richard Hunne affair demonstrated (an affair about
which Colet was highly critical), was unable always to control matters in
London, but his conservative impression upon Merton was indelible.
Despite the bishop’s efforts, humanism did come to Merton in the person
of Richard Rawlins, warden from 1509 to 1521. Although removed by
Warham owing to complaints leveled against him by the fellows of the
college, and succeeded first by Roland Philipps and then in 1525 by John
Chambers, who remained at Merton till 1544, Rawlin’s tenure, as shall
be seen, was not without consequences.^8
8 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^6) At first the college was in two locations, but in 1274 Merton unified the college at its
present location. Most of the information for Merton College is drawn from G.H. Martin
and J.R.L. Highfield, A History of Merton College(Oxford, 1997).
(^7) John B. Gleason, John Colet(Berkeley, 1989), pp. 235–60. Gleason sees Fitzjames
confrontation with Colet as part of a bigger struggle, one connected to the prerogatives of
Warham, and linked essentially to the rise of Thomas Wolsey, who became Colet’s patron.
Colet preached the sermon at Westminster Abbey on the occasion of Wolsey’s receiving his
cardinal’s hat (18 November 1515); Fitzjames failed to show (pp. 244–47). Gleason sees
the relationship between Colet and Fitzjames as amicable until 1515, that he was
prominent in prosecuting Lollards, and that his struggles with Fitzjames were hardly over
matters pertaining to the new learning. This also goes to the question of how attached
Colet was to humanism at this stage of his life. Cf. John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (Oxford,
1963), pp. 38–55.
(^8) Martin,Merton, pp. 143–48.
http://www.ebook3000.com