CHAP. II. Colet was apparently about to quote in support of his A.D. 1497. attempt to explain the first chapter of Genesis by reference to the principle of accommodation.1 Where Colet got these views. The question may be asked:- Whence came this 'doctrine of accommodation which Colet here used so boldly?' It was at least no birth of the nineteenth century, nor of the fifteenth. It belonged to a period a thousand years earlier, when men had (as in Colet's days and in ours) to reconcile reason and faith-to find a firm basis of fact for Christianity, instead of resting upon mere ecclesiastical authority. It will have been noticed that the two authors cited by Colet in these letters were Origen and Macrobius. Traces of Dionysian influence are also apparent.2 1 The following appears to be the passage Colet was about to quote: 'playing with dolls and toys, they might represent in shadow what 'Aut sacrarum rerum notio, sub they were one day to do in reality 'figmentorum velamine, honestis et as men: herein imitating little 'tecta rebus et vestita nominibus 'girls, who in early age play with 'enuntiatur; et hoc est solum fig-'dolls, the images of sons, being 'menti genus, quod cautio de divinis 'destined afterwards in riper years 'rebus admittit.' - In Somnium 'to bring forth real sons: Scipionis, lib. i. c. 2. The 'aut'""When I was a child," says St. with which the sentence begins 'Paul, "I understood as a child; refers to its being an alternative of "but when I became a man, I put two kinds of mythical writing," about which Macrobius has been speaking. I am indebted to Mr. Lupton for this reference. "away childish things." From 'childishness and images and imi'tations Christ has drawn us, who 'has shone upon our darkness, and 2 The following passage from 'has taught us the truth, and has Mr. Lupton's translation of Colet's made us that believe to be men, abstract of Dionysius's De celesti in order that we, " with open face Hierarchia (pp. 12, 13) will show ""beholding as in a glass the glory that he may have derived some of ""of the Lord, may be changed his thoughts from that source. ""into the same image from glory 'Thus led he forth those unin-"to glory even as by the spirit structed Hebrews, like boys, to ""of the Lord." 'school; in order that like children, 'In these foreshadowings and It has already been pointed out, that when, after a CHAP. II. thousand years' interval of restless slumber, the spirit A.D. 1497.. of free enquiry was reawakened by the revival of learning in Italy, the works of the pre-scholastic fathers and philosophers were studied afresh. The works of Origen, Macrobius, and, more than all, of Dionysius, were constantly studied and quoted by such men as Ficino and Pico. And thus it came to pass that the doctrine of accommodation, with other apparently new-fangled but really old doctrines, floated, as it were, in the air which Colet had recently been breathing in Italy. The immediate source of some of the views contained in the letters to Radulphus was evidently Pico's Heptaplus' on the six days' creation; a work pub- The lished in beautiful type, shortly before Colet's visit to of Pico. Italy, and dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici.2 Com 'signs, metaphors are borrowed Heptaplus CHAP. II. paring this treatise of Pico's with Colet's letters, the A.D. 1497. small verbal coincidences are too striking to leave any doubt of the connection. Nor does this tracing of Colet's thoughts to their source detract from his originality so much as might at first sight appear. Colet found many different germs of thought in Pico. Falling into congenial soil, this one attained a vigorous growth in his mind, which it never attained with Pico. Other germs which flourished under Pico took no root with Colet. The result was, that the spirit of the letters to Radulphus had little in common with that of the Heptaplus.' Colet showed his originality and independence of thought by seizing one rational idea contained in Pico's treatise, and leaving the rest. He caught and unravelled one thread of common sense which Pico had contrived to interweave with a web of learned but not very wise speculation. IV. COLET STUDIES AFRESH THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIAN The next glimpse of Colet and his labours at Oxford reveals him immersed in the study of the PseudoDionysian writings: writing from memory an abstract of the Celestial' and 'Ecclesiastical' Hierarchies,1 and even composing short treatises of his own, based throughout upon Dionysian speculations.2 2 These treatises were :-1. 'De 1 The letter preceding the ab- | may be the person to whom it was stract of the 'Celestial Hierarchy,' addressed. in the Cambridge MS. Gg. 4, 26, is evidently a copy by the same hand as the letter to the Abbot of Winchcombe. Possibly the Abbot 4, 26. 'Compositione Sancti Corporis Christi mistici.'-Camb. MS. Gg. Pseudo During the most part of the middle ages the Pseudo- CHAP. II. Dionysian writings were accepted generally as the A.D. 1497. genuine productions of Dionysius the Areopagite-i.e. The of a disciple of St. Paul himself. It is not surprising, Dionysian therefore, that Colet, falling into this current view, writings. should regard the writings of the disciple with some degree of that interest and reverence with which he regarded those of the master. For a time it is evident they exercised a strong fascination on his mind. It has already been mentioned, that the influence of the Dionysian writings upon the Neo-Platonists of Florence was natural, seeing that they were in fact the embodiment of the result of the effervescence produced by the mixture of Neo-Platonic speculations with the Christianity of a thousand years earlier. But whilst it was their Neo-Platonic element which attracted the attention of Florentine philosophers, it was chiefly, as it seems to me, their Christian element which fascinated Colet. Nor can we of the nineteenth century altogether afford to ignore these writings as forgeries. There must have been in them enough of intrinsic power, apart from Their their supposed authorship, to account for the enormous power. 2. 'On the Sacraments of the 'Church,' printed with a very valuable introduction and notes, by the Rev. J. H. Lupton, M. A., from the MS. in the St. Paul's School Library. (Bell and Daldy, 1867.) 3. A short essay in the Camb. MS. Gg. 4, 26, commencing 'Deus 'immensum bonum,' &c. Mr. Lupton is publishing Colet's abstracts of the Celestial' and 'Ecclesiastical' Hierarchy of Dio nysius, from the MSS. at St. Paul's intrinsic A.D. 1497. CHAP. II. influence exerted by them for centuries over the highest minds in the church, in spite of the wildness of speculation in which they seemed to revel; just as there was enough of intrinsic power in St. Augustine to account for his mighty influence, in spite of his narrow views upon some points. It is quite possible that, as the very dogmatism of St. Augustine may have increased his influence in a dogmatic age, so, inasmuch as the dogmatic theology of the Schoolmen aimed at a pantheological settlement of every possible question, their very wildness of speculation may have aided the influence of the Dionysian writings. This may partly account for the remarkable extent to which the works of St. Augustine and Dionysius furnished, as it were, the weft and woof out of which Aquinas wove his scholastic web.' But nothing but some intrinsic power in these works themselves, apart from their dogmatism and speculation, could account for their double position as forming the basis, not only of the Scholastic Theology itself, but also of so many reactions against the results of its supremacy. These reactions were not always Augustinian. Some of them were mystic, and the supposed Dionysius was, so to speak, the prophet of the Mystics. One main secret of the intrinsic power of the Dionysian writings, especially to such men as Colet, lay, undoubtedly, in the severe rebuke they gave to the ecclesiastical scandals of the times. The state of the 1 Balthasar Corderius, in his | Theology, and proves it by giving prefatory observations to his edition four folio pages of references to pasof the works of St. Dionysius (Paris, sages in the 'Summa' of Aquinas, 1644), speaks of Dionysius as being where the authority of Dionysius is the originator of the Scholastic quoted. |