ABSTRACT
In January 1510 John Colet preached a famous sermon to the Convocation of Clergy from the Canterbury Province in St Paul's Cathedral in London, where he served as dean. 1 His text was Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God." A man steeped in the Bible and one of the leading preachers in England, Colet ripped into his clerical colleagues for their pursuit of honors and benefices, their devotion to sensual pleasures, their entanglement in worldly preoccupations, and especially their selfish avarice: "every corruption, every ruin of the church, every scandal of the world, comes from the avarice of priests." After berating them for just the sort of conformity to the world that Paul had condemned, he took up the latter's admonition to reform and renewal, exhorting them to holy uprightness that they might be an example for the clergy and laity in their dioceses. The central problem was not the Church's teachings or ideals, but persistent inadequacy in living up to them: "The work is therefore not that new laws and constitutions be enacted, but that those enacted be observed." 2 Colet specified how important it was to adhere to laws regarding the ordination only of worthy candidates, the legitimate conferral of benefices, the prohibition of simony, the practice of clerical residency, the abstention of clergy from worldly pursuits, and other concerns that had troubled not only England but much of the Latin Church for centuries (as was implied by the way in which Colet seamlessly quoted the twelfth-century Cistercian reformer Bernard of Clairvaux). In Colet's view, the Church was beset by many problems, the clergy was overwhelmingly responsible for them, and such difficulties could be remedied if the clergy followed the prescriptions of canon law and the dictates of Christian morality.
