Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on citations and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Humanism from the source
- 3 ‘Occasyon and tyme wyl never be restorey agayne’: Pole, Paris and the Dialogue
- 4 A responsible aristocracy
- 5 The Dialogue in classical and ‘medieval’ tradition
- 6 An English spirituale
- 7 ‘Homo politicus et regalis’
- 8 Writing for the drawer
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Early life and education
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on citations and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Humanism from the source
- 3 ‘Occasyon and tyme wyl never be restorey agayne’: Pole, Paris and the Dialogue
- 4 A responsible aristocracy
- 5 The Dialogue in classical and ‘medieval’ tradition
- 6 An English spirituale
- 7 ‘Homo politicus et regalis’
- 8 Writing for the drawer
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the first twenty or twenty-five years of his life, Thomas Starkey parlayed social standing and moderate wealth in his native Cheshire into one of the best humanist educations available in England. Perhaps the underpinnings of his civic humanism had been laid even before he reached Magdalen College, Oxford. While there he made contact with the most exalted circles of English society and European learning. He probably counted both the speakers in his Dialogue, Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset, as his friends. Through Lupset if not directly Starkey encountered the writings of John Colet, Erasmus and, perhaps, Thomas More. The first and the last made a much greater impact on Starkey, who embraced Colet's notion of church reform and probably also pieces of his theology, even if Starkey picked and chose the parts which interested him and even they did not root for a while. Neither Erasmus's aloofness nor More's pessimism spoke to Starkey, but he did adopt much of More's analysis of English social problems. In addition to this copia of ideas, Starkey also gained a grounding in how to arrange it in the proper dispositio necessary to make an impact on his hearers. For the moment, Starkey's chief interests may have lain in the largely contemplative science of nature, but he left Oxford with many of the elements which would convert him to the vita activa and prepare him to pursue it successfully.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thomas Starkey and the CommonwealthHumanist Politics and Religion in the Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 14 - 42Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989