Everything about William Grocyn totally explained
William Grocyn (
1446? -
1519) was an English scholar, a friend of
Erasmus.
He was born at
Colerne,
Wiltshire. Intended by his parents for the church, he was sent to
Winchester College, and in 1465 was elected to a scholarship at
New College, Oxford. In
1467 he became a fellow, and among his pupils was
William Warham, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury. In
1479 Grocyn accepted the rectory of
Newton Longville, in
Buckinghamshire, but continued to live at Oxford. As reader in divinity at
Magdalen College in
1481, he held a disputation with
John Taylor, professor of divinity, in the presence of
King Richard III; the king acknowledged his skill as a debater by the present of a deer and five marks. In
1485 Grocyn became prebendary of
Lincoln Cathedral. In about 1488 he left England for
Italy, and before his return in 1491 he'd visited
Florence,
Rome and
Padua, and studied
Greek and
Latin under
Demetrius Chalcondyles and
Politian. As lecturer at
Exeter College, Oxford he helped indoctrinate his countrymen in the new Greek learning.
Erasmus says in one of his letters that Grocyn taught Greek at Oxford before his visit to Italy. The Warden of New College,
Thomas Chaundler, invited
Cornelius Vitelli, then on a visit to Oxford, to act as
praelector. This was about 1475, and as Vitelli was certainly familiar with Greek literature, Grocyn may have learned Greek from him. He seems to have lived in Oxford until 1499, but by the time his friend
John Colet became dean of
St Paul's in
1504 he was living in
London. He was chosen by Colet to deliver lectures in St Paul's. Having at first denounced those who impugned the authenticity of the
Hierarchia ecclesiastica ascribed to
Dionysius the Areopagite, he was led to modify his views by further investigation, and openly declared that he'd been mistaken. He also counted
Thomas Linacre,
William Lilye,
William Latimer and
Thomas More among his friends, and Erasmus writing in 1514 says that he was supported by Grocyn in London, and calls him "the friend and preceptor of us all."
He held several preferments, but his generosity to his friends involved him in continual difficulties, and though in 1506 he was appointed on Archbishop Warham's recommendation master or warden of All Hallows College at
Maidstone in
Kent, he was still obliged to borrow from his friends, and even to pledge his plate as a security. He died in 1519, and was buried in the collegiate church at Maidstone.
Linacre acted as his executor, and spent the money he received on alms for the poor and the purchase of books for poor scholars. With the exception of a few lines of
Latin verse on a lady who snowballed him, and a letter to
Aldus Manutius at the head of Linacre's translation of
Proclus's
Sphaera (Venice, 1499), Grocyn left no literary proof of his scholarship. His proposal to translate
Aristotle in company with Linacre and Latimer was never carried out.
Anthony Wood assigns some Latin works to Grocyn, but on insufficient authority. By Erasmus he's been described as "
vir severissimae castissimae vitae, ecclesiasticarum constitutionum observantissimus pene usque ad superstitionem, scholasticae theologiae ad unguem doctus ac natura etiam acerrimi judicii, demum in omni disciplinarum genere exacte versatus" (
Declarationes ad censures facultatis theoiogiae Parisianae, 1522).
An account of Grocyn by
M. Burrows appeared in the
Oxford Historical Society's
Collectanea (1890).
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