LINACRE (or LYNAKER) , THOMAS 0-1524) , Eng lish humanist and physician, was probably born at Canterbury. He attended the cathedral school of Canterbury, then under the direction of William Celling (William Tilly of Selling), one of the earliest Greek scholars in England. Linacre entered Oxford about the year 1480, and in 1484 was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. Shortly afterwards he visited Italy in the train of Celling, who was sent by Henry VII. as an envoy to the papal court, and he accompanied his patron as far as Bologna. There he became the pupil of Angelo Poliziano, and afterwards shared the instruction which that great scholar imparted at Florence to the sons of Lorenzo de' Medici. The younger of these princes be came Pope Leo X., and was in after years mindful of his old com panionship with Linacre. Among his other teachers and friends in Italy were Demetrius Chalcondylas, Hermolaus Barbarus, Aldus Romanus the printer, of Venice, and Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza. Linacre took the degree of doctor of medicine with great distinction at Padua. On his return to Oxford he formed one of the brilliant circle of Oxford scholars, including John Colet, Wil liam Grocyn and William Latimer, who are mentioned with so much warm eulogy in the letters of Erasmus.
Linacre does not appear to have practised or taught medicine in Oxford. About the year 1501 he was called to court as tutor of the young prince Arthur. On the accession of Henry VIII. he was appointed the king's physician, and practised medicine in London, - having among his patients most of the great statesmen and prelates of the time, as Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop War ham and Bishop Fox. In 1520 he received priest's orders, though he had for some years previously held several clerical benefices. There is no doubt that his ordination was connected with his retirement from active life. Literary labours, and the cares of the foundation which owed its existence chiefly to him—the Royal College of Physicians—occupied Linacre's remaining years till his death on Oct. Linacre was more of a scholar than a man of letters, and rather a man of learning than a scientific investigator. He took no part in political or theological questions, and died too soon to have to declare himself on either side in the formidable controversies which were, even in his lifetime, beginning to arise. He was one of the first Englishmen who studied Greek in Italy, whence he brought back to his native country and his own university the lessons of the "New Learning." Among his pupils was one Erasmus—whose name alone would suffice to preserve the memory of his instructor in Greek, and others of note in letters and politics, such as Sir Thomas More, Prince Arthur and Queen Mary. Colet,
Grocyn, William Lilye and other eminent scholars were his inti mate friends, and he was esteemed by a still wider circle of literary correspondents in all parts of Europe.
Linacre wrote a Latin grammar (Progymnasmata Grammatices vulgaria), composed in English, a revised version of which was made for the use of the Princess Mary, and afterwards translated into Latin by Robert Buchanan ; and a work on Latin composition De emendata structure Latini sermonis (1524). His only medical works were his translations. None of his translations of Aristotle has survived. The following are the works of Galen translated by Linacre : De sanitate tuenda, printed at Paris in 1517; (2) Methodus medendi (Paris, 1519); (3) De temperamentis et de Inaequali Intemperie (Cambridge, 1521) ; De naturalibus facultatibus (London, 1523) ; (5) De symptomatum differentiis et causis (London, 1524) ; (6) De pulsuum Usu (London, with out date). Linacre also translated, for Prince Arthur, an as tronomical treatise of Proclus, De sphaera, which was printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. The accuracy of these translations and their elegance of style were universally admitted. They have been generally accepted as the standard versions of those parts of Galen's writings, and frequently reprinted, either as a part of the collected works or separately.
The foundation by royal charter of the College of Physicians in London was mainly due to Linacre, and he was the first presi dent of the new college, which he further aided by conveying to it his own house, and by the gift of his library. Shortly before his death Linacre obtained from the king letters patent for the estab lishment of readerships in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, and placed valuable estates in the hands of trustees for their en dowment. Two readerships were founded in Merton College, Oxford, and one in St. John's College, Cambridge. The Oxford foundation was revived by the university commissioners in 1856 in the form of the Linacre professorship of anatomy.
The materials for Linacre's biography are to a large extent con tained in the older biographical collections of George Lilly (in Paulus Jovius, Descriptio Britanniae), Bale, Leland and Pits, in Wood's Athenae Oxonienses and in the Biographic Britannica; but all are completely collected in the Life of Thomas Linacre, by Dr. Noble Johnson (1835). Reference may also be made to Dr. Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians (2nd ed., 1878) ; and the Introduc tion, by Dr. J. F. Payne, to a facsimile reproduction of Linacre's version of Galen de temperamentis (Cambridge, 1880.