Editing Thomas Bodley (section)

==Career==
[[File:Coat of Arms (geograph 7521252).jpg|thumb|Arms of Sir Thomas above the entrance to the Bodleian]]
He began lecturing at Merton and in April 1565 was formally appointed as the college's first Lecturer in Ancient Greek, a post that was subsequently made permanent. He served in many college offices: in 1569 he was elected as one of the University's junior [[proctor]]s and for some time after was deputy [[Public Orator]].  Leaving Oxford in 1576 with a license to study abroad and a grant from his college of ten [[mark (currency)#England and Scotland|marks]] (£6.&nbsp;13s.&nbsp;4d.), Bodley toured [[France]], [[Italy]], and the [[Holy Roman Empire]], visiting scholars and adding French, Italian, and Spanish to his repertoire of languages.

It has been suggested that during his tour in Italy he was in initiated in [[Forlì]] in some form of Pythagorean initiation in a platonic academy.<ref>Thomas, D. I., "A Modern Pythagorean", ''Gnosis'', 59, Summer 1997: "It has been suggested  that some form of Pythagorean initiation  survived through the centuries, first in the Byzantine Empire and later, as the Ottoman Turks advanced, in Italy, where the Greek intellectual elite took refuge. During the reign of Elizabeth I, Sir Thomas Bodeley is said to have been initiated in the northern Italian city of Forlì in a platonic academy, established in imitation of an older Society which had existed before the fall of the Grecian Empire in the towns of Constantinople and Thessalonica."</ref>

On his return to England Bodley was appointed a [[Gentleman usher|gentleman-usher]] to Queen Elizabeth, and in 1584 he entered the [[House of Commons of England|House of Commons]] as one of the members for [[Portsmouth]]. In 1585 he was entrusted with a mission to form a league between [[Frederick II of Denmark]] and certain German princes to assist [[Henry of Navarre]], the future [[Henry IV of France]]. He was next dispatched on a secret mission to France. In 1586 he was elected to represent [[St Germans (UK Parliament constituency)|St Germans]] in parliament, and in 1588 he was sent to [[The Hague]] as minister, a post which demanded great diplomatic skill, for it was in the [[Netherlands]] that the power of Spain had to be fought. The essential difficulties of his mission were complicated by the intrigues of the queen's ministers at home, and Bodley repeatedly asked to be recalled. He was finally permitted to return to England in 1596, but finding his hoped-for promotion to [[Secretary of State (England)|Secretary of State]] obstructed by the competing interests of [[William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley|Burghley]] and [[Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex|Essex]], he retired from public life and returned to Oxford.

When he married in 1587, he was obliged to resign his fellowship at Merton, but he retained many friends there and in the spring of 1598 the college gave a dinner in his honour. G. H. Martin speculates that the inspiration to restore the old [[Duke Humfrey's Library]] may have come from the renewal of Bodley's contact with [[Henry Savile (Bible translator)|Henry Savile]] and other former colleagues at this dinner. Once his proposal was accepted, he devoted the rest of his life to the library project. The former library had suffered from the overzealous commissioners of [[Edward VI]] who weeded the ancient collection.<ref>Richardson, Louisa E. “QUATERCENTENARY OF SIR THOMAS BODLEY.” ''Journal of the Royal Society of Arts'', vol. 93, no. 4686, 1945, pp. 172–73. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41361897 JSTOR website] Retrieved 6 Apr. 2023.</ref> The subject was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] on 18 April 1604.