''Homo unius libri'' ('(a) man of one book') is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase attributed to

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...

by bishop

Jeremy Taylor Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) was a cleric in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression, and he is fr ...

(1613–1667), who claimed that Aquinas is reputed to have employed the phrase "''hominem unius libri timeo''" ('I fear the man of a single book'). The poet

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

recalled the tradition in which the quotation became embedded: The phrase was in origin a dismissal of

eclecticism Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories i ...

, i.e. the "fear" is of the formidable intellectual opponent who has dedicated himself to and become a master in a single chosen discipline. In this first sense, the phrase was used by

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

founder John Wesley, referring to himself, with "one book" taken to mean the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

. However, the phrase today most often refers to the interpretation of expressing "fear" of the opinions of the

illiterate Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

man who has "only read a single book".In ''The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader'', Clarence Brown, editor (Penguin) 1985, p. 246; see '' The Hedgehog and the Fox'' for further discussion of this phrase. John Wesley invoked the phrase in this sense and declared himself to be a "homo unius libri", the "one book" being the

."in 1730 I began to be homo unius libri, to study (comparatively) no book but the Bible." Letter to John Newton, May 14, 1765. He wrote privately on another occasion :"I receive the written word as the whole and sole rule of my faith..... From the very beginning, from the time that four young men united together, each of them was homo unius libri... They had one, and only one, rule of judgement with which to regard all their tempers, words and actions; namely, the oracles of God." Wesley used it more publicly in the ''Preface'' to his collected sermons; :"He came from heaven; He hath written it down in a book. O give me that Book! At any price, give me the Book of God. I have it; here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri!"

Notes

*Eugene H. Ehrlich, ''Amo Amas Amat and More: How to use Latin to Your Own Advantage and the Astonishment of Others'', p. 279. "An observation attributed to Aquinas"

External links

{{latin-stub Latin literary phrases