=CALVIN'S PROJECTS.=
Where should he go? His thoughts led him first to Poitiers, whence he proposed to visit Orleans, Paris, and then Germany and Switzerland, to study and gain knowledge by intercourse with the reformers. In their conversations at Gérac the Sieur de Torras had often spoken of Pierre de la Place, who was then studying at Poitiers. Calvin would also meet there with Charles le Sage, regent of the university, like himself a native of Noyon. One consideration restrained him: Could he leave Du Tillet? 'Where you go, I will go,' said the young canon; 'my heart is filled with the faith that animates you.'[90] The idea of enjoying Calvin's society at every moment, and of seeing in Switzerland and Germany the noble-hearted men who were reforming the Church, filled him with joy.[91]
The two friends departed: Calvin under the name of Charles d'Espeville, and Du Tillet under that of Hautmont, which seems to have been borne by some members of his family. They arrived (probably about the end of March 1534) in those plains and heaths of Poitou where so many great battles had been fought, and where a humble combatant was approaching to engage in nobler contests. Few provinces in France were so well prepared. Abelard, who had lived in these western districts, had left behind him some traces of the doubts set forth in his celebrated treatise, Sic et Non (Yes and No),[92] on the doctrines of the Church. Here too a writer, unconnected with the Reform, had attacked the papomania, and the clergy, who formed (it was said) a third part of the population, exasperated the two others by their avarice and irregularities.
=CALVIN AT POITIERS.=
Calvin stayed at Poitiers with Messire Fouquet, prior of Trois-Moutiers, a learned ecclesiastic, and a friend of the Du Tillets, who had a house there. The university was flourishing, it possessed learned professors, and had a famous library. The desire of understanding—a feeling springing up everywhere in France—was particularly felt here. The prior of Trois-Moutiers conversed with his two guests on the public disputations that were going on in the university. This excited Calvin's attention: he went to the hall, sat down on one of the benches, and listened attentively. No one, as he looked at this stranger, would have supposed that under those pale, unattractive features was hidden one of the heroes who change the face of the world in the name of truth alone. Beneath much quibbling and idle trash the young doctor could see flashes of light here and there. After the disputation, he called upon those combatants from whom he had heard the language of christianity; he stated his own ideas, and ere long the beauty of his genius and the frankness of his language won them over. Calvin and these generous men became friends and visited each other; at length, says an historian, 'they began to take walks together without the city,'[93] and as they walked along the banks of the little river Clain, or rambled over the fields, the young doctor spoke to them openly of Christ and of eternity.
They did not trouble themselves, indeed, with scholastic theology and metaphysical formulas: Calvin aimed at the conquest of their souls. He required in every one the formation of a new man, and cared about nothing else. In the midst of the disheartening weaknesses and immense necessities of fallen humanity, a great spiritual restoration must be carried out; the hour had come, and to accomplish the work it needed special men invested with power from on high. Calvin was one of these strong men, whom God has sent to the aid of human decay. At the moment of the awakening, after the slumber of the Middle Ages, the heavenly Father bestowed new creative forces on mankind. The Gospel, then restored to the world, possessed a beauty which attracted men's souls, and an authority which wrought in them an absolute obedience: these are the two regenerating elements. All over Europe prophets arose among the people, but they did not prophesy at their own impulse. Above them was the sovereign, free, living, supernatural God who worked in them with supreme power.
Calvin was about to begin at Poitiers a work of regeneration. Indeed no long time elapsed before numerous hearers crowded round him. Some were offended by his words; and there were some who, looking only for disputations and sophistry, tormented the young doctor with their accustomed insolence; while others opposed the heretic 'with dilemmas and cunning catches.' Others, again, who thought themselves masters of the world, turned their backs on him, 'as if he were an ordinary mountebank.' Calvin, surprised at such resistance, 'instead of entangling himself in useless disputes,' seriously thrust aside these frivolous subtleties, and 'put forward what is true.'[94]
=CALVIN'S FRIENDS.=
But if the doctrine he announced met with enemies, it also met with friends. The word of God perpetually separates light from darkness in the spiritual world, as it did at the time of the creation of heaven and earth. Generous men gathered eagerly round the young and powerful doctor. These were Albert Babinot, jurist, poet, and law-reader; Anthony Veron, procureur to the lower court; Anthony de la Dugie, doctor-regent; Jean Boisseau de la Borderie, advocate; Jean Vernou of Poitiers, the Sieur de St. Vertumien, and Charles le Sage, doctor-regent, a man of great esteem, who possessed the entire confidence of Madame, the king's mother.[95] One of these distinguished men especially won Calvin's heart: it was Pierre de la Place, a native of Angoulême, a friend of Du Tillet, afterwards president of the Court of Aids, and one of the St. Bartholomew martyrs. But Le Sage, another of these eminent men, kept himself rather aloof; he was from Noyon, and was not very anxious to put himself in the train of the son of the old episcopal secretary; moreover, he believed sincerely in the miracle of transubstantiation.