CHAPTER II.
Louis XII. and the Assembly of Tours—Francis and Margaret—Learned Men—Lefevre—His Courses at the University—Meeting between Lefevre and Farel—Farel's Hesitation and Researches—First Awakening—Lefevre's Prophecy—Teaches Justification by Faith—Objections—Disorder of the Colleges—Effects on Farel—Election—Sanctification of Life.
LOUIS XII.—FRANCIS AND MARGARET.
One day in the year 1510, or shortly after, the young Dauphinese arrived in Paris. The province had made him an ardent follower of the papacy; the capital was to make him something very different. In France the Reformation was not destined to go forth, as in Germany, from a small city. All the movements that agitate the people proceed from the metropolis. A concurrence of providential circumstances made Paris, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a focus whence a spark of life might easily escape. The young man from the neighbourhood of Gap, who arrived there humble and ignorant, was to receive that spark in his heart, and many others with him.
Louis XII., the father of his people, had just convoked the representatives of the French clergy to meet at Tours. This prince seems to have anticipated the times of the Reformation; so that had this great revolution taken place during his reign, the whole of France might have become protestant. The assembly of Tours had declared that the king possessed the right of waging war on the pope, and of enforcing the decrees of the Council of Basle. These measures were the object of general conversation in the colleges, the city, and the court; and must have made a deep impression on the mind of young Farel.
Two children were then growing up in the court of Louis XII. One was a prince of tall stature, striking features, who showed little moderation in his character, and followed blindly wherever his passions led him; so that the king was in the habit of saying: "That great boy will spoil all."[698] This was Francis of Angoulême, duke of Valois, and cousin to the king. Boisy, his tutor, had taught him, however, to honour literature.
By the side of Francis was his sister Margaret, his senior by two years, "a princess," says Brantôme, "of great mind and ability, both natural and acquired."[699] Accordingly, Louis had spared no pains in her education, and the most learned men in the kingdom hastened to acknowledge her as their patroness.
Already, indeed, a group of illustrious men surrounded these two Valois. William Budœus, a man giving the run to his passions, fond of the chase, living only for his hawks, his horses, and his hounds, on a sudden, at the age of twenty-three, had stopped short, sold his hunting train, and applied himself to study with the zeal he had formerly displayed in scouring the fields and forests with his dogs;[700] the physician Cop, Francis Vatable, whose knowledge of Hebrew was admired by the Jews themselves; James Tusan, a celebrated Hellenist; and many others, encouraged by Stephen Poncher, bishop of Paris, by Louis Ruzé, the civil lieutenant, and by Francis de Luynes, and already protected by the two young Valois, resisted the violent attacks of the Sorbonne, who looked upon the study of Greek and Hebrew as the most deadly heresy. At Paris, as in Germany and Switzerland, the restoration of sound doctrine was to be preceded by the revival of letters. But in France the hands that thus prepared the materials were not destined to construct the edifice.
LEARNED MEN—LEFEVRE.
Among all the doctors who then adorned the capital, was observed a man of very diminutive stature, of mean appearance, and humble origin,[701] whose intellect, learning, and powerful eloquence had an indefinable attraction for all who heard him. His name was Lefevre; and he was born about 1455 at Etaples, a village in Picardy. He had received a rude, or as Theodore Beza calls it, a barbarous education; but his genius had supplied the want of masters; and his piety, learning, and nobility of soul, shone out with so much the brighter lustre. He had travelled much, and it would appear that his desire of acquiring knowledge had led him into Asia and Africa.[702] As early as 1493, Lefevre, then doctor of divinity, was professor in the university of Paris. He immediately occupied a distinguished rank, and, in the estimation of Erasmus, was the first.[703]