prelatz."
]

CHAPTER II.

THE REFORMATION AT MEAUX.

[Sidenote: Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples.]

The reformatory movement, whose almost simultaneous rise at so many
different points constitutes one of the most noticeable features of the
history of Europe in the sixteenth century, originated, so far as France
was concerned, within the bosom of that famous nursery of mediaeval
learning, the University of Paris. Among the teachers who, during the
later years of the reign of Louis the Twelfth, attracted the studious
from the most distant parts of Christendom, Jacques Lefevre, a native of
Etaples in Picardy, held a high rank for natural ability and extensive
acquirements. It is true that neither his personal appearance nor his
extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could
boast of no noble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable
hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction
he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools
and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and
intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active
mind. Rising steadily above the contracted views, the blind respect for
authority, and the self-satisfied ignorance of the instructors of his
youth and the colleagues of his manhood and old age, he greeted with
delight the advent of those liberal ideas which had wrought so wonderful
a change in Germany and Italy. A thirst for knowledge even led him, in
imitation of the sages of the early world, to travel to distant parts of
Europe, and, if we may credit the statements of his admiring disciples,
to pursue his investigations into portions of Asia and Africa.

[Sidenote: Restores letters to France.]

[Sidenote: His wide range of study.]

To Jacques Lefevre, of Etaples--better known to foreigners under the
Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring
letters to France. His eulogist, Scaevola de Sainte-Marthe, has not
exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the
learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun
rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness
investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a
purer teaching.[129] Lefevre confined his attention to no single branch
of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and
in Biblical litera