FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114  
115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>   >|  
ture and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131] [Sidenote: His pupil, Guillaume Farel.] Enjoying a reputation for profound and exact learning which had spread to foreign countries, and admired even by the great humanist Erasmus, Lefevre had drawn to him a small band of the most promising of the scholars in attendance upon the university. Prominent among these for brilliancy and fiery zeal was a student more than thirty years younger than his teacher, Guillaume Farel, destined to fill an important place in the annals of the French reformation, and to play a leading role in the history of Geneva and Neufchatel. Farel was born in 1489, near Gap, in Dauphiny, and his childhood was spent at the foot of the Alps. Unlike Lefevre, he belonged to a family of considerable importance in the provincial nobility. The contrast was still more marked between the mild and timid professor and the pupil in whose nature courage was so prominent an element that it often assumed the appearance of imprudent contempt of danger. [Sidenote: Devotion of scholar and pupil.] But, in spite of dissimilarity of character, Lefevre and Farel lived together in close friendship. Together they frequented the churches, and united in the pious work, as they regarded it, of decking out with flowers the pictures of the saints, to whose shrines they made frequent pilgrimages. Lefevre was scrupulously exact in the performance of his religious duties, and was especially punctual in attendance on the mass. In his zeal for the church, he had even undertaken as a meritorious task to compile the lives of the saints whose names appear on the Roman calendar, and had actually committed to the press an account of those whose feast-days fell within the months of January and February.[132] On the other hand, Farel was so sincere an adherent of the current faith, that, to employ his own forcible description, he had become "a very Pantheon, full of intercessors, saviors and gods, of whom his heart might have passed for a complete register." The papacy had so entrenched
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114  
115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Lefevre
 

saints

 

Guillaume

 
Sidenote
 

nature

 
attendance
 

flowers

 

decking

 

duties

 

regarded


scrupulously

 
shrines
 

frequent

 

pilgrimages

 

religious

 

pictures

 

performance

 

friendship

 

appearance

 
assumed

imprudent

 

contempt

 
Devotion
 

danger

 

element

 

professor

 

courage

 
prominent
 

scholar

 
frequented

Together

 

churches

 

united

 

punctual

 
dissimilarity
 

character

 

description

 
forcible
 

Pantheon

 

employ


sincere

 
adherent
 

current

 

intercessors

 

complete

 

passed

 

register

 

papacy

 

entrenched

 

saviors