r and wide, over the pursuit
of learning, till Adwert merited the name of an 'Academy'.

Earliest of these is John Wessel (d. 1489), and perhaps also the most
notable; certainly the others looked up to him with a veneration which
seems to transcend the natural pre-eminence of seniority.
Unfortunately the details of his life have not been fully established.
Thirty years after his death, when it was too late for him to define
his own views, the Reformers claimed him for their own; and in
consequence his body has been wrangled over with the heat which seeks
not truth but victory. His father, Hermann Wessel, was a baker from
the Westphalian village of Gansfort or Goesevort, who settled in
Groningen. After some years in the town school, the boy was about to
be apprenticed to a trade, as his parents were too poor to help him
further; but the good Oda Jargis, hearing how well he had done at his
books, sent him to the school at Zwolle, in which the Brethren of the
Common Life took part. There, as at Groningen, he rose to the top,
and in his last years, as a first-form boy, also did some teaching in
the third form, according to the custom of the school. He came into
contact with Thomas a Kempis, who was then at the monastery of Mount
St. Agnes, half an hour outside Zwolle, and was profoundly influenced
by him. The course at Zwolle lasted eight years, and there is reason
to suppose that he completed it in full. He was lodged in the Parua
Domus, a hostel for fifty boys, and we are told that he and his next
neighbour made a hole through the wall which divided their
rooms--probably only a wooden partition--and taught one another:
Wessel imparting earthly wisdom, and receiving in exchange the fear
and love of the Lord. In the autumn of 1449 he matriculated at
Cologne, entering the Bursa Laurentiana; in December 1450 he was B.A.,
and in February 1452, M.A.

By 1455 he had arrived at Paris and entered upon his studies for the
theological degree. Within a year he conceived a profound distaste for
the philosophy dominant in the schools; and though he persevered for
some time, his frequent dissension from his teachers earned for him
the title of 'Magister contradictionis'. After this his movements
cannot be traced until 1470, when he was at Rome in the train of
Cardinal Francesco della Rovere. In the interval he studied medicine,
and, if report be true, travelled far; venturing into the East, just
when the fall of Constantinople had tur