Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/109

94 wide through Europe spread the fame of the brilliant secular College of France. Year by year, as its fame and its students increased, chairs and endowments were added to the first poor foundation. In 1529, the College begins with a professor of Greek and one of Hebrew: that is all. By 1530, two chairs for Greek, two for Hebrew, one for mathematics. In 1534, Latin follows; medicine and philosophy in 1540; these are quickly succeeded by endowments for jurisprudence, for Arabic and Syriac. Physiology, the rights of man, the East—these are the doors opened by the new secular college. In these twelve years the destiny of the genius of France is decided, the character of France has shown its bent.

To this impulse the Sorbonne opposed itself with violence and fury. "If we may believe our masters," says the contemporary Histoire Ecclesiastique, "to study Greek and to meddle, let it he never so little, with Hebrew, is one of the greatest heresies of the world." And Henri Estienne, in his apology for Herodotus, complains that Greek and even Latin are esteemed "luthéranifiques et hérétifiques." To such an extent, he adds, that Master Béda, in the presence of King Francis, first of the name, retorted to the late Guillaume Budé that Hebrew and Greek would be the source of many heresies. In this way learning and science were tabooed as Lutheran. It is necessary to insist upon this point in order to understand the ferocity of the Sorbonne; in order to appreciate the motive which, for the moment, fused the Renaissance with the Reformation. These humanists and pioneers, for the most part Jewish or foreign of origin, professed the Reformed faith as an excuse for lax Catholicism. On the other hand, the most earnest souls in France