DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0082
56
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
the scheme grew larger. Postel, the Eastern dreamer, rested
from his travels in a Chair for Arabic and Chaldaic, which
Royalty had created for him. Philosophy, Medicine, Mathe-
matics, Letters, were all nobly represented. By the year 1545,
the five Professorships had become eleven.
The College had now assumed important proportions-
had taken its place as the first intellectual influence in the
Kingdom. The King had affiliated to it the Estiennes’
Printing business—henceforward known as the Imprimerie
Royale: a faithful colleague in the work of sowing know-
ledge. The Sorbonne was not likely to forget that the
Estiennes had published Lefebre d’Etaples’ translation of the
New Testament, besides other heretical works. They looked
upon the Firm with suspicion and their fears proved only
too well founded. At this glorious moment, when Refor-
mers, Scholars, Poets, Wits, and Men of Science still made
common cause, with the King as their leader; when Refor-
mers meant nothing more startling than a Broad Church
of Rome, it naturally followed that the College became a
nucleus for Liberals in religion as well as for scholarly in-
novators. Lefebre d’Etaples was the centre of this Broad
Church party. He, Farel, and Berquin—who was destined
to such fierce persecution—were its most radical members;
but Bude, Toussaint, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Petit, Marot,
and the Estienne family, were no less of the group: fore-
shadowing the Gallicans of later days and untiringly opposed
to the spirit of scholasticism.
The Sorbonne, meanwhile, had not been idle. It had
rushed to arms under the command of its pitiless leader,
Noel Beda, a fanatic Schoolman of great reputation among
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
the scheme grew larger. Postel, the Eastern dreamer, rested
from his travels in a Chair for Arabic and Chaldaic, which
Royalty had created for him. Philosophy, Medicine, Mathe-
matics, Letters, were all nobly represented. By the year 1545,
the five Professorships had become eleven.
The College had now assumed important proportions-
had taken its place as the first intellectual influence in the
Kingdom. The King had affiliated to it the Estiennes’
Printing business—henceforward known as the Imprimerie
Royale: a faithful colleague in the work of sowing know-
ledge. The Sorbonne was not likely to forget that the
Estiennes had published Lefebre d’Etaples’ translation of the
New Testament, besides other heretical works. They looked
upon the Firm with suspicion and their fears proved only
too well founded. At this glorious moment, when Refor-
mers, Scholars, Poets, Wits, and Men of Science still made
common cause, with the King as their leader; when Refor-
mers meant nothing more startling than a Broad Church
of Rome, it naturally followed that the College became a
nucleus for Liberals in religion as well as for scholarly in-
novators. Lefebre d’Etaples was the centre of this Broad
Church party. He, Farel, and Berquin—who was destined
to such fierce persecution—were its most radical members;
but Bude, Toussaint, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Petit, Marot,
and the Estienne family, were no less of the group: fore-
shadowing the Gallicans of later days and untiringly opposed
to the spirit of scholasticism.
The Sorbonne, meanwhile, had not been idle. It had
rushed to arms under the command of its pitiless leader,
Noel Beda, a fanatic Schoolman of great reputation among