§ 70. CALVIN AS A STUDENT. 305
enjoyments of friendship with like-minded fellow-students. Among them were three young lawyers, Duchemin, Connan, and Francois Daniel, who felt the need of a reformation and favored progress, but remained in the old Church. His letters from that period are brief and terse; they reveal a love of order and punctuality, and a conscientious regard for little as well as great things, but not a trace of opposition to the traditional faith.
His principal teacher in Greek and Hebrew was Melchior Volmar (Wolmar), a German humanist of Rottweil, a pupil of Lefevre, and successively professor in the universities of Orleans and Bourges, and, at last, at Tiibingen, where he died in 1561. He openly sympathized with the Lutheran Reformation, and may have exerted some influence upon his pupil in this direction, but we have no authentic information about it.^ Calvin was very intimate with him, and could hardly avoid discussing with him the religious question which w^as then shaking all Europe. In grateful remembrance of his services he dedicated to him his Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Aug. 1» 1546). 2
His teachers in law were the two greatest jurists of the age, Pierre d'Estoile (Petrus Stella) at Orleans, who was conservative, and became President of the Parliament of Paris, and Andrea Alciati at Bourges, a native of Milan, who was progressive and continued his academic career in Bologna and Padua. Calvin took an interest in the controversy of these rivals, and wrote a little preface to the
^ Floriraond de Raemond (who shows a tendency to discredit the French Reformation bj' tracing it to a foreign, German source) asserts that Volmar first instilled the poison of heresy into the mind of Calvin, and advised him to exchange the Code of Justinian for the Gospel of Christ. But Calvin and Beza {Op. XXI. 122), while speaking highly of Volmar as a teacher and friend, say nothing about his religious influence.
2 Opera, XII. no. 814. He apologizes for his long silence. The correspondence with Volmar is lost, but may yet be found.
306 THE EEFOEMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Antapologia of his friend, Nicholas Duchemin, in favor of d'Estoile.^ He acquired the degree of Licentiate or Bachelor of Laws at Orleans, Feb. 14, 1531 (1532) .2 On leaving the university he was offered the degree of Doctor of Laws without the usual fees, by the unanimous consent of the professors.^ He was consulted about the divorce question of Henry VIII., when it was proposed to the universities and scholars of the Continent ; and he gave his opinion against the lawfulness of marriage with a brother's widow.^
The study of jurisprudence sharpened his judgment, enlarged his knowledge of human nature, and was of great practical benefit to him in the organization and administration of the Church in Geneva, but may have also increased his legalism and over-estimate of logical demonstration.
In the summer of 1531, after a visit to Noyon, where he attended his father in his last sickness, Calvin removed a second time to Paris, accompanied by his younger brother, Antoine. He found there several of his fellow-students of Orleans and Bourges ; one of them offered him the home of his parents, but he declined, and took up his abode in the College Fortet, where we find him again in 1533. A part of the year he spent in Orleans.
Left master of his fortune, he now turned his attention again chiefly to classical studies. He attended the lectures
1 March 6, 1531. Herminjard, II. 314 sq. no. 328; Lefranc, 79 sq.
2 In Op. XXI. 190, the degree is dated from the year 1532. "Dans un act de se jour \_Febr. 14'\ est nomine maistre Jean Cauvin licencie' es lois." In a document relating to the settlement of the estate of the deceased Gerard Cauvin, which Lefranc (p. 202) quotes from Le Vasseur {Annal., p. 1169), and assigns to Feb. 14, 1531, Calvin is mentioned as '^ licentie' es loix."
3 "Absque ullo precio, summo docentium omnium consensu," says Beza (_0p. XXI. 122). CoUadon (f. 54) adds that Calvin refused the offer ("ce que toutesfois il refusa ") ; but it is not clear whether he meant the gratuity or the degree itself, probably the former.
* Gerdes, IV. 201 ; M'Crie, 63 ; Dyer, Life of Calvin, p. 8. Burnet, in his Hist, of the Bef of the Ch. of England (Part I. Bk. II.), refers to a letter of Calvin on the subject, which I cannot find in Herminjard.