848 THE REFORMATION IjST FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Gentle breeding followed. His mother died when he was not quite three years old, but already was he a stranger to his father's house ; for one of his uncles, Nicolas de Besze, seigneur de Cette et de Chalonne, and a councillor in the Parliament of Paris, had taken him with him to Paris and adopted him, so great was the love he bore him, and when the time came he was put under the best masters whom money and influence could secure. The boy was precocious, and liis uncle delighted in his progress. One day at table he entertained a guest from Orleans, who was a member of the royal council. The conversation turned upon the future of Theodore, whereuj)on the friend commended Melchior Wolmar, the famous Greek scholar at Orleans, who was also the teacher of Calvin, as the best person to educate the lad. The uncle listened attentively, and sent Theodore tliither and secured him admission into Wolmar's family. This was in 1528, when Theodore was only nine years old. With Wolmar he lived till 1535, first at Orleans and then at Bourges, and doubtless learned much from him. Part of this learning was not at all to the mind of his father or his uncle Claudius, the Abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Froimont in the diocese of Beauvais, who, on the death of his brother Nicolas, on Nov. 29, 1532, had undertaken the pious duty of superintending the boy's education ; for Wolmar, in common with many sober-minded scholars of that day, had broken with the Roman Church and taken up the new ideas inculcated by Luther, and which were beginning to make a stir in France. Indeed, it was his known adlierence to these views which compelled his flight to Germany in the year 1535. Thus the future reformer, in his tenderest and most susceptible years, had impressed upon him the doctrine of justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ, heard much of the corrupt state of the dominant Church, and was witness to the efforts of that Church to put to death those who differed from her teaching.
Nothing was further from the mind of the father and
§ 167. LIFE OF BEZA TO HIS CONVERSION. 849
uncle, and also from that of Theodore himself, than that he should be an advocate of the new views. The career marked out for him Avas that of law, in which his uncle Nicolas had been so distinguished. To this end he was sent to the University of Orleans. Although very young, he attracted attention. He joined the German nation — for the students in universities then were divided into factions, according to their ancestry, and Burgundy was accounted part of Germany—and rapidly became a favorite. But he did not give himself up to mere good-fellowship. He studied hard, and on Aug. 11, 1539, attained with honor the degree of licentiate of the law.
His education being thus advanced, Beza, now twenty years old, came to Paris, there, as his father desired, to prosecute further law studies; but his reluctance to such a course was pronounced and invincible, so mucli so that at length he won his uncle to his side, and was allowed by his father to pui-sue those literary studies which afterwards accrued so richly to the Reformed Church ; but at the time he had no inkling of his subsequent career. By his uncle Claudius' influence the possessor of two benefices which yielded a handsome income, and enriched further by his brother's death in 1541, well-introduced and well-connected, a scholar, a Avit, a poet, handsome, affable, amiable, he lived on equal terms with the best Parisian society, and was one of the acknowledged leaders.^
1 The Jesuit Maimbourg, a declared enemy, in his Illstoire ilit Calvinisme (Paris, 1682, ISnio, p. 217), has thus described him at this time: "Homme bien fait, de belle taille, ayanl le visarje fort agre'uble, I'liir Jin et de'Ucat, et toutes Us manieres d'un homme du vionde qui le faisoient estimer des Grands et surtout des dames, atisgttelles il prenoit grand soin de ne pas de'plaire. Pour I'esprit, on ne pent nier qu'il ne I'etist tres-beau, vif, ais€, subtil, enjou€ et poli, ai/ant pris peine de le cultiver par l'€tude des belles lettres, et particulierement de la poesie, oil il excelloit en frangois et en latin, s^achant avec cela un peu de philosophie et de droit qu'il avoit appris aux ^coles d'Orteans." " He was well made, of good size, having a very agreeable countenance, a refined and delicate air, and tlie carriage of ji man of the world, who had won the esteem of the great, and especially