In 1464,
Raoul Lefèvre composed for the
Duke of Burgundy a history of
Troy. At that time the French still regarded themselves as descendants of
Hector. If we except the
Sorbonne, the University of Paris, none of the French universities took part in the movement. Individual writers and printing-presses at Paris,
Lyon,
Rouen and other cities became its centres and sources.
Guillaume Fichet and
Robert Gaguin are usually looked upon as the first French Humanists. Fichet introduced "the eloquence of Rome" at Paris and set up a press at the Sorbonne. He corresponded with
Bessarion and had in his library volumes of
Petrarch,
Guarino of Verona and other Italians. Gaguin copied and corrected
Suetonius in 1468 and other Latin authors.
Poggio Bracciolini's
jest book and some of
Valla's writings were translated into French. In the reign of
Louis XI, who gloried in the title "the first Christian king", French poets celebrated his deeds. The homage of royalty took in part the place among the literary men of France that the cult of antiquity occupied in Italy.
Ancient Greek, which had been completely forgotten in France, had its first teachers in
Gregory Tifernas, who reached Paris, 1458,
Janus Lascaris, who returned with
Charles VIII, and
Hermonymus of Sparta, who had
Johann Reuchlin and
Guilielmus Budaeus (known variously as William Budaeus (English), Guillaume Budé (French) and Guilielmus Budaeus (Latin)) among his scholars. An impetus was given to the new studies by the Italian,
Hieronymus Aleander, afterwards famous for his association with
Martin Luther at
Worms. He lectured in Paris, 1509, on
Plato and issued a
Latino-Greek lexicon. In 1512 his pupil,
Vatable, published the Greek grammar of
Manuel Chrysoloras. Budaeus, perhaps the foremost Greek scholar of his day, founded the
Collège Royal, 1530, and finally induced
Francis I to provide for instruction in
Biblical Hebrew and Greek. The
University of Paris at the close of the 14th century was sunk into a low condition and
Erasmus bitterly complained of the food, the morals and the intellectual standards of the
Collège de Montaigu which he attended. Budaeus urged the combination of the study of the Scriptures with the study of the classics and exclaimed of the
Gospel of John, "What is it, if not the almost perfect sanctuary of the truth!"
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples studied at the Universities of Paris,
Pavia,
Padua and
Cologne and, for longer or shorter periods, tarried in the greater Italian cities. He knew Greek and some Hebrew. From 1492 to 1506 he was engaged in editing the works of
Aristotle and
Raymundus Lullus and then, under the protection of
Guillaume Briçonnet,
Bishop of Meaux, he turned his attention to theology. It was his purpose to offset the
Sentences of
Peter the Lombard by a system of theology giving only what the
Scriptures teach. In 1509, he published the
Psalterum quintuplex, a combination of five Latin versions of the Psalms, including a revision and a commentary by his own hand. In 1512, he issued a revised Latin translation of the
Pauline Epistles with commentary. In this work, he asserted the authority of the Bible and the doctrine of justification by faith, without appreciating, however, the far-reaching significance of the latter opinion. Three years after the appearance of Luther's
New Testament, Lefèvre's French translation appeared, 1523. It was made from the
Vulgate, as was his translation of the
Old Testament, 1528. In 1522 and 1525, appeared his commentaries on the four Gospels and the
Catholic Epistles. The former was put on the Index by the
Sorbonne. The opposition to the free spirit of inquiry and to the
Reformation, which the Sorbonne stirred up and French royalty adopted, forced him to flee to
Strassburg and then to the liberal court of
Marguerite de Navarre. Among those who came into contact with Lefèvre were
Guillaume Farel and
John Calvin, the Reformers of
Geneva. Another student of Lefèvre was the anatomist
Jacques Dubois. In the meantime
Clément Marot, 1495–1544, the first true poet of the French literary revival, was composing his French versification of the Psalms and of
Ovid's
Metamorphoses. The Psalms were sung for pleasure by French princes and later for worship in Geneva and by the
Huguenots. When Calvin studied the humanities and law at Bourges,
Orléans and Paris, about 1520, he had for teachers
Maturin Cordier and
Pierre de L'Estoile, the canonists, and
Melchior Wolmar, teacher of Greek, whose names the future Reformer records with gratitude and respect. ==See also==