Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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But the providential preparation for the part he was destined to play
extended far beyond the conditions of his birth. 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 his 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, whereupon 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 thither 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 adherence 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 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 was 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