[Footnote 126: This rare poem has been reprinted, with the unimportant passages omitted, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., v. (1857) 268, etc.]
"Cessez, cessez me donner ornemens, Calices, croix, et beaux accoutremens; Faictes que j'aye ministres vertueux.... Les images d'argent tant sumptueux, La grant beauté des moustiers si notables Ne sont pas tant devant Dieu acceptables Que la doctrine et vie bonne et saincte Des bona prelatz." ]
The reformatory movement, whose almost simultaneous rise at so many different points constitutes one of the most noticeable features of the history of Europe in the sixteenth century, originated, so far as France was concerned, within the bosom of that famous nursery of mediæval learning, the University of Paris. Among the teachers who, during the later years of the reign of Louis the Twelfth, attracted the studious from the most distant parts of Christendom, Jacques Lefèvre, a native of Étaples in Picardy, held a high rank for natural ability and extensive acquirements. It is true that neither his personal appearance nor his extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could boast of no noble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active mind. Rising steadily above the contracted views, the blind respect for authority, and the self-satisfied ignorance of the instructors of his youth and the colleagues of his manhood and old age, he greeted with delight the advent of those liberal ideas which had wrought so wonderful a change in Germany and Italy. A thirst for knowledge even led him, in imitation of the sages of the early world, to travel to distant parts of Europe, and, if we may credit the statements of his admiring disciples, to pursue his investigations into portions of Asia and Africa.
To Jacques Lefèvre, of Étaples--better known to foreigners under the Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring letters to France. His eulogist, Scævola de Sainte-Marthe, has not exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a purer teaching.[129] Lefèvre confined his attention to no single branch of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131]