est, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the
_Chapelle de la Gesine_, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance,
when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift
of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too
frequent occurrence to attract special notice or call forth unfriendly
criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of
the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to
Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of
income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the
prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his
father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to
alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of
the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret
aversion for the superstitions of the papal system, seems dutifully to
have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert
Olivetanus, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both
the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his
interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the
university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'Etoile, afterward
President of the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing on law with great
applause, Calvin in a short time achieved distinction. Marvellous
stories were told of his rapid mastery of his subject. Not only did he
occasionally fill the chair of an absent professor, and himself lecture,
to the great admiration of the classes, but he was offered the formal
rank of the doctorate without payment of the customary fees. Declining
an honorable distinction which would have interfered with his plan of
perfecting himself elsewhere, he subsequently visited the University of
Bourges, in order to enjoy the rare advantage of listening to Andrea
Alciati, of Milan, reputed the most learned and eloquent legal
instructor of the age.

[Sidenote: His studies under Wolmar.]

Meanwhile, however, Calvin's interest in biblical study had been
steadily growing, and at Bourges that great intellectual and religious
change appears to have been effected which was essential to his future
success as a reformer. He attached himself to Melchior Wolmar, a
distinguished professor of Greek, who had brought with him from Germany
a fervent zeal for the Protestant doctrines. Wolmar, reading in