ere Melchior
Wolmar, a German schoolmaster and a man of exemplary scholarship and
character, Francois Daniel, Francois de Connam and Nicolas Duchemin; to
these his earliest letters were written.

From Orleans Calvin went to Bourges in the autumn of 1529 to continue
his studies under the brilliant Italian, Andrea Alciati (1492-1550),
whom Francis I. had invited into France and settled as a professor of
law in that university. His friend Daniel went with him, and Wolmar
followed a year later. By Wolmar Calvin was taught Greek, and introduced
to the study of the New Testament in the original, a service which he
gratefully acknowledges in one of his printed works.[5] The conversation
of Wolmar may also have been of use to him in his consideration of the
doctrines of the Reformation, which were now beginning to be widely
diffused through France. Twelve years had elapsed since Luther had
published his theses against indulgences--twelve years of intense
excitement and anxious discussion, not in Germany only, but in almost
all the adjacent countries. In France there had not been as yet any
overt revolt against the Church of Rome, but multitudes were in sympathy
with any attempt to improve the church by education, by purer morals, by
better preaching and by a return to the primitive and uncorrupted faith.
Though we cannot with Beza regard Calvin at this time as a centre of
Protestant activity, he may well have preached at Lignieres as a
reformatory Catholic of the school of Erasmus. Calvin's own record of
his "conversion" is so scanty and devoid of chronological data that it
is extremely difficult to trace his religious development with any
certainty. But it seems probable that at least up to 1532 he was far
more concerned about classical scholarship than about religion.

His residence at Bourges was cut short by the death of his father in May
1531. Immediately after this event he went to Paris, where the "new
learning" was now at length ousting the medieval scholasticism from the
university. He lodged in the College Fortet, reading Greek with Pierre
Danes and beginning Hebrew with Francois Vatable. It was at this time
(April 1532) that Calvin issued his first publication, a commentary in
Latin on Seneca's tract _De Clementia_. This book he published at his
own cost, and dedicated to Claude Hangest, abbot of St Eloi, a member of
the de Montmor family, with whom Calvin had been brought up. It was
formerly thought that Calvin pub