Note 222 — Chapter XIV

Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris. Vol. ii. p. 227. There is incidental evidence that the Greek and Oriental tongues were occasionally studied even by members of the secular colleges of Paris, during this and the following century. Stephen Pasquier speaks of a certain youth of twenty, who in the year 1445 spoke very subtle Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic, besides many other tongues; and winds up his account by saying that if an ordinary man had lived a hundred years without eating and sleeping he could not have learnt as much as this young prodigy. His learning, however, was evidently something rather uncommon, for, says the historian, it put all his fellow-students in fear lest he knew more than human nature ought to know, and might possibly be “a young Antichrist.”