In Old Geneva education had been neglected. Emperor Charles IV. had offered the citizens a University in the fourteenth century, and the offer had been rejected for fear, it was alleged, lest the students should behave uproariously. The first public school was not opened in the town until 1429. It lasted for about a hundred years, and then fell upon evil times during an epidemic of the plague. The head master ran away from the contagion, and the City Council ordered the building to be closed, on the ground that the children were knocking it to pieces. Then, in 1535, after the Protestants had gained the upper hand, the École de la Rive was established in the convent from which the Cordeliers had been expelled. The first head-master was Antoine Saulnier, a DauphinÉ Reformer, and his prospectus ran as follows:

‘In our school the lectures begin at five o’clock in the morning and continue until ten, which is our usual dinner hour. The ordinary curriculum consists of instruction in the three most excellent languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, not to mention the French language, which, in the opinion of the learned, is by no means to be despised. We hope that, the Lord helping us, the time will come when we shall also teach rhetoric and dialectic.’

Calvin, however, wanted something better than the École de la Rive. He found a means, therefore, of founding a University, and placed ThÉodore de BÈze (of whom more presently) at the head of it as Rector. It was, at first, as Mark Pattison clearly proved in his ‘Life of Isaac Casaubon,’ little more than a grammar school, culminating in a theological college; but it soon expanded, and is still expanding. Nowadays, indeed, housed in commodious new buildings, it furnishes instruction in almost every imaginable branch of knowledge, and specially favours studies of a utilitarian character; but the original programme was confined to the humane letters, the funds for the maintenance of the institution being raised with difficulty, and by means of ingenious fiscal devices, hardly to be held up to the imitation of modern fiscal reformers. One device was to ear-mark for the University chest all the fines imposed upon law-breakers. Those who gave short measure in the market, and those who spoke evil of the magistrates, were alike mulcted in the interests of learning; the heaviest contribution was that exacted from a bookseller convicted of having charged an excessive price for a copy of the Psalms of David. A second method consisted in summoning all the notaries of the town before the Council, and instructing them, when any citizen called them in to make his will, to impress upon the testator the desirability of bequeathing something to the University; the result was a total gain of 1,074 florins, including 312 florins from Robert Estienne, the printer, and 5 sous from a poor woman in the baking business. A third contrivance was to suppress a public banquet, and require the cost, estimated at 100 florins, to be handed to the University authorities.

In this way the University—such as it was—was started, with class-rooms for the scholars and apartments for the professors, who were allowed to supplement their incomes by taking boarders. Everything was poorly done, however, and nobody appears to have been comfortable. Complaints of one sort and another are recorded, in large numbers, in the Register of the Council. For one thing, there was no heating apparatus, but ‘the teachers used to keep up charcoal fires at their own expense, and require every pupil to pay something towards them.’ For another thing, there was no glass in the windows, and we read that ‘as to the request of the Principal that glass windows shall be placed in the class-rooms, it is decided that this shall not be done, but that the scholars may, if they like, fill up the apertures with paper.’ The teachers, too, were constantly expressing dissatisfaction with the accommodation provided for them. As early as 1559 we have one of them applying for a more commodious lodging, on the ground that ‘God has called him to the estate of matrimony.’ A little later we come upon this note:

‘Claude Bridet requested permission to lodge above the Tower, where M. Chevalier, lecturer in Hebrew, used to live, for the sake of his health, and because the lower ground is damp. Decided that he must be satisfied with his present apartment, and that the place to which he refers shall be kept for someone else.’

In spite of discomfort, however, hard work was the order of the day. A letter has been preserved from M. de BÈze, the Rector of the University, to the parent of a pupil, in which he says: ‘I fear I shall be able to make nothing of your son, for, in spite of my entreaties, he refuses to work more than fourteen hours a day.’ The ordinary curriculum did not call for quite such persistent application as that, but was, none the less, sufficiently severe.

The day began, at 7 a.m., with prayers, roll-call, and lessons. At 8.30 there was half an hour’s rest, during which the pupils were instructed to ‘eat bread, praying while they did so, without making a noise.’ From 9 to 10 there were more lessons, terminating with more prayers; from 10 to 11 the scholars dined; from 11 to 12 they sang psalms; from 12 to 1 there were further lessons, inaugurated by prayer; from 1 to 2 there was a quiet time devoted to eating, writing, and informal study; from 2 to 4 there was a final instalment of lessons; and at 4 there was punishment parade in the great college hall.

The punishments were mainly corporal, and were inflicted so frequently that the milder professors protested. ‘The daily fustigations,’ said Mathurin Cordier, ‘disgust the children with the study of the humane letters; moreover, their skins get hardened like the donkeys’, and they no longer feel the stripes.’ It should be added, however, that the stripes were not so often inflicted for neglect of the humane letters as for misbehaviour in church. The children had to attend three services every Sunday and one every Wednesday, in addition to the frequent daily prayers at school. They talked and played, as children will, to the scandal of their elders, and they played truant whenever they saw a chance. It must be admitted to be an indication of imperfect discipline that these peccadilloes were often solemnly reviewed before the Town Council, instead of being summarily dealt with at a Court of First Instance in the head-master’s study. The Councillors, however, showed no sentimental tendency to spare the rod. They might fine offenders whom their police caught in the streets when they ought to have been availing themselves of the means of grace; but they also very generally turned them over to the scholastic authorities to be whipped. A typical case is that of two lads who were caught playing quoits on the ramparts during the hours of Divine service on a Sunday morning.

‘Resolved,’ runs the entry, ‘to hand them over to M. de BÈze, that he may cause them to be given such a fustigation as will prevent them from doing it again.’