Mathematical education was part of the encyclopedic program of Baïf's Academy and its ofishoot the Palace Academy, as Miss Frances Yates has aptly shown. But who were the teachers? She has speculated that the classical archeologist Louis de Montjusieu taught mathematics to the Duc de Joyeuse at the Academies rather than privately. An analysis of the interests and contacts of a number of mathematicians in the Paris area during the 1570's and 1580's adds to her speculation several masters of mathematics, three of whom will be discussed here.

A distinctive feature of early Tudor humanism, with St. Thomas More, Erasmus, John Colet, and John Lewis Vives, was a trenchant critique of war's place in the social pattern, coupled with sustained efforts to effect peaceful reforms in England. This criticism of society not only marks their kind of humanism but was indeed destined to help shape the modern mind. On the English record, Colet appears as the pioneer, beginning with his Oxford lectures on St. Paul (1496), in which he broke with the main traditional concept of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ war, reaching a conclusion that it is impossible for evil and war to produce good or to be a Christian thing. The means Colet used to reach this view is itself notable.