Sir Thomas Bodley

Sir Thomas Bodley (2 March 1545 – 28 January 1613) was an English diplomat and scholar, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Thomas Bodley was born at Exeter in the second-to-last year of the reign of Henry VIII. His father, John Bodley, was a Protestant merchant who went to live abroad rather than stay in England under the Roman Catholic government of Mary. The family including Thomas' younger brother Josias Bodley (and the ten-year-old Nicholas Hilliard, who had been attached to the household by his parents, friends of Bodley) sought refuge in the Duchy of Cleves, staying in the town of Wesel, then in the imperial free city of Frankfurt, before eventually settling in Geneva, home of Calvinism and a great centre of the Reformation. There, Thomas had the opportunity to study at John Calvin's newly erected Academy. He attended lectures in Divinity given by Theodore Beza and Calvin himself and attended services led by John Knox. He learned Greek from Mattheus Beroaldus and Hebrew from Antoine Chevallier. The study of these languages remained enduring passions for Bodley throughout his life.

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