 Marin Mersenne was born on 8 September 1588 near Oizé in the French region of Haut-Maine (nowadays the Sarthe). He came from a family of merchants and small landowners. After studying at the college du Mans, he was sent in 1604 to the newly created Jesuit college of La Flèche, where he received the established Jesuit education, coupling humanist—Ciceronian—and Aristotelian traditions (Dear 1988). He may have met there the young René Descartes, who entered La Flèche in 1606, although it is unlikely that their friendship started then, as Descartes was 8 years his junior. When he left the college, Mersenne completed his training in theology, Greek and Hebrew in Paris at the Collège Royal and at the Sorbonne where he was instructed by the Thomist theologians François Ysambert and Philippe de Gamache (see Coste 1648; Armogathe 1994). Attracted to the strict rule of the Minims, a Franciscan order recently introduced into France, he took the habits in 1611, and after periods of novitiate and teaching in Meaux, Paris and Never, was recalled to Paris in 1619 at the new house on the Place Royale (the present Place des Vosges) where he remained permanently, apart from a few trips to the French provinces, to the Netherlands in 1630, and to Italy from 1644 to 1645.