 Malebranche was born in Paris on August 6, 1638, one month prior to Louis XIV, and died, also in Paris, on October 13, 1715, six weeks after the great French monarch. Malebranche was one of many children born to his mother, Catherine de Lauzon, the sister of a Viceroy of Canada, and his father, also Nicolas Malebranche, a secretary to Louis XIII. As in the case of Descartes and Pascal, Malebranche was born in frail health. His particular affliction was a severe malformation of the spine, and due to this condition as well as his weak lungs he needed to be tutored at home until the age of sixteen. Subsequently he was a student at the Collège de la Marche, and after graduating he went to study theology at the Sorbonne. His education left him with a distaste for a scholasticism that focused on the work of Aristotle. Thus, in 1660 he decided to leave the universities and to enter the Oratory, a religious congregation founded in 1611 by the Augustinian theologian Pierre Bérulle (1575–1629). At the Oratory in Paris, Malebranche studied ecclesiastical history, linguistics, and the Bible, and with his fellow students also immersed himself in the work of Augustine. He was ordained a priest on September 14, 1664.