Abstract
An armchair said to have been used by Vincent de Paul may shed some light on his early career. The chair has rods in its arms to support a board between them to serve as a desk. It was donated to the Berceau in 2010 by a family from Buzet-sur-Tarn, accompanied by a note that says that Vincent used this chair during summers from about 1598 until 1604 while he tutored the sons of local nobility and other students in the area. We still don’t know when or why he came there, the level of his instruction, how long he stayed there, or what he taught. However, this article makes some educated guesses to answer these questions. John Rybolt believes it’s likely that Vincent was a tutor of basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, rather than a teacher. Rybolt draws on what we can learn from Vincent’s biographers and is able to make some connections to what teaching or tutoring he might have done while pursuing his university studies in Toulouse.