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One cause of dissension in monasteries at this period was the existence of an unreformed element among the monks; though in Butzbach's time it had probably disappeared at Laach. Ever since the Oriental practice of monasticism spread into the West, Christendom has seen a continual series of endeavours towards better and purer ideals of human life.
After a few years he came into trouble with his master for laziness and truancy, and received a severe beating; his mother intervened and got the master dismissed from his post, and Butzbach was removed from the school. Butzbach's manuscripts from Laach are now in the University Library at Bonn, but have never been printed. I have used a German translation by D.J. Becker, Regensburg, 1869.
Their guide led them straight into the church, and as Butzbach's eye glanced along the plain Romanesque columns, past the gorgeous tomb of the founder, to the dim splendours of the choir, the words of the familiar Psalm rose to his lips: 'Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi; hic habitabo, quoniam elegi eam. Peace had come to him at once, and he received it.
A zealous Abbot or Prior returning with his band of foreigners was often met by opposition and even forcible resistance. When Jacob of Breden, Butzbach's 'senior brother', came in 1471 with seven others from St. Martin's at Cologne to renew a right spirit in Laach, a number of the older monks resented it, especially when he was made Prior for the purpose. One cannot but sympathize with them.
A hundred prisoners had been executed in the three days before Butzbach's return, and as he strode into Deventer to take up his books again, he may have seen their scarce-cold bodies swinging on gibbets against the summer sunset. The schoolboy of to-day works in happier surroundings. Butzbach's career henceforward was fortunate.
Before the day came Peter's spirit faltered, and he went. But his weakness was not for long. He repented and found his peace in a Cistercian house near Worms; and Butzbach's sympathy went with him, back to the Upper Germany which both loved.
However, at length the opportunity came, and after varying fortunes, Butzbach made his way home to Miltenberg, to find his father dead and his mother married again. For the substantial accuracy of Butzbach's narrative his character is sufficient warranty.
Butzbach's lot was very different; and it is a pleasant contrast to turn to his experiences at Laach, an important Benedictine abbey some miles west of Andernach. In the autumn of 1500, when he had been two years at Deventer, there appeared one day in the school the Steward of the Abbey of Niederwerth, an island in the Rhine below Coblenz.
We are in a position to view from the inside another Benedictine house at this period, that of Ottobeuren, near Memmingen, which lies about mid-way between Augsburg and the east end of the Lake of Constance. It is not so continuous a narrative as Butzbach's, but the picture that it gives is rather more pleasing.
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