Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
Next day he showed them over the monastery, took them into the rooms where the brethren were at work, and explained what each of them had to do: 'just as though we were his equals, says Butzbach, on whom his modesty and friendliness made a deep impression.
He was taken up by a good and pious woman, Gutta Kortenhorff, who without regular vows had devoted herself to a life of abstinence and self-sacrifice; taking special pleasure in helping young men who were preparing for the Franciscan or the reformed Benedictine Orders. For nine months Butzbach lived in her house, doubtless out of gratitude rendering such service as he could to his kind patroness.
Butzbach continued it with an Auctarium, into which he hooked almost every writer he could find, whether ecclesiastical or not. It is a large book, still remaining in manuscript at Bonn, as it was written out for him by two very inefficient novices.
After six months in the fifth, and a year in the fourth class, he was moved up into the third, thus traversing in little over two years what had occupied Erasmus for something like nine. Butzbach was by temperament inclined to glorify the past; in the present he himself had a share, and therefore in his humility he thought little of it.
Between 1477 and 1499 he printed Virgil's Eclogues, Cicero's De Senectute and De Amicitia, Horace's Ars Poetica, the Axiochus in Agricola's translation, Cyprian's Epistles, Prudentius' poems, Juvencus' Historia Euangelica, and the Legenda Aurea: also the grammar of Alexander with the commentary of Synthius and Hegius, Agostino Dato's Ars scribendi epistolas, Aesop's Fables, and the Dialogus Creaturarum, the latter two being moralized in a way which must surely have pleased Butzbach.
Their way lay through Coblenz; and Peter as a weaker vessel was sent on, to go slowly ahead with the lay-brother, whilst the servant and Butzbach stopped in the town to execute some commissions. But they had under-estimated Peter's weakness. After a midday meal the second pair set out briskly, in the comfortable reflection that the others were already part-way to Laach.
Butzbach describes the wife of a wealthy citizen of Deventer as entertaining daily six or seven of the poorer clergy at her table, besides the alms that she distributed continually before her own door. To him she frequently gave food and clothes and money, with much sympathy. It is noticeable how the charity is represented as proceeding from the wife and not from the husband.
At Laach Butzbach for the first time set eyes on Trithemius' works. One of these was a Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, printed by John Amorbach at Basle in 1494 a sort of theological Who's Who, giving the names of authors ancient and modern with lists of their writings.
Trithemius noticed the young lay-brother who seemed so interested in study, and occasionally gave him a word of encouragement. Indeed it was the story of Trithemius' life repeated with wonder by many lips which had spurred Butzbach on to go to Deventer: how as a boy he had worked with his stepfather in the mill at Trittenheim, and at twenty-one was still labouring with his hands.
Henceforward Butzbach was set to beg, going from house to house in the villages they passed, asking for food; and when this failed to produce enough, he was required to steal.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking