Of his four Monastic Conversations the first and the last are concerned with the question whether monks should be allowed to read the books of the Gentiles, that is to say, the classics.  He handles his theme sensibly and liberally.  Piety, of course, is to come before eloquence, and there is to be choice of books.  Anything of loose tendency is to be forbidden, but he would encourage the reading of Cicero, Seneca, and Aristotle’s Ethics.  The last was only accessible to himself, he says regretfully, in Latin, because he knew no Greek—­a loss which he greatly deplores, desiring to read the Greek Fathers.  The third conversation is about the Benedictine rule, directed to the lawless monks who contended that they were only bound by the customs of the particular monastery they had entered, and not by the general ordinances of their founder.  He combats at length the contention that the world has grown old, and that latter-day men cannot be expected to undergo the rigorous fasts and penances achieved by St. Antony and St. Benedict.  He is quite alive to the weakness of the age, to the need for improvement in the monasteries; and the word Reformer is applied with praise to the leaders of the movement.  This was before the days of Luther, though only just before.

Incidentally, an argument is reported between a Christian and an agnostic.  After their diverse opinions have been rehearsed, the Christian concludes with what is meant to be a crushing reply—­certainly it silences his opponent:  ’On your own theory you don’t know what will happen after death.  On mine you will prosper, if you believe; if not, you will go to hell.  Therefore safety lies in believing mine.’

There are one or two glimpses of the life of the monks.  At the end of one conversation, the other brother hears the bell ringing for prayers and runs off to chapel; Fernand, being old and lame, will be forgiven if he is a little late, and not fined of his dinner.  In other ways consideration was shown to him, and he was often sent to dine in the infirmary, not being expected with his toothless jaws to munch the dry crusts set before the rest of the house.  This, it seems, was a custom which had been learnt from St. Justina’s at Padua, to put out the stale crusts first, before the new bread, to break appetite upon:  just as in the old Quaker schools a hundred years ago, children were set down to suet-pudding, and then broth, before the joint appeared; the order being, ‘No ball, no broth; no broth, no beef’.

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.  The source of our information is the correspondence of one of the brothers, Nicholas Ellenbog (or Cubitus); 890 letters copied out in his own hand, and only 80 of these printed.  It is not so continuous a narrative as Butzbach’s, but the picture that it gives is rather more pleasing.