THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHANNES BUTZBACH, A WANDERING SCHOLAR OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Translated from the German by Robert Francis Seybolt ex-'n and Paul Monroe. Pp. iv -)- 159. Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1933-

Professor Seybolt of the University of Illinois and Professor Monroe of Columbia have rendered a genuine service by making this autobiography accessible in English to those interested in the various aspects of the Renaissance period in Germany. It was written in 1506 by Johannes Butzbach (Johannes Piemontanus, from his birth- place Miltenberg) of the Benedictine abbey of Laach at the solicitation of his brother, then a student at Munster in Westphalia; not however in High German as had been requested, but in Latin, as the author states, to further the progress of his brother in that language. A German translation appeared in 1&68.

It may be noted that the abbey of MariaLaach, in the Rhine Province, was founded in 1093, survived till 1802, was re-estab- lished in 1893, and had in 1927 a, library of 85,000 volumes. Of this abbey Johannes Butzbach was prior from 1507 till his death in 1526.

The general character of the narrative is well summed up in Professor Seybolt's Foreword: "This little autobiography presents a contemporary description of the life of a wandering scholar of the fifteenth century. It is a valuable, original source of information concerning the bacchant and his servant, the "ABC-shooter." The hardships endured by these familiar characters of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are clearly and vividly pictured by one of their number. The author not only corroborates the narratives of Burkhard Zink and Thomas Platter* but relates much that is unique. His tale is never dull; one adventure following another is recounted in brief and interesting fashion."

The author of this autobiography was the son of a weaver, and as a boy attended the Latin school, where he was so brutally beaten for truancy that he was covered with blood. His father then entrusted him to the son of a neighbor, a wandering scholar, who promised to see to his education, but ill-treated and afterwards abandoned him on the road. After six years in Bohemia, where his condition was little better than slavery, he managed to escape and return home. He was then apprenticed to a tailor and afterwards practised his trade as a lay brother in the monastery of Johannisberg. The life there so appealed to him that he resolved to become a monk. After attending the famous school of Deventer in the Netherlands, where he endured much privation but made astonishing progress, he finally found the religious and scholarly atmosphere which he craved at Laach. There he studied, taught, wrote extensively in Latin, both prose and, according to the custom of the time, verse and was in touch with some of the leading Humanists.

As an appendix Professor Seybolt gives a translation from the autobiography of another and earlier scholar, Burkhard Zink, whose wanderings took place 1407-15.

A selected bibliography concludes the book„ which should be of interest to many besides workers in the particular field to which it relates.

* For Platter (1499-1582) see: Monroe, P*> Thomas Platter and the educational Renaissance of the sixteenth Century. New York, 1904.