's throw from it.' Platter wrote his autobiography
at the age of 73, when his memories of his youth must have been
growing dim; but though on this account we must not press him in
details, his main outlines are doubtless correct.

On his return, Butzbach was apprenticed to Aschaffenburg, to learn the
trade of tailoring; and having mastered this, he procured for himself,
in 1496, the position of a lay-brother in the Benedictine Abbey of
Johannisberg in the Rheingau, opposite Bingen. His duties were
manifold. Besides doing the tailoring of the community, he was
expected to make himself generally useful: to carry water and fetch
supplies, to look after guests, to attend the Abbot when he rode
abroad (on one occasion he was thrown thus into the company of Abbot
Trithemius of Sponheim, whose work on the Ecclesiastical writers of
his time he afterwards attempted to carry on), to help in the hay
harvest, and in gathering the grapes. Before a year was out he grew
tired of these humble duties, and bethought him anew of his father's
wish that he should become a professed monk. He had omens too. One
morning his father appeared to him as he was dressing, and smiled upon
him. Another day he was sitting at his work and talking about his wish
with an old monk who was sick and under his care. On the wall in front
of his table he had fastened a piece of bread, to be a reminder of the
host and of Christ's sufferings. Suddenly this fell to the ground. The
old man started up from his place by the stove, and steadying his
tottering limbs cried out aloud that this was a sign that the wish was
granted. He had the reputation among his fellows of being a prophet
and had foretold the day of his own death. Butzbach accepted the omen,
and obtained leave to go to school again.

His choice was Deventer. One of the brethren wrote him an elegant
letter to Hegius applying for admission; and though, as he says, he
answered no questions in his entrance examination (which appears to
have been oral), on the strength of the letter he was admitted and
placed in the seventh class, a young man of twenty amongst the little
boys who were making a beginning at grammar. But he had no means of
support except occasional jobs of tailor's work, and hunger drove him
back to Johannisberg. There he might have continued, had not a chance
meeting with his mother, when he had ridden over to Frankfort with the
Abbot, given him a new spur. She could not bear to think of his