ty disappointments.

On Low Sunday, 1506, he was ordained priest at Ottobeuren, and
celebrated his first mass. Some of his letters are to friends inviting
them to be present, and adjuring them to come empty-handed, without
the customary gifts. In these early years there was ample leisure for
study. In 1505 he began Greek, and in 1508 Hebrew. He speaks of
reading Aeneas Sylvius, Pico della Mirandola, Cyprian, Diogenes
Laertius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Dionysius the Areopagite. He went on
with his astronomy, and cast horoscopes for his friends. Binding books
was one of his occupations; and in 1509, when a press was set up in
the monastery, he lent a hand in the printing. He was very fortunate
in his abbot, Leonard Widemann, who had been Steward when he entered
Ottobeuren, but was elected Abbot in 1508, and outlived him by three
years, dying in 1546. Widemann called upon him for service.
Immediately on election he made him Prior--at 28--and only released
him from this office after four years, to make him, though infinitely
reluctant, serve ten years more as Steward.

But if the Abbot knew how to exact compliance, he knew also how to
reward. He gave Ellenbog every assistance in his studies, allowed him
to write hither and thither for books, made continual efforts to
procure him first a Hebrew and then a Greek Bible, wrote to Reuchlin
to find him a converted Jew as Hebrew teacher, and in 1516 built him a
new library; for which Ellenbog writes to a friend asking for verses
to put under the paintings of the Doctors of the Church, which are to
adorn the walls. As results of his studies we hear of him correcting
the abbey service-books, where for _stauros_, a scribe with no Greek
had written _scayros_, and explaining to the Abbot mistaken
interpretations in the passages read aloud in the refectory during
meals. One of these, in a book written by some one who had recently
been canonized--some mediaeval doctor--illustrates the learning of the
day; deriving [Greek: gastrimargia], gluttony, from _castrum_ and
_mergo_, 'quod gula mergat castrum mentis,' because gluttony drowns
the seat of reason.

Of Ellenbog's official duties occasional mention is made in his
letters. As Steward he has to visit the tenants of the monastery; in
the autumn he journeys about the country buying wine. We hear of him
at Westerhaim, on the river Iller, settling a dispute among the
fishermen. On one of his journeys to fetch wine from Constance, at the
hosp