Ulrich von Hutten,(46) the stormy petrel of the Reformation period in Germany, was a member of one of the oldest families of the Franconian nobles—a fierce, lawless, turbulent nobility. The old hot family blood coursed through his veins, and accounts for much in his adventurous career. He was the eldest son, but his frail body and sickly disposition marked him out in his father’s eyes for a clerical life. He was sent at the age of eleven to the ancient monastery of Fulda, where his precocity in all kinds of intellectual work seemed to presage a distinguished position if he remained true to the calling to which his father had destined him. The boy, however, soon found that he had no vocation for the Church, and that, while he was keenly interested in all manner of studies, he detested the scholastic theology. He appealed to his father, told him how he hated the thought of a clerical life, and asked him to be permitted to look forward to the career of a scholar and a man of letters. The old Franconian knight was as hard as men of his class usually were. He promised Ulrich that he could take as much time as he liked to educate himself, but that in the end he was to enter the Church. Upon this, Ulrich, an obstinate chip of an obstinate block, determined to make his escape from the monastery and follow his own life. How he managed it is unknown. He fell in with John Jaeger of Dornheim, and the two wandered, German student fashion, from University to University; they were at Köln together, then at Erfurt. The elder Hutten refused to assist his son in any way. How the young student maintained himself no one knows. He had wretched health; he was at least twice robbed and half-murdered by ruffians as he tramped along the unsafe highways; but his indomitable purpose to live the life of a literary man or to die sustained him. At last family friends patched up a half-hearted reconciliation between father and son. They pointed out that the young man’s abilities might find scope in a diplomatic career since the Church was so distasteful to him, and the father was induced to permit him to go to Italy, provided he applied himself to the study of law. Ulrich went gladly to the land of the New Learning, reached Pavia, struggled on to Bologna, found that he liked law no better than theology, and began to write. It is needless to follow his erratic career. He succeeded frequently in getting patrons; but he was not the man to live comfortably in dependence; he always remembered that he was a Franconian noble; he had an irritable temper,—his wretched health furnishing a very adequate excuse.