His English friends took leave of him with no small regret, and loaded him with parting presents. St. Dunstan gave him a number of exquisitely-wrought silver ornaments of his own workmanship, which he requested him to present as his offerings to St. Benedict, a portion of whose body was preserved at Fleury. St. Oswald ordained him priest, and gave him a chalice, some vestments, and everything else requisite for saying mass. In 988 he became abbot, in which office he continually recommended his monks to cultivate study as the most useful exercise next to fasting and prayer. For himself he ceased not all his life to read, write, or dictate. His favourite studies, next to the Holy Scriptures, were dialectics and astronomy, and among his works were some treatises on both those subjects. Renowned for his learning throughout Europe, he was killed at last in 1004 in an affray between his servants and some Gascon monks of the monastery of Reole, whither he had been sent to effect a reform. In fact, if the age exhibited much decay and many scandals, it found men ready to spend their lives in the weary work of restoration and reformation. And it is remarkable that the greatest prelates of the time invariably regarded the revival of monachism as the only means of restoring good discipline and learning. Such were the views of St. Dunstan and his fellow-labourers, and such was also the conviction of the excellent Adalberon, who in 933 became Bishop of Metz. He was brother to the reigning duke of Lorraine, and his talents and zeal equalled the nobility of his birth. In order to provide his diocese with a seminary of devoted and learned men, he resolved on restoring the great monastery of Gorze, which had been founded by St. Chrodegang of Metz, but which had been ruined under the combined attacks of the Normans and the Hungarians. He completed the rebuilding of the abbey, but was still uncertain whence he should procure his colony of monks, when he was informed that a little society of ecclesiastics, which had been formed in the neighbouring diocese of Toul, was about to pass into Italy, seeking some spot where they might unmolested lead a more perfect life. The way in which this society had been organised was altogether remarkable. At their head was John of Vandières, the native of a village in the diocese of Nancy, who, having been born when his father was advanced in years, had suffered from some of the disadvantages of being a spoiled child. The fond parent, however, was at last persuaded to send the boy to school, first at Metz, and then at the monastery of St. Michael’s, where Master Hildebold, a pupil of Remigius, gave lessons in grammar. John, however, profited very little by his teaching, and on his father’s death, his mother, marrying a second time, recalled him home, and gave him the charge of all the temporal affairs of the house. John showed considerable ability in the management of lands and revenues, and absorbed in these cares,