It was his earnest resolution to renounce the freedom of his academic years and to seek peace of soul and reconciliation with God in the bosom of the pious community. He persisted in keeping the vow made in haste and terror in spite of dissuading voices which made themselves heard both within himself and around him, and the determined opposition of his father to his embracing the religious state. Some were full of admiration for the energetic transformation of the new postulant. Thus the respected Augustinian of Erfurt, Johann Nathin, compared the suddenness and decision of his step to the one-time conversion of Saul into the Apostle Paul.[8] Crotus Rubeanus, the Humanist, then stopping at Erfurt, in a later letter to Luther, expressed himself no less forcibly with regard to the heavenly flash which had made him a monk.[9] The brothers of the “German Congregation of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine”—such was the full title of the Order—on their part rejoiced at the acquisition of the highly gifted and promising youth, who had already taken his degree as Master of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt. If the novice, after gradually regaining peace of mind within the silent walls, permitted his thoughts to recur to his former way of life, this must have presented itself to him as full of trouble and care and very deficient in the homely joys of family life. Luther’s early career differed hardly at all from that of the poorest students of that time. He was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben in Saxony; his parents were Hans Luther, a miner of peasant extraction (he signed himself Luder) and Margaret Luther. They had originally settled in the town of Mansfeld, but had gone first to Möhra and then to Eisleben. Their gifted son spent his childhood in Mansfeld and first attended school there. His father was a stern, harsh man. His mother, too, though she meant well by him, once beat him till the blood came, all on account of a nut.[10] The boy was also intimidated by the stupid brutality of his teachers, and it does not appear that the customary religious teaching he received, raised his spirits or led to a freer, more hopeful development of his spiritual life. He was one day, as he relates later, “beaten fifteen times in succession during one morning” at school, to the best of his knowledge without any fault of his own, though, probably, not without having brought the punishment upon himself by insubordination and obstinacy. After that, in his fourteenth year, he received instruction in Magdeburg from the “Pious Brethren of the Common Life,” and begged his bread by singing from door to door. A year later he went to Eisenach, where his mother had some poor relatives, to continue his Latin studies. In this town he still pursued the same hard mode of earning his living, until a charitable woman, Ursula, the wife of Kunz (Konrad) Cotta, received him into her well-to-do and comfortable household, furnishing him with food and lodging.