In 1513 the two greatest printers of Basle were in partnership, John Amorbach and John Froben. Amorbach, a native of the town of that name in Franconia, had taken his M.A. in Paris, and then had worked for a time in Koberger's press at Nuremberg. About 1475 he began to print at Basle, and for nearly forty years devoted all his energies to producing books that would promote good learning; being, however, far too good a man of business to be indifferent to profit. His ambition was to publish worthily the four Doctors of the Church. Ambrose appeared in 1492, Augustine in 1506, and Jerome succeeded. The work was divided amongst many scholars. Reuchlin helped with the Hebrew and Greek, and spent two months in Amorbach's house in the summer of 1510 to bring matters forward. Subsequently his province fell to Pellican, the Franciscan Hebraist, and John Cono, a learned Dominican of Nuremberg, who had mastered Greek at Venice and Padua, and had recently returned from Italy with a store of Greek manuscripts copied from the library of Musurus. Others who took part in the work were Conrad Leontorius from the Engental; Sapidus, afterwards head master of the Latin school at Schlettstadt; and Gregory Reisch, the learned Prior of the Carthusians at Freiburg, who seems to have been specially occupied with Jerome's Letters. Amorbach's sons, Bruno, Basil, and Boniface, were just growing up to take their father's place, when he died on Christmas Day, 1513. The eldest, Bruno, was born in 1485, and easily paired off with Basil, who was a few years younger. They went to school together at Schlettstadt, under Crato Hofman, in 1497. In 1500 they matriculated at Basle; in 1501 they went to Paris, where in 1504-5 they became B.A., and in 1506 M.A. Bruno was enthusiastic for classical studies, and enjoyed life in Paris, where he certainly had better opportunities, especially of learning Greek, than he had at Basle; so his father allowed him to stay on. Basil was destined for the law, and was sent to work under Zasius at Freiburg. The youngest son, Boniface, 1495-1562, also went to school at Schlettstadt; but when his time came for the university, his father preferred to keep him at home under his own eye. He was rather dissatisfied with Bruno, who as a Paris graduate had begun to play the fine gentleman, and was spending his money handsomely, as other young men have been known to do. The vigorous, straightforward old printer had made the money himself by steady hard work, and he had no intention of letting his son take life too easily. So he wrote him a piece of his mind, in fine, forcible Latin. JOHN AMORBACH TO HIS ELDEST SON, BRUNO, IN PARIS: from Basle, 23 July 1507.