We may notice the anticipation of the Quakers, who in a similar way would only speak of first day and sixth month.

6.  HEGIUS TO WESSEL; from Deventer between 1483 and 1489.

’I am sending you the Homilies of John Chrysostom, and hope you will enjoy reading them.  His golden words have always been more acceptable to you than the precious metal itself from the mint.

‘I have been, as you know, at Cusanus’ library, and found there many Hebrew books which were quite unknown to me; also a few Greek.  I remember the names of the following:  Epiphanius against heresies, a very big book; Dionysius on the Hierarchy; Athanasius against Arius; Climacus.

’These I left behind there, but I brought away with me:  Basil on the Hexaemeron and some of his homilies on the Psalms; the Epistles of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles; Plutarch’s Lives of Romans and Greeks, and his Symposium; some writings on grammar and mathematics; some poems on the Christian religion, written, I think, by Gregory Nazianzen; some prayers, in Latin and Greek.

’If there are any of these you lack, let me know and they shall come to you:  for everything I have is at your disposal.  If you could spare the Gospels in Greek, I should be grateful for the loan of it.  You enquire what books we are using in the school.  I have followed your advice; for literature which is dangerous to morality is most injurious.’

The library mentioned above was that of Nicholas Krebs (d. 1464), the famous Cardinal who took part in the Council of Basle and was the patron of Poggio.  Cues on the Moselle was his birthplace, and gave him his name Cusanus.  In his later years he founded a hostel, the Bursa Cusana, at Deventer, where he had been at school, and at Cues built a hospital for aged men and women, with a grassy quadrangle and a chapel of delicate Gothic; and there in a vaulted chamber supported by a central column he deposited the manuscripts, mainly theological but with some admixture of the classics, which he had gathered in the course of his busy life.

In 1496 we hear of another visit to it; when Dalberg, who was a prince of humanists, led thither Reuchlin and a party of friends on a voyage of discovery.  Their course was from Worms to Oppenheim, where his mother was still living:  by boat to Coblenz and up the Moselle to Cues:  then over the hills to Dalburg, his ancestral home, and finally to the abbey of Sponheim, near Kreuznach, where they admired the rich collection of manuscripts in five languages formed by the learned historian Trithemius, who was then Abbot.  Whether this gay party of pleasure also carried off any treasures from Cues is not recorded.