This study, a companion to Peter Macardle's edition of the 'Confabulationes', examines the ways in which the colloquies relate to their Cologne background, to the major contemporary colloquy collections (particularly Erasmus's 'Colloquia' and Mosellanus's 'Paedologia'), and to the humanist renewal of Classical Latin. It also looks in detail at the documentary traces of Schotten's career, and of his networks of friendship and patronage, and tries to understand how he fitted into the structures of a university which has often been (wrongly) understood as hostile to humanism. Based on primary archival material, this is the only full-length study of this underrated German humanist's life and work.