He was ordained priest at Eichstätt in 1405, and joined the Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Ratisbon in 1410, where he devoted himself to historical studies.
Robert Browning's poem "Incident of the French Camp" is set during the Napoleonic Wars Battle Of Ratisbon/Regensburg.
In Mantua he was knighted; in Landshut he performed for the Burgundian duke Philip the Good; in Ratisbon he performed for Emperor Frederick III.
From among the many scholars at Ratisbon he selected for his guide the mystic Yehuda ben Samuel HaChasid.
His busts, of which there are more than one hundred, include seventeen colossal heads in the Walhalla, Ratisbon; Goethe, Wieland, and Fichte were modelled from life.
In 1817 his father died and John was sent to be educated at St James' monastery (Scots Benedictine College) at Ratisbon, Germany.
Despite the composition of diverse short treatises, chiefly canonical and dogmatic, he did not lose sight of his main purpose, but gathered materials for his history of the Dioceses of Ratisbon, Vienna, Neustadt, Seckau, Gurk, Lavant, and for the secular history of Carinthia.
In 1465 he taught philosophy and was regent of studies in Cologne; in 1467 taught theology at Ulm; in 1469 or 1470 was elected prior in Eichstätt, on 31 May, 1473, the newly founded University of Ingolstadt conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Theology; in 1474 he taught theology in the convent at Ratisbon and in 1478 became professor of Old Testament exegesis in the University of Ingolstadt.
The famous Scottish Monastery of St. Jacob at Ratisbon was built around 1090 by Burgrave Otto of Ratisbon in Ratisbon became the mother-house of a series of other Scots Monasteries, among which the Our Blessed Lady at Vienna built in 1158.