About 1782, when he had come of age, he was admitted to the monastic community as a monk and given the religious name of Maurus and was ordained a Catholic priest around 1785.
He cultivated close ties with the Thurn und Taxis family and other influential people in the region.
He supplied the material that formed the core of John Robison's 1797 allegation of an international conspiracy of freemasons, illuminati, and Jacobins.
In 1799 he travelled to England, meeting with members of William Pitt's government including Earl Spencer.
[1] When in 1802 the Eternal Diet of Regensburg, under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte, determined to secularize all property of the Catholic Church within the Empire, the Scots Monastery was uniquely successful in avoiding this fate.