What Has Been Said Is Confirmed by Some Examples

IN the book of the illustrious men of the Cistercian Order there is a story of the abbot of a monastery in Saxony who was not content to clothe himself with the cloth of the neighborhood, but sent every year to Flanders for pieces of fine costly cloth and clothed himself therewith. When the abbot died the monks divided his clothes among them, and the prior of the monastery took for himself one of his tunics and put it on, one solemn night, in honor of the solemnity of the feast. But no sooner had he done so than he felt as though they were applying plates of hot iron to his flesh, and began to cry out that he was burning, and flung the garment off at once, and all saw that it sent out sparks of fire, as though it were a red-hot iron. Astonished and dismayed at this, all those who had taken any of father abbot’s clothes brought them at once to the spot and made a heap of them; and there began to come out and rise sparks of fire in all directions, as from a burning furnace. This went on long enough for them to be able to give notice to all the neighboring abbots, and they came and bore witness to this so fearful judgment of God.

Caesarius relates how a knight having done many wrongs to a Benedictine community in France, the religious determined to dispatch a monk to King Philip to complain of the wrongs they suffered. They chose for their envoy a young monk of noble family, hoping that the king would give him favorable audience for the sake of his high connections. Coming into the king’s presence, he said to him: ‘There is a man who has done great injuries to our monastery, and I beg your highness to restrain him and make him restore the goods he has taken away.” The king eyed him, and his habit and appearance, and asked him who he was, and learned that he was the son of a well-known knight. He led the conversation to other subjects until the monk said to him: “Sire, the truth is that this knight has carried off all that we had in the house and left us little or nothing.” The king replied: “That may easily be seen in your shoes, which would not have been so pinched if he had left you a little leather. As you are more nobly born than the rest, you ought to be more humble.” Wishing, thereupon, to soothe him, he added: “Take not my warning ill; I do it for your good. Return home, and I will make sure that this person gives you no more trouble.” A similar story is told by Caesarius of another Philip, King of the Romans, who gave the same answer to a Cistercian abbot who was talking to him about the needy condition of his community. The king, looking at the shoes he wore, very close-fitting and tight, said to him: “It is quite evident that your house is very poor from the way you are shod, since even leather is dear.” Whereat the abbot was much annoyed.

It is related of the blessed St. Francis in his chronicles, that a guardian, very intimate with the holy father, founded an oratory for the friars hard by which he made a cell, a little way apart, in which the saint could stay and make his prayer. The cell was of timber, worked with an adz only. When Father St. Francis came to the place, they took him to the cell, and Father St. Francis said: “Brother, if you wish me to dwell in this cell, make within it a lining of osiers and branches of some trees, that I may see in them poverty.” And when that was done, he stayed in the cell for some days.

Of our Father Francis Borgia we read in his Life that in all things he showed himself a truly poor man and a perfect lover of this virtue. It appeared in his dress, food, bed, and lodging, and even in very minute things, as in the paper that he used for his sermons, in the fire that was made for him in a case of necessity, and like things, so much so that he could never be prevailed on to accept new shoes or new stockings. They once tried to play a trick upon him, putting new shoes in the place of the old ones before he got up, but it availed them nothing. When he went begging alms, he ate with more relish the scraps and bits of bread that he or others brought in preference to the whole loaves that were put on the table. On his journeys, though they were ever so long and laborious, or his health ever so weak, he would not allow of there being carried with him a clean pair of sheets for his personal use, fearing that this might be to the prejudice of holy poverty. He often slept in barns upon the bare tiles in cold weather, with the wind coming in in many directions, and that with such cheerfulness and rejoicing as to strike amazement and shame into his companions. His overcoat and raincloak, in winter as in summer, was his mantle, doubled and lined inside, to keep it from wearing out. It was the greatest difficulty imaginable to get him to wear high boots, or other defense against the rain. He would say that a broadbrimmed hat was protection enough against sun and rain. Besides, it often happened that he came to inns, soaked through with water and pierced with cold, and great was his joy, when he arrived in that condition, to find that there was no good accommodation at the inn. In no sickness, and in no weather, however severe and cold, would he allow any curtain to be fastened about his bed or in his room; he thought it a great luxury to have a little mat fastened at the head of his bed. All this was the more pleasing and admirable in him, considering the high estate he had left in the world.