_ What Has Been Said Is Confirmed by Some Examples

IT is related of Rabandus, a Frankish nobleman, whose vocation and coming to religion was a singular miracle, that he found this life very rough and hard, having been brought up in very easy circumstances; and the Abbot Porcarius, who was then superior of the convent, allowed him sundry special and extraordinary comforts, better suited to his constitution, and ordered them to be given him; but not only did he not thrive thereupon, but every day became more delicate and cranky. It happened one day, when he was at dinner with the rest, who were served only with a morsel of dry bread and some beans, he thought he saw two venerable old men—one was bald, and had keys hung about his neck, the other was a monk—with a crystal vase in their hands, and making a round of the refectory they gave to each monk on his plate something that they drew out of the vase; but him alone they left out without giving him any, and looked at him with a severe and angry countenance. But he got as much as he could from the plates of those who were seated about him something of what they had had given them; and tasting it he found it so delicious that all the delicacies he had eaten in his life he thought were not so tasty and could not be compared with that. Having seen this vision three times, he went to his abbot and told it him, and asked him earnestly to tell him who those two old men were that he had seen. The abbot fell in with it at once and understood that they were the Apostle St. Peter, patron of the house, and Honoratus, its founder; and that the reason why they gave him none of that food which they distributed to the others was because he did not follow the community in all things, but had sundry special dishes. Rabandus, hearing this, did violence to himself, and resolved to follow in all things the common rigid and severe discipline of religious life, which he found much easier and lighter than he had expected. A little while after, he saw the same saints making their usual distribution of that food to the monks, and they gave him some of it also, wherewith his soul was much comforted, and he resolved to bear any hardships and severities that he found in religion.

Caesarius has an example very like this, of a Cistercian monk, a monk rather in habit than in works. Being a physician, he was outside the enclosure the greater part of the year, and appeared in the monastery only upon high festival days. One feast of our Lady he was with the rest singing in choir, and saw our Blessed Lady enter the choir, all radiant and shining, and from a box she held in her hand she poured with a spoon something into every monk’s mouth; but when it came to his turn, she passed by with-. out giving him any, telling him he needed none of her drink, since he was a doctor and got good things for himself. This reproach so sensibly afflicted him that, entering into himself, he changed his life, never going out of doors without orders, and mortifying himself much. The next feast of our Lady she came as before to regale the religious, and approached him and, stopping, said to him: ‘Now that you have amended your life and preferred my medicines to yours, see here some of my beverage; drink as the rest.” After that he remained with great delight steady in the monastery, holding all the pleasures of the world in disgust. That drink was devotion, which makes all things sweet.

The same Caesarius relates that there came to the Monastery of Clairvaux a clerk, very fastidious in his diet, who could not stomach the coarse conventual bread; the mere thought of having to eat it made him waste away. Christ our Lord appeared one night to him, and presented him with a piece of the same bread and bade him eat. He replied he could not possibly eat that barley bread. Christ dipped the bread in the blood of His side, and told him to eat it. He tasted it, and it tasted sweeter than honey; and henceforth the bread and all the other coarse food of the community, which he could not touch before, became to him extremely delicious.

The chronicles of the Order of the glorious St. Francis tell us of that famous assembly which was called the Chapter of Mats, because the cells were in the open field, with divisions made by mats between them. Here were assembled some five thousand friars; the blessed St. Dominic was also there. They say that such was the fervor and Spirit of penance among those holy religious that it was necessary to curb them. St. Francis being informed that many wore shirts and coats of mail next to their skin, and others iron hoops, and that thereby they were much weakened and hindered from praying and serving the order, so that some actually died, gave an order of obedience that all who had coats and hoops of iron should leave them off and bring them to him, and there were found five hundred such shirts and iron hoops. While they were thus assembled in chapter to treat of the progress of their order, it was revealed to St. Francis that the devils were holding an opposition chapter in a hospital between the Portiuncula and Assisi; and that there were met there more than eighteen thousand devils. Various shrewd devices were then suggested, how to combat and destroy St. Francis and his order and followers. At last there stood up a devil, more artful and subtle than the rest, and he gave his advice to this effect: “This Father St. Francis with his friars are so fervent in their flight and separation from the world, so strong in their love of God, so busy at prayer, and such adepts at tormenting their bodies, that at present you can do little or nothing against them. I advise for the present not to worry yourselves to death so much about them; but let us leave them until this Francis closes his eyes, and there come to be more friars, and we will find entrance into his order for youths without zeal for perfection, and dignified old gentlemen, and dainty-living nobles, and learned men full of arrogance and with a weakly constitution, and they will receive them all to keep up the honor and swell the numbers of their order. And in this way we will draw them to self-love, and love of worldly things, and desires of science and honors; then we shall overcome them and bring many over to our will.” This plan met the warm approval of all, and they were much satisfied and elated at this prospect.

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