CHAPTER IX.
OF HIS POVERTY.
He was a rigid observer of holy poverty, which in imitation of his patron, St. Francis, he not only loved, but honored so far that he was wont to call it the Evangelical pearl, wherewith he enriched his new province, in that lustre as the observance was in the infancy of our Seraphical Order, from which 'time, and by whose example, most provinces through the Christian world have excelled in this particular point, as much as in their former splendor. He permitted his brethren to have nothing in their cells of mere necessity, and to the preachers he permitted them no more than two or three books, with the Bible and a crucifix.
He was upon a time asked by St. Theresa, whether or no she should found her monasteries
