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We will also not be silent about a brother whom we knew, who belonged
to a high family according to the rank of this world, for he was sprung
from a father who was a count and extremely wealthy, and had been well
brought up with a liberal education. This man, when he had left his parents
and fled to the monastery, in order to prove the humility of his
disposition and the ardour of his faith was at once ordered by his superior
to load his shoulders with ten baskets (which there was no need to sell
publicly), and to hawk them about through the streets for sale: this
condition being attached, so that he might be kept longer at the work,
viz.: that if any one should chance to want to buy them all together, he
was not to allow it, but was to sell them to purchasers separately. And
this he carried out with the utmost zeal, and trampling under foot all
shame and confusion, out of love for Christ, and for His Name's sake, he
put the baskets on his shoulders and sold them by retail at the price fixed
and brought back the money to the monastery; not in the least upset by the
novelty of so mean and unusual a duty, and paying no attention to the
indignity of the thing and the splendour of his birth, and the disgrace of
the sale, as he was aiming at gaining through the grace of obedience that
humility of Christ which is the true nobility.
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