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His conversion to God stood out as a model
for those being converted
in the way he sold his possessions
and distributed them to the poor.
The holy man Francis rejoiced with very great joy
Mt 2:10 over the arrival and conversion of such a man,
because the Lord seemed to be caring for him,
giving him a needed companion
and a faithful friend. Sir 6:14
25 Immediately another man from the city of Assisi followed him. This man was highly respected in his way of life, and what he began in a holy fashion he completed within a short time in an even holier way.a Not much later, Mt 25:19 brother Giles followed, a simple and upright man who feared God. Jb 2:3
[He lived for a long time:
he was holy, living justly and piously.
Ti 2:12 He left us examples of perfect obedience,
work, including work with his hands,
solitary life, and holy contemplation.]b
When one other, brother Philip, joined them, he brought their number to seven.c The Lord touched his lips with the coal that cleanses, so that he might speak of Him in words that were sweet and flowing with honey.d Understanding and interpreting the holy Scriptures, although he had not studied Jn 7:15, he became an imitator of those whom the Jewish leaders considered ignorant and without learning. Acts 4:13
- This may be Peter di Catanio di Guiduccio, who joined Francis with Bernard on April 16, 1208. He served as vicar during Francis’s early absences and later accompanied him to Egypt and Syria in 1219. When Francis resigned his office in 1220, Peter was named his vicar. He died on March 10, 1221, at the Portiuncula where he is buried.
- Giles was received into the Order on April 23,1208, and died on April 27, 1262. This sentence, then, is an interpolation. Thomas could not have written in 1229 about Brother Giles’s long life at this early date.
- Philip the Tall, Filippo Longo, accompanied Francis to the Rieti Valley and, in 1209, to Rome. He served as Visitator of the Poor Ladies of Saint Damian in 1219 and again from 1228 to 1246. He died in 1259.
- The Latin word mellifluous, flowing with honey, appears three times in the 1C: in this paragraph, in referring to Francis’s words at Greccio (n. 86) and in those of Pope Gregory IX at Francis’s canonization (n. 125). It is used frequently in Cistercian literature, especially by Bernard of Clairvaux, the "Mellifluous" Doctor.
Vita Prima, Fontes Franciscani, p. 299-300
7Eius namque ad Deum conversio forma exstitit
convertendis
in venditione possessionum
et elargitione pauperum.
8Sanctus Franciscus vero
de tanti viri adventu et conversione
gavisus est gaudio magno valde,
eo quod Dominus videretur eius habere curam,
dans ei socium necessarium
et amicum fidelem.
25 1Statim autem vir alter civitatis Assisii eum secutus est, qui valde in conversatione laudabilis exstitit, et quod sancte coepit sanctius post modicum consummavit. 2Hunc vero post non multum temporis, sequitur frater Aegidius, vir simplex, et rectus ac timens Deum,
qui longo tempore durans,
sancte, iuste ac pie vivendo,
perfectae obedientiae,
laboris quoque manuum,
vitae solitariae, sanctaeque contemplationis
nobis exempla relinquit.
—3His autem alio uno apposito, frater Philippus septenarium numerum adimplevit, cuius Dominus munditiae calculo labia tetigit, ut loqueretur de ipso dulcia et melliflua eructaret, 4Scripturas quoque sacras intelligens et interpretans, cum non didicerit, illorum imitator effectus est, quos idiotas et sine litteris u fore Iudaeorum principes causabantur.