Chapter 2

The life he led before his conversion.

THIS man, sprung of humble lineage, when he reached the flower of youth began to haunt the household of nobles and the palaces of princes. Sewing pillows upon all elbows (Ezek. xiii. 18), he drew to friendship with himself those whom he had soothed with jokes and flatterings. And, not content with this, he approached the king's palace with some frequency and resorted to the tumults of that tumultuous court and with jocular flattery desired to attract to himself with ease the hearts of many. There he made it his business all day long to attend spectacles, banquets, jests and the rest of the trifles of the court, and, with shameless face betaking himself to the suite -- now of the king, now of the nobles -- he assiduously employed a complaisance that should please them and obtain with greater ease anything that it pleased him to seek. By these means he was well known to, intimate with, and a comrade of the king and of the great men of the court.

This kind of life he had chosen at first and thus he spent his youth. But God, that beholds and pities all men, who cast out seven devils from Mary Magdalene, who gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to a fisherman, mercifully converted this man also from the error of his way and added to him when converted many gifts of virtues; since God chooses the foolish and weak of this world that he may confound the strong.

The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield Rendered into Modern English from the original Latin version preserved in the British Museum, numbered Vespasian B. IX, by Mr. Humphrey H. King and Mr. William Barnard for use in the Records of St. Bartholomew's Priory by E.A. Webb.

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