Note 98 — Chapter I · —How the King of France cajoled the English after the Duke of Burgundy’s Death, for fear they should have interrupted him in the Conquest of the Territories belonging to the said Duke.—1477. (continued 2)

In previous editions it is erroneously stated that the name of this holy man was Friar Robert; but there can be no doubt, that the personage alluded to in the text was St. Francis de Paulo, the founder of the Minims, or lowest order of monks. He was born at Paulo in Calabria in the year 1416. He began his career by retiring to a cave on a desert part of the coast, where his sanctity soon obtained for him many followers, who ere long constructed a monastery round his cell. His rule was extremely rigorous; he enjoined his disciples to abstain from wine, fish, and meat, never to sleep on a bed, to go always barefooted, and to practise many other bodily mortifications. He died in France, on the 2nd of April, 1507, at the age of ninety-one, and he was canonised by Pope Leo X. in 1519. By the confession of his admirers, he was perfectly illiterate.