A Golden Treatise of Mental Prayer by St. Peter Alacantara

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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 with rents and yearly revenues, to which diverse persons of quality had advised her. He answered, that it was an injury to God the author of Evangelical counsels, to ask the advice of men touching the observance of them, or to doubt whether or no they were observable. And with all encouraged her to be constant in that fervent desire, she had begun in embracing holy poverty. To whose counsel she willingly obeyed. And after, our Lord appeared to her in prayer, and declared, that it was his will that her monasteries should be founded in holy poverty. His letter to her, I think it not amiss, to set down at large, which followeth.