When he visited their houses in the
country-towns, and turned out their chests and book-shelves, he found
such wealth as might have lain in kings' treasuries; 'in those cupboards
and baskets are not merely the crumbs that fall from the table, but the
shew-bread which is angel's food, and corn from Egypt and the choicest
gilts of Sheba.' He gives the highest praise to the Preachers or Friars
of the Dominican Order, as being most open and ungrudging, 'and
overflowing with a with a kind of divine liberality.' But both Preachers
and Minorites, or Grey Friars, had been his pupils, his friends and
guests in his family, and they had always applied themselves with
unwearied zeal to the task of editing, indexing, and cataloguing the
volumes in the library. 'These men,' he cries, 'are the successors of
Bezaleel and the embroiderers of the ephod and breast-plate: these are
the husbandmen that sow, and the oxen that tread out the corn: they are
the blowers of the trumpets: they are the shining Pleiades and the stars
in their courses.'
Brother Agnellus of Pisa was the first Franciscan missionary at Oxford,
and the first Minister of the Order in this county. He set up a school
for poor students, at which Bishop Grostete was the first reader or
master; but we are told that he afterwards felt great regret when he
found his Friars bestowing their time upon frivolous learning. 'One day,
when he wished to see what proficiency they were making, he entered the
school while a disputation was going on, and they were wrangling and
debating about the existence of the Deity.
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