"I was studying at Bologna, I, Thomas of Spalato, archdeacon in the cathedral church of that city, when in the year 1220, the day of the Assumption, I saw St. Francis preaching on the piazza of the Lesser Palace, before almost every man in the city. The theme of his discourse was the following: Angels, men, the demons. He spoke on all these subjects with so much wisdom and eloquence that many learned men who were there were filled with admiration at the words of so plain a man. Yet he had not the manner of a preacher, his ways were rather those of conversation; the substance of his discourse bore especially upon the abolition of enmities and the necessity of making peaceful alliances. His apparel was poor, his person in no respect imposing, his face not at all handsome; but God gave such great efficacy to his words that he brought back to peace and harmony many nobles whose savage fury had not even stopped short before the shedding of blood. So great a devotion was felt for him that men and women flocked after him, and he esteemed himself happy who succeeded in touching the hem of his garment." Was it at this time that the celebrated Accurso the Glossarist,[7] chief of that famous dynasty of jurisconsults who during the whole thirteenth century shed lustre upon the University of Bologna, welcomed the Brothers Minor to his villa at Ricardina, near the city?[8] We do not know. It appears that another professor, Nicolas dei Pepoli, also entered the Order.[9] Naturally the pupils did not lag behind, and a certain number asked to receive the habit. Yet all this constituted a danger; this city, which in Italy was as an altar consecrated to the science of law, was destined to exercise upon the evolution of the Order the same influence as Paris; the Brothers Minor could no more hold aloof from it than they could keep aloof from the ambient air. This time Francis remained here but a very short time. An ancient tradition, of which his biographers have not preserved any trace, but which nevertheless appears to be entirely probable, says that Ugolini took him to pass a month in the Camaldoli, in the retreat formerly inhabited by St. Romuald in the midst of the Casentino forest, one of the noblest in Europe, within a few hours' walk of the Verna, whose summit rises up gigantic, overlooking the whole country.