About 1361, a singular circumstance wrought a total change in Boccaccio’s feelings and mode of life. A Carthusian monk came to him one day, and stated that father Petroni of Sienna, a monk of the same order, who had died not long before in the odour of sanctity, had commissioned him to exhort Boccaccio to forsake his studies, reform his loose life, and prepare for death. To prove the truth of his mission, he revealed several secrets, known only to Boccaccio and Petrarch, to both of whom both the monks were totally unknown. Terrified at this mysterious communication, Boccaccio wrote to Petrarch, expressing his resolution to comply with the advice, and shut himself up in a Carthusian cloister. Petrarch’s answer, which may be found among his Latin epistles, is full of sound sense. He tells his friend, that though this disclosure of secrets, supposed to be unknown to any living soul, appeared a mystery, yet “there is such a thing as artifice in imposture which may at times assume the language of supernatural inspiration; that those who practise arts of this kind examine attentively the age, the aspect, the looks, the habits of the man they mean to delude, his theories, his motions, his voice, his conversation, his feelings, and opinions: and from all these derive their oracles.” He adds, that as to the prediction of approaching death, there was no occasion for a message from the next world to say, that a man past the middle age, and infirm of body, could not expect to have many years to live: and, in conclusion, advises his friend to tranquillize his imagination, and to avail himself of the warning towards leading a more regular life; retaining at the same time his liberty, his house, and his library, and making a good use even of the heathen authors in the latter, as many holy men, and the fathers of the church themselves, had done before him. This letter restored Boccaccio to reason. He gave up his intention of retiring from the world, and contented himself with assuming the ecclesiastical dress; and being admitted to the first gradation of holy orders, he adopted a regular and studious course of life, and turned his attention to the study of the Scriptures.