Presently after this, his zeal actually carried him to Africa; but he was obliged to return, in consequence of a disease with which he was seized upon the coast; but was driven by a tempest to Sicily, where hearing of a general chapter of his order being to be held at Assisi in Italy, he repaired to it. Tho’ he was then little known, the provincial of his order was so much pleased with his appearance, that he took him with him, and placed him in a convent called _the mount of St. Paul_. After some months, his superiors procured him holy orders, and sent him, together with some other priests, to Forli, where he distinguished himself by his preaching. Being greatly concerned at the progress of heresy then in the northern parts of Italy, in order the better to prepare himself for encountering the heretics, he went through a course of theology at Vercelli, under a famous doctor there; but he soon surpassed him in knowledge, and was thought equal to any undertaking. Being sent by his superiors to undertake the office of guardian to Limiges in France, in order to the conversion of the heretics in that place, it happened at one time, that his business as a preacher required him to be in one place, and his office of guardian in another: and this was the occasion of the first of the many miracles that his historian ascribes to him, and it was of a very singular kind: for it is asserted that he was actually in both places at the same time. After an earnest prayer for this purpose, he without leaving the pulpit in which he was preaching on a Good Friday, appeared in the choir, and sung the lesson which was his part of the service there. At Montpellier also, he once preached in the dome at the same time that he was singing hallelujah in the choir of the church. After this his whole life seems to have consisted of little more than a series of miracles, and many of them of quite an original and extraordinary kind; so that it must have required much ingenuity to devise them. {522}—Some of them may be here inserted by way of sample, and to enable the reader to judge of the probable effect or consequence of the settlement of Anthony’s disciples, _the friars de Penitentia_, in this town.