[12] Add to all this that the “Sacrum Commercium” contains not a single citation from the Office of St Francis--which it is natural to suppose that the imaginative writer would have here and there availed himself of--and it seems to me that the date of 1227 is proved with something like certainty, and the date of 1247 excluded beyond a doubt. [13] _Op. cit._ p. xii. and p. 41 et ss. [14] The “Arbor Vitæ Crucifixi Jesu,” Venice, 1485, fol. [15] “Chronica Fratris Salimbene Parmensis.” Parma, 1857, 4to, pp. xiv.-424. [16] Let me here render him public thanks for his courteous permission to do so, and make due public acknowledgment of my indebtedness to his critical preface. Had it not been for this scholarly work I must needs have spent months in puzzling out for myself the crabbed hands and crooked abbreviations of three or four fourteenth-century scribes. [17] My references to the Psalms are according to the notation of the Vulgate. Perhaps it may be necessary to state for the benefit of readers not well acquainted with the Vulgate, that “Eccli.” is a reference to Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, and not to Ecclesiastes (Eccl.) or the Wisdom of the Preacher. [18] This chapter is wanting a title in all the Codexes. I have taken the liberty of styling it “In Praise of Poverty.” [19] In contradistinction, _e.g._ to the Meek who _shall_ possess the Land (Matt. v. 4). Only the persecuted for Justice’s sake have the same immediate privilege as the Poor in Spirit (Matt. v. 10). We shall see later on that Persecution is the noblest and most helpful of all the Lady Poverty’s sisters. [20] Though the Author here quotes Psalm xxiii. 10, “Dominus Virtutum,” he is, from the context which follows, obviously not referring to the Lord of Hosts or Sabaoth, nor to the Virtues as one of the Orders of Angels, but to God as the Lord of the Moral Perfections. [21] “Non sum rudis,” I am not raw or new, says the Writer, quoting Matt. ix. 16: “Nemo autem immittit commissuram panni rudis in vestimentum vetus”: No man putteth a piece of new or raw cloth into an old garment. [22] So that Man’s first transgression after his original Sin, was, by this, his first acquisition of property, a Sin against the High Doctrine of the Lady Poverty. [23] King James’ Bible has “ten thousand times ten thousand.” [24] There is in a part of this Chapter so intricate an interweaving of Pauline phrases, that I make no attempt to indicate them by references.