[164] _Appendix ad Fasciculum Rer. Expet. et Fug. p. 578._ Poggio has commemorated in his _Facetiæ_ a mortifying explanation which one of these noisy orators provoked by his overweening vanity. “A monk,” says he, “preaching to the populace, made a most enormous and uncouth noise, by which a good woman, one of his auditors, was so much affected, that she burst into a flood of tears. The preacher, attributing her grief to remorse of conscience, excited within her by his eloquence, sent for her, and asked her why she was so piteously affected by his discourse. Holy father, answered the mourner, I am a poor widow, and was accustomed to maintain myself by the labour of an ass, which was left me by my late husband. But alas! my poor beast is dead, and your preaching brought his braying so strongly to my recollection, that I could not restrain my grief.”—_Poggii Opera, p. 497._ [165] Alberto derived the designation of Da Sarteano from a small town in Tuscany, where he was born, A. D. 1385. At an early age he enrolled himself in the number of the conventuals, and afterwards joined the stricter order of the _Fratres Observantiæ_. In the year 1424 he went to Verona, where he studied the Greek language under the instruction of Guarino Veronese. In the following year he paid a visit to Francesco Barbaro, who was then governor of Trivigi. Here he met with the famous preacher Bernardino, at whose instance he undertook the popular employment of an itinerant preacher. In this capacity he not only traversed a great part of Italy, but crossing the sea, he went to preach the true gospel amongst the schismatics and infidels of Greece, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Armenia. It was in consequence of his representations that the patriarch of the last-mentioned province attended the council of Basil, when in the name of his countrymen he submitted to the decisions of the Latin church. Alberto closed a life of religious labours in the year 1450, at Milan, where he was interred in the church of St. Angelo. A collection of his works, consisting principally of sermons and theological tracts, was published at Rome, A. D. 1688.—_Tiraboschi Storia della Letter. Ital. tom. vi. p. 214, 215, 216._ [166] _Ambrosii Traversarii Epist. p. 978, 979, 1019, 1125._ _Poggii Opera. p. 317, 318, 319._ [167] It is printed in the Appendix to the _Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et Fugiendarum_; a collection of fugitive tracts, intended to display the errors of the church of Rome. This collection, which was first published at Cologne, A. D. 1535, by Orthuinus Gratius, of Deventer, was republished, with considerable additions, by Edward Brown, at London, A. D. 1689, at which period the avowed predilection of James II. for the Roman Catholic doctrines had given alarm to the zealous Protestants of England. [168] _Muratori Annali, tom. ix. p. 142._—_Platina, p. 402._ [169] _Poggii Epistolæ lvii. ep. xxiii._