Very sweet and pleasant are the pictures that Fra Filippo gives us of the priors of Lecceto in his day; for "the friars who had to choose them, always put in that convent for prior the best friar and the one of most holy life that there was in the province." He tells us of Frate Bandino de' Balzetti, who was so strict in the rules that when he saw a thief taking away the convent donkey at the time of silence, rather than break the silence or cause the friars to break it, he let him lead it off, while he himself went into the church to pray for the redemption of that thief's soul. Of course the thief was miraculously moved to repentance, and the prior sent him away in peace with a plenteous alms.[162] He tells in full the life of Frate Niccolò Tini, a friar of the convent of Sant' Agostino in Siena, young in years but old in wisdom and sanctity, who was made Prior of Lecceto in 1332 and ruled it until his death in 1388. It was under him that Filippo himself entered as a novice in 1353, and he records with enthusiastic love and admiration the man's boundless humility and meekness, patience and charity. Suffering agonies from two horrible complaints, the Prior was always bright and kind, though his face would show sometimes the agony he endured. He loved to tend the sick with his own hands, to distribute all that the convent had of bread and wine to the poor--himself going to the gate to do it, because he knew that they would not fare so well at the hands of the other brethren. "His joyous face seemed that of Moses, so burned his heart with love and charity, and with such gladness did he receive strangers, especially the servants of God." Many times during his priorate the friars had to fly from the place, when the wandering companies of mercenaries were ravaging the contado. "One morning," says Fra Filippo, "I arrived there with a companion at the dinner hour, in the days when a company was expected, and already all the place was cleared, and we found the Prior alone, for the other friars had fled with the goods from the place. And as soon as he saw us, that blessed Prior received us with so much love and charity and with such gladness, that it was a wondrous thing. And in all the place there remained nothing to eat, save only two rolls which he had kept for himself, very small, and some wine and some leeks. And with a holy charity he constrained us to eat with him, and he set those two rolls on a table without a cloth, and the wine and the leeks. God knoweth that I do not lie, but I never found myself at feasts nor at weddings nor at any banquet, where I seemed to myself to fare so well and so abundantly or where the food did me so much good; and the like befell my companion. For the sweetness of the words of God that were on his lips was meat above all the meats of the world."