as the essence of a holy life, and resting upon the fallacy that these
cruel mortifyings of the flesh would greatly facilitate the acquisition
of everlasting ease and joy in a better world; as if God knew not, better
than themselves, what chastisements and afflictions were needful for
them. We may sigh with pain over such instances of mistaken piety and
fanatical zeal in all ages of the church; yet with all their privations,
and with all their macerations of the flesh, there was a vast amount of
human pride mingled with their humiliation. But He who sees into the
hearts of all--looking in his benevolence more at the intention than the
outward form, may perhaps sometimes find in it the workings of a true
christian piety, and so reward it with his love. Let us trust so in the
charity of our faith, and proceed to notice that portion of the old
record which is more intimately connected with our subject. We read that

"Thomas had brought with him to the convent, on his entering, many books,
of both canon and civil law; as well as the books by which he had
regulated the schools of Oxford and Exeter before he became a monk. He
likewise had one book of Democritus; and the book of Antiparalenion, a
gradual book, according to Constantine; Isidore's Divine Offices, and the
Quadrimum of Isidore; Tully's de Amicitia; Tully de Senectute et de
Paradoxis; Lucan, Juvenal, and many other authors, _et multos alios
auctores_, with a great number of sermons, with many writings on
theological questions; on the art and rules of grammar and the book of
accents. After he was prior he made a great breviary, better than any at
that time in the monastery, with Haimo, on the Apocalypse, and a book
containing the lives of the patrons of the church of Evesham; with an
account of the deeds of all the good and bad monks belonging to the
church, in one volume. He also wrote and bound up the same lives and acts
in another volume separately. He made also a great Psalter, _magnum
psalterium_, superior to any contained in the monastery, except the
glossed ones. He collected and wrote all the necessary materials for four
antiphoners, with their musical notes, himself; except what the brothers
of the monastery transcribed for him. He also finished many books that
William of Lith, of pious memory, commenced--the Marterologium, the
Exceptio Missae, and some excellent commentaries on the Psalter and
Communion of the Saints in the old antiphoners. He also bought