," i.e. lice, were an unfailing token of mediaeval
sainthood. We read of Francis of Assisi's sheepskin that "often a
companion of the saint would take it to the fire to clean and
dispediculate it, doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father
himself was no enemy of pedocchi, but on the contrary kept them on him
(le portava adosso) and held it for an honor and a glory to wear these
celestial pearls in his habit. Quoted by P. Sabatier: Speculum
Perfectionis, etc., Paris, 1898, p. 231, note.

"He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. At the
end of this time, when his blood was now chilled, and the fire of his
temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in a vision on Whitsunday,
a messenger from heaven, who told him that God required this of him no
longer. Whereupon he discontinued it, and threw all these things away
into a running stream."

Suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord, he
made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails.
This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night.
"The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back his
tender frame was struck with terror at it, and blunted the sharp nails
slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of this womanly
cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and placed once more
the cross upon him. It made his back, where the bones are, bloody and
seared. Whenever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog-skin
were on him. If any one touched him unawares, or pushed against his
clothes, it tore him."

Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this cross and
forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and likewise of his
self-scourgings--a dreadful story--and then goes on as follows: "At
this same period the Servitor procured an old castaway door, and he
used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes to make him
comfortable, except that he took off his shoes and wrapped a thick
cloak round him. He thus secured for himself a most miserable bed; for
hard pea-stalks lay in humps under his head, the cross with the sharp
nails stuck into his back, his arms were locked fast in bonds, the
horsehair undergarment was round his loins, and the cloak too was heavy
and the door hard. Thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just
like a log, and he would send up many a sigh to God.

"In winter he suffered very much from the frost. If he