n a capacity to teach others, which he did with great
applause, and no less advantage by the profits which accrued to him from
his professorship. To arm himself against the allurements of pleasure
and the artifices of the devil, he began to wear a rough hair shirt
under his clothes, and to inure himself to fasting, watching, and
prayer. In the night, if any temptation of concupiscence arose, he got
out of bed and plunged himself into the cold river. After this he
visited churches, reciting the psalter while he performed this devotion,
till the church office began. He not only gave much away in alms, but
was seldom without some poor person at his table, and took a pleasure in
serving such, or rather Jesus Christ in their persons, with his own
hands. But {449} thinking all this to be removing himself from the
deadly poison of sin but by halves, he resolved entirely to leave the
world and embrace a monastic life, and at a distance from his own
country, for the sake of meeting with the fewer obstacles to his design.
While his mind was full of these thoughts, two religious of the order of
St. Benedict, belonging to Font-Avellano, a desert at the foot of the
Apennine in Umbria, happened to call at the place of his abode; and
being much edified at their disinterestedness, he took a resolution to
embrace their institute, as he did soon after. This hermitage had been
founded by blessed Ludolf, about twenty years before St. Peter came
thither, and was then in the greatest repute. The hermits here remained
two and two together in separate cells, occupied chiefly in prayer and
reading. They lived on bread and water four days in the week: on
Tuesdays and Thursdays they ate pulse and herbs, which every one dressed
in his own cell: on their fast days all their bread was given them by
weight. They never used any wine, (the common drink of the country,)
except for mass, or in sickness: they went barefoot, used disciplines,
made many genuflections, struck their breasts, stood with their arms
stretched out in prayer, each according to his strength and devotion.
After the night office they said the whole psalter before day. Peter
watched long before the signal for matins, and after, with the rest.
These excessive watchings brought on him an insomnie, or wakefulness,
which was cured with very great difficulty. But he learned from this to
use more discretion. He gave a considerable time to sacred studies, and
became as well versed in the scrip