Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. RUFINO OF THE SCIFI " Quasi arcus refulgens inter divint contemplationis nebulas varictate virtutum picturatus in civitate Assist frater Rafinus Cipii excmplari vita resplenduit et inter altos beati Francisci primos discipulos caritalis rubore, liliali puritatis candore enituit ac generalls fragravit redolentia sanctitatis."— Vita Fr. Rufini, "chronicle Of The Twenty-four Generals." The first companions were not largely recruited from men instinctively drawn to the monastic life. But in Rufino we meet one saved by Francis, I think, from the perpetual cloister, and from a narrow solicitude for his own soul. In youth he had the world at his feet—at least, all the chances of his time and country; and should have been a gay young fighting gallant, with a becoming scorn of beggars and hermits, and a magnificent wonder at penitents. But legend never hints at any time when Rufino loved the world or its treasures or its strifes. He was of the noble Assisi family of the Scifi, son of Berarduccio Scifi, and therefore related to Silvester and to St. Clara. Silvester, his clerical cousin, may have had influence with the pious thoughtful young man, and to his tales of Francis was probably owing the fact that Rufino was not drawn to one of the older monastic orders. In 1210, the year he is said to have been received, Clara, a girl of sixteen, was listening, with open ears and heart on fire, to the preaching of Francis in the cathedral, and in her home to the tales of his egregious folly. Her cousin Rufino's decision, doubtless, helped her to make her choice; and two years later she fled from the house of the Scifi to the Porziuncola, to take Francis for her guide. Rufino had none of his master's buoyant nature ; waslike him only in his virginal purity and his indifference to worldl...