Blanquerna

BENEDICTUS FRUCTUS VENTRIS TUI

When the Abbot had reached the farm wherein lived as contemplatives the Bishop and the monk, the Abbot related his adventure with the knight whom he had found by the fountain singing of love, and he recounted the words which this knight had spoken and the rule to the which he had

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BLANQUERNA

bound him. Long did the Bishop think upon the hiflory which the Abbot had related concerning the knight, and he had remembrance of those words in the Ave Maria which follow the words “ Blessed art thou among women ” ; and when the Bishop had thought for a great space thereon he spake to the Abbot after this manner :

2. “ I bless the Divine light of pity and grace which has enlightened that sinful man and bound him all the days of

SANCTA MARIA, ORA PRO NOBIS a fitting place, and he himself has provided for their needs; and when they have learned the Arabic tongue they will be able to go, by leave of their General, to honour the Fruit of Our Lady, and in His honour suffer hunger and thirSl, heat and cold, fears and tortures and death. And this establishment, he said, has been made in perpetuity.

4. Greatly did it please the Bishop and all the reft to hear of this establishment, and greatly did they praise the devotion of the king and all the friars who for the love of God desired to suffer martyrdom. After a few days the Bishop ordained and built in a fitting place, far from any town, a monastery right fair ; and by the will of the Pope, and of the chapter of that diocese, the monastery was endowed, that within it thirteen persons might live and Study, and learn divers sciences and divers tongues, that Holy Church might acquit its debt of honour to the Blessed Fruit of Our Lady. And to that monastery the Bishop gave the name BenediStus Fruftus; and he resigned his bishopric, and, together with some canons and monks and laymen, established himself in that monastery to honour the Fruit of Our Lady, according to the rule and manner of the monastery of Miramar, the which is in the Island of Majorca.