The zealous Knight of Christ never spared his body, but exposed it to every hurt both in deed and in word, as though it were something separate from himself. … But that whole first school so subjected themselves to every inconvenience that it was thought an evil thing if someone refreshed himself in anything except in the consolation of the Holy Spirit. For since they girded themselves and clothed themselves with iron hoops and corslets and tried themselves with many vigils and fasts, they would very often have succumbed had they not relaxed the rigor of such abstinence at the earnest advice of their kind shepherd.