Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/373

ODERIC DE FRIULI. 6bl of commerce. Numbers of monks of the Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic undertook this long and perilous journey through motives of piety, and besides those who were officially dispatched by the Holy See and the Christian kings, we hear of many in the re- moter parts of Asia, alone, without protection, food, or money, rich only in their trust in God, animated by zeal for the faith, and burning with the desire of doing good to men and gaining souls to Jesus Christ. One of the foremost of these voluntary apostles was the holy Oderic, who travelled over many parts of the world spreading the Gospel wherever he went. Born at Por- denone in Friuli, at about 1286, he entered the Order of St. Francis at Udine. There he set himself to over- coming his passions by the most extraordinary mortifi- cations. Not content with going always barefoot and wearing a simple tunic for his only garment, with taking no nourishment but bread and water, he constantly subjected himself to the scourge, and wore a vest of chain mail next his skin. It is not easy for people at the present day to conceive how the saint remained in health ; but Oderic's long journeys and the immense labour he performed, prove to us that the holy rigours of mortification which he underwent endowed his mind with a wonderful strength, while it left vigour enough in his body to enable him to go through, during sixteen years, an almost incredible amount of labour and fatigue. Humility, the true test of piety, was always the prin- ciple that actuated this pious cenobite of the monastery of Udine. He invariably refused the dignities of his Order that were offered to him, and desiring only soli- tude and prayer, he obtained permission from his su- periors to pass a hermit's life. While living thus in