Scupoli--described as the "aureo libro," dedicated "Al Supremo Capitano e
Gloriosissimo Trionfatore, Gesu Cristo, Figliuolo di Maria," and this
dedication in the form of a letter to Our Saviour, signed, "Your most
humble servant, purchased with Your Blood."1

1 This work, which achieved a great vogue and of which several editions
were issued down to 1750, was first printed in 1589. Clearly, however, MS.
copies were in existence earlier, and it is to one of these that Agostino
here refers.


Down the middle of the chamber ran a long square­ended table of oak, very
plain like all the rest of the room's scant furnishings. At the head of
this table was an arm-chair for my mother, of bare wood without any cushion
to relieve its hardness, whilst on either side of the board stood a few
lesser chairs for those who habitually dined there. These were, besides
myself, Fra Gervasio, my tutor; Messer Giorgio, the castellan, a
bald-headed old man long since past the fighting age and who in times of
stress would have been as useful for purposes of defending Mondolfo as
Lorenza, my mother's elderly woman, who sat below him at the board; he was
toothless, bowed, and decrepit, but he was very devout--as he had need to
be, seeing that he was half dead already--and this counted with my mother
above any other virtue.2

2 Virtu is the word used by Agostino, and it is susceptible to a wider
translation than that which the English language affords, comprising as it
does a sense of courage and address at arms. Indeed, it is not clear that
Agostino is not playing here upon the double meaning of the word.