with the moderation of true holiness; so that these two Simons might appear to be companions in the matter of moderation, due regard being had to the superiority of the apostle, whose moderation springs from the words of our Lord Himself, who said, ‘Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness,’¹ two sins which were very far distant from both of these Simons. Thus Simon, the scholar of Christ, could have said to Simon, soldier of Christ, had they been contemporaries, as he said to his disciple Clement, in the passage referred to above, ‘I wonder at this, and praise you for it, that though you are a man of great wealth,’ (for pope Clement was of imperial family, just as Earl Simon was of a kingly family) ‘yet since you have come among us, you have so easily changed your habits, and adapted yourself to our way of life, which uses only what is necessary for poverty not pleasure.’ And it is not surprising that those persons who take the path of righteousness for the sake of God, obtain from him the gift of perfect frugality, which never falls short of the goal, measured against moderation and sobriety. For we read that there exist some brute creatures which have been endowed by God with the gift of such entire abstinence as never to touch anything for their food which is of a corporeal substance, as other living things do. Thus Solinus mentions in his book The Wonders of the World, in the 164^th chapter,² when speaking of a quadruped called the chameleon, that its nature is such that it takes neither food nor drink and is supported solely by swallowing air which it is constantly sucking in; and yet, according to Pliny’s testimony, it has flesh and blood and intestines; and he adds that its head and cheeks are fleshy, and that the blood of its whole body lies in a small tail with which it is provided; and yet, though it is a very large creature, as he himself states in the 11^th book of his Natural History, in the 38^th chapter, there is nothing in its inside but a hollow cavity, which is thought to be empty of air, for according to the same authority, its mouth is always gaping after the support which it derives from the air—nor, indeed, has it any other.³ Other living things, worms, for instance, live without bodily food. There are some of them which \are/ to be found in a province near the Torrid Zone, as the letter of Prester John informs us, and these are called salamanders.⁴ The only fitting abode of these important worms is the fire, from which they derive their vigour. Distinct from these salamanders are others which belong to other provinces: they are not only good for nothing, but they are venomous; and therefore they spin little coverings of silk for themselves within which they conceal themselves, just as the other worms which produce silk do; and the garments which are worn by kings and nobles are made from these cocoons. The only way of cleaning these garments is by putting them in a strong fire. I suppose that the garment of which Pliny speaks was one of these; his words are, ‘There is a certain kind of dress which resists sword and fire.’⁵ Having seen, then, that creatures exist who in their moderation and abstinence surpass all that man can exhibit, we have no to reason to be amazed if we discover that Simon received the gift of moderation from God to such a degree that he never went so far as to use anything which was superfluous; for even the camel refuses to move forward