It was S. Giovanni Gualberto who founded the Vallombrosan Order and established here an abbey, whose daughter we now see.  Born about the year 1000, he was the son of Gualberto dei Visdomini, Signore of Petroio in Val di Pesa, of the great family who lived in St. Peter’s Gate in Florence, and were, according to Villani, the patrons of the bishopric.  In those days murder daily walked the streets of every Tuscan city, and so it came to pass that before Giovanni was eighteen years old his brother Ugo had been murdered by one of that branch of his own house which was at feud with Gualberto.  Urged on by his father, who, we may be sure, did not spare himself or his friends in seeking revenge, Giovanni was ever on the watch for his enemy, his brother’s murderer; and it chanced that as he came into Florence on Good Friday morning in 1018, just before he got to S. Miniato al Monte, at a turning of that steep way he came upon him face to face suddenly in the sunlight.  Surely God had delivered him into his hands!  Giovanni was on horseback with his servant, and then the hill was in his favour; the other was alone.  Seeing he had no chance, for the steel was already cold on his jumping throat, he sank on his knees, and, crossing his arms in the form of Holy Cross, he prayed hard to the Lord Jesus to save his soul alive.  Hearing that blessed, beautiful name in the stillness of that morning, when all the bells are silent and the very earth hushed for Christ’s death, Giovanni could not strike, but instead lifted up his enemy and embraced him, saying, “I give you not your life only, but my love too for ever.  Pray for me that God may pardon my sin.”  So they went on their way; but Giovanni, when he came to the monastery of S. Miniato of the Benedictines, stole into the church and prayed before the great Crucifix,[132] begging God to pardon him; and while he prayed thus, the Christ miraculously bowed his head, “as it were to give him a token how acceptable was this sacrifice of his resentment.”

How little that sacrifice seems to us!  But it was a great, an unheard-of thing in those days.  And for this cause, maybe, Giovanni proposed to remain with the monks, to be received as a novice among them, and to forsake the world for ever.  And they received him.  Now when Gualberto heard it, he was first very much astonished and then more angry, so that he went presently to take Giovanni out of that place; but he would not, for before his father he cut off his hair and clothed himself in a habit which he borrowed.  Then, seeing his purpose, his father let him alone.  So for some four years Giovanni lived a monk at S. Miniato; when, the old Abbot dying, his companions wished to make him their Abbot, but he would not, setting out immediately with one companion to search for a closer solitude.  And to this end he went to Camaldoli to consult with S. Romualdo; but even there, in that quiet and ordered place, he did not seem to have found what he sought.  So he set out