THERE existed in the Franciscan Order from an early date a school of asceticism, remarkable no less for great elevation of thought than for singular vivacity and picturesqueness of expression. This two-fold characteristic is perhaps nowhere more happily blended than in Aurea of Blessed Giles of Assisi, a work which the Bollandists do Dot hesitate to rank at the head of its class and which is here presented to the reader in an English dress. No one at all conversant with things Franciscan need be told that Blessed Giles was of that stalwart little band who "were with the Blessed Francis from the time he began to have companions." "The Knight of our Round Table," St. Francis called him, and Giles remains the ideal type of the Franciscan Friar. It may not then be amiss to preface our study of his "Golden Sayings" with some account, however brief, of the long, strange life and the surroundings of their author. Nearly a century ago the great Conventual critic Papini sighed for an adequate biography of Blessed Giles. Some eight years since, a learned member of the same Order essayed to produce one, but his volume falls short of the mark; and the same is true of Mgr. Briganti's monograph published about the same time. Neither of these books should be read with too critical an eye. On the other hand, the recent work of Father Gisbert Menge - a seasoned scholar in all that concerns the subject - goes far toward meeting all modern requirements. But the finally acceptable biography of Giles still remains to be written. Happily, however, we are able to go behind Giles's more recent biographers to some of the early documents from which our knowledge of him is derived.