_ 147 _ told him that the monastery had been built three hundred and fifty years earlier, by a holy man called Philip, whose tomb was the one he had seen. The monks of the monastery, and all the others of the Prester's country, were of the order of St. Anton, and they maintained themselves entirely by their own labours. They dug and cleared the land in the hills to grow crops, they raised many cattle and mules, and they sold them to pay for their needs, because the alms received were very little and were sent to the Barnegais. He told them that the evangelical law was instituted in the land by the evangelist St. Matthew, whose mortal remains were in Alexandria, and that they had a breviary, but only three extra copies of it. They had the epistles of St. Paul, and were accustomed to confess when they committed sing, Our Lord had given the power to St. Peter to pardon and to condemn, and he had left this same power to his successors. The reason why he did not recognize our Pope was because they were very far from Rome, with many Moors and Turks on the way. When the magistrate heard this, he said that if he would like to give him a letter of obedience to the Pope and another to the King of Portugal he should say so; but the head monk said it was already night.
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