lf to the court of the Conqueror's son. He is
generally described as having been jester to Henry I., and it has been
assumed that the nature of his engagement involved a course of life
calling for repentance and a pilgrimage. But whatever the reason may
have been, he apparently went to Rome in 1120, though the journey at
that particular juncture was a very unsafe proceeding. He may, perhaps,
have joined himself to the train of Pope Calixtus II., who had just been
elected at Cluny, in succession to the fugitive Gelasius II., and who
made his journey to Rome in the spring of that year. If so, he arrived
in Rome at the very worst season, and like many others who visit the
city in the summer, he contracted the usual fever. During his illness,
or after his recovery, St. Bartholomew appeared to him in a vision, and
directed him, on his return to London, to found a church in his honour,
outside the walls, at a place called Smithfield. Although visions and
their causes are not always explicable, the association of St.
Bartholomew with this dream of Rahere's may, perhaps, be accounted for.
The church of S. Bartolommeo all'Isola had been built, a century before
Rahere's visit, within the ruined walls of the Temple of AEsculapius, on
the island of the Tiber, and Saint had succeeded, in some measure, to
the traditional healing-power of the God. In classic times, those who
flocked to the shrine generally stayed there for one or two nights,
when the healer appeared to them in a vision, and gave them directions
for their cure. So, in mediaeval times, his successor and supplanter
followed the same course, but provided cures for the soul rather than
for the body.

Rahere can have lost but little time in hastening home and obtaining
from the King a grant of the prescribed land, for we find that within
three years of his visit to Rome the church of his new convent was
sufficiently advanced for consecration, and presumably the convent
itself was ready for occupation. The new priory was designed for the
reception of Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine, and the
reason for the founder's adoption of this Order, apart from the fact
that it was somewhat fashionable at this period, may have been partly
because his former occupation had particularly fitted him for public
speaking, and partly because two, at least, of the men with whom he had
been closely associated at Henry's court were themselves members of this
order. And it is necessar