First a wool carder, he eventually became a member of the poor Jesuates, founded by Giovanni Colombini.
This company was founded towards 1360 by Colombini and his friend Francesco Vincenti: they proposed a life of poverty and penitence.
In the meantime, they were suspected of heresy: Colombini assuaged these suspicions, however, several members left the company.
Because of the intervention of the Roman Curia, the Jesuates became a religious order: the members had to give up their roaming life and settled in Tuscany and in Umbria.
[6][7][8][9] In the 20th century, an English translation of his poem "Discendi amor santo" by Richard Frederick Littledale became a popular Christian hymn, "Come Down, O Love Divine", after it was set to music by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1906.