ASSISI.
“St. Francis be my speed!”
Think of being taken into Umbria, preternatural Umbria, where every olive-sandalled mountain is full of mysterious influences, and every leaf and flower of the smiling valleys seem to breathe out some sweet old Franciscan legend, by a steam-engine bearing the name of Fulton! It was hard. Not but we have the highest respect for—nay, a certain pride in—that great inventor; still it seemed a positive grievance to find anything modern in what was to us a world of poetry and mediæval tradition. We wished, if not to gird ourselves humbly with the cord like Dante, at least to put ourselves in harmony with one of the most delicious regions in the world, where at every step the lover of the classic, of art, or of the higher mystic lore finds so much to suit his turn. The name of Fulton sounds well along the Hudson, but to hear the shriek of an engine awaken the echoes of the Apennines, and see it go plunging insensibly through the very heart of poetical Umbria, along the shores of “reedy Thrasimene,” through “the defiles fatal to Roman rashness,” was a blow difficult to recover from. It required the overpowering influences of this enchanting region, as every one will believe, to restore our equanimity.
Umbria is a mountainous region of the Ecclesiastical States that gradually ascends from the Tiber toward the Apennines, now called the Duchy of Spoleto. It is full of sweet, sunny valleys enclosed
among majestic mountains, with a range of temperature that produces great variety of vegetation, from the pine and the oak to the orange and aloe, the olive and the vine. Its cliffs are crowned with sanctuaries which are resonant night and day with prayer and psalmody, or old towns, each with the remembrance of some saint whose shrine it guards with jealous care, or some artist or poet whose works have made it renowned, or some venerable classical recollection that clings to it like the vine which gives so much grace and freshness to the landscape. There is Spoleto, whose gates closed against Hannibal; Arezzo, where Petrarch was born; Cortona, with its “diadem of towers” and its legend of St. Margaret; Perugia dolente, which Totila only took after a seven years’ siege, and which Charlemagne placed under the sweet yoke of the Papacy; Montefalco, like a falcon’s nest on the crest of the mountain, famous for its virgin saint and its frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli; and picturesque Marni, where the Blessed Lucy when a child played with the Christorello. We pass Orvieto, with its wonderful proofs of past cultivation; the lake of Bolsena, with its isle where a queen died of hunger, and its shores verdant with the glorious pines sung by Virgil, at the foot of which Leo X., when a guest at the Farnese villa, used to gather around him the artists and poets of the day, to indulge in intellectual converse till “the azure
gloom of an Italian night” gathered around them with hues that spoke of heaven.
But over all hovers especially the grand memory of St. Francis, with which the whole of this beautiful region is embalmed. Along its valleys and mountain paths he used to go with Fra Pacifico, the poet laureate of Frederick II., singing their hymns of praise, calling themselves God’s minstrels, who desired no other reward from those who gathered around them but the sincere repentance of their sins. There is the lake of Perugia, where he spent forty days alone on an island among the sad olives, fasting in imitation of our Saviour, in continual communion with God and the angels—a spot now marked by a convent whose foundations are washed by the waters of the lake. There is the blue lake of Rieti, to which, in his compassion for God’s creatures, he restored the fish alive, with the four Franciscan convents on the hills that enclose it. There is Gubbio, with the legend of the fierce wolf he tamed, to which the people erected a statue—an unquestionable proof of its truth. There is the
“Hard Rock
‘Twixt Arno and the Tiber,”
where
“He from Christ
Took the last signet which his limbs two years
Did carry.”
Above all, there is Assisi with his tomb, one of the most glorious in the world after that of Christ, around which centred all the poetry and art of the thirteenth century. We caught our first glimpse of it at Spello—Spello on its spur of red limestone—where we were shown the house of Propertius, “the poet of delicate pleasures,” in full sight of Assisi, where was born
one who sang of a higher love. Assisi stands on an eminence overlooking the whole country around, and we could not take our eyes off it all the way from Spello, till, glancing towards the valley below, we saw the towers and dome of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which encloses the sacred Porziuncula. We were now in the very “land of wonder, of miracle, and mysterious influences,” the first glimpse of which one can never forget. Think of a railway station close by the Porziuncula! We went directly there on descending from the cars.
St. Mary of the Angels is a vast church that stands almost solitary in the plain. It is modern also, and out of keeping with the venerable traditions of the place, which was a disappointment. The old church was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1854. The present one is of noble proportions, however, and has been compared to the garments of a queen that now clothe the humble sanctuary of the Porziuncula which stands beneath the dome, the first thing to strike the eye on entering the church. We hastened towards it at once, to pray where St. Francis so often wept and prayed, and where so many generations since have wept, and prayed, and found grace before God. It was here Picca, his mother, often came to pray before he was born, and where his birth was announced by mysterious songs attributed to the angels. St. Francis loved this spot above all places in the world; for it was here he was called to embrace the sublime folly of the cross, and where he laid the foundations of the seraphic order. It was here, in the year 1222, he beheld Christ and his holy Mother surrounded by a multitude of angels, and prayed that all who should
henceforth visit this chapel with hearts purified by contrition and confession might obtain full pardon and indulgence for all their sins. This was the origin of the celebrated indulgence of the Porziuncula, which the grave Bourdaloue regarded as one of the most authentic in the church, because granted directly by Christ himself. The treasures of the church were not dealt out so generously in those days as now, and thousands came hither from all parts of Christendom, in the middle ages, to gain this wonderful indulgence. When St. Bernardine of Siena came in the fourteenth century, he found two hundred thousand pilgrims encamped in the valley around. St. Bridget spent the whole night of one 1st of August praying in the Porziuncula; and still, when the great day of the Perdono comes (it lasts from the Vespers of the 1st of August till the Vespers of the following day), thousands flock down from the mountains and come up from the extremity of southern Italy. The highway is lined with booths where eatables and religious objects are sold. Processions come with chants and prayer. The great bell of Predicazione, originally cast for Fra Elias, is heard all over the valley from the Sagro Convento, announcing the indulgence. When the church doors open, an overwhelming crowd pours in with cries, and invocations, and vivas for the Madonna and St. Francis with true Italian exuberance of devotion.
The Porziuncula has wisely been left in its primitive simplicity, with the exception of the front, on which Overbeck, in 1830, painted the above-mentioned vision to St. Francis with true pre-Raphaelite simplicity. The remainder is just as it was in the time of the saint; only
its rough walls have been polished by the kisses of pilgrims, and hung with pious offerings. Lamps burn continually therein as if it were a shrine.
Back of the Porziuncula is the low, dark cell St. Francis inhabited, and where he ended his days. It was here, while he was dying, two of the friars sang his Hymn of the Sun, which breathes so fully his love for everything created. And when they ceased, he himself took up the strain, to sing the sweetness of death, which he called his “sister, terrible and beautiful,” in the spirit of Job, who said to corruption: Thou art my father; to the worm: Thou art my mother and my sister.
Then we were taken into the recess where St. Francis so often chastised his body, which he regarded as his beast of burden that it behoved him to beat daily and to lead around with a halter. When dying, he is said to have begged pardon of this old companion of the way for inflicting so many stripes on it for the good of his soul. There is also the Cappella delle Rose with the Spineto—a little court once filled with coarse brambles, but now aflush with roses. Here St. Francis, being tempted to renounce a life in which he was consumed with watchings and prayers, for his only reply threw himself among the thorns, which, tinged with his blood, were immediately changed into roses. They bloom here still, but without thorns, and their petals are stained as with blood. If transplanted elsewhere, the stains are said to fade away and the thorns to come forth again. It was twelve of these roses, six red and six white, the saint bore with him into the Porziuncula when the great Perdono of the 2d of August was granted—roses
that for ever will embalm the church, and that have been immortalized by artists all over Italy and Spain.
The immense convent of Observantine friars adjoining is now solitary and desolate. The Italian government has turned the inmates out of this cradle of their order, with the exception of two or three, who are left as guardians of the church. The hundreds of poor, once fed at their gates in time of need, now take revenge on the passing traveller, and fasten themselves on him with pertinacious grasp. But who can refuse a dole where St. Francis has made Poverty for ever glorious?
From St. Mary of the Angels we went winding up the hill to Assisi. Its base is clothed with the olive, the vine, and the fig, but its sides are as nude and destitute as the Bride of St. Francis. Above, on the right, rises the tall campanile of Santa Chiara over the tomb of St. Clare. At the left is the fortress-like edifice of the Sagro Convento on the Hill of Paradise, once known as the Colle d’Inferno, where St. Francis desired to be buried among malefactors. This monastery against the mountain side stands on a long line of double arches that seem hewn out of the very cliff. It is one of the most imposing and most interesting monuments in Italy, and astonishes the eye by its bold, massive, and picturesque appearance, quite in harmony with the old mediæval city. It has been called the Sagro Convento ever since its consecration by Pope Innocent IV. in 1243—the Sacred Convent, par excellence. Santa Chiara and this convent of St. Francis seem like two strongholds at the extremities of the town to protect it from danger. Between them it rises in terraces, crowned
by a ruined old citadel of feudal times. The declining sun lighted up its domes, and towers, and venerable gray walls as we ascended, and made it seem to our enraptured eyes a seraphic city indeed.
Half way up the hill we came to the Spedalicchio—the ancient ’Spital where St. Francis so often came to take care of the lepers. It was here, as he was borne on a litter to the Porziuncula by the friars, a few days before his death, he begged them to stop and turn him around, not to take a last look at the city he loved—for the eyes that had wept so many tears were now blind—but to bless it with uplifted hands, in solemn, tender words that have been graven over one of the gates:
Benedicta tu civitas a Domino, quia per te multæ animæ salvabuntur, et in te multi servi Altissimi habitabunt, et de te multi eligentur ad regnum æternum.—A city blessed of the Lord art thou, because by thee many souls shall be saved, and in thee shall dwell many servants of the Most High, and from thee many shall be chosen to reign for ever and ever!
With what emotion one enters its gates!… We drove through old, narrow, ascending streets, silent and monastic, named after the saints; past old rock-built houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with the holy names of Jesus and Mary over nearly every door; flower-pots with pinks and gillyflowers in all the windows, even the poorest, or on ledges, or set in rings projecting from the walls; and women spinning under the old archways like St. Clare, who, we are told, even when wasted and enfeebled by her austerities, sat up in bed and span linen of marvellous fineness.
Our hotel was close to the Sagro Convento, and, though extremely fatigued,
we at once hastened to the church, not to examine its treasures of art, but to pray and find repose of heart overburdened by the flood of memories that come over one in such a place as Assisi. Then we returned to our room, and sat at the window looking off at the setting sun and golden sky, and the shining dome of St. Mary of the Angels, and the broad plain where was held the famous Chapter of Mats in St. Francis’ time, with its narrow river winding through it. It was like the page of a beautiful poem laid open before us. St. Francis loved these hills clothed with the pale olive, this valley covered with harvests and the vine, the free air and azure heavens, the running stream, a fine prospect; and we sat long after the rich, glorious convent bells rang out the Ave Maria, gazing at the fair scene before us. Purple shadows began to creep up the rugged sides of the hill, the golden light faded away in the wrest, the dome over the Porziuncula grew dim, and the valley was covered with the rising mists. It was time to close the window.
We spent most of the following day in the church. It is the very inflorescence of Christian art, a great epic poem in honor of St. Francis. A pope laid the corner-stone. All Christendom sent its offerings. The most celebrated architects and painters of the time lent the aid of their genius. One would think it had grown out of the hill against which it is built. Its azure vaults starred with gold, its ribbed arches that bend low like the boughs of a gloomy forest, the delicacy of its carvings, its marble pavement, its windows with their jewelled panes, and above all its walls covered with mystic paintings that read like the very poetry of religion, need almost
the tongue of angels to describe them. M. Taine says: “No one, till he has seen this unrivalled edifice, can have any idea of the art and genius of the middle ages. Taken in connection with Dante and the Fioretti of St. Francis, it is the masterpiece of mystic Christianity.” It was the first Gothic church erected in Italy.[192] It is built in the form of a cross, in memory of the mysterious crucifixion of St. Francis. Its walls are of white marble, in honor of the Immaculate Virgin; and there are twelve towers of red marble, in memory of the blood shed by the Holy Apostles. It consists of two churches, one above the other, and a crypt beneath, where lies the body of St. Francis. The upper church is entered from a grassy terrace on the top of the Hill of Paradise. The lower one opens at the side into an immense court surrounded by an arcade. This under church, with its low Byzantine arches, full of the mysterious gloom and solemnity so favorable to pensive contemplation and prayer, has often been supposed typical of the self-abasement and mortified life of St. Francis. Its delicious chapels, with their struggling light, are well calculated to excite sadness, penitence, and tears. The crypt beneath, with its horrible darkness, its damp walls and death-like stillness, and its one tomb in the centre awaiting the Resurrection, is a veritable limbo; while the upper church, with its lofty, graceful, upspringing arches, all light and joy, is symbolic of the transfigured soul of the seraphic Francis in the beatitude of eternal glory.
But how can we go peering around this museum of Christian art, as if in a picture-gallery? It would be
positively wicked. The knee instinctively bends before the saintly forms that people the twilight solemnity of the lower church. It was thus we gazed up at Giotto’s matchless frescos of the three monastic virtues on the arches over the high altar, which stands directly above the tomb of St. Francis—Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience—fit crown indeed for that “meek man of God.” We remember seeing them during the Forty Hours’ Devotion, when the candles lit them up wondrously; the figures came out in startling relief; the angels seemed actually hovering over the divine Host below. The most celebrated of these paintings is the Spozalizio sung by Dante—the mystic espousals of St. Francis with Poverty, the lady of his choice.
“A Dame to whom none openeth pleasure’s gate
More than to death, was, ‘gainst his father’s will,
His stripling choice: and he did make her his
Before the spiritual court by nuptial bonds.”
This was not an original conception of Giotto’s or Dante’s. They only gave a more artistic expression to the popular belief. There was not a cottage in Umbria that did not believe in these espousals of St. Francis with Lady Poverty, who had, says the Divine Poet, lived more than a thousand years bereft of her first bridegroom, Christ; and it was from the lips of the poor and lowly they gathered the significant allegory. It was also before their time St. Bonaventura wrote: “St. Francis, journeying to Siena in the broad plain between Campiglia and San Quirico, was encountered by three maidens in poor raiment, exactly resembling each other in age and appearance, who saluted him with the words: ‘Welcome, Lady Poverty,’ and suddenly disappeared. The brethren not irrationally concluded that
this apparition imported some mystery pertaining to St. Francis, and that by the three poor maidens were signified Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, the sum and beauty of evangelical perfection, all of which shone with equal and consummate lustre in the man of God, though he made the privilege of poverty his chief glory.”
Dante with all his pride, and Giotto with his repugnance to poverty, even when consecrated by religion, chose one of the most democratic of subjects when they depicted these sacred espousals of St. Francis; for it was the people he identified himself with in this union. He wedded for better and worse the sorrows and misery, the misfortunes and groans, of Italy,[193] and when dying,
“To his brotherhood,
As their just heritage, he gave in charge
His dearest Lady, and enjoined their love
And faith to her.”
The church teaches that the poor are Christ’s suffering members; that it is he who is hungered and athirst in the sick and destitute; to him is every alms given. St. Francis gave his whole being to Poverty thus identified with Christ—a bride chosen only by a few elect souls in these days of luxury and self-indulgence, but in whom the Christian philosophers of the middle ages found an infinite charm. Plato represents Love with bare feet and tattered, disordered garments, to signify the forgetfulness of self that gives all and reserves nothing. It is in this sense the choice of evangelical poverty is one of the highest expressions of love to God in the Catholic Church.
“O hidden riches! O prolific good!” exclaims Dante. And no one ever understood its value more
than St. Francis, the glorioso poverello di Christo, who was, says Bossuet, “perhaps the most desperate lover of poverty ever known in the church.”
“O Lord Jesus!” cries St. Francis, “show me the ways of thy dear Poverty.… Take pity on me and my lady Poverty whom I love with so much ardor. Without her I can find no peace. And it is thou, O my God! who hast inspired this great love. She is seated in the dust of the highway, and her friends pass her by with contempt. Thou seest the abasement of this queen, O Lord Jesus! who didst descend from heaven to make her thy spouse, and through her to beget children worthy of thee, who art perfect. She was in the humility of thy Mother’s womb. She was at the manger. She had her part in the great combat thou didst fight for our redemption. In thy Passion she alone did not abandon thee. Mary, thy Mother, remained at the foot of the cross, but Poverty ascended it with thee.[194] She clung more closely than ever to thy breast. It was she who lovingly prepared the rude nails that pierced thy hands and feet; she who didst present thee with gall when thou wast suffering from thirst.… Thou didst die in her loving embrace.… And even then this faithful spouse did not forsake thee. She had thy body buried in the grave of another. She wrapped thy cold limbs in the tomb, and with her thou didst come forth glorious. Therefore thou hast crowned her in heaven, and chosen her to mark thy elect with the sign of redemption. Oh! who would not choose Lady Poverty above all other brides? O Jesus! who for our sakes didst become poor, the grace I beg of thee is the privilege of sharing thy poverty. I ardently desire to be enriched with this treasure. I pray thee that I and mine may never possess anything in the world of our own, for the glory of thy name, but that we may only subsist, during this miserable life, on that which is given us in alms.”
How foreign this seems to the spirit of our age; and yet it is the
science of the cross, of which we need an infusion to counterbalance the general worship of Mammon. Coleridge seems to have caught a glimpse of the beauty and dignity of poverty when he wrote:
“It is a noble doctrine that teaches how slight a thing is Poverty; what riches, nay, treasures untold, a man may possess in the midst of it, if he does but seek them aright; how much of the fiend’s apparent bulk is but a fog vapor of the sickly and sophisticated mind. It is a noble endeavor that would bring men to tread the fear of this phantom under their firm feet, and dare to be poor!”
Giotto represents St. Francis receiving his bride from the hands of Christ himself. Her head is crowned with roses and light, but her feet are bleeding from the thorns of the rough way. Her cheeks are hollow and pale, but her eyes are full of fire. Her garments are worn and in tatters, but she is beautiful with modesty and love. Hers is the tempered spiritual beauty of one who has been chastened by misfortune, but there is nothing of the degradation of human passion. It is the poverty of country life, free, modest, unabashed, but ennobled by an expression that religion alone can give. Worldlings attack her with blows, and a dog, that last friend of the poor, is barking at her with fury. Angels, beaming with joy and admiration, encircle these mysterious nuptials. Below, in one corner, are the vices of the times personified—the rapacity of the nobility, and the greed of monks who have become unmindful of their obligations. At the left is the youthful Francis sharing his mantle with a beggar, while an angel above is ascending with the garment to heaven. The central figure in the painting is the radiant
form of Him who took upon himself the likeness of the poor, on whose condition he now confers fresh dignity by perpetuating a love of poverty in the person of Francis and his order. Over all are angels of sacrifice offering to God the riches that have been abandoned for the love of him.
Philosophy, poetry, and religion are all in this wonderful allegory, which has shone here nearly six hundred years as a memorial and a perpetual admonition to the followers of St. Francis.
Chastity is represented under the veiled form of a maiden who has taken refuge in the tower of a fortress, defended by a triple wall, and guarded by Innocence and Fortitude. She is kneeling in the attitude of prayer, while angels bring her a crown and a palm. Before the castle gates are depicted the divine means of purifying the human soul: Baptism, with the cardinal virtues in attendance, and an angel bearing the robe of innocence; Penance, in her hood and garb of serge, or, as some say, St. Francis receiving new members into his fold, among whom may be seen Dante in the habit of the Third Order; and angels of Expiation consigning unseemly vices to the purifying flames of a yawning gulf.
Sancta Obedientia, the least pleasing of these paintings, is represented by the monastic yoke placed on the shoulders of a novice. Prudence and Humility are at his side; the former, entrenched behind a barrier with mirror and compass, has two faces, one examining the past and the other considering the future. Humility is bearing a torch. The old Adam of the human heart, under the form of a centaur, is put to flight by these virtues.[195]
In the midst of these three priceless jewels is represented St. Francis radiant with holiness, in a rich deacon’s dress, on a throne of gold, and surrounded by angels who hymn his praise. Never was mortal more glorified on earth than the humble St. Francis, out of whose tomb has grown this richest flower of mediæval art.
On the wall of the left transept is a sublime painting of the Crucifixion by Pietro Cavallini—one of the most important monuments of the school of Giotto, who was one of the first to soften the representations of the awful sufferings of Christ by an expression of divine resignation and beauty of form. The Byzantine type of the twelfth century, still scrupulously adhered to, was repulsive and expressive only of the lowest stage of human suffering, as all know who have seen the green, livid figures of Christ on the cross by Margaritone, who died of grief at seeing his standard of excellence set aside and despised. Cavallini, whose piety was so fervent that he was regarded as a saint, had scruples, however, about condemning as an artist what he had knelt before in prayer, though he widely departed from the old school. Nothing could be more beautiful or pathetic than the angels in this picture, who are weeping and wringing their hands with anguish around the dying Saviour.… Among the figures below is Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, then (in 1342) at the head of the Florentine republic, for whom this picture was painted. He is on horseback with a jewelled cap, clothed in rich robes, and, strange to say, with a nimbus around his head, which seems to have been a symbol of power as well as sanctity in those days.
It was one of Cavallini’s Christs[196]
that spoke to St. Bridget at St. Paul’s without the walls of Rome; and he was the architect of the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey.
At the foot of the altar beneath the Crucifixion is buried Mary of Savoy, granddaughter of Philip II. of Spain, a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, who often came here to venerate his tomb and seek counsel of St. Joseph of Copertino, then an inmate of the Sagro Convento.
All the chapels of this lower church are famous for their frescos by noted artists. Simone Memmi, the friend of Petrarch, and painter of Laura, has covered one with the life of St. Martin, who, like St. Francis after him, divided his cloak with a beggar, remaining for ever a symbol of the divine words: I was naked and ye clothed me. The Maddalena Chapel is covered with the legend of the
“Redeemed Magdalene,
And that Egyptian penitent whose tears
Fretted the rock, and moistened round her cave
The thirsty desert,”
by Puccio Capana, who became so attached to Assisi that he settled there for life.
The melancholy Giottino adorned the chapel of St. Nicholas with his usual harmony of color. On the arches of the chapel of St. Louis of France a Franciscan tertiary, Adone Doni, painted the beautiful Sibyls which Raphael admired and imitated at Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. Taddeo Gaddi, the godson and favorite pupil of Giotto, has also left here many touching and beautiful paintings. In fact, all the renowned artists of the day seemed to vie with each other in adorning this monument to the memory of St. Francis, and some of their works were offerings of
love and gratitude. To the artistic eye they are models worthy of study, but to us pilgrims so many visions of beauty and holiness.
In the sacristy is the most authentic portrait of St. Francis in existence, by Giunta Pisano—a lank, wasted form that by no means reflects the charm the saint most certainly had to attract so many disciples around him, to say nothing of his power over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air. Two marble staircases lead down to the sepulchral chamber where lies the body of St. Francis. This crypt, or third church, as it is sometimes called, is of recent construction, and, though not in harmony with the upper churches, is a prodigious achievement, dug as it is out of the rock on which the whole edifice rests. It is of the Doric order, and in the form of a Greek cross, and lined with precious marbles. It is dark and tomb-like, being lighted only by lamps around the bronze shrine, which stands in the very centre. The body of St. Francis had lain nearly six hundred years in the heart of the mountain, shrouded in a mystery that had given rise to many popular legends. When brought here in 1230, it was still flexible as when he was alive, and the mysterious stigmata distinctly visible. This was four years after his death. It was then shown to the people in its cypress coffin, amid the flourish of trumpets and the shouts of the multitude, and put on a magnificent car drawn by oxen which were covered with purple draperies sent by the Emperor of Constantinople, and escorted by a long procession of friars with palms and torches in their hands, chanting hymns composed by Pope Gregory IX. himself. Legates, bishops, and a multitude
of clergy followed. But the car was guarded by the magistrates of Assisi, and so fearful were the people lest the body of their saint should be taken from them that, when it arrived at the Colle d’Inferno, they would not allow the clergy to take possession of it, but buried it themselves in the very bowels of the earth. Hence a certain mystery that always hung over the tomb.
It is related that the third night after his burial the mountain was shaken by an earthquake and surrounded by an unearthly light. The friars, hastening to the place where they knew their patriarch lay hidden, found the rock rent asunder and the saint standing on his tomb with transfigured face and eyes raised to heaven. Gregory IX. is said to have come to witness the prodigy, and left this inscription on the wall: Ante obitum mortuus; post obitum vivens—Before his death, dead; after death, living.
It became a popular belief that this body, which bore the impress of the Passion of Christ, would never see corruption, and that he would remain thus, ever living and praying, in the depths of his inaccessible tomb.
In 1818 Pius VII. authorized the Franciscans to search for the body of their founder. After continued excavations in the rock for fifty-two days, or rather nights (for they worked in the silence and secrecy of the night), they came to an iron grate that protected the narrow recess where lay the saint. It was then the crypt was constructed to receive the sacred body. The same old grate is before the present shrine, and the sacristan thrust his torch through the bars, that we might catch a glimpse of the remains of one
“Whose marvellous life deservedly were sung
In heights empyreal.”
Around this glorious tomb all the Franciscans of Assisi, before they were suppressed by the present Italian government, used to gather every Saturday at the vesper hour, to chant, with lighted tapers in hand, the Psalm Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi, sung by St. Francis when he was dying. It has been set to music by one of the friars in a grand air known as the Transito because it celebrates the transit of the saint to a higher life. This became one of the attractions of the place which kings and princes considered it a favor to hear, but of course it is no longer sung. Let us hope that this forced suspension is only transitory.
At the door of the crypt are the statues of Pius VII., in whose pontificate it was constructed, and Pius IX., a member of the Third Order, who has surrounded it with twelve bas-reliefs representing the life of the saint.
A long flight of stone steps leads from the lower court to the terrace before the upper church, which is grassy and starred with daisies. This church is as lofty and brilliant with light as the other is gloomy and low-browed. Cimabue and Giotto adorned its walls with paintings that are now sadly defaced, but they have a fascination no modern artist can inspire, and we linger over them as over the remembrance of some half-forgotten dream, hoping to catch a clearer view before they fade for ever away. Above are scenes from the Holy Scriptures—a glorious Biblia Pauperum, indeed, it must have been when fresh from the artist’s hands; and this is especially the church of the people, as the lower one is that of the friars. Below is the wondrous life of St.
Francis, a poem in twenty-eight cantos, by Giotto, the painter of St. Francis par excellence, who never seemed weary of his favorite subject.
There are over one hundred stalls in the choir, delicately carved by Sanseverino, with curious intarsia-work representing the popes, doctors, and saints of the Franciscan Order.
The beautiful lancet windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are “suffused with lessons sweet of heavenly lore,” glorious in color, which gives marvellous hues to Cimabue’s angels who hover in the arches with “varied plume and changeful vest.” The lower church is that of poor mortals who struggle with earth and grope for the light. This one depicts the glory of the saints, and is a symbol of Paradise.
Connected with the church is the Sagro Convento, which is entered by an arched passage lined with portraits of distinguished Franciscans. There are four large cloisters, now solitary but for the ascetic forms painted on their walls, and the silent tombs of the dead friars. Long corridors, lined with saints of the Order, lead to the narrow cells intended for the living. Two refectories were shown us, one large enough to contain two hundred and fifty persons, with Silentium in great letters on the wall over the fine Cenacolo by Solimena. Opposite the latter is a Crucifixion by Adone Doni, with Jerusalem and Assisi in the background, and SS. Francis and Clare at the foot of the cross. Narrow tables extended around the room, with seats against the wall on which the Benedicite is carved.
But the most striking feature of this vast monastery is the immense gallery on the western side, like an arcade on the brink of a precipice, with
a torrent in the depths below. This was constructed by Sixtus IV., whose statue is at one end. It affords a grand view over the whole Umbrian valley. Montefalco, Spello, and Perugia are in full sight; below is the Porziuncula; in the distance the purple Apennines, with the glorious Italian sky over all. One needs no better book of devotion than this page of nature.
On the other side of the monastery the windows look down on the garden of the friars with charming walks on the side of the mountain amid olives and cypresses.
It was not till the second morning we began to explore Assisi. What queer old lanes, up and down hill, we passed along, the walls covered with moss and ferns out of which green lizards darted! The streets were grassy and noiseless, being mostly inaccessible to carriages. Coats-of-arms are sculptured over many of the massive old portals, accompanied, perhaps, with some religious symbol. On one was Viva Gesu e Maria! Another had Ubi Deus ibi pax. Every few moments we came to a lovely fresco of the Madonna—too beautiful a flower to bloom on the rough highways of life. Everything was old and quaint, and in harmony with the traditions of the place; everything redolent of the middle ages and of the memory of St. Francis. Assisi is full of monuments that perpetuate some incident of his life. There is San Francesco il Piccolo—Little St. Francis—an oratory on the site of the stable where he was born, with the inscription:
Hoc oratorium fuit bovis et asini stabulum
In quo natus est Franciscus mundi speculum;
—This chapel was the stable of an
ox and ass, wherein was born Francis, the mirror of the world.[197]
The Chiesa Nuova—the New Church, but over two hundred and sixty years old—was built by Philip III. of Spain on the site of the house of Pietro Bernardone, the father of St. Francis, and has always been under the protection of the Spanish crown. It is in the form of a Greek cross, with five domes in memory of the five mystic wounds of the saint. Over the entrance are graven the arms of Spain. A flock of white pigeons was around the door. A young friar with mild, pleasant eyes came forward in his brown habit to show us the church. Some portions of the original house of Bernardone have been preserved; among others, a low, round arch with an old door held together by iron clamps. And at the left is the low cell in which St. Francis was confined three days by his father for selling some of his goods to repair San Damiano. In it is a statue of the saint, kneeling with folded hands, before which we found flowers and a burning lamp. Around the central dome are statues of celebrated Franciscans: St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Clare, St. Diego, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. In the presbytery is shown St. Francis’ chamber.
In the bishop’s palace is the room where St. Francis stripped off his garments in the presence of his father, and the bishop covered him with his mantle. It contains a painting of the scene.
There is an oratory where once dwelt Bernard de Quintavalle, the first disciple of Francis. Here he saw the saint upon his knees all
night, weeping and exclaiming, Deus meus et omnia—My God and my all! and conceived such a veneration for him that he
“Did bare his feet, and in pursuit of peace,
So heavenly, ran, yet deemed his footing slow.”
The church of St. Nicholas is where they consulted the Gospel to know what manner of life they should lead.
On our way to all these places, so touching to the heart of a Catholic, we passed the theatre named for Metastasio, who was enrolled among the citizens of Assisi, and whose father was a native of the place. We visited likewise the portico of the temple of Minerva, now a church, which is one of the finest specimens of Greek art in Italy. Goethe stopped at Assisi on purpose to visit it, but, like our own Hawthorne after him, passed by the marvels of art around the tomb of St. Francis.
It must not be supposed that all this while we have forgotten St. Clare, the moon in the heavens of the Franciscan Order, of which St. Francis is the sun, as Lope de Vega, the celebrated Spanish poet, and, by the way, a Franciscan tertiary, says:
“Cielo es vuestra religion
Y como sol haveis sido,
Quereis que haya luna Clara
Mas que su mismo appellido.”
We now went to visit her shrine, which is in the church of Santa Chiara, on the very edge of the hill at the western extremity of Assisi. The so-called piazza in front is rather a broad terrace from which one looks directly down on the tops of the olives below. The church is of the purest Gothic style of the thirteenth century, with enormous flying buttresses to preserve it from earthquakes. Its lofty campanile
with open arches is one of the prominent features of Assisi. Adjoining is the monastery of Clarists, that looks more like a castle with ramparts and battlements. We entered the sculptured portal between two lions growling over their cubs, and found ourselves in a great church without aisles, almost without ornament, cold, severe, and deserted. It was once nearly covered with paintings, of which only a few remain. Over the main altar are encircled some of the celebrated virgin saints who early gave their souls to heaven: Agnes, Cecilia, Catherine, Lucy, Clare—a Corona Virginum indeed, full of delicacy and expression, painted by Giottino. In a side chapel is an interesting old picture of St. Clare, said to have been painted by Cimabue thirty years after her death. It represents her with noble but delicate features, a fair complexion and smiling lips, and majestic in form. In fact, she was of uncommon stature. The body of her sister Agnes is in a tomb over the altar.
This church was first known as St. George’s, but took the name of St. Clare after her body was brought here for burial. Here the canonization of St. Francis took place. Through a grate that looks into the nuns’ chapel, we saw by the light of a candle the old Byzantine crucifix—of the tenth century, at least—which spoke to Francis at San Damiano: Vade, Francisce, et repara domum meam quæ labitur. It is painted on wood, with the Maries and St. John at the foot, and angels hovering over the arms of the cross.
A broad staircase leads down from the nave to the subterranean chapel recently constructed for the shrine of St. Clare. Her sacred remains, by the permission of Pius
IX., were, in 1850, taken out of the narrow recess in the rock where they had lain five hundred and ninety years. All the bones were found perfect. One hand was on her breast, the other at her side with the remains of some fragrant flowers. On her head was a wreath of laurel, the leaves still green and flexible; and scattered around her were leaves of wild thyme. These remains were borne solemnly through the city she and St. Francis have made so illustrious. Children strewed the way before them with flowers and green leaves, after the fashion of Italy, and young maidens followed with lilies in their hands. In this manner they were taken to the Sagro Convento, stopping at six convents on the way, and brought back at night by the light of torches. They are now in a beautiful Gothic chapel, partly due to the liberality of Pius IX. Two nuns in gray showed us the shrine. St. Clare lies on a rich marble couch, with a lily in her hand, and the rules of her rigid order on her breast, surrounded by lamps. We also saw some of the long, fair hair cut off at the Porziuncula, and some of the fine linen she spun with her own hands.
Passing through an old gateway a little beyond Santa Chiara, we left the city and strolled leisurely down the long, steep side of the mountain, along a charming road lined with hedges and groves of olive-trees. The fields were bright with poppies, the trees melodious with birds, and the burning sun of Italy as intense as the soul of St. Francis, who must often have trod the same path. At length we came to a Madonna in a niche, at the corner of a group of buildings, with a few faded flowers before her, and, in a minute more, to an old church and monastery that looked as if they
needed again the restoring hand of St. Francis. This is San Damiano, homely and simple, but like a bird’s nest on the mountain-side, half hid among olives which, gnarled and twisted and split asunder, looked as old as the convent itself. It seemed a fit dove-cot for the gentle Clare and her companions, whom St. Francis established here in quietness and solitude.
A small court leads to the church, before which is a portico with a fresco of St. Clare repulsing the Saracens. These Saracens were in the employ of Frederick II. On their way to attack Assisi, ravaging the country as they went, they came to San Damiano, and scaled the convent walls in the night. The poor nuns, in their terror, took refuge around the bed of St. Clare, who, though ill, rose by the aid of two sisters, and, taking the Blessed Sacrament in her hands, she went forth on the balcony, chanting in a loud voice: “Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever!” This unexpected apparition in the darkness of night, amid the light that streamed around the uplifted Host, so terrified the infidel band that they took immediate flight. All Assisi resounded with hymns of joy. But a few days after they returned anew, vowing to take the city. Then Clare and her companions covered their heads with ashes, and, prostrating themselves before the altar, wept and prayed till the enemy was dispersed by the valiant citizens. This was on the 22d of June, 1234, on which day the inhabitants of Assisi vowed an annual pilgrimage to San Damiano in gratitude for their deliverance.
Everything in this convent has been left in its primitive simplicity. The bell is merely suspended from
the wall. The rafters are bare. The buildings are of unpolished stone. Everything bears the impress of the evangelical poverty its inmates embraced. But nature supplies what is lacking in art. The site is delicious. The view from the terrace is lovely, with the dear Porziuncula in the distance, and the fertile valley radiant in the sun.
Several steps lead down into the little, sombre church, which is only lighted by two small windows. There are some old frescos on the wall, a few votive offerings falling to pieces, tarnished wooden candlesticks on the altars, and faded flowers, as if fresh ones would be out of keeping. In an oratory at the right is a miraculous crucifix, carved out of wood by a Franciscan friar in the sixteenth century. The head is said to have been finished by an angel while the artist slept, and, in fact, has a wonderful expression, which changes with different points of view. On the steps of the altar beneath sat a child with olive complexion and coal-black eyes, eating a crust. She looked as if she might have been left behind by the Saracens. Not another soul was in the church. She had doubtless strayed in from a neighboring house with the usual liberty of the free-and-easy Italians, who have nothing of the awe of northern nations in the house of God.
On the left side of the church are several objects that belonged to St. Clare—a bell with too sharp a sound for so sweet a saint, her breviary, and the ivory ciborium, curiously carved, with which she repulsed the infidel host.
Going through the chancel, we came to the choir of the first Clarists, precisely as it was in the thirteenth century—small, dim, and of extreme simplicity. The pavement
is of brick. The stalls are plain wooden seats, now worm-eaten, which turn back on wooden pivots. There is only one narrow window with little panes set in lead. The decayed door turns on a wooden bar inserted in grooves. Old lecterns stand in the centre, and the list of St. Clare’s first companions, who sang here the divine praises, hangs on the wall. In one corner is the recess where the wall gave way to hide St. Francis from the fury of his father. The saint is here painted in the red Tuscan vest of the time, such as we see in pictures of Dante.
By this time the guardian of the church had arrived, and he took us into the refectory, which is gloomy and time-stained, with low Gothic arches, once frescoed. There are two windows with leaded panes, and worm-eaten tables around the blackened walls, with the place in one corner occupied by St. Clare. At one end is painted the miracle of the loaves, now half effaced; for it was here Pope Innocent IV., who had come to visit the saint, commanded her to bless the frugal repast. Confused, she knelt down and made the sign of the cross over the table, which was miraculously imprinted on each of the loaves.
Then we went up the brick stairs, through narrow passages, past the small cell of Sister Agnes, with its one little window looking down into an old cloister with a well in the centre, and came to St. Clare’s oratory, where she performed her devotions when too infirm to descend to the choir. Close by is the room where she died, poor and simple, unpainted beams overhead, and the pavement of brick. The lover of art finds nothing here to please the eye, but to the religious soul there is a world of moral
beauty. Here Pope Innocent IV. came to see her on her death-bed. “Know, O my soul!” she exclaimed as she was dying, “thou hast a good viaticum to go with thee, an excellent guide to show thee the way. Fear not. Be tranquil, for He who created thee, and has always watched over thee with the tender love of a mother for her child, now comes with his sanctifying grace. Blessed be thou, O Lord! because thou hast created me.”
One of the nuns asked to whom she was speaking so lovingly. “Dear daughter,” replied she, “I am talking to my blessed soul.” Then turning to another sister, she said: “Seest thou not, my daughter, the King of Glory whom I behold?” And their eyes being opened, they saw a great company of celestial virgins clothed in white coming down out of heaven with the Queen of all saints at their head. And her soul at once departed to join them.
The death of St. Clare is the subject of one of Murillo’s masterpieces, a picture that resumes, as M. Nettement says, all the hopes and fears of Italy. The earth is wrapped in darkness. The sick-chamber, with its inmates, is veiled in obscurity. But the heavenly Jerusalem opens, dispersing the gloom and lighting up with its splendor the face of the dying nun, which beams like a star on everything around her. Such is the church, threatened on the one hand by the thick darkness of the world, but cheered on the other by a never-failing light from heaven like a great hope.
Ave, Mater humilis,
Ancilla Crucifixi,
Clara, virgo nobilis,
Discipula Francisci,
Ad cœlestem gloriam
Fac nos proficisci. Amen
A steep mountain-path through the woods leads north of Assisi to the Eremo delle Carcere, composed of a cluster of houses among the ilex-trees, and five or six cells hollowed in the cliffs, to which St. Francis and his first disciples used to retire when they wished to give themselves up to the bliss of uninterrupted contemplation. No place could be more favorable for such a purpose. The wooded mountain, the wild ravine, the profound silence, the solitary paths, the sky of Italy—and God. What more did they need? There is the cave of St. Francis with the crucifix, carved with skill and expression, which he used to carry with him in his evangelical rounds, and the couch of stone on which he took his slight repose. Near by is the evergreen oak where the birds, who once received his blessing, still sing the praises of God. A place is pointed out where the demon who had tempted him cast himself despairingly into the abyss; and below is the Fosco delle Carcere, where flowed the turbulent stream which so disturbed the hermits in their devotions that St. Francis prayed its course might be stayed; and for six hundred years it has only flowed before some special disaster to the land. As may be supposed, it has not failed, as we were assured, to flow in abundance ever since the day Victor Emanuel set his foot in the Pontifical States.
Every branch of the Franciscan Order has a house at Assisi, but most of these communities have been dispersed by the Italian government. People are at liberty to dress in purple and fine linen, and indulge in every earthly pleasure; but to do penance, to put on sandals
and a brown habit, and “clothe one’s self in good St. Francis’ girdle,” is quite another affair. Besides, the Franciscans are traditionally the friends of the people, and the influence they once exerted against the German emperors who oppressed Italy may not be forgotten. Frederick the Second’s ministers said the Minor Friars were a more formidable obstacle to encounter than a large army. The tertiaries of the middle ages exercised great influence in the moral and political world. They created institutions of mutual credit in the thirteenth century. At the voice of St. Rose, who belonged to the third order, Viterbo rose up against Frederick II.
This branch of the seraphic order embraced all classes of society. One hundred and thirty-four emperors, queens, and princesses are said to have belonged to it, among whom were Louis IX. of France, the Emperor Charles V. of Germany, Maria Theresa of Austria, etc. Christopher Columbus, Raphael, and Michael Angelo were also tertiaries. Princes assumed the cord on their arms, like Francis I., Duke of Brittany, who added the motto: Plus qu’autre, as if he, more than any one, revered the saint whose name he bore. Giotto has painted a Franciscan ascending to heaven by means of his girdle, and Lope de Vega makes use of the same image in his ode to St. Francis:
“Vuestra cordon es la escala
De Jacob, pues hemos visto
Por los nudos de sus passos
Subir sobre el cielo empireo
No gigantes, sino humildes.”[198]
[192] The upper church is of the Gothic style; the lower one, Lombard; and the crypt, Grecian.
[193] Ozanam.
[194] Dante’s actual words:
“With Christ she mounted on the cross,
When Mary stayed beneath.”
[195] In this allegory we have followed, in part the interpretation of M. Ozanam.
[196] This is carved.
[197] Several other saints have had the happiness of being born in a stable, as St. Joseph de Copertino and St. Camillo de Lellis; the latter from a pious wish of his mother that he might come into the world like the Son of God.
[198] Your cord is the ladder of Jacob; we have seen not the mighty, but the lowly of heart, mount up by its knots to the empyreal heaven.