Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

When we finally turned from the piazza, we accepted the eagerly offered guidance of a lad of fourteen or fifteen, who led us through steep, narrow streets and under heavy stone arches to the Chiesa Nuova. Within the walls of this so-called new church is the house of the once prosperous cloth-merchant Pietro Bernardone, the home in which St. Francis spent his early years. A peasant woman unlocked a heavy wooden door and showed us with reverent pride the stable in which St. Francis was born, and our young guide spelled out with care the inscription upon one side of the church wall which records that here the Madonna Pica, the mother of Francis, had a vision of the future greatness of her long-desired son. The sacristan opened the door of a cell in the wall where Francis was confined by his father in the hope of disenchanting his son with his chosen bride, the Lady Poverty, and perhaps, as Angela suggested, to punish him for having taken good cloth from the paternal storehouse and given it to the Church. Zelphine was shocked at the idea of any one thinking that St. Francis could ever have done anything wrong; but as the gift of cloth figures quite prominently in the narrative and involves a nice question in ethics, we discussed the question, with some warmth, on our way to the Church of Santa Chiara, which is at the eastern end of the town.

This church, handsome as it is, with its pink and white stone, vast flying buttresses, and beautiful rose-window, interested us far less than Santa Chiara's convent, the San Damiano, which we visited later in the morning. We all regretted that we had gone down into the crypt at Santa Chiara to see the tomb of the founder of the Poor Clares and the friend of St. Francis. We would so much rather think of the gentle abbess at San Damiano than lying under a glass case in the dark crypt, the once beautiful face, which is quite clearly outlined against her veil, darkened by time and no longer beautiful. We turned hastily from the crypt, and were glad to be again in the open air and under the blue sky wending our way to Clare's hillside convent, which is only second in interest to the basilica of San Francesco.

It was after Clare, the daughter of Count Favorino Scifi, had listened to the preaching of St. Francis, and decided to devote her life to works of love and mercy, that he prepared the San Damiano as a retreat for her and other noble ladies who desired to accompany her. From the hour when the high-born maiden, Clare Scifi, yielded to the burning eloquence of Francis Bernardone, to the day of her death, her story is surrounded by all the charm of mediæval romance. The door of the Palazzo Scifi is still shown through which Clare escaped at night and made her way to the Portiuncula, where, in the presence of her aunt Bianca Guelfucci and several companions, she took upon herself the vows of poverty and obedience. The picture of the beautiful girl kneeling before the altar in the dim light of the Portiuncula, while the golden glory of her fair hair is shorn from her head, is one that has captivated the artist as it does the traveller. Every part of the Convent of San Damiano is associated with the lovely young abbess. Standing in the tiny terrace garden, with its few straggling wallflowers, we imagined Clare taking the air in the bloom of the lilies, surrounded by her nuns. Here is the cell where she lay ill, when tidings reached the quiet convent that a detachment of Saracen troops was advancing toward Assisi. The sisters gathered around the abbess like so many frightened doves; the bold invaders were already scaling the walls, when Clare, who was endowed with the high courage of her race, appeared at an upper window, holding aloft the chalice containing the Blessed Sacrament, which she was allowed to keep in a little chapel near her cell. At the sight of the holy and beautiful vision, so runs the legend, the soldiers upon the walls dropped to the ground and fled across the plain. As we saw the little convent, peaceful and bathed in the bright sunshine of May, it was difficult to imagine the confusion and terror that reigned there seven hundred years ago.

Still under the spell of Francis and Clare, whose story seems to be on the lips of all Assisi, young and old, we spent the long spring afternoon in the basilica of St. Mary of the Angels. The brother who showed us about the church, a namesake of Assisi's saint, spoke fairly good English, of which he was as proud as a Franciscan could venture to be, and took pleasure in relating to us some quaint and homely tales of the early days of the order. More especially did the good brother delight in speaking of the love of his Father Francis for the wild creatures of the wood, which instinctively turned to him for protection. One day a leveret hid itself in the folds of his gown, and upon another a timid hare sought shelter in his breast, still returning into the father's bosom, he said, "as if it had some hidden sense of the pitifulness of his heart."

When Angela spoke of the story that we had just been reading of Brother Juniper and the chickens, the brother laughed heartily, and said: "Chickens is goot; but Brother Juniper spoiled his by cooking the two weeks' portion of chickens in one day, and with the feathers on, to save much time for prayer; but it was not goot, and the brothers was angry."

Do you remember the story, Allan?—how Brother Juniper set the stew upon the table, "crying up his wares to find a customer for his unsavory dish, when," as the chronicler quaintly added, "there was not a pig in all the land of Rome so famished as to have eaten it."

"But he was goot," said our guide, "Brother Juniper was goot, and the guardian forgive him, and he was goot when he cut off the pig's foot and cooked it for to make the sick man well, and the herdsman forgive him this time and brought the maimed pig all killed and roasted for the brothers at St. Mary of the Little Portion to eat of it."

"This must have been the occasion," said Miss Morris, "when St. Francis exclaimed, 'Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole forest of such Junipers!'"

"Yes, yes," said the brother, "roast pig is goot," leading us, as he talked, from the modern pictures that adorn the many chapels of this large church to the most interesting object within its walls, the Portiuncula. Here, surrounded by much that is too modern to be in harmony with the old, is the simple little Portiuncula, within whose walls many pilgrims, Protestant and Catholic, kneel feeling that this is a holy spot, for here were born the high purposes and noble aspirations that led to a great movement for purer religion in the Christian world. Near the Portiuncula, under the same roof, is the rude hut in which St. Francis spent his last days, and here, opening out from the cloisters, is the little rose-garden which witnessed his earlier struggles with the powers of darkness. The rose-bushes are still free from thorns, a miracle, the good brother tells us, and spotted with blood. The green leaves are covered with brown spots, the stems are thornless. We look at them as we listen to the earnest words of our guide; the spell is still upon us, we offer no word of dissent; for whether the thornless rose-tree is natural or miraculous, whether the spots on the leaves are from blood or rust, the truth remains that this little garden witnessed the struggle of a human soul, and from its soil there arose something more wonderful than the greatest miracle over material forces ever recorded—a soul born from clouds and darkness into life and light eternal.

An overwhelming sense of Italy, of what it means to be in this old hill town, with its remains of Etruscan occupation and pagan Roman and Christian Roman life, has possessed my mind to-day. You will never quite understand what Mr. Emerson means by the oversoul until you stroll through Italian highways and by-ways, knowing that what you tread upon is only common earth and stone, well worn by many feet, and yet among the many feet there were some whose footsteps seem to have turned the common earth ways into paths that lead to the stars. But why should I try to explain that which is unexplainable, and to you, who have read more books about Italy than I shall ever read, and yet, here I triumph over you, no books, no, nor even letters of mine, can make you understand the compelling charm of this