[54] See The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvii. Nov. 1882.
[55] Speculum Perfectionis, cap. lv., edited by Paul Sabatier.
[56] This custom ceased in the fifteenth century; but in the year 1899, through the piety of the Rev. Father Bernardine Ibald, it was revived. Once again the franciscans take a small basket of fish to the abbot and his monks who now live at S. Pietro in Assisi, where the benedictines went when their mountain retreat was destroyed by order of the Assisan despot, Broglia di Trino.
[57] This illustration is from a print to be seen in the somewhat rare edition of the Collis Paradisi Amœnitas, seu Sacri Conventus Assisiensis Historiæ, published in 1704 at Montefalco by Padre Angeli, and it may even have been taken from an earlier drawing. In it there is the true feeling of a franciscan convent, such as the saint hoped would continue for all time, and though there are some points which are incorrect (the Church of Sta. Chiara, though curiously enough not the convent, is represented, which was built several years later than San Francesco), we get a clear idea of both Assisi and its immediate neighbourhood. All the ancient gates of the town can be made out, the Roman road from Porta Mojano to San Rufino d'Arce, a faint indication of the path to the Carceri, and also the old road from Assisi to the plain out of the gate of S. Giacomo, passing not very far from the Ponte S. Vittorino. The wall round the Portiuncula and the huts did not exist in the time of St. Francis, which, together with the wooden gate, may have been added by Brother Elias. The largest hut a little to the right of the chapel was the infirmary where St. Francis died (now called the Chapel of St. Francis), and the one behind it was his cell (now known as the Chapel of the Roses, see [chapter xi.] for its story), whence he could easily pass out through the woods to San Rufino d'Arce hard by.
[58] For fuller account see The Mirror of Perfection, translated by Sebastian Evans, caps. 107, 108, 112, and The Little Flowers of St. Francis, translated by J. W. Arnold (Temple Classics), chap. vi.
[59] In the same way when Beato Egidio, ill and nigh his end, wished to return to the Portiuncula to die in the place he loved so well, the Perugians refused their consent and even placed soldiers round the monastery of Monte Ripido to prevent his escape.
[60] In the illustrations on p. [38] and p. [107] is shown the gallows erected where now stands the franciscan basilica, but it is unlikely that the property of a private individual should have been used for such a purpose, and Collis Inferni may simply have meant the spur of hill beneath the upper portion of Assisi upon which the castle stood.
[61] See Vasari, Life of Arnolfo di Lapo.
[62] It would be a thankless task to follow the bewildering maze of contradictory evidence which has enveloped the question as to who built San Francesco. Those who are eager to do so, however, can consult Henry Thode's exhaustive work, Franz von Assisi (beginning p. 187), which deals most thoroughly with the subject. Leader Scott also, in her learned book upon The Cathedral Builders, gives some ingenious theories with regard to "Jacopo" and his supposed relationship with Arnolfo, p. 315-316.
Another book is I Maestri Comacini, by Professore Marzario, whose statements about "Jacopo's" nationality are interesting and probable. But, following Vasari a little too blindly, he gives us the startling fact that "Jacopo" died in 1310, this, even supposing him to have been only twenty-five when he was at Assisi as chief architect, would make him one hundred and fifteen years of age at the time of his death.