The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

THE CARCERI WITH A VIEW OF THE BRIDGE

It is the hermit's answer; but now the need of such lives has long since passed away, and even St. Francis, living at the time when the strain of perpetual warfare, famine, pestilence and crime, created a fierce craving for solitude in the lives of many, realised that a hermitage must only be a place to rest in for a while—not to live in. His anxiety to keep his Order from becoming a contemplative one is shown in the following rule he carefully thought out for his disciples. "Those religious who desire to sojourn in a hermitage are to be at the most three or four. Two are to be like mothers having a son. Two are to follow the life of a Martha, the other the life of a Mary." Then they were to go forth again strenuously to their work abroad and give place to others in search of rest and peace.

But after the death of St. Francis the Carceri gradually lost its primitive use, and the principal person who entirely changed its character was St. Bernardine of Siena who in 1320 made many alterations and additions, building a larger chapel, adding cells and a kitchen, but so small, remarks a discontented franciscan chronicler, that it barely held the cooking utensils. Although we can no longer call it a hermitage, the Carceri became the type of an ideal franciscan convent such as Francis dreamed of for his followers when he went to live at the Portiuncula, and such it has remained to this day. For certainly the place, as left by St. Bernardine, would have been approved of by the first franciscans as a dwelling-place, but those of later years can only tell us of its discomforts. Here is a graphic description of its primeval simplicity which very nearly corresponds to its present state: "It were better called a grotto with six lairs; one sees but the naked rock untouched by the chisel, all rough and full of holes as left by nature; those who see it for the first time are seized with extraordinary fear on climbing the ladder leading to the dormitory, at each end of which are other poor buildings, added by the religious according as need arose for the use of the friars, who do not care to live as hermits did in the olden times. The refectory is small, and can contain but few friars; a brother guardian made an excavation, of sufficient height and breadth in the rock, and added thereto a table around which can sit other six religious, so that those who take their places at this new table are huddled up in the arched niche which forms a baldaquin above their heads. There is also a little common room which horrifies all beholders, wherein is lit a fire, for besides being far inside the rocky mass it is gloomy beyond description by reason of the dense smoke always enclosed therein, this is a lively cause to the religious of reflection on the hideousness and obscurity of the darkness of hell; in lieu of receiving comfort from the fire the poor friars generally come out with tears in their eyes." To somewhat atone for these discomforts they possessed a fountain, raised, as we are told, by the prayers of St. Francis, which never ran dry, "a miracle God has wished to perpetuate for the glory of His faithful servants and the continual comfort of the monks."

The crucifixion in the chapel built by St. Bernardine adjoining the choir, is said to have been painted by his orders. The artistic merits of the fresco are questionable, but connected with it is a legend possibly invented by some humorous member of the franciscan brotherhood in order to point a moral to his companions. "Here," says a chronicler, "is adored that most marvellous crucifixion, so famous in religion; it is well known to have spoken several times to the devout Sister Diomira Bini of the Third Order of St. Francis and a citizen of Assisi; and in our own times, in the last century (the seventeenth) it was seen by Brother Silvestro dello Spedalicchio to detach itself from the cross, and with most gentle slaps on the face, warn a worshipper to be reverent and vigilant while praying in this His Sacred Oratory."

In a small wooden cupboard in the chapel, according to an inventory made two hundred years ago, are preserved some relics, a few of which we have unfortunately not been able to identify. Part of the wooden pillow used by St. Francis, and a piece of the Golden Gate through which our Lord passed into Jerusalem, are still here, but the hair of the Virgin, and, strangest of all, some of the earth out of which God created Adam, are no longer to be found!

Ten or twelve friars continued to live at the Carceri for a few years after the death of St. Bernardine; some begged their daily bread from the villagers in the valley, others dug in the tiny garden at the foot of the ravine where a few vegetables grew, and two always remained at the convent to spin the wool for the habits of the religious. But soon wearying of the life they went to live at other convents, and the place passed away from the franciscans into the possession of various sects, among others to the excommunicated Fraticelli. In 1415 it was given back to the Observants, and Paolo Trinci, who had done much to reform the Order, persuaded some friars to live once more at the deserted hermitage. Again the Carceri became such an ideal franciscan convent that many came from afar to visit it, and there is a strange story of how a "woman monk" found a home and died here in the middle of the fifteenth century.

"Beata Anonima," a chronicler recounts, "being already a Cistercian nun in the convent of S. Cerbone of Lucca at the time of the siege of that city by the Florentines, when the said nuns, for valid reasons, were transferred to the convent of Sta. Christina inside the city. Now this most fervent servant of God took this opportune time and fled by stealth, disguised as a man, and went, or rather flew, to Assisi; there, fired with an ardent desire to fight under the seraphic standard, she breathlessly climbed the steep slopes of Mount Subasio, and having found the horrible cavern of Santa Maria delle Carceri fervently entreated those good Fathers to admit her amongst them and to bestow on her their sacred habit, for which her longing was extreme. At length, having overcome all resistance, believing her to be a man as appeared from her dress, and not a woman which in reality she was, they admitted her to the convent and gave her the habit of religion." She edified all by the holiness of her life and the rigid penances she performed, but her health soon suffered and only upon her death-bed, surrounded by the friars chanting the psalms for the dying, the Blessed Anonima confessed to the fraud she had practised in order to dwell in the hermitage rendered so dear because of the memory of the Poverello d'Assisi.

Rivo-Torto[53]

A straight and stony road, the old Roman one, now overgrown in many parts with grass and trails of ivy and bordered by mulberry and oak trees, leads out of the Porta Mojano to two little chapels in the plain. Set back from the main road in the midst of the fields few people find them, and the peasants know nothing of their story and can only tell of a miraculous well in which a youthful saint met his death. When his body was brought to the surface a lily had grown from his mouth and upon its petals was written in letters of gold the one word, Veritas, for he had died in the cause of truth. Since then, as the peasants recount with pride, many come from afar to drink of the waters of this well for it cures every ill. It is over-grown with ferns and close by stands an ancient sarcophagus where the children sit to eat their midday meal. A piece of old worn sculpture still ornaments the chapel of the young martyr, and the feeling of the place is very charming, but the pilgrim who comes to Assisi to visit St. Francis, has a different picture to recall with another kind of beauty belonging to it than that of holy wells and flowering banks and meadows.

It is difficult, when looking on San Rufino d'Arce, with its cluster of vine-shaded peasant houses, and then on Santa Maria Maddalena, narrow windowed, the small apse marking it as a primitive Umbrian chapel of the fields, to realise that in the Middle Ages this was a leper village separated from Assisi by a little more than a mile of open country. And yet here, without doubt, we have Rivo-Torto where, even before his famous interview with Innocent III, St. Francis had stayed with those three first Assisan companions, Bernard di Quintavalle, Peter Cataneo and Egidio. Then in the autumn of 1210, when he returned from Rome after the rule of poverty had been sanctioned by the Church, but before he was ready to begin his mission as preacher, he came to live among the lepers, forming with his disciples a little family which we may call the beginning of a first franciscan settlement.