The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

Half ruined and neglected as the chapel was, Francis learned, even as quite a child, to love it, and kneeling therein by his mother's side would pray with all the fervour of his childish faith. Later in life when he had turned from the mad follies of his youth to follow in the footsteps of Christ, he remembered the shrine he had loved in childhood, and would pass many nights there in prayer and bitter meditation upon the Passion. At last touched by the sight of its crumbling walls, he set himself the task of repairing them, working so busily with stones and mortar that the chapel soon regained its former simple beauty. The Benedictines of Mount Subasio, touched by his ungrudging labour and piety, arranged with an Assisan priest to celebrate mass at the Portiuncula from time to time, and this fact drew the young saint there still oftener.

Then followed his time of ministry among the lepers of San Rufino d'Arce, when day by day so many disciples came to enlist in this new army of working beggars that the little hut in the leper-village could no longer hold them, and Francis had to think of some means of housing the brethren, and obtaining, what he had often desired, a chapel wherein they could say the Hours. (The saint, we may be sure, always said his office in the woods.) But evidently he had no particular place in his mind, not even his beloved Portiuncula, for he went first to his friend Guido, Bishop of Assisi, and then to the canons of San Rufino to ask if they could help him. They only answered that they had no church to dispose of, and could offer no advice upon the subject. Then sorrowfully, like a man begging from door to door, St. Francis climbed Mount Subasio to lay his request in piteous terms before the benedictine abbot, where he met with more success. Brother Leo tells us that the abbot was "moved to pity, and after taking counsel with his monks, being inspired by divine grace and will, granted unto the Blessed Francis and his brethren the church of St. Mary of the Little Portion, as being the smallest and poorest church they possessed. And the abbot said to the Blessed Francis, 'Behold Brother, we grant what thou desirest. But should the Lord multiply thy brotherhood we will that this place shall be the mother-house of thy Order.'"[55]

With a willing heart Francis promised what the abbot asked, and further insisted upon paying rent for the Portiuncula, because he wished his followers always to bear in mind the point of his rule, which he so often dwelt upon, namely, that they owned no property whatever, but were only in this world as pilgrims. So every year two of his brethren brought to the gate of the benedictine monastery a basket full of roach caught in the Chiaggio which flows at no great distance from the Portiuncula, and the abbot, smiling at the simplicity of Francis, who had imagined yet another device for humility, gave back a vessel full of oil in exchange for the gift of fish.[56]

With great rejoicing St. Francis set to work building cells of a most simple pattern, with walls of wattle and dab, and thatched with straw, each brother inscribing his name upon a portion of the mud floor set apart for him to rest in. "And no sooner had they come to live here," writes Brother Leo, "than the Lord multiplied their number day by day, and the sweet scent of their good name spread marvellously abroad throughout all the Spoletan valley, and in many parts of the world."

It was thus that St. Mary of the Little Portion, henceforth to be the nucleus of the franciscan order, and a place familiar to pilgrims from far and near for many succeeding centuries, came into the keeping of St. Francis in the year 1211, about nine months after Innocent III had sanctioned his work among the people of Italy.

St. Francis and the brethren had been but a year in their new abode when a figure passed in among them for a moment and then was gone, leaving, as a vision to haunt them to their dying day, the memory of her beauty and soul's purity.

Never in the history of any saint has there been so touching and wondrous a scene as when the young Clare left her father's palace in Assisi to take the vows of perpetual and voluntary poverty at the altar of the Portiuncula. Followed by two trembling women, she passed swiftly through the town in the dead of night, across the fields by the slumbering village of Valecchio, and through dark woods made more sombre by the starry Umbrian sky which at intervals gleamed between the wide-spreading branches of the oak trees. The hurrying figure of the young girl, swathed in a long mantle, seemed like some spirit driven by winds towards an unknown future. One thing alone was clear to her, she was nearing the abode of Francis Bernardone whose preaching at San Giorgio only a month before had so thrilled her, inspiring her in this strange way to seek the life he had described in such fiery words. And just as she came in sight of the Portiuncula the chanting of the brethren, which had reached her in the wood, suddenly ceased, and they came out with lighted torches in expectation of her coming. Swiftly and without a word she passed in to attend the midnight mass which Francis was to serve.

The ceremony was simple, wherein lies the charm of all things franciscan. The service over and the last blessing given, St. Francis led Clare towards the altar and with his own hands cut off her long fair hair and unclasped the jewels from her neck. But a few minutes more and a daughter of the proud house of Scifi stood clothed in the brown habit of the order, the black veil of religion falling about her shoulders, lovelier far in this nun-like severity than she had been when decked out in all her former luxury of silken gowns and precious gems.

It was arranged that Clare was to go afterwards to the benedictine nuns of San Paolo near Bastia, about an hour's walk further on in the plain. So when the final vows had been taken, St. Francis took her by the hand and they passed out of the chapel together just as dawn was breaking, while the brethren returned to their cells gazing half sadly as they passed, at the coils of golden hair and the little heap of jewels which still lay upon the altar cloth.