The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

Such is the irony of fate, that while numerous documents remain giving the names of contractors and minor masons employed in the building there is absolutely no evidence or clue of any kind as to the architect employed by Elias. We can only suppose that the document relating to this and other interesting points in connection with the decoration of the church, must have been destroyed by the Perugians when they sacked Assisi under Jacopo Piccinino and burnt so many treasures in the archives. We are consequently at the mercy of local legends, which were no doubt recounted to Vasari by the Assisans themselves when he visited the town in the middle of the sixteenth century. But there is still the evidence of our own eye to help us to know something of the builder of San Francesco, the builder of the first Gothic church in Italy. We are told he was a German; but then we know from Mr Fergusson's Handbook of Architecture that Germans were only just awakening to the Gothic influences at the time of St. Francis's death, and, when they wished to build churches in the new style they called in French masons to help them. Was it therefore likely that Germany should have given the mysterious architect to Assisi? A church recalling the Assisan Basilica may be vainly searched for in Germany or in Lombardy and this further fact inclines us to believe in the theory of M. Edouard Corroyer.

CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAN FRANCESCO

Whether the man who conceived the original idea of raising one church above another flanked by a colonnaded convent on the spur of a great mountain was called Philip or James, or whether he came from a Lombard or a German province seems of small importance compared with the country where he learned his art. Even supposing "Jacopo" to have been a northern Italian from the home of the Comacine Guild of master masons, which is extremely likely, everything goes to prove that he must have drawn his inspiration for the Assisan Basilica straight from the south of France. What establishes the French parentage of San Francesco is the mode of construction, especially visible in the Upper Church, and which, as M. Corroyer says, "possesses all the characteristics peculiar to the French architecture in the south of France at the close of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, of which the Cathedral of Albi [in Aquitaine] is the most perfect type. The single nave, its buttresses projecting externally in the form of half turrets, add to the likeness of the Italian church of Assisi with that of Albi in France."[63] A glance at the illustrations of the two churches will bear this theory out better than many words; and it will be seen at once that had the half turrets between the bay windows of San Francesco been completed with pointed roofs and small lancet windows, as no doubt was the intention, the likeness would be even more striking.

Although "Jacopo" left a very substantial mark of his genius upon the Umbrian hill-side, he came and went like a shadow, leaving his designs and plans to be carried on by his young disciple Fra Filippo Campello, whom we shall meet with again in the chapter on Santa Chiara. Little, therefore, as we know of this earlier portion of its history, San Francesco at least remains to us in all its first prime and glory to tell its own tale, and endless should be the hymn of praise sung by the Assisans for the chance which brought so beautiful a creation within their walls.

It seems indeed strange that a style so new and so admired, was not more faithfully adhered to at a time when cathedrals and churches were being erected in every Italian city. Perhaps the Romanesque and Byzantine influences from the south so tempered the Gothic tendencies of Lombard architects, that they were unable to attain the true ideal, and succeeded only in creating a style of their own, to be found at Florence, Siena and Orvieto, known as Italian Gothic. Thus it happens that the Assisans are the proud possessors, not only of the first Gothic church built in Italy during the dawn of the new era, but of a church which is unique, as recalling less dimly than those of other cities the splendour of the northern cathedrals.

The rapidity with which the Assisan Basilica progressed is one of the most wonderful results of the love inspired by St. Francis among mediæval Christians. The generosity of the Catholic world was so stirred that donations poured in without ceasing from Germany and France, and even from Jerusalem and Morocco. "Cardinals, bishops, dukes, princes, counts and barons," write the chroniclers, helped Elias in his work, while the people of Umbria, too poor to give money, came in numbers, out of the reverence they bore the Saint, to work for small and often for no wages. It was a busy time; and Assisi awoke to a sense of her importance. Under the vigilant eye of Elias, armies of masons and labourers worked as unremittingly as ants at a nest, while processions of carts drawn by white oxen, went ever to and fro upon the road leading to the quarries, bringing creamy-white, rose and golden-coloured blocks of Subasian stone.

This universal enthusiasm enabled Elias to complete the Lower Church in twenty-two months, while the Upper Church was roofed in six years later, and finished in all essential details by 1253. But while Elias was applauded by most people, a few of the franciscans, headed by Fra Leo, still clung to the letter of the franciscan rule, and bitterly disapproved of these innovations. They sorrowfully looked on at the army of workers, raising, as if by magic, walls and colonnades upon the hill-side and towers ever higher against the sky. They watched blocks of marble and stone being chiselled into cornices, friezes and capitals ornamented with foliage and flowers, until, with despair in their hearts, they slowly returned to their mud huts in the plain. The dreams of Francis were vanishing fast as the allegiance to the Lady Poverty diminished. Now her shrine existed only in the Carceri, in San Damiano and in the Portiuncula, where few sought her company, for all eyes were turned towards the new Basilica. The words of the Master, recorded faithfully in Leo's biography, were ever ringing in his ears: "Set a good hedge round in lieu of a wall, as a sign of holy poverty and humility ... build poor little cells of mud and wood, and other cells where at times the brethren may pray and work to the gain of virtue and the avoidance of sloth. Also cause small churches to be built; they ought not to raise great churches for the sake of preaching to the people, or for any other reason, for they will show greater humility and give a better example by going to preach in other churches. And if by chance prelates, clerics, religious or seculars should come to these abodes, the poor houses, the little cells and small churches will be better sermons and cause greater edification to them than many words."[64]

No wonder that Leo and his friends watched Elias at his work with no friendly eye, for between the mud huts which Francis had planned with so much simplicity, and the massive Basilica and palatial convent, stretched an infinite chasm, separating the old order from the new.