The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

Now before placing the Crucifix of San Damiano in its place over the high altar the monks settled that it should be carried in solemn procession through Assisi. "But," writes the angry chronicler, "those who had joined this diabolical conspiracy against our Crucifix were not slow to prevent this, and had recourse to the Inquisitor of Perugia, who was induced to send his vicar to stop the procession, and bid the monks of San Damiano to keep their Crucifix hidden and allow no one to see it." There arose a terrible storm in the troubled community of Assisi, between those who took the part of the "persecuted Crucifix" and those who sided with the jealous canons of the cathedral. Finally, the case was placed before the Pope himself, and all waited anxiously the result of his investigations. A duplicate of the Crucifix of San Damiano was sent to Rome that it might be well examined by the Pope and the whole college of cardinals, and they not finding in the pious Brother Innocenzio's work anything contrary to the teaching of the gospel, it was unanimously decreed that the Crucifix of San Damiano might receive all the homage and love of the friars and citizens. So on a burning Sunday in August solemn high mass was sung at the altar of St. Clare in San Damiano and, although the friars were defrauded of their procession, such was the concourse of people who came to gain the plenary indulgence granted by His Holiness that the good friars rejoiced, and were comforted for all the persecution they had suffered on account of this marvellous Crucifix. What must have been the feelings of Brother Innocenzo as he stood by the high altar and watched the crowd of worshippers and the women lifting up their streaming eyes to the crucifix he had fashioned in his cell? The devotion to it grew as the years passed on, and we read that a century later the monks were obliged "for their greater quiet to transfer it from the choir to the chapel," where it now is, after which the monks could say their office in peace. Now we see it surrounded with votive offerings, and our guide pours forth an incessant stream of praise, and recounts at length numberless miracles.

Through the chapel of the Crucifix we reach the choir of St. Clare, left as when she used it, with the old worm-eaten stalls against the wall. It is probable that originally this was part of the house of the priest who had the keeping of San Damiano before the benedictines gave it to the Poor Clares; for here is shown the recess in the wall where St. Francis hid when his father came to seek for him, and where he is supposed to have lived in hiding for a whole month until the storm should have blown over. It was for the rebuilding of the chapel that he had taken bales of costly stuffs from the Bernardone warehouse in Assisi to sell at the fair of Foligno, and thus called forth the wrath of Messer Pietro. The good priest of San Damiano was so much astonished at this sudden conversion of Francis, that thinking he mocked him he refused to accept the purse of gold, which Francis finally threw on to a dusty window-sill. But the priest soon became his friend, allowing him to remain at San Damiano and partake of such humble fare as he could give, joining him in repairing of the poor ruined chapel.

An artist of the sixteenth century had sought to adorn the altar with a fresco of the Crucifixion which was only discovered a few months ago, but the whitewashed walls and severe simplicity of the rest seem more in keeping with the place than this crude attempt at decoration. By a rough flight of stairs we reach the small private oratory of St. Clare, which communicated with her cell and where, in her latter days of illness, she was permitted to keep the Blessed Sacrament. The rest of the convent being strict "clausura," ever since the Marquess of Ripon bought San Damiano from the Italian Government and gave it into the keeping of the franciscan friars, can only be seen by men. Within is the refectory of St. Clare where Innocent IV, dined with her and witnessed the miracle of the loaves, and Eusebio di San Giorgio (1507) has painted in the cloister two fine frescoes of the Annunciation and St. Francis receiving the Stigmata.

But anyone may step out into the small and charming garden of St. Clare which is on a level with her oratory. Walls rising on either side leave only a narrow vista of the valley where Bevagna, and Montefalco on her hill, can just be seen. Within this small enclosed space the saint is said to have taken her daily exercise and carefully attended to the flowers, and the friars to this day keep a row of flowers there in memory of her. It will be well on leaving the chapel of San Damiano to look at the open chapel in the courtyard where Tiberio d'Assisi has painted one of his most pleasing compositions. The Madonna is seated in an Umbrian valley, low lines of hills fade away in the distance, and franciscan saints, among whom St. Jerome with his lion seems curiously out of place, surround her, while at her feet is placed the kneeling figure of the nun who succeeded St. Clare as abbess. It is signed and dated 1517, while the fresco on the side-wall of St. Sebastian and St. Roch was painted five years later. In another corner of the courtyard, near the entrance, is a painting in a niche of the Madonna and saints by some Umbrian artist who felt the influence of both Giotto and Simone Martini, so that we have a curious, if pleasing result.

Santa Chiara

St. Clare was no sooner dead than the people, as they had done with St. Francis, sought to honour her memory, but in this case, Innocent IV, being in Assisi for the consecration of the Franciscan Basilica, the funeral service was conducted by the Pope and cardinals. Such a gathering of church dignitaries, Assisan nobles, priors and people had certainly never been seen in the humble convent of San Damiano; their presence, though honouring the saint, filled the hearts of the nuns with sorrow for they knew they had come to take the body of St. Clare to Assisi. With tears they consented to its being placed in safety in San Giorgio, but only on the condition that they might eventually be allowed to live near her tomb in some humble shelter. San Damiano without her, alive or dead, meant little to them, and they were ready to abandon a home of so many memories to go where they and their successors could guard her body to the end of time. Devotion to her memory and belief in her sanctity was not solely confined to them; when the friars rose to intone the service of the dead, Pope Innocent signified that there should be silence, and to the wonder of all ordered high mass to be sung and the funeral service to be changed into one of triumph, in honour of her who he believed was already with the Virgins in heaven. It was a kind of canonisation, but could not be regarded as valid without the usual preliminaries being performed, and the cardinals, more cautious and less enthusiastic than His Holiness, persuaded him to wait and in the meanwhile allow the ordinary service to proceed. To this he consented, and then amidst music and singing the Pope led the people up the hill where years before another saint had been borne to the same church of San Giorgio, and as on that day a funeral ceremony became a triumphal procession.

Innocent IV, died soon after, and it was Alexander IV, who in September 1255, two years after her death, canonized St. Clare in a Bull replete with magnificent eulogy in which there is a constant play upon her name: "Clara claris præclara meritis, magnæ in coelo claritate gloriæ, ac in terra miraculorum sublimum clare gaudet ... O admiranda Claræ beatæ claritas." Another two years were allowed to elapse before they began to erect a building to her memory; besides the readiness shown by every town to honour their saints, the Assisans had especial cause to remember St. Clare, as she had twice saved them from the Saracen army of Frederic II. Willingly the magistrates and nobles, besides many strangers who had heard of the saint's renown, contributed money for the new building, and Fra Filippo Campello the minorite was chosen as the architect. Fine as his new work proved to be it was rather the copy of a masterpiece than the inspiration of a great architect, which makes it more probable that he was only employed in completing the church of San Francesco from the designs of that first mysterious architect, and not, as some have said, its sole builder.

The canons of San Rufino offered the church and hospital of San Giorgio which belonged to them. A more fitting site for the church to be raised in honour of St. Clare could not have been chosen, for it was here that St. Francis had learnt to read and write as a child under the guidance of the parish priest; here he preached his first sermon, and later touched the heart of Clare by his words during the lenten services; and here both of them were laid in their stone urns until their last resting places were ready. So around the little old parish church with its many memories, and within sight of the Scifi palace, arose "as if by magic" the new temple with its tall and slender campanile. The hospital enlarged and improved became the convent, and the church was used by the nuns as a choir, the rest of the large building, which they could only see through iron gratings, being for the use of the congregation. With its alternate layers of pink and cream-coloured stone, wheel window and finely modelled door, the church fits well into its sunny piazza, and is a beautiful ending to the eastern side of Assisi. But in building it Fra Filippo forgot the crumbling nature of the soil, and failed to overcome the difficulty of position as had been done so admirably at San Francesco, so that in 1351 it became necessary to prop up the sides by strong flying buttresses, which, while serving as an imposing arched entrance to the side of the church, sadly detract from the feeling of solidity of the main building. A darker stone with no rosy tints was used for the convent, which makes it look very grim and old as it rises out of a soft and silvery setting of olive trees on the hillside, with orchards near of peaches and almonds. There is a great charm in the brown, weather-beaten convent, though a certain sadness when we remember, in looking at its tiny windows like holes in the wall through which only narrow vistas of the beautiful valley can be seen, how changed must be the lives of these cloistered nuns from those of the Poor Ladies of San Damiano in the time of St. Clare. They are now an order of the orthodox type, an order given to prayer and not to labour, and seeing no human face from the outside world except through an iron grating. So early as 1267 their connection with the franciscan brotherhood ceased; the brethren no longer heard their confessions or begged for them through the land as St. Francis had decreed; they lived under the patronage of the Pope, who declared their convent to be under the especial jurisdiction of the Holy See, and on the feast of St. Francis called upon the nuns to send a pound of wax candles in sign of tribute. As the Pope had often in olden times become master of Assisi so now he obtained the rule over her monastic institutions, gaining the temporal allegiance of the religious, as he had gained that of the citizens.