THE VIGIL OF SANTA MARIA ASSUNTA
ON the summit of a conical hill, rising above the great amphitheatre of forests that skirt the sunny Apulian plains, upon the ruins of a temple to Apollo and in a grove sacred to Venus here, in the sixth century had arisen the model of western monasticism, the cloisters of Monte Cassino.
From its sun-kissed heights the view extended on one side towards Arpinum where the Prince of Roman orators was born, on the other, towards Aquinum, already famous as the birth-place of Juvenal. Scarcely a pope or emperor of note there was who had not been personally connected with its history. From its mountain crags it had seen Goths, Lombards, Saracens and Normans devastate the land, had witnessed the death struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline, the discomfiture of Rome, and the extinction of imperial dynasties.
Up to the chapter house of the great Order of Benedict of Nursia, enthroned upon that predestined height, Francesco slowly and wearily made his way. After a night, even more restless than the preceding one, he had journeyed all day, wishing, yet dreading, to behold his ultimate goal. And as he slowly rode up the hill his heart sank with the sheer weight of his misery.
It was evening.
An immense silence, full of sadness, had fallen upon the world. The distant mountains were lost in a dome of roseate fire, which reached almost to the horizon, bordered by a line of pallid gold. Only in the west, like the very Host, the sun, shrouded in golden mists, hung in the heavens over the mystery of the sea. Slowly the light was changing. It was the moment of Benediction. Great tongues of flame stole into the firmament; the hills took fire from the splendor of the skies. Across the world lay the shadow of the Mountain. The earth seemed as a smoking censer.
As one wrapped in a dream, Francesco gazed across the land. Far and away in the Umbrian plains a fire shone like a star fallen to earth; then another and another. Castellazzara flamed on the mountain; Proceno, Aquapendente, Elciola and Paladino in the plains. Torre Alfina high in the mountains lighted her beacon; San Lorenzo in the valley answered it. Every hamlet chanted "Magnificat" and the hills answered: "Salve Regina!"
It was the Vigil of Santa Maria Assunta.