Here at least we cannot but feel grateful to Brother Elias, for from the beginning the Franciscans were patrons of the art of painting, and they were among the first to encourage the independent school of art as distinct from the work of Byzantium. Giunto da Pisa clothed the walls of the transept, and Cimabue and his pupils were called in to complete the decorations of the Upper Church. Thus it befell that, while Cimabue was painting some of his masterpieces on the walls above, Giotto, serving his apprenticeship and working with the other pupils of his Master's atelier, stretched out his hand to snatch the greater laurel.
'Cimabue thought
To lord it over painting's field; and now
The cry is Giotto's, and his name eclipsed.'[17]
Many years later, when his fame was assured, Giotto came back to paint his allegories in the place of honour over the High Altar of the Lower Church. What did he think of it all, I wonder, this Florentine, this lover of beautiful things, this shepherd who left his sheep and his poverty and lighted the difficult path of art by the torch of his genius? Did he too love the memory of Francis? Or was it beyond his understanding that a man should dream of giving up all the world to follow a vision of eternal life? Perhaps he shrugged his shoulders over the whole thing, and painted on, with little thought for the saint, but all his heart in his ambitions, and in the beautiful church which he was helping to adorn.
Truly it is a temple of Art this Franciscan Holy of Holies, but pilgrims who are questing for the gentle spirit of St. Francis should come away, nor hope to find it in the other great shrine of Assisi, Santa Chiara, the resting-place of Clare. Santa Chiara is inside the eastern gate of Assisi, close to the ancient palace of the Scifi in which the saint was born. It is a bare and empty church whose frescoes, according to the sacristan, were white-washed by a seventeenth-century bishop, because so many strangers came to disturb the nuns! But this Goth, who is said to have been of German extraction, left untouched some exquisite gold pictures of virgin saints over the High Altar, nor did he deem it worth while to destroy the frescoes which cover the walls of the ancient parish church of San Giorgio. For which we should be grateful, because half-hidden behind the gaudy trappings of its altar are two expressive and beautiful pictures of the Madonna and Saint Clare.
In this humble chapel where they keep the miraculous crucifix of San Damiano, we seem to draw a little nearer to Francis, who must have come here often to the old priest who gave him lessons in his childhood. Later, when the Assisans had begun to listen to him, he preached here until the press became so great that he was given permission to deliver his sermons in the then unfinished cathedral of San Rufino. Here, too, he lay in state while the people of Assisi wept and gloried over him, just as many years after they wept and gloried over St. Clare. It would have been a gentle thought if these two who had prayed and laboured together in life could have been sheltered by the same roof in death. Madonna Giacobba, who had the privilege of coming to St. Francis in his last illness, lies in San Francesco; but Clare, the Poor Lady of San Damiano, who had so humbly begged that she might once break bread with Francis, lies on the hillside far away from him.
We went down to see her tomb, the rock-hewn vault in which until fifty years ago she lay, just as the world had left her seven centuries before, with sprigs of wild thyme scattered by her mourning sisters still clinging to her robe. To-day she lies in a gilt and crystal chest, decked with flowers and jewels and elaborate velvet cushions. Her strong and rather austere face with its delicate aquiline nose is outlined against her snowy wimple, and in the midst of the incongruous splendour of her resting-place she is clad in the coarse brown robe and black veil of penitence for which she cast aside the luxurious garments of her youth. Candles burn at her head and at her feet, and a phantom-like nun with a lighted taper in her hand glides from behind a veil to draw the curtains. It was so quiet that suddenly I could hear the ticking of my watch out of the stillness, as though time tried to mark the moments in that silent chamber where it had been as nothing for so long.
But how grotesque the wreath of flowers, the thin halo, the gilded bed! Why not have left that sunken figure resting on such hard stones as it chose for comfort in life?
It is only by going out into the highways and hedges as he did that we can find the real Francis;—in the little convent of San Damiano, in the Hermitage of the Carcere, that retreat on Monte Subasio beloved of the early Franciscans, and in the holy places scattered through the fields of Umbria in which he worked and prayed.
