On the Road with Francis of Assisi

by Linda Bird Francke

  Francis loved the new verse and had his friars sing the entire canticle to him at all hours of the day and night to lift his spirits as well as the morale of the knights guarding the palace. In a clear indication of the irreconcilable differences between the old and new guards of the Franciscan Order, Brother Elias reportedly objected to the singing on the grounds that the joyous sound wafting out of the palace windows was sending the wrong message to the people of Assisi.

  “How can he display such great joy when he is going to die?” Elias asked, voicing what he believed to be the people’s confusion. “Would it not be better to think of death?” But Francis had always chosen joy. “Brother, let me rejoice in the Lord and sing his praises in the midst of my infirmities,” he answered his minister general. And the singing continued.

  There were other joyous moments at the Bishop’s Palace. Francis, who had virtually stopped eating, had a craving one day for fish. And instantly and miraculously, a brother arrived unannounced from Rieti with a gift “basket containing three well-cooked pike and a quantity of lobster.” Another night he craved parsley, and when an anguished friar told him there was none in the garden, Francis directed him to go out into the darkness and bring him “the first herbs your hand touches.” The handful of wild herbs, Celano reports, turned out to have “a tender stock of parsley in the middle of them,” which Francis ate a bit of and “felt much better.”

  But time was running out for Francis, and toward the end of September, heeding the doctor’s timetable for his death, Francis asked to be taken to the Porziuncola. Again, it must have been an amazing scene. His loyal friars carried him down the hill from Assisi on a litter. When they reached a crossroad, which is still there, by an old lazzaretto, which is now thought to be the Casa Gualdi, Francis asked his friars to turn the litter around and prop him up so he could “see” Assisi for the last time. Perhaps his vision cleared for an instant so he could take in what is still a stunning view of Assisi from below. And then he blessed the city of his birth.

  Francis lingered for a week or so in the infirmary at the Porziuncola. At one point he struggled out of his habit and lay naked on the floor in order to die on the earth in absolute poverty, without even a tunic to his name. Elias could not bear the sight and came up with a brilliant ruse. He commanded Francis, under holy obedience, to accept the tunic, underwear, and hood that he was “lending” him. “And so that you know that they in no way belong to you, I take away all your authority to give them to anyone,” Elias told him. Francis then consented to wear the borrowed clothes.

  It was his wish for a specific gray cloth for a burial tunic that brought about one of Francis’s last living miracles. At his request, a brother was just about to depart for Rome with a letter to Lady Jacopa di Settesoli, asking her to send not only the “gray-colored monastic material” but some of his favorite almond-honey cake, when suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was “Brother” Jacopa.

  The miracle of her spontaneous arrival multiplied with what she had brought: the exact shroud cloth, the ingredients for his favorite cake, plus incense and wax candles to burn “before the holy body after his death.” She had been told to come to the Porziuncola, she explained to the friars, by a “voice” that had interrupted her prayers in Rome. “Go and visit your father, blessed Francis,” the voice had instructed her, according to the Legend of Perugia. “But hurry … for if you delay, you will not find him alive.” The voice had also told her what to take.

  Francis’s friars busied themselves by having the gray tunic hastily made for his shroud, with sackcloth, at his direction, sewed over it as a “sign of most holy humility and poverty.” Francis was so ill, however, he could eat only a crumb or two of the almond cake Lady Jacopa made for him.

  With his last strength, he dictated a letter to the ailing Clare, known as “The Blessing Sent to St. Clare and Her Sisters.” The letter was prompted less by his illness than by the severe bout of illness Clare was suffering at the time and her fear that she would die without seeing him again. “She wept in bitterness of spirit and could not be comforted because she would not be able before her death to see her only father after God, that is blessed Francis,” reports the Assisi Compilation. But any meeting was impossible, of course, “since they were both seriously ill.” So he wrote her a note.

  The text of the letter Francis sent Clare has never been found, but all the medieval biographies report that it contained his blessing of Clare and his absolution of her for any failings she might have committed. Francis also promised her what she so desperately craved, though, ironically, it would be after his death, not hers. “Let her know, in truth, that before she dies she and all her sisters will see me again and will receive great consolation from me,” Francis instructed the friar bearing the letter to her at San Damiano.

  Finally, there were only Francis and his friars in the little infirmary at the Porziuncola. As we stand inside the Cappella del Transito, a restoration of that simple cell inside the massive Santa Maria degli Angeli, it is difficult to sense the intimacy and the anguish that must have filled this space eight hundred years ago. Somewhere, under the acres of marble in this, the seventh largest Christian church in the world, the friars were sitting on the earth around Francis, crying.

  Brother Elias was in the cell with Francis. So were Brother Leo and several others among the first companions: Brother Rufino, Brother Giles, Brother Angelo, and Brother Bernard of Quintavalle. Eighteen years had passed since Francis spent the entire night in prayer at the Quintavalle home and converted Bernard, his first friar.

  “Write this just as I tell you,” Francis said to Leo. “Brother Bernard was the first brother whom the Lord gave me, as well as the first to put into practice and fulfill most completely the perfection of the Holy Gospel by distributing all his goods to the poor. Because of this and many other prerogatives, I am bound to love him more than any other brother of the entire Order. Therefore, as much as I can, I desire and command that, who ever the Minister General is, he should cherish and honor him as he would me.”

  Then it was the other friars’ turn for their blessings. And the call from Francis for bread, which he blessed before giving a piece to each of his brothers. And the reading he asked his friars for, from the Gospel According to St. John. And then Francis, faltering, began to recite Psalm 142. “Lead me out of my prison, that I may give thanks to your name,” he whispered. “Then the just shall gather around me because you have been good to me.”

  Francis died just after sunset on October 3, 1226, at the age of forty-five. It is said that the bells of the twelfth-century church of San Stefano in Assisi began tolling spontaneously. His friars, however far-flung, also sensed his passing. One saw his “blessed soul under the appearance of a radiant star carried up on a shining cloud.” Another, many miles away, who was himself at death’s door and unable to speak, suddenly cried out: “Wait for me, Father. Wait! Look, I am coming with you”—and he did. Bishop Guido, too, saw a vision of Francis that night while he was on a pilgrimage to Monte Gargano. “Behold, I am leaving the world and am going to heaven,” Francis said to his old friend. And all the legends began.

  We leave the reconstructed chapel where Francis died and exit the cavernous Santa Maria degli Angeli, only to be met by the jarring sound of music, albeit sacred, being broadcast over loudspeakers. After all the hundreds of miles we have traveled with Francis, however, I have learned to blot out intrusions into the simple spaces we have shared with this extraordinary man and his legend. And so I don’t hear the canned music. I hear the sound of larks.

  Francis was particularly fond of larks. He admired their dark heads, which he saw as “capuches” or hoods worn by his friars, and their “earth-colored plumage,” because it gave a good example to “religious who ought not to wear garish and choice garments.” He also admired Sister Lark, according to the Legend of Perugia, because she is a “humble bird” who eats little and “praises the Lord” in flight.

  So it is not surprisin
g that larks marked the moment of his death at the Porziuncola. It is said that an exaltation of larks, which had assembled on the roof of Francis’s hut, suddenly—and inexplicably—took to the air just after sunset, wheeling and singing.

  TRAVEL NOTES

  We found the various Rough Guides to Italy and Egypt to be most informative and helpful (see bibliography). We prebooked most of our hotels over the Internet and booked our “villa” near Perugia through www.italianvillas.com, phone 800-700-9549.

  We rented a series of excellent cars and Italian cell phones from Auto Europe through a referral at www.italianvillas.com. The cell phones, programmed in English and delivered to us in the United States before our departure for Italy, proved invaluable.

  We found the following road maps most helpful:

  Umbria e Marche, Grande carte stradale (scale of 1:200,000), published by Touring Club Italiano and available on the Internet or at any good map store, is an excellent map that covers the heart of St. Francis country.

  A handy booklet of road maps for Italy, at a scale of 1:300,000, is Euro-Travel Atlas, Italy, published by the American Map Corporation of Maspeth, New York, and available through www.italianvillas.com.

  An extensive series of first-rate city and provincial maps covering all of Italy (at scales ranging from 1:5,000 to 1:150,000) is produced by Litografia Artistica Cartographic of Florence; individual maps are available on the Internet at www.initaly.com/ads/maps.htm.

  SOURCE NOTES

  Brother Thomas of Celano wrote four works on St. Francis, three of which I use in the book. The first, The Life of St. Francis, is abbreviated in the notes as 1C; the second, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, is abbreviated as 2C; the third, The Treatise on the Miracles, is abbreviated as 3C.

  I use three sources for Celano: Saint Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, translated from the Latin by Placid Hermann, O.F.M., and published in 1963 by the Franciscan Herald Press; Marion A. Habig, O.F.M., ed., St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, also published by the Franciscan Herald Press, in 1973; and its successor, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, a stunning three-volume, 2,362-page anthology of Franciscan documents—vol. 1, The Saint; vol. 2, The Founder; and vol. 3, The Prophet—published by New City Press between 1999 and 2001.

  The thirteenth-and fourteenth-century recollections of Francis—the Legend of the Three Companions, the Legend of Perugia, the Anonymous of Perugia, the Assisi Compilation, the Kinship of St. Francis, and A Mirror of the Perfection—all appear in the English Omnibus and/or Early Documents.

  The Little Flowers of St. Francis is cited in the 1958 book by the same name and in Early Documents, vol. 3, as the Deeds of Blessed Francis and His Companions. Similarly, the book The Life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure, edited by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, appears in Early Documents, vol. 2, as the Major and Minor Legends of St. Francis by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

  1. MOZART AMONG THE GIOTTOS

  A stern German bishop … : Buckley et al., Tuscany and Umbria: The Rough Guide, p. 498.

  “of a decoration …”: Desbonnets, Assisi, p. 104.

  “medium height, closer to shortness”: 1C-83, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 74.

  her biography: The Life of St. Clare Virgin, p. 18.

  “cheerful countenance”: 1C-83, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 74.

  born here—in a stable: Desbonnets, Assisi, p. 24.

  “dark cellar”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 17, p. 907.

  “He would use only …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 2, English Omnibus, p. 891.

  “He was the admiration …”: 1C-2, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 6.

  “while I was in sin”: Testament, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 154.

  “And what is no less to be admired …”: 1C-82, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 73.

  “strong, sweet …”: 1C-83, ibid., p. 74.

  The cathedral’s piazza was ablaze … : Green: God’s Fool, p. 46.

  2. LOST IN PERUGIA

  “interfered with his words,” et cetera: 2C-37, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 169.

  “I shall send them all …”: Green, God’s Fool, p. 178.

  “His grieving companions resented …” et cetera: 2C-4, ibid., p. 138.

  “he went outside one day …”: 1C-3, ibid., pp. 7, 8.

  “freed from his chains” et cetera: 2C-5, ibid., p. 139.

  “Upon hearing this …”: 1C-4, ibid., p. 8.

  “raised his spirits …” et cetera: 1C-5, ibid., p. 9.

  3. THE MISSING LETTER IN SPOLETO

  “The Lord,” et cetera: 2C-6, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 140.

  Letter to Brother Leo: Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 47.

  “The world was tasteless …”: 2C-94, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 215.

  “He was chosen … ,” et cetera: 2C-7, ibid., p. 141.

  “Francis, do you wish to get married?” et cetera: 1C-7, ibid., pp. 11, 12.

  “in a certain grotto,” et cetera: 1C-6, ibid., p. 10.

  a “humpbacked and deformed woman …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 12, English Omnibus, p. 901.

  “inopportune ideas”: Ibid., p. 902.

  “Consequently, when he came out again …”: 1C-6, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 11.

  “his heart was aglow …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 12, English Omnibus, p. 902.

  “He was already a benefactor …”: Ibid., no. 8, p. 897.

  “He would give his belt …”: Ibid.

  “new ardor which was taking possession …”: No. 12, p. 902.

  4. THE OLD ROME

  “Astounded when he came …”: 2C-8, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 142.

  “He put off his fine garments …”: Ibid.

  “Many times he would have done …”: Ibid.

  begging for alms himself: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 10, English Omnibus, p. 899.

  “Considering himself one of them …”: 2C-8, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 142.

  “if, by chance, he happened …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 11, English Omnibus, p. 901.

  “O, Francis, if you want to know …”: Ibid., p. 900.

  “Though the leper caused him …”: 2C-9, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 143.

  “He washed all the filth off them …”: Celano, 1C-7, Early Documents, vol. 1, p. 195.

  “When I was yet in sin …”: Ibid.

  “When postulants presented themselves …”: Legend of Perugia, no. 102, English Omnibus, p. 1079.

  “Strengthened by God’s grace …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 11, English Omnibus, p. 901.

  “Francis, go, repair my house …”: 2C-10, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 144.

  “After fortifying himself …”: Celano, 1C-4, Early Documents, vol. 1, p. 188.

  “It seemed to him that Francis … ,” et cetera: Ibid., pp. 189, 190.

  “Calling together his friends … ,” et cetera: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 16, English Omnibus, pp. 906, 907.

  “prayed continually … ,” et cetera: Ibid.

  “When his friends and relatives saw him … ,” et cetera: Ibid.

  “sprang on his son … ,” et cetera: Ibid.

  “When she saw that his mind … ,”: Ibid., no. 18, p. 908.

  “When the authorities saw … ,” et cetera: no. 19, p. 908.

  “repeated his accusation,” et cetera: Ibid.

  5. SHOWDOWN IN ASSISI

  “Your father is highly incensed …”: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 19, English Omnibus, p. 908.

  “My Lord Bishop, not only will I …”: Ibid., no. 20, p. 909.

  “Listen all of you …”: Ibid.

  “His father rose up …”: Ibid
., no 19, p. 909.

  “prompted by divine counsel … ,” et cetera: Legend of the Three Companions, no. 20, Early Documents, vol. 2, p. 80.

  “singing praises to the Lord … ,” et cetera: Celano, 1C-7, Early Documents, vol. 1, pp. 194, 195.

  “graciously” host Francis “quite often”: Passion of San Verecondo, in Early Documents, vol. 2, p. 806.

  “ravenous bite” of a “cruel sow,” et cetera: Bonaventure, Major Legend, no. 8, ibid., pp. 590–591.

  “ferocious wolves”: Passion of San Verecondo, ibid., p. 806.

  “No mercy was shown to him … ,” et cetera: Celano, 1C-V1, Early Documents, vol. 1, p. 195.

  “Brother Wolf,” et cetera: Little Flowers, ch. 21, pp. 89, 90, 91.

  “see what kind of man this Francis is”: Celano, 2C-48, Early Documents, vol. 2, p. 299.

  seven-year-old capons: Ibid., p. 298, n. b.

  “so crippled that she could do no work … ,” et cetera: 1C-24, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 60.

  “When he saw his bowl …”: 2C-1X, ibid., p. 148.

  “bashfulness and retraced his steps,” et cetera: 2C-8, ibid., p. 147.

  “Tell Francis to sell you a pennysworth”: 2C-7, ibid., p. 146.

  “would lash out at him …”: Celano, 1C-7, Early Documents, vol. 2, p. 251.

  “the holy virgins of Christ”: Celano, 2C-43, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 147.

  6. CLARE’S “PRISON”

  “And they shall take care …”: Rule of Saint Clare, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 214.

  “how to form words as they should”: 1C-20, St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, p. 21.

  “not to let a day go by …”: Celano, Life of Saint Clare Virgin by Fra’ Tommaso da Celano, no. 18, p. 40.

  “a stiff hair shirt … ,” et cetera: Ibid., no. 17, p. 38.

  “rivers of tears,” et cetera: Ibid., no. 19, p. 42.

  “possession or ownership … ,” et cetera: Rule of Saint Clare, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, p. 219.