On the Road with Francis of Assisi

by Linda Bird Francke

  His concern about the friars’ contact with women extended to any visits to any sisters at other monasteries. (Italians call the dwelling places of nuns “monasteries” as opposed to the American custom of calling them “convents.”) One instance recorded by Celano involves a friar who wanted to take a gift in Francis’s name to two sisters he knew at an unidentified monastery. The friar evidently protested when Francis refused his request to go, prompting Francis to “rebuke him very severely by saying things that should not now be repeated.” Francis then dispatched the gift with another friar, “who had refused to go.”

  All this could be chalked up to the vows of obedience and chastity sworn by all of Francis’s followers and the spiritual value Francis placed on the denial of human wants, but his harsh punishment of friars who came in voluntary contact with women speaks more to the sexuality Francis both felt and steadfastly fought. When one unfortunate friar paid a sympathy call on a monastery without permission from Francis, Francis imposed his own delusting ice-water remedy on the poor man by making him “walk several miles naked in the cold and deep snow.”

  That Francis is so human while struggling so hard not to be is one of his greatest appeals. His efforts to distance himself and his friars from any temptation vis-à-vis women, however, border on paranoia. He referred to women as “honeyed poison” and warned his friars of the consequences of looking a woman in the face. “All of us must keep close watch over ourselves and keep all parts of our body pure, since the Lord says ‘Anyone who looks lustfully at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart,’ ” he wrote in an early Rule for his friars.

  Francis, who was so chaste he boasted that the only female faces he knew were those of Clare and “Brother” Jacopa, discouraged his friars from even talking to women—“He declared that all conversation with women was unnecessary except for confession or, as often happens, offering very brief words of counsel.” When Francis himself was forced to talk to a woman, he did so, according to Celano, “in a loud voice so that all could hear.” But talking to women at all had its perils. “Avoiding contagion when conversing with them, except for the most well-tested, was as easy as walking on live coals without burning his soles,” Celano quotes Francis in The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul.

  Even Celano seems taken aback by Francis’s negative attitude toward women and their “inappropriate chattering.” “Indeed the female even troubled him so much that you would believe this was neither caution nor good example, but fear or terror,” Celano writes. He may have been right. But it wasn’t that Francis feared women per se; it was that he loved them too much. He would spend anguished hours begging forgiveness for the “sins of his youth,” which most certainly involved the pleasures of the flesh. And in more than one sermon, he would portray himself as unworthy of flattery because he might yet father “sons and daughters.”

  Francis revered women, perhaps to a fault. He had been very close to his mother, Lady Pica; he “married” Lady Poverty; he worshiped the Virgin Mary and founded his community at St. Mary of the Angels; and it was his decision, after all, to welcome Clare into his fledgling order.

  It was not just his personal weakness but the management of his Second Order for women, and the inherent temptation posed by the rapidly growing number of Poor Ladies, that threatened Francis. “God has taken away our wives and now the devil gives us Sisters,” he once remarked. He never really resolved his inner conflict about women, but in one wonderful story, he did come to peace with his feelings toward Clare.

  According to the Little Flowers, a tired and troubled Francis was resting with Brother Leo by a well on the night road from Siena when Francis suddenly said: “Brother Leo, what do you think I have seen here?” Leo replied: “The moon, father, which is reflected in the water.” And Francis replied: “No Brother Leo, not our sister Moon, but by the grace of God, I have seen the true face of the Lady Clare, and it is so pure and shining that all my doubts have vanished.”

  Clare, by contrast, seems never to have had any doubts about Francis. She referred to him as “Blessed Francis” and to herself as the “little plant of the most blessed Father Francis.” She readily embraced the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience at San Damiano, which Celano calls “this harsh cloister.” Her only regret seems to have been the absence of Francis.

  Francis had written a very short rule for the Poor Ladies soon after Clare and her growing number of followers had settled into San Damiano. Known as “The Form of Life Given to Saint Clare and Her Sisters,” the one-sentence missive simply states Francis’s promise to the “daughters and servants of the most high King” that they will have the “same loving care and special solicitude” from him that he has for his friars. But that solicitude, while undoubtedly genuine, did not translate into action. For all that Francis “cared” about the sisters, he prayed with his friars, fasted with his friars, instructed his friars, and left Clare and the Poor Ladies pretty much on their own.

  There are very few accounts in the early biographies of any face-to-face meetings between Francis and Clare, but the ones there are were all instigated by Clare. One such famous meeting involved a lonely Clare yearning to have a meal with Francis. He kept refusing until his friars intervened on her behalf. Making the argument, as recorded in the Little Flowers of St. Francis, that Francis owed her at least the favor of a meal, Clare having given up “the riches and pomp of the world as a result of your preaching,” the friars finally persuaded Francis to honor her request. He even made the grand gesture of inviting her to the Porziuncola for the occasion, because she would “enjoy seeing once more for a while the Place of St. Mary where she was shorn and made a spouse of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  When the day arrived, Francis sent some friars to escort Clare and a sister companion to the much-anticipated meal. But it was never eaten. No sooner had they all sat down on the ground to share whatever crusts of bread there were than Francis began to speak about God “in such a sweet and holy and profound and divine and marvelous way” that the dinner guests were overcome by rapture. The food was forgotten as their spiritual fever reached such a pitch that it lit up the night sky over the Spoleto Valley.

  People in the surrounding towns, including Bettona, on the far side of the valley, thought the Porziuncola and the forest that surrounded it were on fire, and they rushed to put it out. But seeing Francis and Clare and their entourage in religious ecstasy, they quickly realized that it had been “a heavenly and not material fire” and they withdrew, with “great consolation in their hearts.” (We tested the Bettona part of the legend and found that Santa Maria degli Angeli was indeed clearly visible across the valley.) The dinner party ended when “later, after a long while,” Francis and his guests regained their senses, and Clare and her escorts returned to San Damiano, sated from that untouched “blessed meal.”

  Another bittersweet legend about Francis and Clare explains her love for roses. Again, it is Clare who desperately wants to be with Francis, and again, it is Francis who rebuffs her. This time the two of them are walking back to Assisi from Spello, an impossibility, of course, because Clare was cloistered at San Damiano, but regardless, the two of them are walking along in the winter snow and cold, and they are both depressed. They have evidently stopped at several houses to beg for food and water, and though they were given it, they also heard lewd insinuations about their relationship. The ever-sensitive Francis then told Clare that they would have to walk apart on the last part of their journey.

  A disconsolate Clare took his words to mean for the rest of their lives, and after trudging on alone through the snow, with Francis following at a respectful distance, she suddenly cried out: “Francis, when will we see each other again?” to which he replied: “When summer comes and the roses are in bloom.” And suddenly, roses in full bloom sprouted from snow-covered bushes and trees. Clare carried a bouquet back to Francis but knew in her heart they would be parted. Which is why her favorite flower became the rose, which still blossoms
every summer on the bushes in her tiny garden at San Damiano.

  True to his sense of decorum, Francis withdrew even further from contact with Clare. Did she pine for him? Probably. But she never deviated from the path she had chosen. Year after year, decade after decade, she remained cloistered at San Damiano, making altar cloths, caring for the sick who were brought to the convent’s infirmary, praying, and looking after her sisters. It was for them, perhaps, that she sent message after message to Francis, entreating him to come to San Damiano to preach and instruct her and her followers on how best to serve the Lord. He finally came in 1221—but left them with a puzzle.

  Clare and the Poor Ladies were waiting eagerly in San Damiano’s choir to hear Francis utter the words that had stirred so many. When he finally entered the tiny church, they watched expectantly as he knelt, raised his eyes to heaven, and began silently to pray. But then, instead of loosing his golden tongue, he called for ashes to be brought to him, some of which he sprinkled on his head and the rest around him in a circle. The Poor Ladies held their breaths, waiting to hear his explanation, but instead he recited the Miserere, the penitential psalm asking God for mercy—and left.

  Though Clare must have felt disappointed, she evidently understood the lesson of the pantomime. The universal interpretation of Francis’s performance is that he, like everyone else, is a sinner and worth no more than ashes. The only path to the Lord is through prayer and not through the words of an intermediary, however stirring. Some biographers also suggest that the ailing Francis knew he was nearing the end of his life—he delivered the odd “sermon” five years before his death—and wanted the Poor Ladies to wean themselves from any spiritual dependence on him. It seems to have worked, for after Francis left Clare and the Poor Ladies sitting in the choir at San Damiano, it is said that Clare doubled the already considerable time she spent in penance and prayer.

  What a fascinating and poignant relationship Francis and Clare shared. It is easy to read all sorts of innuendo into it, especially in their early years, but such snickers do not lend themselves to Francis’s hard-fought war against temptation and Clare’s deeply committed spiritual life. Their relationship does not appear to be the steamy and forbidden stuff of The Thorn Birds. Theirs was a shared passion for Christ.

  The deep devotion that joined Francis and Clare had extraordinary ramifications. Together, they humbled the arrogance of the Church by embracing the path of holy poverty and caring for the sick and needy. In modern jargon, Francis and Clare talked the talk and walked the walk, and they inspired the foundation of hundreds of Franciscan missions throughout the world, many of which continue to this day.

  The rapid spread of Francis’s visionary influence is also due largely to Clare. At one point after she entered San Damiano, Francis had a crisis of purpose. Part of him wanted to be a hermit and spend his days and nights in solitary prayer. The other part wanted to preach and save as many souls as he could. To resolve his “agony of doubt,” according to the Little Flowers of St. Francis, he sent Brother Masseo to two of his followers with a request—to ask God in their prayers the question of what he should do and come back to him with the Lord’s message.

  The second person on Francis’s list was a particularly devout friar, Brother Silvester, who was living in solitude on Mount Subasio. The first was Clare. And each came back to Brother Masseo with the same message for Francis from the Lord: “He wants you to go about the world preaching because God did not call you for yourself alone, but also for the salvation of others,” the Little Flowers reports.

  Francis was immediately transformed at the news. “As soon as he heard this answer and thereby knew the will of Christ, he got to his feet, all aflame with divine power, and said to Brother Masseo with great fervor: ‘So let’s go—in the name of the Lord.’ ” And off Francis went—again—to ever more beautiful places in Umbria and Tuscany.

  13

  Eating Well and Tuscany’s First Hermitages

  LAKE TRASIMENO, where Francis spends forty days with a rabbit · CELLE DI CORTONA, the hermitage where he gives away his new cloak · CETONA, now an inn and restaurant · SARTEANO, where Francis foils the devil by sculpting a snow family

  The first glimpse of blue water is tantalizing. We have been up and down so many mountains and hiked the steep cobbled streets of so many hill towns that seeing the vast, flat, blue expanse of Lake Trasimeno elicits a disproportionate thrill. Just six easy miles west of Perugia, the lake is the fourth largest in Italy and seems almost an inland sea, rimmed by villages both new and very, very old.

  Francis arrived on the shore of Trasimeno, then known as the Lake of Perugia, in the early spring of 1211. He had not come for the sport or recreation that currently draws summer hordes to its shallow, balmy waters. Francis was here to spend the forty days and nights of Lent secretly fasting in prayer and solitude on one of the three small islands in the lake, the Isola Maggiore.

  Making sure his Lenten vigil would be undisturbed was characteristic of Francis. He did not want to be interrupted in any way during the periods when he communicated most directly with the Lord. So he persuaded the man he was staying with on the mainland to row him out to the island “during the night before Ash Wednesday,” according to the Deeds of Blessed Francis and His Companions, “so that no one would know about it.” The man was to return for him on Holy Thursday.

  We are looking not for someone to row us out to the Isola Maggiore but for the passenger ferry that leaves every hour or so from the resort town of Passignano. The town’s public parking lot seems a long way from the ferry pier, which is some indication of the crowds in summer, but we are here in October and miraculously find a parking place in town, almost directly across from the pier. It’s a good omen for what turns out to be a magical day.

  The morning haze begins to burn off as we board the 11:50 A.M. ferry for the twenty-minute run to the island. There isn’t a whisper of wind, and the glassy surface of the lake reflects the passing clouds overhead. Cormorants are busy diving for their midday meal, but there are only a few fishing boats around, nothing like the swarms of summer speedboats that make swimming offshore a risky contact sport.

  Unlike Francis, who landed on the thickly forested shore of Isola Maggiore and found—nothing, we disembark at the island’s tiny, one-street fishing village lined with tourist kiosks, restaurants, and a hotel. “Since there was no shelter where he could rest, he crawled into a dense thicket where thorn bushes had formed an enclosure,” continues the Deeds of Blessed Francis and His Companions. He would stay here for the next forty days and forty nights, “neither eating or drinking,” his only company a wild rabbit that never left his side.

  We set out to look for the “dense thicket,” following the Lungo Lago, a pleasant perimeter dirt path hugging the lake’s shore. We come upon a statue of Francis in such short order that it is almost anticlimactic. The modern statue is of a young Francis raising his hand in a blessing, his youth confirmed by his prestigmata hands and feet. We feel quite let down until we continue along the path to discover a much older stone shrine with a small, ragged wooden statue of Francis set in an alcove and, under it, a grilled opening into a small cave. We have arrived.

  A narrow path leads up the hill behind the shrine, and we follow it to a second old stone shrine, with a bigger grille enclosing a larger cave. The carved sign just under the peak is almost illegible, but the inscription definitely ends with the words “Francesco d’Assisi.” This must be the two-cell hermitage his friars later established on the island, where perhaps Francis had sought shelter in 1211. Local legend holds that he weathered a fierce storm on the island, and this cave is well above the water and far more protected than the one below.

  There is a wonderful smell of earth and pine needles at the shrines and the persistent cry and wingbeat of a nearby male pheasant. We linger in the lovely spot, looking out over the lake, struck as ever by Francis’s fortitude in spending more than a month here, all alone save for the rabbit.

 
We have a ferry to catch, however, and we hurry up the path and over the hill, pausing briefly in an olive grove to admire the lovely twelfth-century church of San Michele Arcangelo. But we’ve lingered too long and miss the 12:50 ferry by seconds. And that turns out to be a gift. We have an hour and a half before the next ferry—and lunch is being served at the end of the brick-paved main street under white umbrellas outside the Da Sauro hotel.

  I hesitate to interrupt the narrative of Francis’s legend on the Isola Maggiore to wax on about lunch, but it turns out to be one of the best meals we have on that trip to Italy. Our research schedule is such that we do not usually have the time to indulge in Italy’s leisurely, multicourse cuisine. Our norm is to eat lunch either on the road, at the frequent Auto-Stops, otherwise known as gas stations, or at coffee bars in whatever town we have followed Francis to.

  We are hardly deprived. There’s nothing lacking in a prosciutto, mozzarella, and arugula sandwich on freshly baked bread, washed down by a glass of freshly squeezed blood orange juice and cappuccino. Dinner, too, is often at the restaurant nearest to whatever hotel we are staying in, and though the food is always good, it is not always memorable. But this simple lunch is. My perfectly cooked crisp whitebait, latterini fritti, with a fresh salad, and my husband’s pasta and rich vitello tonnato, accompanied by a glass or two of the house white wine, turn an already wonderful day to perfection. We ask the waiter to take a photograph of us, and I keep it on my desk as a reminder.

  My digression into lunch is not, however, that far off course. Food, or the lack of it, is central to the legend of Francis’s Lenten fast on the Isola Maggiore. He is said to have arrived on the island with two small loaves of bread—and nothing else. In what is considered a miracle by some, and an example of the utmost piety by others, he had eaten only half of one loaf when he was picked up by his secret boatman forty days later. And that tiny portion out of deference to Christ. “It is believed that Saint Francis ate part of one loaf so that with a little bread he would expel the poison of vainglory and thus the glory of a forty day fast be reserved for the blessed Christ,” records the Deeds of Blessed Francis and His Companions.