After visiting some churches outside Spello's walls, Edward Hutton concluded his brief account of the town with a touching story about S. Francis and S. Clare.
It is delightful to walk to San Girolamo under the olives outside Porta Montanara with its frescoes, a Nativity by Perugino and others by followers of Pintoricchio and Mezzastris. Or to wander out of Porta Fontevecchia to Santa Maria della Rotunda, a fine Renaissance church, a Greek cross under an octagonal dome dating from 1517. Or to go to San Claudio, a small Romanesque and curiously asymmetrical church of the twelfth century and to the Roman amphitheatre.
They say it was one day at Spello, when S. Francis and S. Clare were walking together and came to some osteria or other where they were given a morsel of bread, that as they sat there on the stones the people began to point at them with diffidenza and no little suggestion of evil and bisbigli malevoli, indirect allusions and jokes.
They went away in silence.
It was a winter’s day and the ground was covered with snow. Evening came on under the grey sky as they went. Presently S. Francis said:
“Sister Clare, hast thou understood what they were saying to us?”
S. Clare did not reply, for her heart was sorrowful, and she felt, if she had spoken, she could not have restrained her tears.
“We must never do this again,” said, S. Francis at last.
S. Clare knelt down in the path on the desolate countryside.
“What, never, Father? When then shall we meet again?”
“When?” said S. Francis. “When the roses bloom in January.”
Marvellous and divine miracle! In a moment, a second of time, the whole mountainside was covered with roses, so that the air was filled with their perfume.
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Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 48-9.
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