Assisi: Portiuncula

   

The huge cathedral of St. Mary of the Angels was built to house the Portiuncula, the birthplace of the Franciscan order, and the last resting place of St. Francis. Below is Edward Hutton's moving description of the death of St. Francis.

Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Portiuncula, was, S. Bonaventura tells us, the spot on earth most beloved by S. Francis. Today the half-industrialized village which bears this name, in the plain about two miles below Assisi, close to the railway station, will, it may be, disappoint the traveller. In the midst of rather squalid surroundings he sees an enormous basilica, originally of the sixteenth century, under a dome which is said to have been designed by Vignola and which covers like a casket the little sacred chapel, the Portiuncula. But in the time of S. Francis the valley hereabouts was wooded and the little chapel of the Portiuncula was lonely among the trees, and until some wattle huts were built about it by his companions, nothing encroached upon its solitude….

As to S. Francis’s death: he had for long lain sick in the bishop’s palace within the walls of Assisi, but presently he asked to be borne to S. Mary of the Little Portion that he might yield up the breath of life in the place he had so much loved and in which he had received the breath of grace. When he had been borne thither, he lay on the ground, here in what is now the Transito chapel, his habit laid aside, naked in honour of Lady Poverty, while his companions wept, and one of them, divining his wish, took a habit with the cord and brought it, saying, “There I lend thee as unto a beggar and do thou receive them under holy obedience.” And at this he rejoiced, for in his zeal for poverty he was minded to possess not even a habit unless it were lent him by another. As at the outset of his conversion he had stood naked before the bishop, as in the ending of his life he was minded to quit the world naked. He recommended to his brethren the beloved Portiuncula. “This place is holy,” he told them, “hold it ever in veneration and never abandon it. If you are driven out by one door, return by another, for it is here the Lord has multiplied us and has shown us His Light and poured out His love in our hearts.”

 

He did not forget Sister Clare and sent her a message forbidding her to give way to sadness and promising that she and her daughters should see him again, which came to pass when his body was borne to Assisi by way of San Damiano. He remembered, too, the noble Roman Lady “Frate Jacoba”, as he called her. She too would be sad to learn that he had left the world without warning her, and he was already dictating a letter to her when the noise of a cavalcade was heard and the Lady Jacoba was herself come from Rome with her two sons. “the Lord be praised,” he said, “let the door be opened for the Rule is not for Brother Jacoba.” She had come furnished with all that was needed for the burial of the Poverello, a veil for his face, a cushion for his head, a sheet of haircloth for his body and wax for the funeral ceremonies. She had brought, too, some of the sweetmeats made of almonds which he loved. * He could but taste it; it was Bernard of Quintavalle, his first companion, who ate it.

 

Then turning to those about him, he told them to lay him on the ground and after he was dead to let him lie there for the space in which one may gently walk a mile. As his desire the Canticle of the Sun was constantly heard in the hut with the verse in praise of our sister the Death of the body which he had so recently made. He asked for bread, and having blessed it, distributed it to the brethren in imitation of Christ at the Last Supper.

 

The next day, his last, the Passion according to St. John was read to him, and at dusk of October 3, 1226, she to whom no one willingly opens the door entered. He saw her, received her courteously, “Be welcome, my Sister Death.” They placed him on the ground, ashes on his head, ashes and dust. Then with failing voice he intoned a Psalm with those about him: Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi: “Bring my soul out of prison that I may give thanks unto thy name…. **

 

Evening had stolen into the hut. There was a great silence. He seemed to be sleeping.

 

###

 

*Note. She was a Frangipani and the sweetmeat bears her name to this day.

**Note. Psalm 141 (A.V. 142). 

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 23,  28-30.

Assisi

   

 

 

Edward Hutton published "Assisi and Umbria Revisited" in 1953.  He began his account in the city of St. Francis.

Today there is nothing, can be nothing, in Assisi but the memory  of him who took Lady Poverty to wife. Yet the city we see but little resembles what it was in Francis’s day. What we see is not what he saw, but is, in fact, his creation. The city S. Francis knew had no San Francesco, no Sacro Convento, no Santa Chiara, and no Rocca towering over all. The western hill on which the triple church of San Francesco stands, the Collis Infernis or Collis Inferni, was divided from the city, quite outside which it stood, by a deep ravine which was only finally filled up and the upper and lower piazzas of San Francesco constructed in the sixteenth century. Before that the church was reached by a bridge over the ravine. Perhaps from very far off, from Perugia, for instance, we may have an impression of the city as S. Francis knew it, crouched on the skirts of Subasio. But there are, of course, many buildings within the city which he knew well; the Roman Temple, the great façade of the Duomo, and the churches, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Pietro, San Giacomo within the wall, San Damiano and the Carceri without. And he seems to have loved this, his birthplace, so well that, great traveller though he was, he never wanted to leave it, to go far away from it. The places he loved best were Monte Subasio, Rivotorto, the Portiuncula, San Damiano, the island in Lago Trasimeno, and Assisi itself, which he turned to bless with words of love as they bore him to the Portiuncula to die. Hardly one of these places, however, at all resembles what it was in his day, least of all his best-loved Rivotorto and Santa Maria degli Angeli. It is only the wide landscape that is the same and there is surely a divine harmony between the soul of S. Francis and this landscape of the valley of Spoleto which his early biographers seem instinctively to have understood.

 

And yet one finds oneself on his account wandering up and down the steep and climbing ways, through street and piazza where he played as a child, where he went gaily as a young man, which presently saw him begging his bread, and echoed alike with the scorn of his fellows and the irresistible words of his preaching. Here is the house, here is the stable, in which he was born; here the font in which he was baptized. Just beyond the walls is San Damiano where the Crucifix spoke to him. Here before Santa Maria Maggiore he stripped himself and repudiated his earthly father, Pietro Bernadone. There is the house of his first companion, Bernard of Quintavalle. And there in the Vescovado he lay till they bore him out of Porta Moiano on his last journey when he turned and blessed the city he loved, but could no longer see, on the way to S. Mary of the Angels, where he was to die. And finally, here in the great triple church dedicated in his honour, on the Collis Inferni, now the Collis Paradisi, we may venerate his dust.

 

 

###

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, 1953. Pp. 1-3.

St. Francis and La Verna

 

Edward Hutton's visit to La Verna, the rocky hilltop where St. Francis received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on his body, brought forth words about the enduring significance of the man that still resonate today.

 

It was with a certain hesitation that I first came to La Verna, as though something divine that was hidden in the life of the Apostle of Humanity might be lost for me in the mere realism of  his sacred places. But it was not so. In Italy, it might seem even to-day, St. Francis is not a stranger, and, in fact, I had got no further than the Cappella degli Uccelli before I seemed to understand everything, and in a place so lonely as this to have found again, yes, that Jesus whom I had lost in the city. … 

Everywhere you go in La Verna you feel that S. Francesco has been there before you; and where there is no tradition to help you, surely you will make one for yourself. Can he who loved everything that had life had failed to love, too, that world he saw from La Penna—

                    “Nel crudo sasso, intra Tevere ed Arno”

--Casentino and its woods and streams, Val d’Arno, Val di Tevere, the hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romagna. There on the summit of La Verna, you look down on the broken fortresses of countless wars, the passes through which army after army, company upon company, has marched to victory or fled in defeat; every hilltop seems to bear some ruined Rocca, every valley to be a forgotten battlefield, every stream has run red with blood. All is forgotten, all is over, all is done with. The victories led to nothing; the defeats are out of mind. In the midst of the battle the peasant went on ploughing his field; somewhere not far away the girls gathered the grapes. All this violence was of no account; it achieved nothing, and every victory was but the tombstone of an idea. Here; on La Verna, is the only fortress that is yet living in all Tuscany of that time so long ago. It is a fortress of love. The man who built it had flung away his dagger, and already his sword rusted in that little house in Assisi; he conquered the world by love. His was the irresistible and lovely force, the immortal, indestructible confidence of the Idea, the Idea which cannot die. If he prayed in Latin, he wrote the first verses of Italian poetry. Out of his tomb grew the rose of the Renaissance, and filled the world with its sweetness. He was the son of a burgess in Assisi, and is now the greatest saint in our heaven. With the sun he loved his name has shown round the world, and there is no land so far that it has not heard it. And we who look upon the ruined castles of the Conti Guidi, are here because of him, and speak with his brethren as we gaze.

 

###

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 381-384.

Assisi: Portiuncula

  

The huge cathedral of St. Mary of the Angels was built to house the Portiuncula, the birthplace of the Franciscan order, and the last resting place of St. Francis. Below is Edward Hutton's moving description of the death of St. Francis.

Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Portiuncula, was, S. Bonaventura tells us, the spot on earth most beloved by S. Francis. Today the half-industrialized village which bears this name, in the plain about two miles below Assisi, close to the railway station, will, it may be, disappoint the traveller. In the midst of rather squalid surroundings he sees an enormous basilica, originally of the sixteenth century, under a dome which is said to have been designed by Vignola and which covers like a casket the little sacred chapel, the Portiuncula. But in the time of S. Francis the valley hereabouts was wooded and the little chapel of the Portiuncula was lonely among the trees, and until some wattle huts were built about it by his companions, nothing encroached upon its solitude….

As to S. Francis’s death: he had for long lain sick in the bishop’s palace within the walls of Assisi, but presently he asked to be borne to S. Mary of the Little Portion that he might yield up the breath of life in the place he had so much loved and in which he had received the breath of grace. When he had been borne thither, he lay on the ground, here in what is now the Transito chapel, his habit laid aside, naked in honour of Lady Poverty, while his companions wept, and one of them, divining his wish, took a habit with the cord and brought it, saying, “There I lend thee as unto a beggar and do thou receive them under holy obedience.” And at this he rejoiced, for in his zeal for poverty he was minded to possess not even a habit unless it were lent him by another. As at the outset of his conversion he had stood naked before the bishop, as in the ending of his life he was minded to quit the world naked. He recommended to his brethren the beloved Portiuncula. “This place is holy,” he told them, “hold it ever in veneration and never abandon it. If you are driven out by one door, return by another, for it is here the Lord has multiplied us and has shown us His Light and poured out His love in our hearts.”

 

He did not forget Sister Clare and sent her a message forbidding her to give way to sadness and promising that she and her daughters should see him again, which came to pass when his body was borne to Assisi by way of San Damiano. He remembered, too, the noble Roman Lady “Frate Jacoba”, as he called her. She too would be sad to learn that he had left the world without warning her, and he was already dictating a letter to her when the noise of a cavalcade was heard and the Lady Jacoba was herself come from Rome with her two sons. “the Lord be praised,” he said, “let the door be opened for the Rule is not for Brother Jacoba.” She had come furnished with all that was needed for the burial of the Poverello, a veil for his face, a cushion for his head, a sheet of haircloth for his body and wax for the funeral ceremonies. She had brought, too, some of the sweetmeats made of almonds which he loved. * He could but taste it; it was Bernard of Quintavalle, his first companion, who ate it.

 

Then turning to those about him, he told them to lay him on the ground and after he was dead to let him lie there for the space in which one may gently walk a mile. As his desire the Canticle of the Sun was constantly heard in the hut with the verse in praise of our sister the Death of the body which he had so recently made. He asked for bread, and having blessed it, distributed it to the brethren in imitation of Christ at the Last Supper.

 

The next day, his last, the Passion according to St. John was read to him, and at dusk of October 3, 1226, she to whom no one willingly opens the door entered. He saw her, received her courteously, “Be welcome, my Sister Death.” They placed him on the ground, ashes on his head, ashes and dust. Then with failing voice he intoned a Psalm with those about him: Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi: “Bring my soul out of prison that I may give thanks unto thy name…. **

 

Evening had stolen into the hut. There was a great silence. He seemed to be sleeping.

 

###

 

*Note. She was a Frangipani and the sweetmeat bears her name to this day.

**Note. Psalm 141 (A.V. 142). 

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 23,  28-30.

La Verna and St. Francis

Edward Hutton's visit to La Verna, the rocky hilltop where St. Francis received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on his body, brought forth words about the enduring significance of the man that still resonate today.

 

It was with a certain hesitation that I first came to La Verna, as though something divine that was hidden in the life of the Apostle of Humanity might be lost for me in the mere realism of  his sacred places. But it was not so. In Italy, it might seem even to-day, St. Francis is not a stranger, and, in fact, I had got no further than the Cappella degli Uccelli before I seemed to understand everything, and in a place so lonely as this to have found again, yes, that Jesus whom I had lost in the city. … 

Everywhere you go in La Verna you feel that S. Francesco has been there before you; and where there is no tradition to help you, surely you will make one for yourself. Can he who loved everything that had life had failed to love, too, that world he saw from La Penna—

                    “Nel crudo sasso, intra Tevere ed Arno”

--Casentino and its woods and streams, Val d’Arno, Val di Tevere, the hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romagna. There on the summit of La Verna, you look down on the broken fortresses of countless wars, the passes through which army after army, company upon company, has marched to victory or fled in defeat; every hilltop seems to bear some ruined Rocca, every valley to be a forgotten battlefield, every stream has run red with blood. All is forgotten, all is over, all is done with. The victories led to nothing; the defeats are out of mind. In the midst of the battle the peasant went on ploughing his field; somewhere not far away the girls gathered the grapes. All this violence was of no account; it achieved nothing, and every victory was but the tombstone of an idea. Here; on La Verna, is the only fortress that is yet living in all Tuscany of that time so long ago. It is a fortress of love. The man who built it had flung away his dagger, and already his sword rusted in that little house in Assisi; he conquered the world by love. His was the irresistible and lovely force, the immortal, indestructible confidence of the Idea, the Idea which cannot die. If he prayed in Latin, he wrote the first verses of Italian poetry. Out of his tomb grew the rose of the Renaissance, and filled the world with its sweetness. He was the son of a burgess in Assisi, and is now the greatest saint in our heaven. With the sun he loved his name has shown round the world, and there is no land so far that it has not heard it. And we who look upon the ruined castles of the Conti Guidi, are here because of him, and speak with his brethren as we gaze.

 

###

 

Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 381-384.