On the Road with Francis of Assisi Read Free

until Francis ordered her not to, and then she ate little more than crusts of bread. As for the relic of her blond curls displayed in a glass box . . .
    The religious relics are more convincing, among them a
breviàrio
or prayer book used by St. Francis and the
grata di S. Chiara,
a filigree iron screen with a central opening through which Clare and her cloistered “sisters” discreetly received communion from a male priest. Upstairs, in the glassed-in Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, are the most important relics of all: another and undeniably authentic book of the Gospels used by Francis with an inscription by Brother Leo; and the original, six-foot-tall, colorfully painted Byzantine crucifix that, legend holds, spoke to Francis in the little ruined church of San Damiano in 1205 and started him on his life’s mission.
    I leave the relics, feeling rather guilty at having any uncharitable thoughts. I have grown very fond of Clare and Francis in the course of my research, and looking at some of their personal artifacts, especially their old clothes, makes me feel like a voyeur rummaging, uninvited, through their closets.
    I don’t have a clear, physical impression of Clare, but I do of Francis. To Celano’s everlasting credit, he provides a detailed portrait of Francis in his biography of the saint. Beyond his short stature, which a later examination of his bones would pinpoint at only five foot three, three inches shorter than the average medieval Italian man, Francis had a “cheerful countenance,” a “round” head, a face “a bit long,” a forehead that was “smooth and low,” “black” eyes, hair, and a beard, “not bushy.” His eyebrows were “straight,” his nose “symmetrical, thin and straight,” his ears “upright, but small,” his temples “smooth,” his lips “small and thin,” his teeth “set close together, even, and white.”
    Celano goes on to describe this appealing-sounding man as having a “slender” neck, “straight” shoulders, “short” arms, “slender” hands, “long” fingers, “extended” fingernails, “thin” legs, and “small” feet. “His skin was very delicate, his flesh very spare,” Celano ends.
    As we move on to see the other vestiges of Francis and Clare dotted around Assisi, it is extraordinary to think that we are walking on the same streets they did and seeing at least a few of the same medieval structures they did. The first-century Temple of Minerva in Assisi’s central Piazza del Comune, for example, is clearly visible in one of Giotto’s frescoes in Francis’s basilica. Now a secular Franciscan church, the pagan temple in their time was used as the local jail.
    Not surprisingly, some visitors to Assisi, and not only the many pilgrims and religious groups, feel a deeply spiritual presence on these streets. One friend of mine spent a month here after being treated for cancer and returned home in a newly serene state of mind. Another friend, a Muslim diplomat, told me he had experienced a spiritual awakening in Assisi second only to one he had felt during a pilgrimage to Mecca.
    But another aspect of Assisi is undeniably commercial. As uncomfortable a reality as it might be, Francis, and to a lesser extent Clare, is a profitable industry for Assisi. The only one, in fact. Besides the many restaurants and hotels supported by visitors to Assisi, shops all over town sell multisized replicas of the San Damiano cross, religious medals with Francis’s likeness on them, and his signature tau cross carved out of olive wood, which many visitors wear on leather cords around their necks.
    Pottery shops sell ashtrays and plates with scenes from Francis’s life on them, and at least one bakery sells “Pane di San Francesco,” a local bread laced with the
limoncello
liqueur so popular in Italy. One shop even sells Umbrian wine with replicas of the saints by Simone Martini on the label—St. Francis on the red wine, St. Clare on the white.
    The Francis we