Feast of St. Francis

Today is the feast fay of St. Francis, or S. Francesco in Italian. Actually, Francesco was not his real name but a nick-name meaning "little Frenchman". His father was a merchant from the Italian city of Assisi but his mother was a French woman from Provence.

For the past three years I have been transcribing and posting passages from the extraordinary travel books of Edward Hutton, an Englishman who early in his life fell in love with Italy and its people. Coincidentally, I just brought the series to an end with a series of posts from "Assisi and Umbria Revisited,' a 1953 remake of his 1907 "Cities of Umbria." 

Hutton began his Umbrian journey at Assisi, and ended it at  Gubbio, a small town visited by Francis. As usual, Hutton related the history of the town, and described its various churches and artworks. He also quoted at length the familiar story of the taming of a ferocious wolf by St. Francis. But below is a less familiar story as well as a tribute to S. Francesco that brings his book to an end.

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Just before I crossed the watershed I came on the hill-top to a mass of building with tower and bell-turret which proved to be the Badia di Vallengegno, but of old was the monastery of San Verecondo, where it is said S. Francis was employed as a scullion after he had been thrown into a ditch full of snow by brigands on his first wandering to Gubbio. He was thus employed, according to Thomas of Celano, for several days, “wearing nothing but a wretched shirt and desired to be filled at least with broth. But when, meeting with no pity there, he could not even get any old clothing, he left the place (not moved by anger but by need) and came to the city of Gubbio, where he got him a small tunic from a former friend of his. But afterwards,” says Thomas, “when the fame of the man of God was spreading everywhere, and his name was noised abroad among the people, the prior of the aforesaid monastery, remembering and realizing how the man of God had been treated, came to him and humbly begged forgiveness for himself, and his monks.” …

 

It is said of S. Francis that death, which is to all men terrible, and hateful, he praised, calling her by name: “Death, my sister, welcome be thou”; and that one of those best-loved brothers saw his soul pass to heaven in the manner of a star, “like to the moon in quantity, and to the sun in clearness”. And however we may think of him, whether he is to us the most beloved saint in all the calendar, or whether he is merely a delightful figure, a little ailing, a little mad from the Middle Age, he went honourably upon the stones, as Voragine reminds us. “He gadryd the wormes out of the ways, by cause they should not be trodden with the feet of them that passed by.” He called the beasts his brethren; and in all that age of passion and war, of immense ambition and brutal hate, he loved us as Christ has done, and was content if he might be an imitation of Him. “He beheld the Sonne, the Mone, and the Starres, and summoned them to the Love of their Maker.”

As we pass up and down the Umbrian ways, it is his figure which goes ever before us.

 

                               Que pacis crescit oliva

                   Regnat amor, concors, gratia, vera fides.*

 

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*           Where the olive tree of peace grows

           Love, concord, grace, and true faith reign.

 

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 221,233-234.