Isisi

“ SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
In the sunny land of Italy, high upon hills covered with olive-trees, nestles the little town of Assisi. Such a strange little town it is, with its tall city walls and great gateways, its narrow, steep streets, and houses with wide, overhanging eaves. The road that leads up from the plain below is so steep, as it winds upwards among the silver olive-trees, that even the big white oxen find it a toil to drag the carts up to the city gates, and the people think it quite a journey to go down to the level land below. ”

“ Just before reaching Hotel Subasio there is a picturesque view looking upwards, the great convent and churches of San Francesco towering above us.
Even apart from the touching interest with which the story of St. Francis invests the little town, Assisi is delightful, so many churches and religious houses exist there, full of picturesque charm is the exquisite setting of landscape beyond and around them.
Wherever one looks between the old grey houses, one sees the valley full of rich colour, and the far-off, softened outlines of the hills. The town on market-days is very bright and cheerful. ”

“ Assisi, down to our own times, has continued to be the Mecca of thousands of pilgrims. Her churches bear the record of infinite early piety, for when art was in its early prime the most famous masters from 19 Tuscany were called upon to decorate the Franciscan Basilica and leave their choicest treasures there as tributes to the immortal glory of the saint. But the note of war rings louder than the song of praise and love for many years to come in all the Assisan chronicles, and grass and weeds grow up to choke, though not to kill, the blessed seed that Francis sowed and did not live to tend. ”

“ The Umbrians left their towns empty to assist at the great spectacle, and their number was so great, that, failing to find room within the walls of Assisi, they wandered like droves of cattle on the hills above trying to obtain a sight of the procession. It was a great day in the annals of Assisi; outside the little church of San Giorgio a triumphal car, drawn by a pair of magnificent oxen, their whiteness almost hidden beneath purple draperies and their horns wreathed and garlanded with flowers, stood waiting for the holy burden. ”

“ Of course a stranger's first visit in Asisi is to the basilica of San Francesco, and, though I had seen it before, I lost no time in renewing my acquaintance with it. This church is not only the jewel of Asisi, but one of the most precious of Italy. It is among churches what a person of genius is in a crowd. The rich marbles one sees elsewhere suggest the mechanic in their arrangement, and one grows almost tired of them ”

“ ASSISI Almost the first thing we noticed in Assisi was the Biblical simplicity of life. This little city, rose and white, upon the lower slopes of Subasio would be like a picture out of the Bible if it were not so Gothic. Its steep and rough-paved streets have grasses growing in between their stones; its grim and silent houses, built of Subasian rock, are as unresponsive as the East; at their barred gates stand mules and asses tethered, with clumsy wooden saddles on their backs, or sacks of grain thrown pannier-wise. ”

“ To go behind Assisi is almost more needful than in the case of any of the other hill-cities, not only for the mediæval walls, for the slight traces which seem to mark an outer and earlier wall; but yet more for the view over the narrow valley, the bleak hills scattered with houses, the winding river at their feet, soon to become yet more winding in the plain, and the glimpse far away of Perugia on its hill. But Assisi has a spot only less wild within the city walls, the ground namely over which we climb from the inhabited streets to the fortress. ”

“ So rarely in Italy is a church perfect both within and without that it is with amazement we find at Assisi not one but two churches, choir and nave piled above each other, and covered from roof to floor with frescoes, as perfect of their kind as the buildings which they decorate. Wars in every town, trouble, dissension and jealousies among men, raged like a storm over the land, but all this turmoil of a fevered age was unable to check the steady, rapid progress of at least this monument to a dead saint's memory ”

“ No journey in Italy is quite like that to the lovely Umbrian valley and its Jerusalem, Assisi, the shrine which, with the single exception of Rome, is the special place of pilgrimage for the entire religious world. Perugia offers the charm of art, and attracts the visitor, also, by an exceptional degree of modern comfort and convenience; but Assisi is the shrine before which he kneels, where the footsteps of saints who have knelt in prayer make holy ground, and where he realizes anew the consecration of faith and sacrifice. ”

“ Clothed in long grey hooded cloaks, holding lanterns and candles and singing their mediæval hymns, these citizens of the nineteenth century belong to Assisi of the past as much as all her frescoes and early buildings. Their origin goes back to the middle of the thirteenth century when, out of the great devotional movement due to St. Francis, arose that strange body of penitents the Flagellants, who are said to have first appeared in Perugia, and thence spread throughout Italy. ”

“ A VILLEGGIATURA IN ASISI. To most travellers a visit to Asisi is a flying visit. They drive over from Perugia or up from the railway station, and if, besides San Francesco and Santa Chiara, they see the cathedral and San Damiano, they believe themselves to have exhausted the sights of the town. ”

“ We are weary of hearing the stated fact that every town in Italy is worth the visiting; but, however hackneyed the remark, we must make it once again in the case of the towns around Perugia. Each has an individual charm, a long and carefully recorded history. We exclude Assisi, for that town is a study in itself, a thing above and apart. Assisi may be called the Jerusalem of Italy; its connection with one of the greatest Saints of the Catholic world has made its churches monuments of art and history, a centre for pilgrims and for painters throughout a period of nearly seven hundred years ”

“ Assisi lay behind us like a city of the Middle Ages, with Gothic towers and palaces grouped in échelon below her fantastic castle. On our right the hillside, veiled in the tender grey of olives, sloped [163] away to the Valley of Spoleto, which was a vision of pure beauty, with mists clinging about the banks of its streams, and its many little cities, Spello, [164] Foligno, Bevagna, tall Trevi and Spoleto, rising from the green folds of encircling hills. ”

“ Assisi, no longer oppressed by the nobles, harassed by the armies of Perugia, or alarmed by the coming of the despots whose power was on the wane all over Italy, lost her character of individuality as a fighting and turbulent city, and sank beneath the wise and beneficent government of the Papacy. ”

“ Barren and desolate and colourless, with neither shade of tree nor coolness of water, these dreary Assisi hills have nothing of the grandeur and beauty of the barrenness and desolation of the north—they are simply hideous to the eye, inexpressibly dreary, dead, and accursed. I shall never now hear Assisi mentioned without a shudder, for picturesque as the old town is, beautiful as are the Monastery, the Upper Church, the paintings and the frescoes—they are overweighted in my memory with the hideousness of the immediate hill-surroundings. ”

“ Far away on the spur of the mountain is Assisi, where he laboured to bring love; and further away still, beyond the peaceful vales of Umbria, are great cities in which men worked, and hated, and struggled, ay, and loved unceasingly. But here in this leafy ilex [165] grove, in these tiny cells and chapels, there is a little world of dreams and tender memories.
It is so small that a few minutes suffice to see everything—the courtyard with its miraculous well; the narrow cell and chapel of St. Francis, which is polished by the feet and shoulders of a multitude of pilgrims ”

“ Since then, as the peasants recount with pride, many come from afar to drink of the waters of this well for it cures every ill. It is over-grown with ferns and close by stands an ancient sarcophagus where the children sit to eat their midday meal. A piece of old worn sculpture still ornaments the chapel of the young martyr, and the feeling of the place is very charming, but the pilgrim who comes to Assisi to visit St. Francis, has a different picture to recall with another kind of beauty belonging to it than that of holy wells and flowering banks and meadows. ”

“ He had been in Italy only a month, and in Assisi for the first time, whereas Italy was rather her adopted country, and Assisi was like home to her. She returned to it, sometimes in the summer as now, but always in the spring and in the fall—"at the two perfect moments," she had told him, "when the grape is in bloom, and later when it is gathered."
"What a night!" she said, looking up at the vast, starlit dome. "What a night! I left my poor old uncle asleep. Isn't it strange that to the old sleep is better than to watch the stars pass over the Umbrian Valley?" ”

“ This romanesque church stands above a Roman building whose columns and mosaic floor can easily be seen from the garden behind the apse, and for many centuries it was the cathedral of Assisi as is testified by its close proximity to the Bishop's palace. But there is now little to remind us of any pretensions to splendour 309 which it may once have possessed, only vestiges of the frescoes destroyed by the great earthquake of 1832 can be seen on its walls, and an Annunciation in a cupboard of the sacristy—in such strange places do we find an ancient fresco in Assisi. ”

“ No sooner did the gates of death close upon that sweet and genial spirit, than war, lust, strife and pestilence burst upon the very people he had so tenderly loved. The story of Assisi becomes, as it had never been before, a list of murders—of struggles to the death for individual power, and of wars which made the fair Umbrian country a desolate and cruel waste for months and even years. ”

“ Looking upon the road to Spello, winding down the hill through luxuriant fields of indian corn and olive groves, with the oak trees spreading their still fresher green over the vineyards of the plain, we feel that this pathway to the Carceri is something novel and unlike anything at Assisi which we have hitherto explored. Just as we are marvelling at its loveliness, a sudden turn brings Assisi once more in view, and the sight we get of it from here carries us straight back to the days of St. Francis ”

“ Assisi lies hidden, and standing high above us, shutting out the view of the valley, is San Francesco; not the building with great arches we are familiar with, rising high above the vineyards, but a castle, seen clearly defined and strong against the sky, whose bastions clasp the hill top as powerfully as a good rider bestrides his horse. Oak copses cover the slopes from the convent wall straight down to the banks of the Tescio, where little mills are set above deep pools of emerald green water and narrow canals fringed by poplar trees. ”

“ When the others returned in search of their leader, they, wondering at the change that had come over the wildest spirit of Assisi, assailed him with questions. "Are you thinking of marrying, Francis," cried one jester, and amidst the laughter of all came his quiet answer: "Yes, a wife more noble and more beautiful than ye have ever seen; she will outshine all others in beauty and in wisdom." Already the image of the Lady Poverty had visited him, and enamoured like a very troubadour he composed songs in her honour as he walked in the woods near Assisi. ”

“ Assisi presented a most melancholy spectacle at the end of one of these encounters. Most of the dwellings of the exiled nobles lay in ruins, the churches were shut in consequence of the perpetual bloodshed, and the palaces, barred and chained, with the gratings drawn up before the entrance, seemed to be inhabited by no living being. Franciscan friars stole along the streets on their errands of mercy among the distressed citizens, who, besides the horrors of the city feuds, suffered from the pestilence and famine which decimated nearly all the towns of Italy at this period. ”

“ It is impossible to excavate in any part of Assisi without coming upon relics of that time. Statues and busts of the Cæsars, of gods and of consuls, are lying in dark corners of the communal palace, and broken fragments of delicately-wrought friezes and heads of goddesses, half buried in bushes of oleander, adorn the Assisan gardens. Beneath the foundations of the more modern houses, mosaic floors and frescoed walls have been found, showing that Assisi had her years of early splendour. ”

“ Carven slabs from the temple friezes—what a story they tell of the primitive and ardent culture of the early Greeks perched upon their twin hills at Selinus, beside the sounding deep! One whole hall is lined with them, arranged symmetrically in series, speaking even to-day with the voice of that mystic lore which, to understand, reveals ancient Sicily. And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpassed. ”

“ Money is, in reality, the god that is worshipped in Italy. Naples is the kingdom of the Church; Rome is the state. It is in Naples that the papistry of Rome is in the fullest vigour, and the poor Neapolitans furnish abundant proof of the iniquity of the system: they are the rowers of the pope's grand bark, and the king is at their head. The priests rule in every direction; they insinuate themselves in a thousand ways into every body's concerns, and, directly or indirectly, possess an influence over all. ”