A little more than two weeks later, Francis left La Verna and went to Portiuncula. He was too exhausted to think of making the journey on foot, and Count Orlando put a horse at his disposal.
We can imagine the emotion with which he said goodbye to the mountain on which had been unfolded the drama of love and pain that consummated the union of his entire being with the Crucified One. If we are to believe a recently published document, Brother Masseo, one of those who remained on the Verna, made a written account of the events of this day.
They set out early in the morning. Francis, after having given his directions to the brothers, had a look and a word for everything around—for the rocks, the flowers, the trees, and for brother hawk, a privileged character that was authorized to enter his cell at all times, and that came every morning with the first glimmer of dawn to remind him of the hour of service.
Then the little band set upon the path leading to Monte-Acuto. Arriving at the gap from where one receives the last sight of the Verna, Francis alighted from his horse and, kneeling on the earth with face turned toward the mountain, said, “Adieu, mountain of God, sacred mountain, mons coagulatus, mons pinguis, mons in quo bene placitum est Deo habitare. Adieu, Monte-Verna, may God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Abide in peace; we shall never see one another again.”
“mons coagulatus, mons pinguis, mons in quo bene placitum est Deo habitare”: Francis is quoting from the Latin psalter, roughly translated into English as: “a fat mountain, a curdled mountain, a mountain in which God is pleased to dwell.” Even when we ascend the hill of the Lord, we can never fully penetrate the incomprehensible mysteries there. “Fat” and “curdled” are God’s mysteries. (Cross-reference to Psalm 68:15–16 in today’s English language psalters.)
Suddenly the Italian does not suffice and Francis is obliged to resort to the mystical language of the breviary to express his feelings. A few minutes later the rock of the ecstasy had disappeared.
The brothers had decided to spend the night at Monte-Casale, the little hermitage above Borgo San-Sepolcro. All of them, even those who were to remain on the Verna, were still following their master. As for Francis, he was so absorbed in thought that he became entirely oblivious to what was going on, and did not even perceive the noisy enthusiasm that his passage aroused in the numerous villages along the Tiber.
At Borgo San-Sepolcro he received a real ovation without even then coming to himself. But when they had left the town he seemed suddenly to awake and asked his companions if they would soon be arriving.
The first evening at Monte-Casale was marked by a miracle. Francis healed a friar who was possessed. The next morning, having decided to spend several days in this hermitage, Francis sent the brothers back to the Verna, and with them Count Orlando’s horse.
In one of the villages through which they had passed the day before, a woman had been lying several days between death and life unable to give birth to her child. Those about her had learned of the passage of the saint through their village only when he was too far distant to be overtaken. We can imagine the joy of these poor people when the rumor was spread that he was about to return. They went to meet him and were terribly disappointed to find only the friars. Suddenly an idea occurred to them: Taking the bridle of the horse consecrated by the touch of Francis’s hand, they carried it to the sufferer, who, having laid it upon her body, gave birth to her child without the slightest pain.
This miracle, established by entirely authentic narratives, shows the degree of enthusiasm felt by the people for the person of Francis. As for him, after a few days at Monte-Casale, he set out with Brother Leo for Citta of Castello. There, he healed a woman suffering from frightful nervous disorders and remained an entire month preaching in this city and its environs.
Winter was almost closing on the day when Francis and Leo finally set forth. A peasant lent Francis his donkey, but the roads were so bad that they were unable to reach any sort of shelter before nightfall. The unhappy travelers were obliged to spend the night under a rock. The shelter was more than rudimentary; the wind drifted the snow in upon them and nearly froze the unlucky peasant who, with abominable oaths, heaped curses on Francis. But Francis replied with such cheerfulness that he made the peasant at last forget both the cold and his bad humor.
The next day, the saint reached Portiuncula. He stayed only briefly, however, and soon left to evangelize southern Umbria. We know almost nothing of this trip, except that Brother Elias accompanied him, and Francis was so feeble that Elias could not conceal his uneasiness about it. Ever since his return from Syria (August 1220), Francis had been growing continually weaker, but his fervor had increased from day to day. Nothing could check him, neither suffering nor the entreaties of the brothers. Seated on a donkey he would sometimes travel to three or four villages in one day. But now he was losing his sight.
Meanwhile a sedition had forced Honorius III to leave Rome (end of April 1225). After passing a few weeks at Tivoli, he established himself at Rieti, where he remained until the end of 1226. The pope’s arrival had drawn to this city, with the entire pontifical court, several physicians of renown. Cardinal Ugolino, who had come in the pope’s train, hearing of Francis’s malady, summoned him to Rieti for treatment. But despite Brother Elias’s urging, Francis hesitated a long time before accepting the invitation. It seemed to him that a sick man has but one thing to do—place himself purely and simply in the hands of the heavenly Father. What is pain to a soul that is fixed in God!
Elias, however, overcame his objections at last and the journey was determined, but first Francis desired to go and see Clare and enjoy a little rest near her. He remained at San Damiano much longer than he had proposed to do, from the end of July to the beginning of September 1225. His arrival at this beloved monastery was marked by a terrible aggravation of his malady. For fifteen days he was so completely blind that he could not even distinguish light. The care lavished on him produced no result, since every day he passed long hours in weeping—tears of penitence, he said, but also of regret. How different they were from those tears of his moments of inspiration and emotion that had flowed over a countenance all illumined with joy! They had seen him, in such moments, take up two bits of wood, and, accompanying himself with this rustic violin, improvise French songs in which he would pour out the abundance of his heart.
But the radiance of genius and hope had now become dimmed. Rachel weeps for her children and will not be comforted because they are not. There are in the tears of Francis this same quia non sunt for his spiritual sons.
In the nave of the Upper Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi are twenty-eight frescos representing the life and legend of Francis. The great painter Giotto is believed to be their creator, although this is hotly debated even today. At this point in our narrative of Francis’s life, we have just passed number nineteen in the cycle, that of Francis receiving the stigmata. Other scenes from these paintings are never discussed by Sabatier and most modern biographers, including a vision of some of the brothers at Rivo-Torto of Francis traveling to heaven in a chariot like Elijah (number eight), and a vision of Brother Leo in which the highest throne of heaven, formerly occupied by Satan (before the angels revolted) is reserved for Francis, the most humble (number nine).
“Ah, if the brothers knew what I suffer,” St. Francis said a few days before the impression of the stigmata, “with what pity and compassion they would be moved!” But they, seeing in him the one who had laid cheerfulness upon them as a duty becoming more and more sad and keeping aloof from them, imagined that he was tortured with temptations of the devil.
Clare divined what could not be uttered. At San Damiano her friend was looking back over all the past. Here, the olive-tree to which, a brilliant cavalier, he had fastened his horse; there, the stone bench where his friend, the priest of the poor chapel, used to sit; over there, the hiding-place in which he had taken refuge from the paternal wrath; and, above all, the sanctuary with the mysterious crucifix of the decisive hour.
In living over these pictures of the radiant past, Francis aggravated his pain, yet they spoke to him of other things than death and regret. Clare was there, as steadfast, as ardent as ever. Long ago transformed by admiration, she was now transfigured by compassion. Seated at the feet of him whom she loved with more than earthly love she felt the soreness of his soul, and the failing of his heart.
She kept him near her, and taking part in the labor, she made him a large cell of reeds in the monastery garden, so that he might be entirely at liberty as to his movements. How could he refuse a hospitality so thoroughly Franciscan? It was indeed, but only too much so: Legions of rats and mice infested this retired spot. At night they ran over Francis’s bed with an infernal uproar, such that he could find no rest from his sufferings. But he soon forgot all of that when near his sister-friend. Once again she gave back to him faith and courage. “A single sunbeam,” he used to say, “is enough to drive away many shadows.”
Little by little the man of the former days began to show himself, and at times the sisters would hear, mingling with the murmur of the olive trees and pines, the echo of unfamiliar songs seeming to come from the cell of reeds. One day he was seated at the monastery table after a long conversation with Clare. The meal had hardly begun when suddenly he seemed to be rapt away in ecstasy. “Laudato sia lo Signore!” (“Praise the Lord!”) he cried on coming to himself. He had just composed “The Canticle of the Sun.”
O most high, almighty, good Lord God,
to you belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing!
Praised be my Lord God with all Your creatures,
and especially our Brother Sun,
who brings us the day and who brings us the light.
Fair is he and shines with a very great splendor:
O Lord, he signifies You to us!
Praised be my Lord for our Brother Wind,
and for air and cloud, calms and all weather
through which You uphold life in all creatures.
Praised be my Lord for our Sister Water,
who is very useful to us and humble and precious and clean.
Praised be my Lord for our Brother Fire,
through whom You give us light in the darkness;
and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong.
Praised be my Lord for our Mother Earth,
who does sustain us and keep us,
and brings forth many fruits and flowers of many colors, and grass.
Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for Your sake,
and who endure weakness and tribulation;
blessed are they who peaceably endure, for You, O most High,
shall give them a crown.
Praised be my Lord for our Sister Death of the Body,
from whom no one can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are they who are found walking by Your most holy will,
for the second death shall have no power to do them harm.
Praise and bless the Lord, and give thanks to Him
and serve Him with great humility.
It is fairly easy to imagine how the originality of Francis’s ideas was not always appreciated within the established norms of traditional religious life. This story—of Francis teaching his brothers to be God’s jugglers—recalls the vehement words of the old monk, Jorge, in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose. Jorge poisoned the pages of a hidden book about laughter in the abbey scriptorium, wanting to protect the young and the curious from the greater poison of laughter: a “weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.” At the end of the novel, Jorge says with contempt to his accuser, a Franciscan: “You are a clown, like the saint who gave birth to you all. You are like your Francis, who . . . begged in French, and imitated with a piece of wood the movements of a violin player, who disguised himself as a tramp to confound the gluttonous monks, who flung himself naked in the snow, spoke with animals and plants, transformed the very mystery of the Nativity into a village spectacle, called the lamb of Bethlehem by imitating the bleat of a sheep” (ECO 2, pp. 474, 477–78).
Joy had returned to Francis, joy as deep as ever. For a whole week he put aside his breviary and passed his days in repeating “The Canticle of the Sun.”
During a night of sleeplessness he heard a voice saying to him, “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this mountain, ‘Be removed from here,’ and it would move away.” Was not the mountain his sufferings, the temptation to murmur and despair? “Be it, Lord, according to your word,” Francis replied with all his heart, and immediately he felt that he was delivered.
Francis might have perceived that the mountain had not greatly changed its place, but for several days he turned his eyes away from it and had been able to forget its existence.
For a moment he thought of summoning to his side Brother Pacifico, the king of verse, to retouch his canticle. His idea was to attach to him a certain number of friars who would go with him from village to village, preaching. After the sermon they would sing the hymn of the sun, and they were to close by saying to the gathered crowd, “We are God’s jugglers. We desire to be paid for our sermon and our song. Our payment will be that you persevere in penitence.”
“Is it not in fact true,” Francis would add, “that the servants of God are really like jugglers, intended to revive the hearts of men and lead them into spiritual joy?”
The Francis of the old raptures was back—the layman, the poet, the artist.