Read On the Road with Francis of Assisi for Free Online

and heavier as they rode along, as must his shield. It is not known whether they stopped to rest at one of the towns along the way or rode straight through to Spoleto, where they were to spend the night. In any event, by the time they reached Spoleto that night, Francis was sick again with a high fever.
    In his delirium, he had a dream that began to change his life course. A voice spoke to him, according to Celano, asking him who could do better for him, the servant or the Lord. “The Lord,” Francis replied. Then why, the voice continued, was he looking for the servant instead of the Lord? “Lord, what do you want me to do?” Francis asked. “Go back to the place of your birth for through me your vision will have spiritual fulfillment,” the voice said.
    Many biographers have wondered about the “voice” in that dream. Some think it must, of course, have been the voice of God preparing Francis for his more honorable role to come. Others think the voice might have been that of Francis himself, half delirious, realizing he could not continue his journey. Still others wonder if the “voice” Francis heard was that of his traveling companion, presumably a lord, who knew Francis would not be up to the journey and could be a liability. In any event, the dream remains a critical juncture in his legend, and his illness, at least, was real. His bout with the recurring chills and fever of malaria kept him in Spoleto for some time while his companion, presumably, rode on without him.
    We follow Francis from Assisi to Spoleto, not only because Spoleto is so pivotal to his legend but also because the high hill town houses a unique Franciscan treasure: a letter Francis wrote in his own hand to Brother Leo. I had seen the only other surviving handwritten document of his, also to Leo, in the lower church in Assisi, but there is something exciting about seeing this second document in a location outside the Franciscan-rich collections in Assisi.
    We arrive in Spoleto at noon and, with great anticipation, walk up the long, gently curving Via Filitteria to the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, where the letter is displayed in the Reliquary Chapel. The Rough Guide notes that the duomo is closed between 1:00 P.M. and 3:00, but as anyone who has been to Italy knows, Italians have their own interpretation of time, and when we reach the astonishingly beautiful twelfth-century cathedral, we find it has closed an hour early and will be
chiuso
until 4:00.
    But no matter. Downtime is a gift in Italy, and we spend some of it over a delicious lunch of local sausage, artichokes, and homemade pasta, and while away the rest walking around the graceful, fan-shaped piazza in front of the cathedral, dodging the local children playing soccer, and wondering who all the men carrying bright orange tote bags and milling around the piazza might be. (They turn out to be obstetricians gathered for a convention.)
    We are the first into the cathedral when the small, very round priest arrives with an ancient iron key ring the size of a bicycle tire to unlock the door. The cathedral, I quickly discover, is not a model of high technology. Each very dark chapel requires a twenty-five-cent euro coin in a light box to shed temporary electric light on its treasures, including an unfinished fresco by a teenage Pinturicchio. Nervously clutching my coin, I enter the Reliquary Chapel and position myself in front of the case on the wall that holds the letter. But when the light comes on, albeit fleetingly, I can’t believe my eyes. The case is empty.
    I rush after the priest to ask about the letter and deduce from his torrent of Italian, arm waving, and finger pointing that the letter is somewhere up the steps at the top of the piazza, in the Museo Diocesano. It takes us another half an hour to find the little yellow sign near an arch on the Via Aurelio Saffi that leads us to Sant’Eufemia, Spoleto’s revered twelfth-century church, and the museum’s central