Read On the Road with Francis of Assisi for Free Online Page A

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    I am so intent on finding the letter that I barely glance at what surely are treasures in the museum’s five rooms, and suddenly, there is the letter, displayed in a glass case rimmed in silver and mounted on red marble. Turns out that the document is on loan from the cathedral for a monthlong Umbria-wide exhibition of Franciscan artifacts.
    It is an extraordinary feeling to see once again Francis’s actual handwriting, especially so well displayed and lit. Francis wrote the letter, in Latin, toward the end of his life, when his eyesight was failing, which accounts for the painfully shaky script and the irregular lines. But it is a remarkable and tender document written to Brother Leo during a troubled period in Leo’s life.
    Brother Leo, [wish] your Brother Francis health and peace. I speak to you, my son, as a mother. I place all the words which we spoke on the road in this phrase, briefly, and [as] advice. And afterwards, if it is necessary for you to come to me for counsel, I say this to you: In whatever way it seems best to you to please the Lord God and to follow His footprints and His poverty, do this with the blessing of God and my obedience. And if you believe it necessary for the well-being of your soul, or to find comfort, and you wish to come to me, Leo, come!
    Historians differ on where Francis was when he wrote this letter. All agree, however, that Francis was at one of the many mountaintop hermitages to which he would often withdraw to pray and meditate, one of which, on the sacred mountain of Monteluco, is just five miles from Spoleto. And utterly charming.
    To even begin to understand Francis of Assisi, it is critical to leave the museums and cathedrals and the hill towns to go, as he did, to the hermitages. After his conversion, he would divide his time between preaching in the towns and retreating to the mountaintops, where he fasted and prayed in isolation and often talked directly with God. “The world was tasteless to him who was fed with heavenly sweetness, and the delights he found in God made him too delicate for the gross concerns of man,” writes Celano. “He always sought a hidden place where he could adapt not only his soul but also all his members to God.”
    The hermitage Francis would found in 1218 on top of the 2,650-foot-high Monteluco is well worth the hairpin turns and narrowing road that lead us above the clouds and the smoke from fires farmers in the valley have set to burn off the rubble on their fall fields. We make one false stop, at what looks like an ancient convent but turns out to be a pizza restaurant adjoining the twelfth-century church of San Giuliano. The restaurant is not yet open for dinner, but an obliging waitress brings us espressos, which we sip gratefully in front of a television set tuned in to
Milionario,
the Italian version of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
    The “hidden” hermitage, when we finally achieve the mountain’s level summit, turns out to be inside a Franciscan convent tucked into the sheer face of the far side of the mountain, with a view of the Spoleto Valley normally reserved for those flying in small planes. Hardly a ruin, the fifteenth-century convent that grew up around the primitive hermitage looks newly restored, with a shiny carved wooden door leading into a beautiful cobbled courtyard bordered on one side by a small one-story, tile-roofed building.
    Big ceramic pots of grasses and geraniums dot the courtyard and beyond, through an open door, a small and graceful cloister with a central—and miraculous—well. Local legend holds that Francis, in search of water, drew a spring of fresh water from a rock. Adding to this magical scene is a young Franciscan friar chatting with a young woman at the doorway of the convent. “Buona sera,” they welcome us as we step through the door into a corridor and follow a sign that reads “1218 Primitivo Convento.” It turns out to be as close to Francis as we ever get.
    This quintessential