On the Road with Francis of Assisi (2 page)

The lovely
Tuscan sanctuary of
Celle di Cortona, where Francis founded one of his first hermitages. He would write his Last
Testament here near the end of
his life.

The Virgin Mary, crowned with a halo of
electric lightbulbs, atop the vast church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi, which harbors Franci
s
’s tiny chapel, the Porziuncola.

A naked Francis fought devil-sent lust by building a family out of
snow at Sarteano, another early and primitive sanctuary. I gird myself
to access the caves on my hands and knees.

The modern Adriatic port of
Ancona, whence Francis first sailed for the Holy Land and was shipwrecked instead.

The gleaming travertine-paved Piazza del Popolo in Ascoli Piceno, with the imposing church of
St. Francis in the background. Francis was mobbed when he preached in Ascoli.

The incomprehensible pinnacle of
San Leo, where Francis crashed a noble’s party and was given the mountain of
La Verna.

The runaway Clare thwarted her furious uncle at the monastery church of
San Paolo delle Abbadesse near
Assisi. This is how it looks now.

A triumphant Muslim warrior in Fariskur, Egypt, where, during the Fifth Crusade, Francis offered to walk over hot coals to peacefully convert the Sultan. He failed.

Francis recuperated from his Egyptian ordeal on the Isola del Deserto in the Venice lagoon. Here he decided to resign as head of
the Franciscan Order.

On a preaching tour of southern Italy, Francis summoned a crowd in Bari by ringing this bell, now enshrined here in the church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli. We ring it, too.

Francis reenacted the first live nativity in a cave in this extensive, reconstructed sanctuary of
Greccio. He also performed many miracles here.

Francis received the stigmata in the rocky wildness of
La Verna and lived thereafter in excruciating pain.

His stone bed, strewn with pilgrim
s
’ offerings, at the hermitage of
Monte Casale, near Sansepolcro, where the weakened Francis rested on the way home from La Verna.

The Pope ordered Francis to go to the important medieval city of
Rieti for treatment of
the eye disease he had contracted in Egypt. The Pope’s doctors failed.