On the Road with Francis of Assisi by Linda Bird Francke Page A

St. Francis asleep in St. Clare’s arms but also a portrait of the Italian author and native Alessandrian Umberto Eco.
    Like the people he serves, Father Tonino lives very much in the here and now. “Excuse me, I must go to work now,” he says as a young man enters the church and steps into the confessional.
    I understand the impatience and even embarrassment of today’s friars toward the miracles, but I think they are instructive. They are filled with the mystery and often the superstitions of the medieval age—seven-year-old capons, for example, were believed to have precious stones in their entrails, while eight-year-old capons were reserved for a king. The miracles also speak to the very real fears and dangers of the time: predatory wild animals, life-snuffing diseases, crippling injuries, poverty, drought, floods, famine, and violence, always violence. Because medieval doctors had very little ability to cure anything, injury or illness, people naturally turned to the healing powers of the godly—and hoped for a miracle.
    One of my favorites, also recorded by Celano, occurred in Gubbio. A woman whose hands were “so crippled that she could do no work at all with them” hurried to Francis during one of his visits to the town and begged him to touch them. “Moved to pity,” he did so, and presto, her hands were cured. What makes this miracle so beguiling is that she did not fall on her knees to praise God or instantly become a Franciscan convert but instead ran home to make a cheese cake for Francis “with her own hands.”
    Francis must have recovered his physical strength in Gubbio, thanks to the generosity of the Spadalonga family. And he did not waver from his search for spiritual strength. The brigands who set upon him in the forest and the Benedictine monks who did not succor him merely reinforced his conviction in his new calling. In the spirit of “the things that formerly made you shudder will bring you great sweetness and content,” he spent his time taking care of the lepers at a nearby leprosarium before setting out again for Assisi.
    Francis left the lepers in Gubbio in the summer of 1206 to return to restoring the little ruined church of San Damiano. He still took the mission from Christ to rebuild his church literally. Collecting stones for the project was in order, but Francis soon realized it would take many more stones than he could glean from the surrounding land. So he decided, for the first time, to beg.
    “Whoever gives me a stone will get a reward from the Lord,” he evidently called out to the citizens of Assisi. “Whoever gives me two stones will get two rewards.” And so on. When that did not work, he would break into song, singing the praises of the Lord, in French.
    One can only imagine the stupefaction of the Assisians who for years had heard Francis singing heroic ballads and love songs and now found him singing to the Lord and dressed in a hermit’s tunic on the back of which he had etched a cross with a brick. Perhaps the stones he started lugging back to San Damiano were given to him out of pity or just to get rid of him, but he eventually had enough to start rebuilding the church.
    It was hard work, too hard for Francis. He had never been a particularly strong person, and he had never really recovered his health from his imprisonment in Perugia. The old priest at San Damiano was worried about him and started giving Francis larger portions and choicer selections of whatever food he had, but Francis soon caught on to the priest’s sacrifice. And another moment in the legend was solidified: Francis decided to go door to door in Assisi and beg for his food.
    Assisians were well used to beggars, but to have young Francis Bernadone, the party animal who had always lavished money on food and drink for his friends, come to the door with a begging bowl was beyond comprehension. Some of them must have filled his bowl, because Francis did not starve to death, but the quality of what