Assisi of Saint Francis

’ It is built with bulwarks : a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armour of valiant men.—(Cant. IV. 4.)In all the world there is no town to compare with this little walled city seated on a spur of the Umbrian Hills. No place is so intimately and exclusively bound up with the ever-continuing memory of one man. For Assisi is Saint Francis, and Saint Francis is Assisi. One cannot remain an hour there without fully realising this all-embracing fact. Yet to appreciate all that Assisi stands for, a short stay of a day or two is not enough. Some persons, even Catholics, are content to limit their visit to this city which is so wholly a shrine, to a few hours, and even take it as a place to see en passant on a motor drive from Perugia.I myself reached Assisi with somewhat mixed feelings. The whole countryside was enveloped in mist and driving rain. Accommodation at an Albergo seemed rough, after home comforts. And—worst of all—one felt little or no devotion, only dryness in place of exaltation, and, I am even ashamed to confess the word, a sense of possible boredom in contemplating a more than very brief stay. Yet in less than twenty-four hours this feeling of desolation gave way to intense joy and inward peace. Assisi’s Saint Francis had worked that magic spell over me that has been his to exercise during seven centuries on the hearts of men of good will. I cannot explain it otherwise. The weather for an Italian May continued atrocious, and the hotel food unappetising to an English palate. But one had found the spirit of Assisi, and nothing else mattered.