whitebeard

Sunday, March 18, 2007

CHAPTER VII c

THE ROCK OF S. FRANCESCO

Cap. VII pag. 160-173

There are some ancient shields sculptured upon the façade, two of which bear the arms of the Catani of Chiusi, Count Orlando's family, a cross and three lilies.

Over the high altar of this church we see' the first of the beautiful altar-pieces in which Andrea della Robbia has offered up, upon the Rock of La Verna, the best of his hand and soul to the glory of San Francesco. The exquisitely refined and graceful work of this artist, who expresses with so much charm and tender sentiment the meek and childlike spirit, and the sweet celestial visions of medioaeval faith, is peculiarly associated with the stigmatised saint. There was in Andrea's day a marked revival of the cult of the Stigmata, prompted by the half-mystical, half-curious spirit of the late fifteenth century. St. Francis and St. Catherine of Siena were the objects of special devotion, and the strange phenomena which had appeared in both of them seem to have been repeated in quite a number of devout persons at this time. Andrea, who reflects with naiveté the ideas and thoughts current in his time, represents the person and legend of St. Francis again and again in his altar-pieces. But his mild and somewhat effeminate conception of the ardent-souled Francesco Bernardone is not very satisfying, for the artist, with all his gifts, had no profound understanding of human character.

Vasari tells us how Andrea produced many altarpieces on the Rock of La Verna which are imperishable in that solitary spot, where no painting, even for a few years, could endure. This does not . necessarily mean, however, that he actually worked up here and was inspired by the very air and lofty surroundings in which the vision came to San Francesco, and the tradition that he had his furnaces dose by ,must be regarded. on1y as a romantic legend. (See Cruttwell, Luca and Andrea della Robbi, p.172).

His works at La Verna are some of the most beautiful which he ever produced. Not one shows better the peculiar charm of his art than this altar-piece in the Chiesina, the Madonna giving her girdle to St. Thomas. Behind the doubting apostle kneels St. Clement, and San Francesco and San Bonaventura are on the other side. Here are the most delicate, the most ethereally lovely of floating angels, the sweetest-faced cherubs, the most sincere and spiritual of saints, all drawn by the force of their adoration into a halo round the most gracious of Madonnas. The beauty of the angels in the predella is specially notable. In detail the work is almost perfect, but, like many of this master’s compositions, it is very overcrowded, and at a little distance the subject loses its significance. The arms of the Bartoli, who gave the altar-piece, are upon the predella. There are two other Della Robbia pieces in the church, gaudy and inferior productions of the later school-a Nativity and an Entombment.

The Chiesa Maggiore was not built till much later than the Chiesina, and one naturally seeks out first the sanctuaries more especially associated with San Francesco.

But before passing to the Luoghi Santi, as these are called, one is arrested by the glorious prospect of sky and mountain and valley upon which the pizza is open on the south. This at least. is the same now as when Francesco first stood on this place and breathed down upon the hundred castles tossed upon the spurs and ridges far below, his salutation: Peace be with you. All their master's spirit was in the two disciples who chose this particular spot for the new home of Obedience, Chastity pd Poverty. Far here, lifted so high above the cares and necessities of the world, earthly possessions are seen to be merely a drag and burden upon the soaring spirit, which can have need of nothing save wings. And only to breathe here is to be pure, and to obey is to sing with the stars in their spheres.

Now in the wake of the Santuarista - the Brother vho holds the office of guide to the Luoghi Santi- you come to the part of the Rock specially consecrated by memories of the Seraphic Father. Here, on the edge of the precipice, the ground is rent with terrific chasms and deep caverns formed by titanic rocks heaped one upon another as if by some tremendous convulsion of the earth. These are the stony places in which San Francesco made his nest, and some of the most holy of the sanctuaries cling about their brink. Here is the place where the great beech tree once grew, beneath which Count Orlando had a little cell made for the saint on his first visit. Tree and hut of branches and turf are long vanished, and in their stead have risen two little chapels, one above the other. These were built by Contessa Caterina, wife of Count Roberto dei Tarlati, towards the end of the fifteenth century. Cardinal Galeotto of the same family, who was distinguished by a specially vindictive, arrogant and quarrelsome temper, and by an ardent devotion to the Poverello of Assisi, was buried in the upper chapel in a fine tomb, which has now disappeared. Upon the altar of the lower chapel, which is dedicated to the Magdalen, lies a flat stone called the Mensa di San Francesco, which has always been regarded with great veneration as the very stone upon which, according to an ancient legend, Christ seated Himself when He appeared one day to the saint and promised him special blessings for his order. In the pages of the Fioretti, San Francesco himself relates this vision to Brother Leo, bidding him wash the stone with water, with wine, with oil, and with balsam. There is an inscription in Gothic characters, almost obliterated, upon the stone, referring to the vision.

From these chapels you are led down by steps cut in the rock, and stand upon the edge of the precipice which falls sheer to the green meadows at the foot of the Mount. Then descending again by a long narrow stair into a deep and cavernous place walled by immense masses of rock, and slipping over the slimy stones and oozy crevices, you stand beneath the Sasso Spicco, that far-famed natural marvel, a gigantic table of stone poised in the air apparently without support, so slight is its attachment to the wall of rock from which it projects. I n the chill, dark shadow under this threatening mass, which looks ready to fall and crush any who dares to step beneath, a tall cross rears itself. San Francesco has carried the sanctification of humanity and of faith into this savage haunt of terror and danger. When one remembers how the medioaeval imagination peopled darkness and the unknown with the forms of evil and the shadow of death one appreciates the newness and courage of his spirit in penetrating into these awe-inspiring places. To a world possessed by the fear of the devil, he was come to declare the praise of God; to reassure men of His undivided dominion, and that the shows of evil and sorrow were but misunderstood aspects of His love. The awful mysteries of Nature were answered by the consoling mysteries of faith, and to his ardent imagination, ever occupied with the remembrance of the Passion, these tormented rocks were a visible witness of that moment of the great sacrifice on Calvary, when the earth shook and the veil of the Temple was rent in twain.

There is something also in Francesco's interest 10 these natural wonders which foreshadows the curiosity of the modern spirit towards the phenomena of Nature. One pictures the small frail figure slipping and springing from stone to stone, wounding hands and feet, smiling with the joyousness of a child. So strongly does that vivid personality of seven hundred years ago still possess this place to-day, that lingering for a moment alone one feels it present, warm and quick, dispel1ing the deadly chill, vivifying the dead and deathless petrifaction around, calling one's eyes to the strip of glowing sky above, to the golden branches that dip from the brink of the chasm, and the reflected warmth that fills the green twilight of the cavern.

Having returned to the upper air, you are shown various tabernacles and shrines, each of which commemorates some miracle or sign of grace which has occurred on the spot. A long covered way leads from the Chiesa Maggiore to the most holy of all the sanctuaries upon the mount, the Chapel of the Stigmata. This passage was built in the latter part of the sixteenth century for the protection of the Brothers on their daily and nightly pilgrimage to the holy shrine, and is now decorated with incredibly bad modern frescoes, painted over a faded series of the sixteenth century. Half way down, a door on the left leads out into the open again and communicates by another steep stair with a dark and awesome grotto overhung by strangely suspended rocks. Here is the Bed of San Francesco, a flat rock moist with the eternal distillations of the mountain. Upon this the saint is said to have couched his emaciated frame when utterly worn out by spiritual wrestlings. The faithful regard this place with special devotion and weep compassionate tears upon the rigid stone, which has now been covered with an iron grating that it might not be quite worn away in time by their fervent kisses. Marvellous things are related of sufferers healed by stretching themselves upon this painful couch.

Re-entering the corridor, you are conducted into several little chapels, of no great interest, on the way to the Sanctuary of the Stigmata. From one of these, dedicated to San Sebastiano, you issue forth again into the open, this time to stand over the precipice, which drops down beneath to a depth of over a hundred and twenty feet. Legend relates that to this spot, then unprotected from the abyss, San Francesco was wont often to come, and gazing out over the glorious landscape, give praise to God; and that one day, as he sat rapt in contemplation, the devil suddenly appeared in most horrible aspect, and seizing hold of him, would have hurled him over the brink. But the saint, crying out to God, turned and dung with both hands to the rock, which, yielding as if it had been wax, gave him shelter, so that the arch enemy flew off, completely confounded. The marks of the holy man's fingers are said to have remained long visible upon the rock.

You are now dose to the holy of holies, the Church of the Stigmata. To reach it you pass through the Chapel of the Cross, which stands on the supposed spot of the cell in which San Francesco passed his long retreat. Here it was that he remained hidden from his companions; here Brother Leo sought him every day and every night. Here the falcon, nesting in the precipitous crags outside, sang and beat his wings against the cell every morning to wake him, keeping silence like a compassionate and discreet person, the Fioretti tell us, till a later hour than usual on those days when Francesco was very weak and ill. But we must seek these fresh and tender memories in the open woods outside. It is in vain that we endeavour to connect them with the cold and dark interior of this oratory, which is quite devoid of beauty or artistic interest. It was built originally in the gothic style, and is believed to have been frescoed by Taddeo Gaddi in the fourteenth century, and tradition says that it had an altar-piece painted by Giotto representing San Francesco's adventure with the devil on the precipice. But later on the cult of the Stigmata was neglected for a time and the chapel fell into decay, to be restored and deformed in the seventeenth century. Some relics of the saint are preserved upon the altar.

Both this chapel and the Sanctuary of the Stigmata were built by a very notable and zealous votary of the apostle of humility, no other than that proud and wrathful member of the great House of Guidi, Count Simone di Battifolle, who took upon himself the endowment and maintenance of these holy places and of the special rites of the Stigmata. He charged his descendants to carry on the pious duty, which they appear to have done in a somewhat fitful manner.

His great-grandson, Count Roberto, the friend of Petrarch, intended to be buried in a splendid tomb in the passage between the two sanctuaries, and left directions to that effect in his will, but they were apparently not carried out.

Upon the façade of the church there is a contemporary inscription carved in marble, recording that in 1263, five days “after the feast of the Assumption of the glorious Virgin Mary, Count Simone, son of the illustrious Guido, by the Grace of God, Count Palatine of Tuscany, founded this oratory in honour of the Blessed Francis, to whom in this same place the seraph appeared in the year of our Lord 1225, within the octave of the birth of the Virgin, and impressed upon his body and signed him with the Stigmata of Jesus Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit."

The building was originally gothic, like the chapel. Vasari records that Taddeo Gaddi covered walls and ceiling with frescoes. These have all perished, and little is left of the original design of the church. But the interior is simple and dignified, and is furnished with choir stalls of fine sixteenth century intarsia work, well restored quite lately by Fra Leonardo, the sacristan. One has eyes for nothing else in it however but the great Crucifixion upon the east wall, filling the whole space behind the altar. It is impossible to judge of this, the most impressive of all Andrea della Robbia's works, on its artistic merits seeing it for the first time here. So wonderful1y does it sum up the meaning and mystery of the place that one is overcome with awe, aware only of the love and tragedy of the great Sacrifice, of the passion of Mother and Friend, of the anguish of the penitent sinners, expressed before one in that gleaming purity of white and blue above the dimness of the sanctuary.

Beneath, in the midst of the floor, guarded, by an outer grating of iron and a marble slab, whereon is carved in cinquecento style a representation of the event commemorated here, is the portion of rock which has been regarded for ages with peculiar awe as the very spot whereon San Francesco kne1t when he received the Stigmata. It is a vain and foolish curiosity that would search out the material circumstances of a

great spiritual experience and would fix the precise moment and place of its' happening. But the rites which man institutes in memory of that which is beyond comprehending must have a local habitation and a name. And the tears of penitence and love which have fallen upon this spot through all the long centuries, the souls for whom. it has been a steppingstone from earth to heaven, have changed it by the alchemy of faith from a material into a spiritual thing. It has been the centre of a constant worship ever since Count Simone built the church. The pious baron instituted and endowed a little band of hermits-five, like the number of the wounds of Christ-for the special service of the Stigmata and built for them five little cells in the place which is now the sacristan's garden. In this retreat, only to be reached by a narrow path along the edge of the crag, these devotees led a life of extreme austerity, in strict seclusion from the rest of the community, and daily and nightly officiated in the church. The holiest members of the order were chosen for this high and difficult office. Men famous for sanctity; Giovanni della Verna, Corrado da Offida and others of the Strict Observants, were among them. But with time laxity of discipline crept in; few were found willing to dedicate themselves to this life of self-denial, and grave disorders were apparent among those who did. The Counts of Battifolle failed, on their side, to keep up the endowments for the bodily wants of the hermits, though each one on his deathbed earnestly recommended the pious duty to his successor. At length, in the fifteenth century, the hermitage was abolished, and nothing now remains of the cells. The offices in the church were committed to the whole community, and from that time forth, every day and every night at the same hour, a long procession of brothers has issued from the Chiesa Maggiore and passed down the long way to the Sanctuary of the Stigmata, there to perform the appointed rite.

Though once there was no sheltering corridor, they might not forego their journey for any tempest that midnight had loosed upon the Rock, or for any snow or bitterness of frost. If they did, the very beasts rebuked them. There is a legend that one night, the snow being very deep, the Brothers neglected this duty and in the morning they discovered to their confusion and shame, from the marks upon the snow, that the animals of the forest had gone in procession to the church instead of them. .

This solemn service of the Stigmata is a deeply impressive ceremony. When the hour draws near, you hear the sound of distant chanting as the procession leaves the Chiesa Maggiore. It approaches rapidly, and round the curve of the corridor comes a tall young novice lifting a great cross on high, followed by two long files of brown-frocked Brothers whose bare feet beat to the measure of the monotonous litany. They pass and enter the darkened sanctuary, and the little gate is shut behind them. Prostrating themselves, they touch the ground with their foreheads. When they have sung an antiphon, two of the most youthful of the novices kneel in the midst and indicate with outstretched arm and finger the spot of the Seraphic Father's mysterious martyrdom. Then, when the office has been recited in full, all remain for a long space motionless upon their knees, with faces and hands uplifted in silent adoration. Above them shines the sunillumined altar-piece, where the figure of the Man of Sorrows hangs on high upon the Cross, in the midst of the tears of saints and angels. In that shadowed crowd beneath, whose great ensample is written so clearly before them and whose accomplishment is hid in the obscurity of each individual heart, we may surely hear pulsing still, transmitted uninterrupted through all the centuries, the thrill of that mighty heart uplifted here into the arcana of mystic ecstasy, may feel warm and strong and living still that pure love and faith and adoration which wounding glorified him. Here, more than elsewhere, their master is in their midst.

They rise and pass out and away down the long corridor as they came, and the sound of their chanting grows fainter and fainter; the sacristan locks the gate and the sanctuary is empty once more. But in the silence of the night those long dark files will come again, stealing down the dimly-lighted way, like the shades of their daylight selves, risen to drive away the malignant spirits and to consecrate to Christ even this the unholy midnight hour. Their weird chanting precedes them, scattering with the long cry of Ora pro nobis those stranger voices that whispered in the darkness before.

But the power of the Enemy is great at this, the moment of the spirit's weakness. So out of the obscurity where the cloaked forms kneel comes the sound of the seIf-inflicted disciplina, the clash of the chains with which they rend the flesh and strengthen the soul.

Ere the day breaks all have melted away into the shadows of the convent and the silence is once more unbroken.