A Day in Assisi

Saturday was another free day for us; it seems so strange to write that after the busyness of most of the semester. I decided to take the family and any students who wanted to go to Assisi, which is about an hour and fifteen minutes away from Citerna. In the end, four students took me up on the offer, so we drove the minibus through the rain down the E45 to the pilgrimage site, finding a parking place right around 10:00.

As approached the Basilica of St. Francis, it struck me that we were there on a holy day, All Saints Day. Of course that meant that the major churches of Assisi were packed with pilgrims, and that there were numerous services being held in the churches throughout the day. As a result the majority of St. Francis's church was inaccessible to us. However, we were able to go into the crypt to see his tomb. I think it was good for the students to see a full Italian church, whatever else might have happened. After leaving St. Francis's, which is near the bottom of the town, we walked up to Piazza Matteotti, and then turned around and slowly made our way back down through the town, following a walking tour in Rick Steves's guidebook.

We walked through a neighborhood that is built around and incorporates a first-century Roman amphitheater. We went into the cathedral dedicated to San Rufino, where St. Francis, St. Clare, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II were all baptized. We spent some time in the Basilica of Santa Chiara (St. Clare), named after a convert of St. Francis who founded her own semi-monastic order, the Poor Clares, for women. We saw St. Clare's tomb in the crypt, but were unable (because of an ongoing service) to get to the chapel containing the crucifix that is supposed to have spoken to Francis in a vision. In the oldest part of Assisi, we saw a Roman temple to Minerva (Corinthian columns and all) that had been converted into a Christian church in the Middle Ages. To top it all off, we had some magnificent views of the Umbrian countryside from several vantage points along the route.

We ate lunch in a cafeteria near St. Clare's church, and made it back to the bus around 1:45. I would have liked to have stayed longer and perhaps driven up to the top of Mt. Subasio to see one of Francis's retreats, but it was raining on us again, and Jonathan had asked us to have the bus back in Citerna by 3:00 so that a group of students heading into Florence could ride it into Arezzo. So we returned for a more or less relaxing afternoon and evening.