Free On the Road with Francis of Assisi by Linda Bird Francke

is a matter of chronological choice. Determining exactly what he did and when and where he did it has proven impossible in many instances for modern historians because his medieval biographers were less interested in following a time line than they were in storytelling. The
Legend of the Three Companions
has Francis returning immediately to his work restoring San Damiano; Thomas of Celano, in his
First Life of St. Francis,
reports that he left Assisi in the direction of Gubbio, some say still naked, others say dressed in a simple workman’s tunic and mantle donated by the bishop’s gardener. We choose Celano and set off to follow Francis the thirty miles or so north to the hill town of Gubbio, though he had a much more difficult time getting there than we do.
    Thieves jumped Francis in a forest en route, while he was “singing praises to the Lord in French.” What the robbers hoped to glean from the bare-legged, tunic-clad man spouting French is questionable, but attack him they did, and “savagely.” When they demanded to know who he was and he replied, “I am the herald of the great King!” they beat the mad little fellow, took his cloak, and tossed his body into a snow-filled ditch. “Lie there, you stupid herald of God,” the thieves reportedly said to him before retreating back into the forest to await a more lucrative target. Unperturbed by the attack, young Francis managed to climb out of the snowy ditch, and “exhilarated and with great joy,” he set off again, singing loud praises to the Lord. But his travails were not over.
    To the everlasting chagrin of the monks at San Verecondo, a Benedictine monastery Francis came upon five miles south of Gubbio, little charity was given him. Though he was obviously in need of food and clothing and perhaps even medical attention, the monks gave him none and instead put him to work as a scullery boy in the kitchen. (One local legend even has him being held prisoner by the princes of Gubbio in a nearby castle, though I can’t imagine why.) When later Francis’s reputation as a man of God spread far and wide, the prior of the monastery begged his forgiveness and tried to make up for his harsh treatment. According to a late-thirteenth-century text written by one of San Verecondo’s monks, the monastery would “graciously” host Francis “quite often” over the years and supply food and apple wine for a subsequent gathering of his followers. But such was not the treatment he received in 1206.
    Unbelievably, San Verecondo is still there, just off the road to Gubbio. The first view of the old monastery, since renamed the Abbazia di Vallingegno, is so splendid that we pull off the road into a convenient photo opportunity site one hundred yards or so from the driveway. Who could resist the image of such a picture-perfect hilltop bell tower, church, and cloister buildings nestled in a grove of cypresses?
    We drive the short distance to the renovated
abbazia
to discover that its up-to-date hospitality is now available to everyone. Owned by a family in Gubbio and leased to a young couple from Rome, the old monastery is now an
agriturismo
inn and working farm with a website—www.abbaziadivallingegno.it. Francis could have e-mailed ahead to book any one of six apartments for seventy euro a day, take riding lessons, and survey from the swimming pool the beautiful country he’d just walked through.
    It is a beautiful, sunny morning, and we chat with a touring German family at the picnic table outside their rooms. In such a serene setting, it is hard to imagine the rather vicious miracle Francis had gone on to perform at San Verecondo. Recounted by all his early biographers, it involves a lamb born at the monastery during one of his visits, and the lamb’s immediate demise from the “ravenous bite” of a “cruel sow.” Francis was so incensed at the pig for killing “brother lamb, innocent animal,” Jesus being known as the Lamb of God or
Agnus Dei,
that he put a curse