Spirituality & Perception – Paper 14 Assisi: city of SS Francis and Clare – Reflections on a short visit
A visit
of five days to Assisi in Italy in October 2012 lends itself to making some
connections between built environment and theology. I do this in three
sections as follows: Built environment: encountering Assisi Theology: encountering SS Francis and Clare Building-Theology interface: the
Franciscan religious buildings of Assisi and its surrounding area
Built
environment: encountering Assisi As I
encountered Assisi for the first time, three things struck me forcibly about
it: First,
although it has a present day population of 25000, it is still essentially a
medieval, mountainside city. It faces south, the direction from which we
approached it. From west to east some half dozen main roads follow the
contours of Mount Subasio. These are connected by steep, narrow,
hairpin-type roads and numerous sets of steps, some narrow, some wider. Some
of the west-east roads widen out to accommodate the Piazza del Commune (or
Town Hall Square) and some smaller squares and forecourts. Because of the
steepness of the mountainside, many buildings have several floors both above
and below their road level entrance. Whether indoors or out, one is never
far from a place where one can look out over the southern vista. For flat-landers
it takes a while to adjust to this kind of urban layout, verticality and
topography but when one does, it becomes a renewing experience, giving a
shape to space and place of a kind different from that to which one is
accustomed. While necessarily there are some modern areas to the city, as
they are located on the plain at the foot of the mountainside, they do not
harm the integrity of the medieval city which one enters and leaves through
its gateway structures. Second,
almost every building, every wall and every road or stairway is constructed
of limestone. Mostly it is of various shades of grey but perhaps 10% is
pink, reflecting the mix in local quarries. Most ordinary houses, hotels and
shops are of a vernacular nature. Generations of masons have simply taken
the stone that is to hand and laid it in mortar in an uncoursed, random way
to make an everyday structure. As one walks and looks, there is a great
feeling of timeless stability; I noticed only one significant structural
crack. Every now and again a house stands out because it has been
purpose-designed with arches and pediments over the windows and doors and
the general masonry laid in straight, regular courses. One such just
opposite the hotel where I was staying, looked as though it had been taken
straight from the masonry section of Mitchell's Building Construction which
I studied in London when a young student. However, it subsequently occurred
to me that it was more likely that the authors of Mitchell would have
travelled round Europe recording what they saw and sorting examples into
categories for teaching and learning. If that were the case, building
knowledge would go from practice to book, rather than from book to practice.
Almost all roofs are covered with half-round clay pantiles brownish-red in
colour. Externally, visible timber-work is mainly the doors and the folding
shutters fitted to almost every window. The whole fabric of the city is
well-maintained. This is particularly noticeable in the pavings to the
squares, roads and external stairways. Loose or displaced stones were
encountered very infrequently. Thirdly,
I was taken by the way in which the city layout and the buildings and
structures combine to draw one into a whole tradition, a trad-eo, something
handed on from past generations to ours, and, one trusts, from ours to those
that will follow. Assisi, while small and comprehensible in terms of
geography, is long, connected and continuous in terms of its history. In
creating this perspective, it is important to remember that life didn't
begin with the medieval and with Christianity. An hour's drive from Assisi
to the city of Cortina showed us more clearly than in Assisi the earlier
Roman structures, temples and city gateways. Theology:
encountering SS Francis and Clare In
contrast to a built environment of continuity, Assisi confronted me with a
theology of acute, devastating discontinuity. The theology is that of St
Francis (1182-1226) and St Clare (1194-1253). A son and a
daughter of rich, well-to-do families they each set everything aside in
order to embrace lifestyles of near absolute poverty. Francis' father's
business was in textiles, including those of the richest colours. He
exchanged a career in business accountancy for having no money, and a
well-provisioned home for asking others for food, and his own doubtless rich
wardrobe for the simplest friar's habit. Clare had to face fierce opposition
from her father and family to her chosen way of life. Both Francis and
Clare exchanged the spaciousness of their family homes for the confines of
the caves, hermitages and cells in which they lived, or to which from time
to time they made pilgrimages. They exchanged the prospect of children of
their own for the embryonic religious communities which in time came to be
the Orders of, respectively, Francis and of Clare. It was, I suggest, the
freedom of poverty that gave Francis the space and simplicity to develop the
care for animals and love for air and water and sun and moon, and even of
the natural death of the body, which are expressed in his best known
canticles and prayers. And again it might not be implausible to think that
it was his love of poverty which enabled him to make 'peace' his greeting
for all whom he met, and what we in our more complex world, might call his
philosophy of life. Their theology, expressed through lifestyle. Is the
sharpest of discontinuities and contrasts with the life around them. Building-Theology
interface: religious buildings In
Assisi, as in many places, it is the churches and associated buildings that
bring building and theology into relationship and dialogue with each other. As one
approaches the city from the south and sees it stretching from west to east
along the hillside, one is immediately aware of the great Basilica of St
Francis at the western-most end. Francis' body was re-interred there in
1230. A partial consecration of the building took place in 1235, followed by
the full consecration in 1253. One of its key features is the fact that it
is composed of a Lower Church and an Upper Church. The former, containing
the tomb of Francis, I found to be low, heavy, dark and to some extent
oppressive. However, without that there would be no contrasting sense of
height, and light, and colour, as one climbs the steps and enters the Upper
Church. Christian theology has to live constantly and faithfully with the
inseparability of death and resurrection. This building embodies that
marvellously. The extensive frescos in the Upper Church link together the
Old Testament, the New Testament and events in the lives of Francis and
Clare. That reminded me of my own MPhil and PhD dissertations; perhaps
connecting our lives with the scriptures is something we all have to do in
some way or other. My
experience of the Basilica was enhanced by the fact that our guide was an
American member of the Tertiary Franciscan Order. While fully committed to
the ethos of Francis and Clare, the Tertiary men and women are able to
retain, in a spirit of stewardship, their marriages, partnerships, families,
professions, money and all the elements that make up modern life. That is
great because it is only inside the life of the world that some facets of
peace, joy, hope and practicality can be seen and celebrated. Worldwide,
most Franciscans are Roman Catholics, with a smaller Anglican community. It
was good to discover that in America there is a special Order of Ecumenical
(ie other than Roman Catholic or Anglican) Franciscan Tertiaries taking
their part in the work of, as they describe it, 'Celebrating God's presence
and grace in everything'. An
equally meaningful building for me was Santa Maria Maggiore, Assisi's
cathedral before 1096, a reminder that the Christian tradition here
pre-dates Francis and Clare, making them, like us, links in the long chain.
The interior of this basilica type church just worked for me. It is long and
high with a low pitch ceiling and side aisles formed with high arches. The
full-height apse is bare stone like the other buildings in the city with
just one small window at mid-height. The main walls are newly decorated in a
light colour and the extensive surviving parts of the frescos fully
restored. The modern transparent perspex lectern seemed in no way out of
place. The presence of the floor cleaner and some lighting technicians
represented for me – and to me – the generations of working people who
have served this place as part of their everyday jobs. At this
point I could chronicle our visits to half-a-dozen or more other churches
and try to comment on some of the marvellous frescos and other art works
housed by them. But that would be simply information that is readily
available in guide books and websites. Instead, I want to reflect on the
general sequence of events which seems to me to be as follows: -
the pre-Christian and Roman times -
first Christian footfalls -
the lifetimes of Francis and Clare in Assisi and its environs -
the small communities of brothers and sisters that gathered round them -
a strong desire by the communities to mark significant places in their lives
and the buildings that arose in connection with them -
the use of frescos and other media to record the stories and relate them to
biblical narratives In
response to this whole process tourists and pilgrims, including ourselves,
come to Assisi, visit the places, sense the buildings and view the pictures. One voice
in my head says that this has all become a travesty; it has lost touch with
the simplicity and poverty from which it started. Then another voice
suggests to me that if it had not been for all the Franciscan buildings and
art no one now would remember Francis and Clare and we would not be alerted
to the ways in which they responded to the conditions of their times; their
responses prompt us to ask about our responses to and in our times. Before
going to Assisi I read the World Bank publication Faith in Conservation: New
Approaches to Religion and the Environment. This tells how in 1985 in
Assisi, under the chairmanship of Prince Philip, representatives of
Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism, met to share their
faith-based insights on the need for the whole world to plan urgently for
the conservation of nature and natural resources. Built Environment as both
a conserver and consumer of resources is a small part of this scenario. As
he walked the city streets of Assisi and the wooded hills beyond it, Francis
knew that enjoying and valuing the sun's energy, the moon's light, the
water's purity, the animals' life and each person's own allotted time, are
essential parts of meaningful and responsible life. It is
good to note that in the year 2000, UNESCO listed Assisi as a World Heritage
City.
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In this
short paper, I have spoken first of Assisi much as one might speak of any
city. Second I
have spoken of Francis and Clare as one might speak of any two people
fiercely dedicated to a costly ideal Third I
have explored how this city and these people come together to create a
meaning beyond themselves, that can encompass our own times and point
towards a future in which what Francis, Clare and their companions loved and
believed in may come to have a yet more formative place.
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