A Trip to Assisi, the Land of Saint Francis

Another summer, another workshop of Renaissance polyphony. This year, it's Assisi, Italy. The repertoire is yummy: Palestrina, Victoria, Josquin, Richafort, Clemens, Morales, Gesualdo.

I have never been particularly drawn to St. Francis. The Pope taking the monk's name was the first tangible sign that he would try to bring a sense of simplicity  and sanity back to that exalted office, which much of the world found encouraging.

The Feast of St. Francis means the blessing of the animals in many Catholic & Protestant churches, because of the monk's association with nature.

To prep for my trip I read Chesterton's appreciation of the saint, and found that he tried to reestablish the seriousness of the Friar, and save him from the Disney-fication that is easy to do when nature is invoked. Case in point: the drawing below looks like it's right out of Enchanted, with Amy Adams just out of the frame.

"St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and Scott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague.

"In short, the hermit might love nature as a background. Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting,  in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man." G. K. Chesterton

The other thing that I learned is that Wiki says that "The Prayer of Saint Francis," which most of contemporary Christendom knows well because of its hymn setting, is not from Francis's writings at all. There is no record of it before 1912, in French! 

It's one of those odd cultural mistakes. It's a shame, because it does "sound" like the teachings of Francis, so I doubt he minds the error.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

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Westminster Abbey Choir, singing the hymn at Lady Diana's funeral.

 Mapeel     8/06/2014     Italy, Travel