The Story of Assisi

All who ascend the hill of the Seraphic City must feel its indescribable charm—intangible, mysterious, and quite distinct from the beauty of the Umbrian valley. "Why," we ask ourselves, "this stillness and sense of marvellous peace in every church and every street?" And, as though conscious of our thoughts, a young Assisan, with a gesture of infinite sadness towards the large, desolate palaces and broad deserted streets, said, as we lingered on our way: "Ah! Signore mie, our city is a city of the dead—of memories only." As he spoke a long procession of a grey-clothed confraternity, bearing on their breasts the franciscan badge, preceded by a priest who walked beneath a baldachino, streamed out of a small church. Slowly they passed down the road, and then the priest turned into a wayside cottage where lay a dying woman, while the others waited outside under the olive trees. But the sound of their chanting and the tinkling of the small bell came to us as we leaned over the city walls. Of a truth we felt the religious life of the town was not dead: perchance, down those streets, now so still, men had passed along to battle during the sad turmoil of the middle ages, had hated and loved as well as prayed, with all the fervour of their southern nature. We must turn to the early chroniclers to find in their fascinating pages that Assisi has had her passionate past and her hours of deepest trial.

Her origin goes back to the days when the Umbrians, one of the most ancient people of Italy, inhabited the country north and south of the Tiber, and lived a wild life in caves. But the past is very dim; some Umbrian inscriptions, a few flint arrow heads, and some hatchets made of jade found on the shore of lake Thrasymene are the only records we possess of these early settlers.

If written history of their ways and origin is lacking, the later chroniclers of Assisi endeavour to supply with their gossip, what is missing. Rambling and strange as their legends often seem to us, nevertheless they contain a germ of truth, an image, faint but partly true of a time so infinitely far away. Most of the local Umbrian historians have awarded the honour of the foundation of their own particular town to the earliest heroes whom they happen to know of, and these are invariably Noah and his family. It is, therefore, curious to note that the Assisan chroniclers have departed from this custom and have woven for themselves a legend so different from the usual friar's tale: "Various are the opinions," says one of them, "concerning the first building of our city; but the most probable, and the most universally accepted by serious writers, is the one which gives Dardanus as her founder. In the year 713 after the Deluge, and 865 years before the foundation of Rome, the first civil war in Italy broke out between the brothers Jasius and Dardanus, both sons of Electra; but the father of Jasius was Jupiter, while Dardanus was the son of Corythus, King of Cortona." The people of Umbria took sides, as some would have it that Jasius ought to be king in the place of the dead prince Corythus. Now it happened that Dardanus had pitched his tent on the slope of Mount Subasio, when a dream came to him that Jupiter and Minerva were preparing to assail the enemy, and that Jasius would be vanquished. On waking he determined, should his dream be true, to raise a temple to the goddess on the spot where he had slept. He went forth to battle, and with the help of the goddess drove the enemy back with great slaughter; Jasius was killed and they buried him on the field of battle. "Full well did Dardanus keep his vow, for in a few months there arose a wonderful building, now known as the sacred temple, dedicated to the true Minerva of Heaven, under the name of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Thus it is that the country round Assisi has been called Palladios agros, the fields of Pallas."