On the Road with Francis of Assisi by Linda Bird Francke Page B

to Francis, some say even bowed to him, and repeated three times: “Francis, go, repair my house, which as you see, is falling completely to ruin.”
    Francis must have been ecstatic finally to get the clear order promised him in the dream he had had months before, and he took the order literally. Rebuild this crumbling church. So that was what he was meant to do. But how? The reconstruction would take money, more money than he had. Where would he get it? Of course! His father’s shop. “After fortifying himself with the sign of the holy cross, he arose, and when his horse was made ready, he mounted it,” writes Celano. “Taking with him scarlet cloth to sell, he quickly came to a city called Foligno.”
    Foligno surprises us. The once-thriving medieval market town nine miles east of Assisi (and strategically located at the crossroads of the ancient Via Flaminia and a secondary but equally vital trade road connecting the town to Spello, Perugia, and Assisi) is so universally trashed in our guidebooks as a dreary industrial, agricultural, and transportation center that we dread going there. But we find the valley city surprisingly inviting. It is a relief to be walking on flat pavement after our stiff climbs around the hill towns and a welcome change to be on wide, pedestrian-only streets and not dodging cars.
    Our goal in Foligno is to find the medieval marketplace where Francis sold the “scarlet” cloth he had taken from his father’s shop and the horse he had taken from his father’s stable. It takes awhile. The obvious starting point is Foligno’s unexpectedly charming main Piazza della Repubblica with its funky twelfth-century duomo, whose carved façade boasts a pagan panoply of animals and signs of the zodiac. We step inside the church to hear a small group of worshipers singing harmoniously in a side chapel, but we see no sign of Francis.
    The Piazza San Domenico, at the far end of the old town down a flag-lined shopping street and past a Benetton, seems more promising. The piazza is big enough for a marketplace; it is shaded by oak trees and close to an ancient city gate. It also has an unexpected treasure: the sunken, low, pink and white stone church of Santa Maria Infraportas, which bears a startling plaque identifying it as the “Mother Church of Foligno, established in 58 A.D. ” This church, too, is said to have pagan origins and to be the venue of a conversion sermon delivered to local animists by none other than St. Peter.
    Surely Francis visited this little Romanesque church, with its recycled columns supporting the sunken portico. At the risk of sounding otherworldly, we feel him there. What we neither feel nor find, however, is any indication that this is the piazza where he sold his father’s cloth and horse.
    We retrace our steps to the Piazza della Repubblica and find consolation in an elegant
pasticceria
along the Via Garibaldi. The unassuming doorway opens into a cheerfully lit ancient stone vault with modern yellow and burgundy fleurs-de-lis frescoed on its ceiling and arches, and glass cases displaying irresistible tarts and pastries. Regulars are gathering for their nightly card game, and while we drink our caffè latte we watch them share the news of the day with some degree of envy. Our appreciation of Foligno is heightened further by the
pasticceria
’s manager, who gives us a parting present from the overflowing shelves of chocolates wrapped in gleaming gold, blue, red, and green wrappers.
    And then, of course, we see it. In the Piazza della Repubblica. Over a candy store. A plaque, fifteen feet off the ground, identifying the piazza we’d started from two hours before as the site of Francis’s signature transaction. Though we feel somewhat like chumps, we are also grateful. If we’d seen the plaque right away, we would not have explored the old town and seen the hauntingly old Santa Maria Infraportas and discovered the
pasticceria
that so typifies the serendipitous wonders of