The Franciscan Conspiracy by John Sack

Author:John Sack
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935952305
Publisher: White Cloud Press

XXIV

BY THE FIRST WEEK of December, winter had settled over Assisi in earnest. The wind whistling through the covered windows of the room where Conrad read became a ceaseless wail, with all the spirits of heaven and earth joined in lamentable chorus. Monte Subasio and the surrounding hills rested in turbulent sleep.

Only the gloomiest light filtered through the translucent linen of the window frames, even at midday. Forced to read in the dim light cast by his candle and the fireplace, Conrad progressed slowly. Savage gusts hurled smoke back down the chimney, choking him with the bittersweet smell of the juniper branches a peasant woman delivered on her donkey each day.

He could have carried his manuscript at any time into the brighter hall where Amata and Pio studied, with its larger windows and chimney that drew cleanly, but the many strangers who passed through the house and the need for secrecy left him leery. On one occasion before he moved out of the house, Fra Federico had even strayed into Conrad’s room as he read. Conrad did his best to distract the friar, telling him of the new work, Tomas d’Aquino’s Summa Theologica, that he’d just read at the Sacro Convento, casually closing Celano’s manuscript behind his back as he chatted. Any traveling scholar would be intrigued—understandably—to come across no fewer than four books in the house of a lay woman, be she noble or not. Books of any sort. Banned manuscripts would be extremely interesting. So Conrad kept to himself, grappling with the smoke and poor light, rubbing his stinging eyes in the privacy of his room.

He knew the history of Celano’s legends from his talks with Leo. After San Francesco’s death, the brotherhood assumed that the saint’s secretary would be named to write the hagiography. No one had been closer to Francesco, and Leo’s plain, unadorned style matched his master’s austere life. But Elias and Cardinal Ugolino instead chose Fra Tomas da Celano for the task, even though the friar had never met Francesco and had spent most of his religious career in Germany. Tomas had composed a stately hymn of death and judgment, the Dies Irae, demonstrating that he could write eloquently. But as one who had no personal knowledge of Francesco, he’d had to rely for information on the head of the Order who commissioned his task—Fra Elias. Not surprisingly, Elias played a prominent role in Tomas’ work—so much so, that after the minister general’s disgrace and excommunication, a later general, Fra Crescentius, asked Tomas to write a second legend in which Elias wasn’t mentioned once. To help Tomas with this second work, Crescentius asked all the friars who had known Francesco to write down their recollections—and thus the Legend of the Three Companions came to be.

Conrad started his search through Tomas with the first line of the first chapter. He wanted to take no chances of missing his clue, the words that marked “the start of blindness.” He read a story of a blind woman whom Francesco had healed, but nothing in that account struck a chord with Leo’s phrase.

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