The Times Magazine 41here is already a buzzing heat at
8am as I climb into the passenger
seat of the rented Fiat that my
husband is driving. We are heading
for Assisi on the trail of St Francis,
whom Pope John Paul II declared
in 1979 to be the Patron Saint of
Ecology. I tell my husband it is
about an hour’s drive, although it turns
out to be three.
It is the week that Boris Johnson is
elected prime minister. Meanwhile I am
drawn to the quiet of a 13th-century monk,
who considered himself the lowliest of men
and was regarded by pilgrims as Christ-like.
I have been to Assisi before. My former
boss, the proprietor of the London Evening
Standard, Evgeny Lebedev, had a castle on
a hill above the city. His weekend salons
ferried guests between this fabulous castle
near Perugia and his palazzo in Umbria.
It was my job as editor of the newspaper
to deliver Boris Johnson to these weekends.
The preparations were elaborate, and our
welcoming party would breathe more deeply
when our cars finally accelerated up the
avenue of cypresses, taking in the jasmine
air, and preparing for a weekend of medieval
splendour; feasting, dancing, boar hunting.
I have a memory of a dishevelled Johnson
chasing Evgeny’s wolf, also named Boris,
because it had eaten his computer dongle.
Evgeny’s castle was gorgeously attired,
with the finest furniture, fabrics and art- a mixture of religious, historical and
contemporary profane. It was the kind of
home that would have been familiar to
Francis of Assisi, before his conversion. He
was the son of a wealthy merchant; a knight
and aesthete. But he gave all this up for
penitence and self-mortification.
First, Francis sought permission from
the Pope to set up a fraternity, originally
in an abandoned shed by a stream. Towards
the end of his life in 1225, Francis retreated
to a hermit cell. Almost totally blind, he
called for the sound of a lute. He returned
to Assisi, dressed in sackcloth, and was
sprinkled with ashes. On a Saturday evening
just before nightfall in 1226, a flock of
larks circled the cell. He died, aged 44,
surrounded by his favourite birds.
By the time we get to Assisi it is oven
hot. We create a scene as we try fruitlessly
to extract the parking ticket from the
machine and I helpfully describe to my
husband the irritation of the queue behind
us. Also I am hungry, and looking for coffee
and breakfast. I construct my day around
appetite rather than prayer. We walk up
a steep, flagged, grey path past limestone
buildings. In the square of the basilica, I spot
Father Daniel Quackenbush, the Franciscan
monk I have come to meet; I notice him
because of his stillness rather than his activity.
When everyone is talking and waving, a figure
who is motionless stands out.
Father Daniel is from New York but has
been a Franciscan priest since 1981. He is tall,
thin, bespectacled. His beard is greying, his
eyes kind and his manner calm. He says that
there is a private room where we can talk,
but first he leads me, through pink limestone
arches and gleamingly worn flagstone
passages, to look down at the view. The
Basilica di San Francesco in the old city of
Assisi still worries some Franciscans. Is it too
grand for a saint who preached simplicity?
Father Daniel’s daily pleasure is a walk
through the surrounding countryside. Trees
and birdsong bring him close to St Francis.
We find a small, plain room where we can
talk, with a table, four chairs and a portrait
of St Francis on the wall. I ask Father Daniel
how it is that Assisi still attracts five million
visitors a year, many of them pilgrims. He
replies that St Francis was authentic and the
encounter feels personal. He pauses and then
says there is something else. He believes that
the yearning for meaning is profound and
that the secular world does not lead to
contentment. “People live as if God did
not exist,” he says. He is shocked by our
ingratitude towards Creation, our carelessness
towards the environment and our distorted
values. “We look for pleasure in all the wrong
places,” he sighs.
Around the friary, a canopy of holm oaktrees forms a congregation of nature.
I breathe in the treetop air and the
silence. But it is also bleak. Nothing was too
uncomfortable for St Francis. His bed was a
slab of rock in a small cell. Often he would
withdraw further into the woods into a cave
that you could not stand up in. Its tunnel
opening is today blocked by iron bars, but
you can peer into the dark, dank hermit
space. There is a cast-iron statue of him
sleeping on the stony ground, hard stones for
a pillow, his worn feet bare. His hands are
behind his head, his expression exhausted.
I wish I could slip a pillow under his neck.
At the end of his life, foreshortened by the
pain he chose, he asked a friend for cookies
as his last meal. Cookies! My last meal would
include spaghetti vongole and chocolate tart.
I would want a wine list. I remembered the
many-course dinners at Evgeny Lebedev’s
castle: the caviar and delicate fish courses,
the goblets of champagne and wine. All this
St Francis shrugged off.
The following night, we drive to a
hilltop restaurant for dinner, in a converted
monastery. The thick stone walls and plain
wooden floors are simple but the restaurant
is for the wealthy. The menu is meat. Only.
The first course Tuscan ham. The second an
enormous blood-soaked steak, accompanied
by potatoes. We gorge ourselves on the
thick meaty chunks and after-taste of fat.
We clink wine glasses, smeared with the
grease from our lips.
I sleep badly that night, my wine-soaked,
throbbing mind chasing thoughts. In the
morning I am out of sorts. My body cries
out for cleansing. For the first time in my
life, I decide to fast for the day. I eat one
peach, dripping juice onto the ground as
I walk barefoot across the grass, and after
that just water or herbal tea. By night-time,
my stomach is indignantly empty and I go
to bed early. I wake before dawn, and look
out of the window. A mist is rising over the
blue green hills. The birds are rehearsing.
My head is as clear as a bell. The popular
five-two diet is based on the monastic
principle that fasting cleanses, body
and spirit. I can at least learn from that.
St Francis’s hardships were founded on
humility rather than recovering from
a hangover. But the lesson has some
transference. Excess will not make us happy.
We need much less than we think we do. nThe Interior Silence by Sarah Sands is
published by Short Books on March 11 (£12.99)T
‘I REMEMBERED LEBEDEV’S DINNERS: CAVIAR,
DELICATE FISH, GOBLETS OF CHAMPAGNE AND WINE’
With her husband, Kim Fletcher, 2007EXTRACT