Vacation/Travel Supplement

A tale of two cities: Rome and Assisi show diversity and unity in faith

As sunlight shimmers through the falling water, a visitor to St. Peter’s Square in Rome dips his hand into a fountain designed and built by Carlo Maderno in 1613.

By Sean Gallagher

ROME AND ASSISI, ITALY—Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities centers on London and Paris.

The book contrasts the quiet nature of the English capital in the late 18th century with the revolutionary atmosphere present in Paris at the same time.

Visiting both Rome and Assisi today is a similar tale of two cities because the communities are a study in contrasts.

Rome is a bustling city with a population that nearly equals the entire state of Indiana.

Assisi is a quiet hilltop town in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains.

Yet the two Italian communities are bound together by the Catholic faith that has been lived out heroically by so many residents across the centuries as well as an even longer history tying the two to the history of the Roman republic and later empire.

Although I prefer the stillness of Assisi to the brashness of Rome, I wouldn’t miss a visit to the Eternal City on a trip to Italy.

Rome: Where old is relative

Why is Rome known as the “Eternal City” throughout the world?

The credit lies in part because it was established more than 2,700 years ago.

For nearly two millennia, Rome has also been the heart of the Catholic Church, which proclaims a timeless Gospel.

The sheer weight of Rome’s history can easily overwhelm American visitors.

Upon entering the Basilica of St. Mary Major, for example, visitors can admire beautiful gilded adornments that were added 400 or more years ago, nearly two centuries before the United States came into existence.

And yet the church building that houses those massive Counter Reformation-era altars and statues was constructed a full 1,000 years earlier.

Travel across town a little ways to the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, and view ruins that pre-date the birth of Christ, making the 1,500-year-old Basilica of St. Mary Major look young by comparison.

At one end of the Roman Forum are the massive ruins of the Coliseum, which was built more than 1,900 years ago. Christian pilgrims visit it because it was the place where many of the city’s first believers gave their lives in witness to the Gospel.

The Basilica of St. Mary Major is a good example of how one age of history sets itself upon earlier periods in Rome.

To see ancient, untouched and intact structures in Rome, some “digging” may be required. The search, however, is well worth the trouble.

The Basilica of Santa Sabina sits atop the Aventine Hill in Rome. It was built in the fifth century in the style of Roman administrative buildings, which were known as basilicas. It is rectangular with a semi-circular apse at one end.

Its overall design is much like that of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Indianapolis, which was modeled after the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.

The 24 majestic columns that stand in two rows along the sides of the main body of the Basilica of Santa Sabina were originally in a nearby pagan temple.

Since the 13th century, Dominican friars have cared for the church. St. Dominic—and later St. Thomas Aquinas—lived in the adjoining friary.

By and large, Santa Sabina has retained the look that it had when it was completed some 1,500 years ago. So stepping into it is like entering a church where Pope St. Leo the Great may have preached one of his famous sermons.

Popes still come to this church every year on Ash Wednesday to celebrate Mass, which includes the imposition of ashes on the faithful who gather there.

Those who travel to Rome today can visit what an ancient tradition holds is the home of one of the first popes, St. Clement, who lived in the late first century. He likely gathered other Christians there for worship.

These ruins are found below the current Basilica of San Clemente built in the 12th century. It replaced a fourth-century structure that was burned in 1084 by invading Normans.

Also found below San Clemente are the ruins of a pagan temple of Mithra built after the time of Pope St. Clement, but before the construction of the fourth-century church dedicated to him.

Visits by Catholic newcomers to Rome should include the better known sites, such as St. Peter’s Basilica, the nearby Vatican Museum and the other major basilicas: St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran—don’t miss viewing its baptistery—and St. Mary Major.

All these churches, to varying degrees, have a number of layers of history upon them. Visit them. Then try if you can to view some of the lesser known places that also are integral to the history of the Catholic Church.

Assisi: A world apart

When visitors travel from Rome to Assisi, they are first confronted by massive amounts of advertising posters as they leave the Eternal City.

That, combined with snarled or fast-moving traffic or crowded train stations, can make it hard for visitors to Rome to relax and spend time in quiet reflection.

On the way to Assisi, however, that hectic pace will gradually change to a rural lifestyle. When traveling outside Rome to the northeast, rolling hills and lush green countryside start to take over.

Larger hills rise near the approach to the home of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi. At the hilltop town, the fevered hubbub of Rome has long been left behind in this world apart.

While taking in the beauty of the natural world and noticing the steep streets of the town—which seem to have allowed the hill to be as it is rather than shaping it to human demands—it is easy to see how St. Francis became enamored with nature and quickly discerned the presence of God in it.

Arguably the two most famous churches in the town—the Basilicas of Santa Clara and San Francesco—are the product of the robust spiritual movement spawned by these two early 13th-century saints.

These basilicas are gems that visitors to Assisi must take time to tour and spend time in prayer. The churches seem to invite visitors to become pilgrims instead of tourists.

This is in part due to the fact that all photography—even without a flash—is prohibited inside the basilicas. An atmosphere of reverent silence is vigilantly maintained in the churches.

To see a part of Assisi that dates back to the time when Francis and Clare were just awakening to the destinies that God had in store for them, a visit to the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva is a good choice.

It’s a small church, which seats probably 300 people at the most, just off a small square in the middle of Assisi.

Its name is derived from the fact that it was built over a former temple to the pagan goddess Minerva. The columns on the façade of the church were used in the temple and pre-date the time of Christ.

Although the interior of the church dates mainly from a few centuries after the time of Assisi’s famous saints, its façade is portrayed in one installment of a series of frescoes by Giotto in the Basilica of San Francesco that tell the story of St. Francis.

Standing at one side of the plaza in front of the Basilica of San Francesco, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels is visible in the valley.

A trip to this large Reformation-era church is a treat. Inside it, visitors are immediately struck by the presence of another smaller church at its center that seats no more than a dozen or so worshippers.

It is the “porziuncula,” the “little portion,” given to St. Francis and his first followers by a community of Benedictine monks.

St. Francis had rebuilt it and other small churches in the area. It is said that his reconstruction projects were inspired when, after he had been praying before a crucifix in the Church of San Damiano, he received a message from Christ to “Rebuild my church.”

It was only later that St. Francis learned of the broader mission to renew the Church that Christ had in mind for him.

Bringing the two together

St. Francis in part became enlightened about this plan when he walked some 100 miles to Rome in 1209 with 11 companions to seek approval for his fledgling order from Pope Innocent III at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

It is said that the pontiff initially rebuffed him. But that night, Pope Innocent had a dream in which a small man in raggedy clothes kept a large crumbling church building standing by placing his back against one of its walls.

The man in the pope’s dream was St. Francis.

Pope Innocent, arguably the most influential man in Europe at the time, was struck by the simple faith of this little man from a hilltop town.

St. Francis and his followers, in turn, strove mightily in all the places where they traveled to aid the pope in his proclamation of the Gospel.

Today, Catholic visitors to Rome and Assisi can find much spiritual enrichment in both places.

In some ways, the tale of these two cities is the story of the Catholic faith in microcosm. For just as there are many vivid differences between Rome and Assisi, there is also a great diversity in the Catholic faithful around the world.

It is the changelessness and timeless of Christ and his Gospel, however, that brings these cities and all the faithful together as one. †