During this Jubilee year of St. Francis, commemorating 800 years since the death of the saint on the evening of October 3, 1226, we can point out the role played by the Benedictines in the founding of the Franciscan order.
The small Portiuncula chapel as it stands today within the walls of the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
During the early years of St. Francis’ new way of life devoted to Lady Poverty, he was an itinerant beggar with no place to rest his head. Recognizing the special mission of St. Francis, the Benedictine monks of Mount Subasio granted him and his first companions the use of the Portiuncula, a very small 9th-century chapel in the valley below Assisi.
As St. Francis was committed to absolute poverty, he refused to accept ownership of the Portiuncula, but instead established a symbolic agreement, whereby the Franciscans would pay the Benedictines an annual rent of a basket of fish from the nearby river. In return, the Benedictine monks would send the Franciscan friars a jar of oil. It was at the Portiuncula that Francis received Clare of Assisi into the religious life to launch the Poor Clares, and gathered his friars for their annual General Chapters to organize their mission. By supplying the physical sacred spaces where Franciscan spirituality could take root without violating Francis’s strict vow of lady poverty, the Order of Saint Benedict served as an indispensable guardian to the birth of the Franciscan Order.
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