A Basket of Fish, Volume Two

“If you are driven out on one side, come back in on the other.” — Francis, of the Porziuncola, as told by Thomas of Celano

When Francis died in 1226, his brothers were left with a small stone chapel that belonged to someone else, a few huts of mud and branches, and one command: never abandon this place. They never did.

Volume Two follows the Porziuncola through eight centuries: the Spirituals who made it a banner for poverty, the long struggle to prove a pardon that had no document, the reformers in wooden clogs, and the vast basilica that Pius V ordered built around the chapel without touching a stone of it. It tells of Napoleon’s soldiers, the night in 1832 when the nave fell and the little chapel stood, the golden Madonna raised in 1930, the refugees hidden in Assisi during the war, and the popes who came to pray for peace, ending in 2026 with the eight hundredth anniversary of the death of Francis.

With new translations of the early texts, a timeline, a guide to people and terms, a walking tour of the basilica, and an index to both volumes.