Begging for Stones

The church Francis rebuilt with begged stones, and the house where Clare lived for forty years.

In the years around 1205, a young man of Assisi knelt in a crumbling church below the city walls, and the painted cross above the altar spoke to him: “Francis, go and repair my house.” He took the words at face value. He went up into the streets of Assisi and begged, not for bread, but for stones.

The little church he rebuilt became the home of Clare of Assisi and her sisters for more than forty years. Here Clare defended the right to own nothing against cardinals and popes, faced down soldiers at the door, and wrote the first rule for religious women ever written by a woman. Here Francis, sick and nearly blind, composed his Canticle of Brother Sun.

Drawing on the sworn testimony of Clare’s own sisters and the earliest lives of Francis, Begging for Stones tells the whole story of San Damiano, from a forgotten country priory to the eight hundredth anniversary of 2026.