“This singular convent, which stands on the cliffs of a lofty Apennine, was built by St. Francis himself, and is celebrated for the miracle which the motto records. Here reigns all the terrible of nature⁠—a rocky mountain, a ruin of the elements, broken, sawn, and piled in sublime confusion⁠—precipices crowned with old, gloomy, visionary woods⁠—black chasms in the rock where curiosity shudders to look down⁠—haunted caverns, sanctified by miraculous crosses⁠—long excavated stairs that restore you to daylight.⁠ ⁠… On entering the Chapel of the Stigmata, we caught the religion of the place; we knelt round the rail, and gazed with a kind of local devotion at the holy spot where St. Francis received the five wounds of Christ. The whole hill is legendary ground. Here the Seraphic Father was saluted by two crows which still haunt the convent; there the Devil hurled him down a precipice, yet was not permitted to bruise a bone of him.”

↩