The Rule of St. Francis and those 40 days of fasting

An ancient yet timeless piece of writing, a precious testimony of that absolute love that leads us to abandon the past to embrace the future. At the same time, a unique and absolutely unprecedented cultural proposal for a world premiere scheduled on October 22th.
That’s what Solet Annuere is, the Letter with bula (lat. seal) which Pope Honorius III issued to comply with the desire and mission of St. Francis, confirming the Rule of the Order.
Regarded as one of the most precious historical documents of the Order, the Letter is conserved in the Lower St. Francis Basilica, in Assisi. It is commonly believed that the Saint dictated the content of the Rule to his confessor Friar Leo after 40 days of fasting, while he was in Fontecolombo, a remote site in the Rieti area where one of the four sanctuaries of the Franciscan path still stands today. It was October 1223 and St. Francis had withdrawn in a cave meditating about the rules on which his order would be founded. From there the Rule traveled to Rome where, on the following 29 November it obtained the papal approval which in fact established the birth of the Franciscans.
Solet Annuere represents for the faithful devoted to the Saint, but also for lovers of medieval history, the precious testimony of the life of one of the most fascinating and charismatic figures of the Catholic Church, capable of attracting followers wherever he went spreading the Gospel. St. Francis is also the main character of one of the most poignant Cantiche of the Divine Comedy: the Canto XI of Paradise in which Tommaso D'Aquino celebrates his life in a crescendo of admiration.

It is certainly no coincidence, therefore, that the online event La vera voce di San Francesco will take place just on October 22th, timing the crucial days of the drafting of the Rule in 1223. During the web event, the only two surviving autographed manuscripts of the Saint will be revealed in the first perfect replicas produced with absolute, scientific and philological accuracy by Scrinium, for a research project that involved Prof. Attilio Bartoli Langeli, one of the leading international paleographer.
Joining La vera voce di San Francesco will be like traveling back to a remote past, living a unique event that, in a sense, is also a celebration and an opportunity to see rare treasures of Christianity revealed to a selected audience.