In The Ave Maria, of February 8, 1908, the noted Danish writer,
Johannes Jorgensen, tells of a visit to Assisi, and makes this
passing allusion to the singular phenomenon also alluded to in The
Diary of a Pilgrim: "Then there is the rose garden where the bushes
are strangely flecked as if with spots of blood." When the present
writer stood beside this little plot, in the early days of July,
1900, the roses were not in bloom--it was past their season in
Italy--but the bushes were in leaf, of course. Strictly speaking, it
is not the bushes that bear the flecks of red, but the roses and the
leaves. The impression made upon one is not soon effaced. It looks
for all the world as if those leaves had been sprinkled with blood.
Here and there a leaf seems to have caught a drop, a few, two or
three, which left a crimson stain, while most show a fleckless green.
But this is not the most striking phase of the phenomenon. It has
passed into a proverb that there is no rose without its thorn, though
Milton, in a flight of fancy, found in our lost paradise,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
But under the lovely sky of Italy and under the shadow of the Umbrian
hills, in fair Assisi, famed forever as the birthplace and early home
of the Poverello, grow roses without thorns. The writer felt the
bushes with his hand, and proved them thornless. What is more, our
little pilgrim group, of whom some have since gone on their long
pilgrimage, were told on that July day, seven years ago, by the Prior
of the Franciscan Monastery, a true son of Saint Francis if
appearances count for aught, that time and time again was the
experiment made of transplanting those bushes, and that they grew up
with thorns and with stainless leaves. Here is the legend, if legend
that can be called, which Nature seems to vouch for, copied from a
leaflet, enclosing a spray of the rose leaves now brown with the
years, which the writer brought with him from Assisi:
"One bitter winter's night, S. Francis being sorely tempted by the
devil to lessen his austerities, overcame the evil one by throwing
himself into a thicket of briers, and rolling himself in it till his
body was all torn and bleeding. At the same moment the briers were
changed into rose trees in full bloom, and a heavenly brightness
shone around, and angels came to lead S. Francis to the Church of the
Portiuncula, where Our Lord appeared to him in Person accompanied by
His Mother and a heavenly host, and granted him the Indulgence of the
Portiuncula. The miraculous rose bushes have no thorns, their leaves
are stained with spots like blood in May, and can be seen in the
Garden of the Friary adjoining the Portiuncula at the village of
Santa Maria degli Angeli which is close to the Station of Assisi in
Italy."