The former is not otherwise mentioned in his biographies.[27] As to the second, it was to become the true cradle of the Franciscan movement.
This chapel, still standing at the present day after escaping revolutions and earthquakes, is a true Bethel, one of those rare spots in the world on which rests the mystic ladder which joins heaven to earth; there were dreamed some of the noblest dreams which have soothed the pains of humanity.

It is not to Assisi in its marvellous basilica that one must go to divine and comprehend St.Francis; he must turn his steps to Santa Maria degli Angeli at the hours when the stated prayers cease, at the moment when the evening shadows lengthen, when all the fripperies of worship disappear in the obscurity, when all the nation seems to collect itself to listen to the chime of the distant church bells.

Doubtless it was Francis's plan to settle there as a hermit.

He dreamed of passing his life there in meditation and silence, keeping up the little church and from time to time inviting a priest there to say mass.

Nothing as yet suggested to him that he was in the end to become a religious founder.