rent called Tescio, there was brought to Assisi, after much
consideration, as the best of all that were then to be found, one
Maestro Jacopo Tedesco. He, having considered the site and grasped the
wishes of the fathers, who held thereunto a general Chapter in Assisi,
designed a very beautiful body of a church and convent, making in the
model three tiers, one to be made underground and the others for two
churches, one of which, on the lower level, should serve as a court,
with a fairly large portico round it, and the other for a church;
planning that from the first one should climb to the second by a most
convenient flight of steps, which should wind round the principal
chapel, opening out into two parts in order to lead more easily into the
second church, to which he gave the form of a [Symbol: T], making it
five times as long as it is broad and dividing one bay from another with
great piers of stone, on which he afterwards threw very bold arches,
with groined vaulting between one and another. From a model so made,
then, was built this truly very great edifice, and it was followed in
every part, save in the buttresses above that had to surround the apse
and the principal chapel, and in making the vaulting groined, because
they did not make it as has been said, but barrel-shaped, in order that
it might be stronger. Next, in front of the principal chapel of the
lower church, they placed the altar, and under that, when it was
finished, they laid, with most solemn translation, the body of S.
Francis. And because the true sepulchre which holds the body of the
glorious Saint is in the first--that is, in the lowest church--where no
one ever goes, and the doors are walled up, round the said altar there
are very large gratings of iron, with rich ornaments in marble and
mosaic, that look down therein. This building is flanked on one of the
sides by two sacristies, and by a very high campanile, namely, five
times as high as it is broad. It had on top a very high octagonal spire,
but this was removed because it threatened to fall. This whole work was
brought to a finish in the space of four years, and no more, by the
genius of Maestro Jacopo Tedesco and by the solicitude of Frate Elia,
after whose death, to the end that such a pile might never through any
lapse of time fall into ruin, there were built round the lower church
twelve very stout towers, and in each of these a spiral staircase that
climbs from the ground up to the summit.