Those who visit the Franciscan sites in the Rieti Valley will also visit Fonte Colombo. Next to the monastery there is a small chapel dedicated to St. Magdalene, which dates back to the time of St. Francis. If you then go into the silence of the small semi-dark interior, after a while you will discover in a window niche an already somewhat blurred sign of the cross in the form of the so-called Tau. Following the tradition, it was drawn by Francis himself. That this particular sign was familiar to Francis is reported to us, among others, by an eyewitness and biographer, Thomas of Celano: „Familiar to him above all other letters was the sign of the Tau; with it alone he used to authenticate his epistles; with it he painted the walls of the cells everywhere.“ (3C3, cf. 3C159) Thus, the Tau sign had a special meaning for the saint, so that he used it quasi like his personal seal. Since the Tau was actually a letter from the Hebrew and Greek alphabets, but Francis was by no means proficient in these languages, the meaning of this sign must have grown on him from other contexts and source. First, he certainly encountered the Tau in a religious order of his time, the Antonites. The Antonite Order was founded in 1095 and was named after the Egyptian monk and hermit Anthony. The order cared for the sick who suffered from the so-called Antony’s fire and later lepers. They were widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages and their emblem was the Tau. From historical sources we know that Francis, when he was in Rome, often found lodging in their hospice. Indeed, Francis himself tells us in his Testament of his decisive conversion in his encounter with the lepers, and in the early days of his fraternity he and his brothers usually lived in or near leper hospices, which were often run by the Antonites. The sign Tau is thus related to the care of lepers, of whom Francis became a special friend (cf. Gef 11). Further, Francis was probably inspired by the IV Lateran Council. In his homily at the opening of the Council on November 11, 1215, Pope Innocent the III commented from the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 9 and especially the phrase „But of those who have the T on their foreheads, you must not touch any (verse 6),“ and he declared, „Mercy is granted to those who wear the Tau, a sign of repentance and renewal of life in Christ.“ Again, these words also apply to the conversion experience of Francis, who confesses, „Thus the Lord gave me, the brother Francis, to begin the life of repentance: For when I was in sins, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord himself led me among them, and I showed them mercy.“ (Testament 1-2) Tragically, Innocent III then reinterpreted the text and applied it to the Crusaders, who will experience mercy if they prove to be „champions of the Tau“ and execute God’s judgment. As early as the tragically ended Children’s Crusade of 1212, the Tau was reinterpreted as a sign of the executors of God’s will. Francis may have experienced this as well, we do not know. However, he himself became a champion of the Tau in his Gospel way, going into the Muslim encampment without weapons to peacefully profess his faith before the Sultan. Francis was probably aware that the Tau has a biblical reference and is above all a sign of liberation related to the Exodus of Israel (cf. Ex 12:7) and was interpreted by the medieval interpretations of the Talmud as a sign of completion, a seal of belonging to God, of conversion and an eschatological sign. Likewise, the Tau was known to be the scriptural sign for the number 300 and were interpreted by the Christian church fathers in connection with various scriptural texts. For example, Noah’s ark is said to have been 300 cubits long (cf. Gen. 6-9), or Gideon defeated Israel’s enemies with 300 men (cf. Judges 7), and Magdalene wasted 300 denarii to anoint Jesus (cf. John 12:3-8). Also, in John’s Revelation, the angel of the sixth seal was depicted by the Fathers as marking the redeemed with a sign similar to Tau. The numeral sign Tau was thus interpreted on the basis of these texts as a sign of redemption, salvation and loving devotion. This may have been known to Francis from the liturgy and homilies. In addition, the Tau also appeared in the widely read narrative of the Greek Odyssey. In this tale, Ulysses was tied to the mast tree of his ship for his own salvation, and this in turn was in the form of a Tau. The mast tree as the tree of salvation was then seen in Christian literature in the cross. The original cross, as used by the Romans for crucifixions, also had the shape of the Tau. The shape we know today comes later, as the nameplate placed on the Tau cross by Pontius Pilate is now shown as an extension of the longitudinal beam. For Francis, however, the Tau was still a representation of the cross and as such he makes it his sign of identification and by designating as much as possible with the Tau he places everything under the redeeming cross, the sign of God’s love for the world.
*** Translated with the help of http://www.DeepL.com/Translator ***
Franciscan Note 