We learn from the Canticle of Creatures, composed by St Francis 800 years ago, that it is with the heart, not the eye, that we ‘see’ the world in all its wonder and glory

The librarian, after pulling numerous volumes from the shelves, pointed to an unimpressive box on top of a little table in the middle of the small room. A big smile on his face, he said: “You know what this is, don’t you?” Inside was a very old manuscript bound in leather with metal clasps: Assisi Bibl. Comm. Ms. 338. Collated during the mid-thirteenth ­century, it is a Franciscan jewel. It contains some of the earliest transcriptions of ­documents from the origins of the Franciscan Order. Most remarkably, bound within it is the earliest surviving copy of St Francis’ Canticle of Creatures.

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