The guide of Assisi by the pilgrim, the tourist, the traveller

The Franciscan Tau

When he arrives in front of the entry of the superior Basilica in Assisi, on the lawn of the hill Heaven, is seen "written" on a hedge a big symbol of the Tau.

The Tau is the last letter of the Jewish alphabet.

The Tau is quoted in the Bible as symbol of the Divine salvation in what who is marked with the Tau he/she will be saved:

"The God told him: It passes in the middle of the city, in the middle of Jerusalem and it marks a tau on the forehead of the men that they and they cry for all the abominations that end you"

(Ezechiele 9-4)

St. Francis loved this letter with which He was accustomed to open or to close his letters so much that:

"He had a great veneration and affection for the sign of the Tau.

He often recommended it in to speak and He wrote it of own hand under the letters that He sent"

(FF 1079)

For St. Francis the Tau had many meanings:

The Tau remembered Him the Cross and the redemption from the sin.

And for St. Francis that was defined as "One saved by the love and by the mercy of God" the Cross was the most greater symbol to love and to revere in Earth.

Besides the Tau was for St. Francis the concrete sign of the salvation and of the victory of God (Christ) on the evil.

Here is the why of a choice that otherwise we could seem "eccentric."