Simone Weil’s Visit to Assisi

Simone Weil’s 1937 visit to Assisi was an early turning point in her movement toward Christianity: in a chapel associated with Francis, she found herself kneeling for the first time, an experience the book presents as the beginning of a previously hidden Christian piety.

Background and Visit

After recovering from a serious burn sustained during the Spanish Civil War, Weil’s parents took her on vacations to Switzerland and Italy. During the Italian trip, she spent what she called “two marvelous days” in Assisi and visited the chapel where Francis had prayed. The account situates the visit within a family journey, rather than describing it as a formal conversion or a planned religious undertaking.

The First Kneeling

At the chapel, Weil said that “something stronger than I was compelled me for the first time…to go down on my knees.” The significance lies in the unprecedented gesture: the visit did not simply add a religious destination to her travels, but brought forth a response she had not previously experienced. The narrative describes this as the emergence of a Christian piety that had been hidden within her.

Place in Her Spiritual Development

The Assisi experience was one moment in a gradual movement, not the culmination of Weil’s religious life. The book connects it with her later stay at Solesmes, where she attended the Easter liturgy and had a further decisive mystical experience. In retrospect, the experiences in Assisi and Solesmes, alongside an earlier experience in Portugal, created an openness to God; her spiritual life would deepen further through the attentive recitation of the Our Father.

Significance

Assisi matters in Weil’s story as an early threshold: an encounter with a place of prayer prompted an inward religious response before the later experiences through which her Christian orientation became more pronounced. The account preserves both the force and the limits of the moment. Weil’s first kneeling signals a change, but the book presents her spiritual development as continuing beyond the visit.