Why the Tau?

The TAU is the sign with which St. Francis of Assisi loved signing his letters and blessings. Indeed, the TAU, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is indicated in the Bible as a symbol of salvation.

In the book of Ezekiel and in Revelation it is a prophetic sign of redemption through the Cross of Christ.

“The Lord said: go throughout the city of Jerusalem and mark the TAU on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament.” (Ezek. 9.4).

“It is a sign of powerful protection against evil …” (Ez.9, 6).

The love for the TAU was a love that sprang from a passionate reverence for the holy cross, for the humility of Christ, the subject of ongoing meditations of Saint Francis.

For St. Francis, the TAU was also the concrete sign of his salvation and of the victory of Christ over evil.

Below is the Blessing of Brother Leo written by St Francis in his own hand and signed with the TAU.

 

 

The Franciscans (OFM) of the Province of Great Britain write,

The letter TAU occurs in both the Greek and Hebrew alphabets and corresponds to our letter T: in Greek it is the nineteenth letter and shaped very much like our T, whereas in Hebrew it is the twenty-third — that is the last — letter and has a different shape, but is sometimes represented by a cross. St Francis adopted this sign and used it frequently in his writings, on the walls of places where he stayed, and on himself when he initiated any action. It became his recognised signature on any letters he wrote. St Bonaventure tells us that Francis venerated the TAU and was devoted to it. He spoke of it often and recommended it to his Brothers and signed it with his own hand on his letters. That he marked walls with it is confirmed by archeological findings, and that he signed his letters with it is confirmed by two manuscripts.

The first is his Letter to all Clerics, the original of which is lost but the early copy we have reproduces scrupulously the TAU with which St Francis signed it.

The second is the original autograph of the Blessing of Brother Leo written in his own hand and given to Brother Leo, priest, companion and scribe, after Francis had received the Stigmata at La Verna. Francis told Leo to accept this and keep it until death. Brother Leo himself took care to annotate the document in his own hand to confirm that Francis himself had written the TAU at the foot of the text inserting it in Brother Leo’s name: FRATE LE†ONE. Brother Leo further annotated in red ink in the upper margin the circumstances and fixed the date as two years before the death of Francis. This autograph is now kept in Assisi and often reproduced. The words of the blessing are taken from the Old Testament Book of Numbers (6:24-26).