The small chapel out of the nave was built in the middle of the seventeenth century to contain the large Crucifix which is still there, and whose story is very famous. In 1634 Brother Innocenzo of Palermo was sent to the convent to carve a crucifix for the friars, his sanctity and the talent he possessed as an artist being well known. After nine days he completed all except the head, and on returning next morning after early mass he found that mysterious hands had fashioned it during the night; not only was it of wonderful workmanship, but looking at it from three different points of view three different expressions were seen--of peace, of agony, and of death. The fame of the Crucifix spread throughout Umbria, and people flocked to San Damiano. "Now, the devil," says a chronicler, "very wrath to see such devotion in so many hearts, turned his mind to finding out some means of sowing seeds of discord. Through his doing there arose in Assisi a whisper that owing to the rapidly growing fame of this Crucifix, the ancient one of the cathedral would lose the veneration in which it had hitherto been held."
Now before placing the Crucifix of San Damiano in its place over the high altar the monks settled that it should be carried in solemn procession through Assisi. "But," writes the angry chronicler, "those who had joined this diabolical conspiracy against our Crucifix were not slow to prevent this, and had recourse to the Inquisitor of Perugia, who was induced to send his vicar to stop the procession, and bid the monks of San Damiano to keep their Crucifix hidden and allow no one to see it." There arose a terrible storm in the troubled community of Assisi, between those who took the part of the "persecuted Crucifix" and those who sided with the jealous canons of the cathedral. Finally, the case was placed before the Pope himself, and all waited anxiously the result of his investigations. A duplicate of the Crucifix of San Damiano was sent to Rome that it might be well examined by the Pope and the whole college of cardinals, and they not finding in the pious Brother Innocenzio's work anything contrary to the teaching of the gospel, it was unanimously decreed that the Crucifix of San Damiano might receive all the homage and love of the friars and citizens. So on a burning Sunday in August solemn high mass was sung at the altar of St. Clare in San Damiano and, although the friars were defrauded of their procession, such was the concourse of people who came to gain the plenary indulgence granted by His Holiness that the good friars rejoiced, and were comforted for all the persecution they had suffered on account of this marvellous Crucifix. What must have been the feelings of Brother Innocenzo as he stood by the high altar and watched the crowd of worshippers and the women lifting up their streaming eyes to the crucifix he had fashioned in his cell? The devotion to it grew as the years passed on, and we read that a century later the monks were obliged "for their greater quiet to transfer it from the choir to the chapel," where it now is, after which the monks could say their office in peace. Now we see it surrounded with votive offerings, and our guide pours forth an incessant stream of praise, and recounts at length numberless miracles.