ELIAS OF CORTONA. - Minister General of the Friars Minor, born at Assisi or its vicinity c. 1180, called Elias of Cortona from the place of his death. Having entered the Friars Minor, he soon gained great esteem from the Founder, who chose him as minister of the newly established Franciscan province of Syria from 1217 to 1220, where he founded residences and organized the apostolate among Christians and Muslims. After accompanying St Francis on his visit to the Holy Places, he returned with him to Italy in the spring of 1221 and, upon the death of Peter Catani (10 March 1221), was chosen by the Saint as his successor as Vicar, an office he held until 1227, earning from the dying Poverello (1226) a special blessing. After the death of St Francis, he took part in the General Chapter of 1227, in which John Parenti was elected as the first Minister General of the Order.
(per carisela di wons d. P. Fratus) Elias of Cortona - Fr Elias, painted by Dono Doni (16th cent.). Assisi, Italian Convent.
By order of Gregory IX he presided over the construction of the basilica of Assisi, of which the Pope laid the first stone on 17 July 1228; by 1230 the lower church was already completed, and on the occasion of the General Chapter of Pentecost the new temple was inaugurated and the body of the Seraphic Father was transferred there. Elias’s partisans attempted, though unsuccessfully, to reinstate him by force as head of the First Order. With the support of Gregory IX he was elected Minister General in 1232.
During his government Elias greatly promoted missions among the infidels, worked for the union of the Greeks with the Roman Church, and especially fostered the studies of the Order. Held in high regard for his talents, a friend of the Emperor and the Pope, in 1258 he was sent by them as ambassador to Frederick II. His conduct, however, was marred by many and serious defects, especially by his despotic rule, which disturbed the tranquillity of the Order, much to the discontent of the priests and scholars, who in 1239 succeeded in having him deposed by Gregory IX and Albert of Pisa elected in his place. Retiring to Assisi and then to Cortona, where in 1245 he built a church and a convent in honour of St Francis, he later took the side of the excommunicated Frederick II and was himself excommunicated by Gregory IX in 1240 and again by Innocent IV in 1244. In that year Elias went to Nicaea and Constantinople as ambassador of Frederick II. The Minister General John of Parma (1247–57) attempted to reconcile Elias to the Order, but he refused out of fear of just punishment. Around Easter 1253 he fell ill in Cortona and, urged by his friend Buono, prior of the abbey of St Bartholomew at Cegliano, to repent of the evil he had done and of his apostasy from the Order, Elias willingly did so. Having received absolution from the censure from Bencio, archpriest of Cortona, and the last sacraments from his brethren, he died on 22 April of the same year. He was buried in the church of St Francis. Some treatises on alchemy were attributed to him.
Studies: I. ARB, Vita di frate E., Parma 1783, 2nd ed., ibid. 1839; the first modern critical biography, E. Lempp, Frère E. de Cortone, Paris 1901; P. Sabatier, Examen de la vie de fr. E. du Speculum vitae suivi de trois fragments inédits (Opuscules de critique historique, 9), Paris 1904; G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano, I, Quaracchi 1906, pp. 106–17; D. Sparacio, Fr. E. compagno e successore di s. Francesco, Milan 1923; L. Nimir, Fr. E. da Cortona, in Miscellanea Franciscana, 31 (1931), pp. 86–95, 175–87, 233–43; S. Attal, Fr. E. compagno di s. Francesco, Rome 1936; the most recent work, but of little critical value.