JOHN of PENNA, St JOHN, blessed. – One of the first disciples of St Francis of Assisi, born at Penna S. Giovanni (Macerata) c. 1193, died there in 1270 (or 1271).
Received into the Order in 1213, he met St Francis at the general chapter of Assisi in 1217, and was sent by him to Languedoc to found convents there together with about thirty friars. On his return to the Marca he was superior in several convents; his work was concentrated chiefly in his native city of Penna. Without bloodshed, he succeeded in composing an agreement between the counts Aldobrandini and their subjects, and in 1248 the city was constituted a Republic, as a free commune. The constitution is a monument of wisdom and justice.
The document, discovered in 1948 by R. Cecchetti in the historical archive of Penna S. Giovanni, represents a very rare specimen of a Charta libertatis, of which a few examples are found in Tuscany and Lombardy. It has been studied by Prof. Pier Silverio Leicht of the University of Rome and is considered fundamental for a complete historical framing of Italian law. With this Charta, Penna, in advance by centuries of modern States, established institutions for which peoples had to fight bloodily, such as, for example, the right of parliament; the concession of lands to subjects made with a criterion of perfect balance between capital and labour, i.e. with the division of products «ad partibus» or «ad portionem», with the right of redemption for the tenants after several years.
JOHN of PENNA S. GIOVANNI – JOHN PISANO
was a learned and pious Cluniac monk, flourishing c. 1340. All these seem to be mere conjectures. Casimir Oudin (Commentarius de Script. Eccles., III, Paris 1722, p. 1088), repeats Leland and Pitts. The Chronicon was reprinted in 1845 and 1849.