Giovanni da Penna, Saint John, Blessed

GIOVANNI DA PENNA, Saint John, Blessed. - One of the first disciples of St. Francis of Assisi, b. at Penna S. Giovanni (Macerata) ca. 1193, d. 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 some thirty friars. Having returned to the Marca, he was superior in various convents; his work shone forth chiefly in his native city of Penna. Without bloodshed, he succeeded in composing the agreement between the counts Aldobrandini and their subjects, and in 1248 the city erected itself into 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 Charta libertatis, of which some 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 had, centuries in advance of modern States, institutions for which peoples had to fight bloodily, such as, for example, the right of parliament; the granting of lands to subjects made with a criterion of perfect balance between capital and labor, that is, with the division of the products "ad partibus" or "ad portionem", with the right of the colonists to redemption after some years.

His body was buried in the church of the Minor Conventuals. The cult was approved by Pius VII in 1806. Feast on Sept. 25; in the Franciscan Order on Oct. 31.