JESI. - A city and diocese in the province of Ancona. It has 73,000 inhabitants, of whom 62,000 are Catholic; 27 parishes with 69 diocesan priests, a seminary, one male religious house and 21 female religious houses (Annuario Pontificio, 1951). Patron saint: St. Settimio, bishop (September 22).
HISTORY. - Of Umbrian origin, it took its name from the river Aesis; it was a Roman colony; it suffered the sackings of the Goths and Lombards; in 756 it was included among the donations of Pepin to Pope Stephen II. The counts of J. were successively, in the 11th century, Attone, Alberico, Ugone and Gozo; after the mid-12th century the Commune arose with four consuls and schools of the arts; the motto «Respublice Aesiae libertas ecclesiastica» explains very well the origin of the Commune itself, which arose from the emancipation granted by the ecclesiastics, the bishop and the monks of the abbeys that had been established in the territory (C. Annibaldi, Iesu e la sua costituzione a Comune, in Studia Picena, 1 [1925], pp. 66-71). The «Memoriale Civitatis Aesii et antiquitatum suarum» begins in the year 1114.
The Republic of J. had as its subjects the castles of Serradoconti, Montalboddo, Barbaro, Montenovo. It fought against the Guelph city of Ancona. In 1259 J. was placed under interdict and deprived of its bishop by Alexander IV. Cardinal E. d'Albornoz removed it from the dominion of the Malatesta. J. was among the great cities in the Egidian constitutions of 1357. Taken by Francesco Sforza, it returned in 1447 to the Church, to which it attempted to rebel in 1486. It was sacked in 1517 by the soldiers of the duke of Urbino, Francesco della Rovere. In 1528 Clement VII granted J. the privilege of a mint. In 1580 a chair of philosophy and one of law were founded; Sixtus V exempted J. from the jurisdiction of the legate of the Marches and granted it a separate government presided over by a prelate.
Christianity penetrated J. very early, and the first bishop was St. Settimio. A St. Florian, venerated in J. on May 4, according to Lanzoni could be the martyr Florian venerated in Noricum near Lauriana (Lorch). Bishops of J. were also Cardinals Camillo Borghese (1597, later Pope Paul V), Tiberio Cenci (1621), Alderano Cibo (1656-71), P. M. Petrucci (1681-96), G. B. Caprara (1800-1802), who concluded the Concordat with Napoleon; his successor was A. M. Odescalchi, deported in 1809 by the French. The diocese is immediately subject to the Holy See.
The primitive cathedral was dedicated to the Most Holy Savior; then to St. Nicholas. In 1237 Bishop Severino began the new cathedral, dedicated to St. Settimio; it was rebuilt in 1469, and redone by D. Barrigioni (1732-41); the façade is from 1889. The interior is a single nave in the shape of a Latin cross with a dome (C. Annibaldi, La cattedrale jesina e suoi rinnovamenti, Jesi 1925). Other notable churches: St. Mark, founded by the Benedictines in the 13th century, with three naves divided by octagonal pillars; St. John the Baptist, from the end of the 17th century; the monastery of St. Benedict de Castello Plano, attached to the episcopal table by Callistus III.
A few kilometers from J. stood the Benedictine abbey of St. Mary "Molearum" with a church from the 9th century, transformed in the 17th century and then restored to its ancient lines, now called the church of "Le Moje"; and the abbey of St. Helena (P. Zampetti, La Chiesa abbaziale di S. Elena nei dintorni di J., Ancona 1940).
Natives of J. were: the scholar Monsignor Angelo Colocci (1467-1540), secretary to Leo X and Clement VII; the musician G. B. Pergolesi (v.).
In honor of Clement XII, in 1734 the Arco Clementino was erected. In 1472 Federico dei Conti of Verona printed the Divine Comedy in J. The Pinacoteca is rich in panels by Lorenzo Lotto (the Annunciation; the Visitation; the Deposition; the Virgin with Child, St. Joseph and St. Jerome, St. Francis and St. Clare; the Stories of St. Lucy).
In the former church of St. Florian is housed the communal library, with the library of the marquises Pianetti annexed.