Verna, Sanctuary of. — A detached mountain of the central Apennines (highest point, La Penna, 1284 m), in the province and diocese of Arezzo, donated to St. Francis of Assisi in 1213 by Count Orlando Catani of Chiusi in Casentino, on the occasion of a chance meeting between them at the castle of San Leo in Montefeltro during a knights’ festival.
Having sent two companions to explore it and finding it most suitable for contemplation, St. Francis accepted it, and from 1214 to 1224 he withdrew there six times to spend periods of recollection in penance and prayer, and on his last visit received the Sacred Stigmata. The mountain thus acquired the fame and veneration of a Franciscan Calvary, not only among the Friars Minor but also among the people, who immediately began uninterrupted pilgrimages of devotion that continue to this day. The first religious lived in simple cells made of wood and earth. In 1216 the first little church was built, which St. Francis wished to be dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels, its dimensions having been given to him by the Mother of God in a memorable vision. The second church in chronological order was that of the Stigmata, built on the very spot of the miracle (1263), and the third was the Great Church (1348), raised by Benedict XV to the status of a minor basilica (23 Aug. 1921: cf. AAS, 13 [1921], pp. 472-73). Around these three sacred buildings and the convent that gradually developed, as in the wonderful beech and fir forest, oratories and chapels sprang up in memory of particular moments in the life of St. Francis or in commemoration of saints and blessed of the Order and others connected in some way with the sacred mountain. In the 15th century the Commune of Florence began to exercise, through the Consuls of the Wool Guild, a right of protection and guardianship entrusted to it by Eugenius IV (1431). Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their school worked there, leaving twelve remarkable panels, among which are especially notable the Annunciation and the Nativity.
Vernazza, Battista, Venerable — Portrait prefixed to the Opere spirituali of the reverend and most devout virgin in Christ, lady Battista da Genova, Canon Regular of the Lateran. Venice, heirs of Francesco Ziletti, 1588 — Rome, copy in the General Postulation of the C.R.L.
The Ascension (Great Church), Our Lady of the Girdle (St. Mary of the Angels), the Crucifixion (Church of the Stigmata). Before this period Giotto and Taddeo Gaddi painted there, and afterwards Grimo Gerini of Pistoia, perhaps Burlotome della Gatta, Fra Emmanuele da Como. From the 15th century onward the Observants (1431-1625) and the Reformed (1625-1897) took turns at La Verna, until in the latter year they were reunited under the ancient name. The juridical status of the Commune of Florence’s jurisdiction over the Sanctuary and its dependencies also underwent various vicissitudes, until the Concordat between the Holy See and Italy (1929) brought about a revision of positions and a return to the state prior to 1866, the year of the suppression of religious corporations. On 18 Oct. 1934 an Act was stipulated by which the Commune of Florence, continuing its centuries-old merits toward the Sanctuary, restored the Friars Minor once more to full possession of their ancient rights. — See pl. CXXXI.