VERNA, Sanctuary of. - A detached mountain of the central Apennines (highest point, the Penna, 1284 m), in the province and diocese of Arezzo, offered as a gift to St. Francis of Assisi in 1213 by Count Orlando Catani of Chiusi in Casentino, on the occasion of a chance meeting of theirs at the castle of S. Leo in Montefeltro for a gathering of knights.
Having sent two companions to explore it and finding it most suited to contemplation, St. Francis accepted it, and six times he withdrew there from 1214 to 1224 to spend periods of recollection in penance and prayer, and on the last occasion he received the Sacred Stigmata there. The mountain therefore acquired fame and veneration as a Franciscan Calvary, not only among the Friars Minor but also among the people, who immediately began pilgrimages of devotion there, unbroken down to our own days. The first religious lived in poor cells made of wood and earth. In 1216 the first little church arose, which St. Francis wished to be dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels, on dimensions given to him by the Mother of God herself in a memorable vision. Second in order of time was the building of the church of the Stigmata, on the very spot of the miracle (1263); third was the Major church (1348), raised by Benedict XV to a minor basilica (23 Aug. 1921: cf. AAS, 13 [1921], pp. 472-73). Around the three sacred buildings and the convent that slowly developed, as in the marvelous forest of beeches and firs, oratories and chapels flourished in memory of particular moments in the life of St. Francis, or in memory of saints and blesseds of the Order, and of others linked in some way with the sacred mountain. In the 15th century the Commune of Florence began to exercise there, through the Consuls of the Wool Guild, a right of protection and guardianship entrusted to it by Eugene IV (1431). Luca and Andrea della Robbia with their school worked there, leaving 12 admirable panels, among which the Annunciation and the Nativity are chiefly noteworthy.
the Ascension (Major church), the Madonna of the Girdle (S. Maria degli Angeli), the Crucifixion (church of the Stigmata). In the preceding period Giotto and Taddeo Gaddi painted there; in the following one Gerino Gerini da Pistoia, perhaps Bartolomeo della Gatta, fra' Emmanuele da Como. From the 15th century onward there succeeded one another at the Verna: the Observants (1431-1625) and the Reformed (1625-1897), until in the latter year they reunited under the ancient name. The juridical form of the Commune of Florence's action over the Sanctuary and its appurtenances was also subject to various vicissitudes, until the Concordat between the Holy See and Italy (1929) prepared 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 services toward the Sanctuary, once again put the Friars Minor in full possession of their ancient rights. - See plate CXXXI.
Bibliography7 works
Adamo Pierotti