Chiesa e Convento di San Francesco

The origins of the monastery of St. Francis are likely prior to 1220. Towards 1215 shows that S. Francis came in Ascoli visiting various convents in the company of between Boulder and Angelo Tancredi. The favorable reception of S. Francesco in Ascoli is evidenced both by the fact that thirty young people between clergy and laity took the same hands of the holy Franciscan habit, is that in that area there were several Franciscan monasteries including that of Venarotta castle on the hill where the current cemetery. This place was a little ‘”Olympus Sacred” deu venarottesi; In fact, according to tradition, in Roman times, this hill was a temple dedicated to the goddess Venus. In the eighth century it would become a place of prayer and solitude of a few hermits. Around a thousand many penitents withdrew on the hill became a hermitage arranged in speakers and small cells where they prayed and did penance. Due to the rapid emergence of the Franciscan rule, also hermits venarottesi willingly embraced the new way of living in community, that is, in the Convent. You could then peacefully think that these hermits – obviously Benedictine – have made the monastery in the place where they were to adapt their hermitages, thus, to the Rule of St. Francis of Assisi. Conversely, according to a unique and established tradition, St. Francis himself had founded the monastery and its church. In fact the Civalli, which is a biographer of the saint, after defining this place and arid wasteland “of little moment to the forest,” says that “he was taken to St. Francis.” In the book of the records of the Archives Parish Venarotta, written in 1737 by Abbot Pietro Emidio Massini, it reads: “in the first place be noted that the Church of St. Francis istesso, ut ab antiquis traditur, and was the first parish, as is recognized in some old memories … And ‘church is still consecrated as seen from the main altar, the table of the whole which, as well as on the side towards the village which is noticeable by some ancient red crosses … “. This fascinating hypothesis of the foundation headed by St. Francis, which was endorsed by almost all local writers, however, seems historically implausible, at least for “foundation” does not intend to transform the life of a hermit in the Franciscan convent, that they hermits dormer accepted , during the visit that the Saint would have done in that place, he himself the Franciscan habit and the Rules. In this way we believe we should interpret the statement of Righini which traces the origin of the Convent (“creditur about tempora S. Patris”) at the time of St. Francis. E ‘likely that the “new Franciscan community” has adapted the former Oratorio hermit in church and monastery in Convent and entitled to all the Holy meanwhile canonized by Pope Gregory IX. In 1289, Pope Nicholas IV, a Franciscan and Ascoli, sent to all Franciscan monasteries of Ascoli (and among them also to Venarotta) a fragment of the Holy Wood of the Cross of Christ, which was added to a silver cross and Later (in 1585) kept in a reliquary donated by Pope Sixtus V.