Silvia Leggio
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
The church of St. Francis in Cortona was built in the middle of the 13th century by Elias of Cortona (1180–1253), second Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor and trusted confidant of Frederick II. This church houses an important gathering of relics, that arrived in the tuscan city thanks to the effort of the friar.
In 1243 this controversial figure of the early Franciscan Age was sent on diplomatic mission to the East by the Hohenstaufen. A few years after he brought back from this journey a lot of gifts and relics: among them perhaps a fragment of the Holy Cross, kept in the well-known Byzantine ivory staurotheke (10th century) that he later settled in the church of St. Francis, built immediately after (1245). Willing to create in Cortona a franciscan alternative to Assisi, Elias used the fragment of the Holy Cross as well as three other relics bound to the Serafico’s memory: Francis’ evangeliary and cassock, and a pillow maybe given to him as a gift by Jacopa de’ Settesoli and linked to the Saint’s last moments before his death.
The presence of all these relics in the church of St. Francis shows the importance of this place in the early years of Franciscanism, also proving its founder’s contacts with the East: these objects are actual documents telling us both about the role of Elias as intermediate between Byzantium and Cortona and his deep and intimate connection with Saint Francis.