Gabriele Ferretti and the Franciscan Order
The Franciscan Order
The Ordo Fratrum Minorum, today known as the Franciscan or Order of Friars Minor and previously known as the Observants, is a group of mendicant religious orders (Order of Friars Minor, the Order of Saint Clare, and the Third Order of Saint Francis) founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi, and part of the Catholic Church. Saint Francis began his preaching journey in 1207, and already in 1209 he received the approval from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious order. It is today the first of the three Catholic Franciscan First Orders, with the Conventuals founded in 1517 and the Capuchins founded in 1520. The current organization of the Order is the result of several small orders Pope Leo XIII united in 1897; Franciscans also have the Secular Franciscan Order (founded in 1221) as subsidiaries and the Order of Saint Clare (founded in 1212) as affiliates.
The three orders part of the Friars Minor base their lives and activities on the spiritual disciplines of their founder and have been deeply influenced by his most important followers, such as Saint Clare of Assisi and Saint Anthony of Padua. The Rule of Saint Francis prohibits ownership of any type of property, and requires members to travel and beg for food while preaching in complete austerity -meant to emulate the life and legacy of Jesus Christ. This extreme poverty has been loosened up in the 1223 revision of the Rule, making the level of observance a substantial conflict within the order, resulting in numerous secessions.
The Capuchin and Conventual Orders continue to be two distinct religious institutes apart, observing the Rule with different strictness levels. The Conventual Franciscans in particular, which the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti was part of, are also referred to as minorites or greyfriars because of their habit and are believed to be the most strict and severe one among the orders.
San Francesco ad Alto
San Francesco ad Alto is today one of the churches part of the archdiocese of Ancona and Osimo. Originally funded as a convent in the XIII Century outside the city of Ancona, it has been incorporated.
The tradition tells it was funded by Saint Francis himself is 1219, when he was in Ancona to embark for Egypt, looking up to the Astagno hill and indicating the “Alto”, “high” place where he intended to build the first Anconitian church and convent. It remained very small until 1422, when Gabriele Ferretti started works to enlarge the church, and then the convent because of the great number of followers he was gaining to the Franciscan Order. Other works have been made during the XV century, and between 1588 and 1614. In 1863 the church was secularized and became a military hospital.
From 1520 the church hosted as well Luigi Gozzi’s donation, an altarpiece by a young Tiziano to the church, the Apparition of the Virgin, as a thanksgiving to the city of Ancona. It is Tiziano’s first known signed painting.
Gabriele Ferretti
Gabriele Ferretti was born in 1385 in the ancient and aristocratic Anconitian family of the Ferretti. He entered the Franciscan Order at eighteen years old, and his great virtue gained him so much respect and fame that in a few years he was assigned to preaching duties in Ancona. He was a theologian and a strict, fervent observant of the Franciscan Rule, and later became Guardian of his convent, San Francesco ad Alto, and Provincial for the whole Marche region. A famous example among his contemporaries, with his fame of sanctity he gained many novices -so many that he restored a convent in San Severino and even built a new one in Osimo to welcome them all. Documents of the time report a meditative and contemplative person, in constant praying or preaching activities.
He died 12th November 1456 and was buried in San Francesco ad Alto. His funeral was attended by a great number of people, and the Bishop and the whole clergy of Ancona are reported to have presided over it, together with the city’s most important political figures as magistrates and officials. He was beatified after an accurate process in 1753 by Pope Benedict XIV. His tomb was then rebuilt in 1489, since the Pope gave consent to the Ferretti’s family to erect a funerary monument in consideration of his growing cult. Probably because of this constant growth, he was beatified in 1753 by Pope Benedict XIV. Since San Francesco ad Alto was secularized and transformed into a military hospital, his burial site was translated first in the Duomo of Ancona in the Crypt of the Protectors, and then in the church of San Giovanni Battista, in the custody of the Order which he was part of. Even if the Catholic Church never formally recognized his visions, it is traditionally told that he received many apparitions of the Virgin, and the body is reported as incorrupt to this day. He is Patron Saint of Ancona together with Saint Ciriaco of Jerusalem, His feast day is November 12th.
