Eremo di Montecasale

Set in the wooded Apennines above Sansepolcro, the Eremo di Montecasale has a long Franciscan history. St Francis stayed here in 1213; a second visit in 1224 belongs to local tradition. The Capuchin community has been associated with the hermitage since the sixteenth century.

Why it matters

The site began as a wayside refuge on a route from the Tiber valley over the Alpe della Luna towards the March of Ancona. By the late twelfth century it was a hospice, the hospitium de Sancta Maria de Montecasale, run by Camaldolese monks. In 1213 Francis of Assisi stayed here among the lepers cared for at the spring. The hermitage’s significance lies less in a collection of artworks than in the surviving setting and the Franciscan history associated with it.

What to notice

The church and convent form a small complex around a courtyard. The site’s history associates cells with St Anthony of Padua and St Bonaventure, and a spring bears the name of St Francis. Below the buildings, the wooded slope leads to the rock spur called Sasso Spicco, connected with the hermits’ early life. A local story tells of Francis testing two candidates by planting cabbages upside down.

Context and history

The hermitage’s foundation is recounted in the constitutions of prior Rodolfo I (1074–1088), which describe Francis’s foundation at the request of the bishop of Arezzo. According to the site’s chronicles, converted bandits lived here; one is said to have died at Montecasale around 1267–1268. When friars moved to their new urban convent in Sansepolcro in 1258, hermits remained at Montecasale, receiving a licence from the bishop of Città di Castello in 1269. In 1531 the commune offered the sanctuary to the Capuchin reform, and Pope Paul III’s 1537 bull Exponi vobis transferred the hermitage, church and woods to the order. After suppressions and sales in 1810 and after 1866, Giuseppe del Rosso bought the site and gave it to the Capuchins in 1894.