10311447 Tommaso Bellacci
Tommaso Bellacci (1370 - 31 October 1447) was a butcher and became a religious after turning his life around from one of sin to one of penance and servitude to God.[2] Bellacci travelled across the Middle East and the Italian peninsula to preach and administer to people despite not being an ordained priest. His beatification was celebrated in 1771.
Tommaso Bellacci was born in Florence in 1370 in the neighborhood of the Ponte alle Grazie. His parents came from Castello di Linari in Val d'Elsa. He became a butcher like his father. During his youth he got into a good deal of trouble on various occasions, and led such a wild and dissolute life as an adolescent that parents warned their sons to keep their distance from him. Persuaded by a friend to change his ways, he tried to enter a religious order but found strong resistance to being accepted.
Bellacci was accused of having committed a serious crime in 1400 that he in fact did not do and so he wandered the streets of Florence until he met a priest who listened to Bellacci and took him in and helped clear his name.[2] The incident shocked him so much - coupled with his appreciation of the priest - that he shed his life of sin and decided to live a life of total penance and service to God. He joined the Third Order of Saint Francis in Fiesole[3] under the spiritual guidance of Friar Giovanni da Stronconio and became noted for keeping vigils and fasting.
Bellacci was very particular in keeping to a literal interpretation of the Franciscan Rule. As novice master, despite not being a priest,[1] he led by example. He became part of the Observant reform and in 1414 accompanied another friar to Naples to introduce the Observant practice in the Franciscan houses there. He remained in Naples six years, preaching and helping to spread the reform.
He founded friaries in Corscia[2] Pope Martin V called him to preach in the northern cities against the "Fraticelli" who were a group of heretical Franciscans and was also made Vicar General at the pope's behest; he and Albert Berdini of Sarteano in 1438 were later sent to the Middle East to cities such as Damascus and Cairo in order to promote the reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches when he was over 70.[3] Alberto had to leave due for back home due to his ill health which left Bellacci on his own.
He attempted to travel to Ethiopia but the Turks captured him three times. The Florentine merchants helped to secure his release the first two times. The third time he was again captured and suffered enslavement and persecution for several years.[6] Pope Eugene IV helped secure his release.[3] He returned home in 1444 and spent his time in a convent in Abruzzo until 1446. He was known for his diet of water and vegetables.
Bellacci died in Rieti while on a visit to Rome to visit the pontiff. He planned to ask him for permission to return to the Orient.[2] His remains were relocated in 2006
A few years before his death, Giovanni embarked upon the dissemination of the Observant reform in Puglia and in Calabria together with one of his disciples, Tommaso da Firenze, known also as Tommaso Bellacci or Tommaso da Scarlino (1370–1447). Tommaso assumed Giovanni’s offices following his death in 1418, becoming the vicar of Puglia and Calabria and founding several convents in these regions.66 In 1419, Tommaso was entrusted with the task of eradicating the fraticelli de opinione in the area of Maremma, near Siena. He stayed in the Convent of San Benedetto della Nave at Montorsaio67 with a few other friars, possibly including Lancelao, who earned distinction by chasing away the fraticelli when they attacked the house.68 But Tommaso’s most beloved dwelling place was the hermitage of Scarlino, the predecessor of the Observant Franciscan Convent of Monte Muro. Tommaso’s community at Scarlino became an important spiritual center in Tuscany for those friars who wished to observe the rules of Francis living in a quasi-eremitic lifestyle. Lancelao came here due to the zeal and the sanctity of the “pura observantia regolare” in the Provinces of Tuscany and of St Francis (the two provinces functioned as one until 1440). The region was renowned for its reformed Franciscan spirituality and its abundance of saintly friars. As the Observant Franciscan Bernardino Aquilano noted in his Cronaca dei frati minori dell’osservanza (1480), “in the province of St Francis there were famous men of distinguished life and holiness.”69 Tommaso da Firenze was a renowned figure in his era and was highly esteemed by the leading figures of the second generation of the Observants as well.70 After his death during a mission in 1447, Tommaso was venerated as a blessed due to his conversio and the miracles that occurred at his tomb in the Church of St Francis in Rieti.71
In the early 1420s the hermitage of Monte Muro near Scarlino was transformed into a convent housing a reformed Franciscan community and its spiritual milieu attracted people from all social strata, ranging from unlettered lay people to descendants of Tuscan and Roman noble families. Tommaso da Firenze’s disciples, in addition to Lancelao, included Clemente Capponi, Gerolamo della Stufa, Polidoro Romano and Guasparre da Firenze.72 The latter became an important figure in the subsequent history of the Observants at Scarlino: the convent was rebuilt at his initiative and he was a major propagator of the local cult of Lancelao. In the sixteenth century, the convent was attacked and looted by the Ottomans first in 1539 and again in 1566, after which the friars decided to leave the convent. However, at the initiative of General Minister Francesco Gonzaga, a decision was made at the Chapter of Poggibonsi in 1580 to repopulate the convent.73 In the opinion of Dionisio Pulinari, Gonzaga, who was “stimulated by the odor and the name of such great holiness,” proposed reviving the convent, probably due to the rather high number of friars buried there “because in those early times those early brothers were saints.”74 It shows that the importance of the burial place of saintly friars as a potential site of miracles and thus of local cult had not decreased with the Observant Franciscans more than a century later.
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