The former Convent and Church of St. Augustine 

 

 

 

Surround by woods or centuries-old oak and chestnut trees, Monticiano and its commune or municipality tell a long story or villages located on the roads which connected the larger city of Siena to the hill country that eventually leads to the Tyrrhenian Sea which borders the south western side of Italy. During the Middle Ages, it was under the possession or the Bishops of Volterra, a city rich in the Etruscan civilization, but then it fell under the dominion of the municipality of Siena in the 13th century. This was the time or the beginning of the Order of St. Augustine between 1244 and 1256.

During this time, the men who belonged to or joined this new religious order were in a process of a change in life-style from being hermits, living in the woods with a heavy emphasis contemplation. Pope Innocent IV asked the hermits who were following the Rule of St. Augustine to leave the woods and to become mendicant and apostolic, that is, to support themselves by asking for alms and to engage in ministering to the people of God. By necessity, this meant that they left the woods for the towns, small and large, in order to respond to the papal request. Monticiano was one of the small villages where the newly formed friars came to begin a foundation. 

St. Augustine, a Gothic church, located in the center of the town, with is chapter-house of the ex convento or former convent decorated with frescoes by Bartolo di Fredi, Guidoricio Cozzarelli and Giovanni di Paolo, is a fine example of one of the most ancient hermitages of the Augustinian Order. The ruin of another ancient Augustinian hermitage is located in nearby Camerata. Another thing to be noted is that even today, one of the early friars of Monticiano, Blessed Anthony Patrizi, is still honored by the people of the town. His body is kept in church for veneration. The ruins of another ancient Augustinian hermitage is located in nearby Camerata. Having visited Rosia and Lecceto, both in isolated places, it is important to visit one of the early 'town' Augustinian foundations of the mid-thirteenth century. Seeing a church and convento in the main piazza of a small town, a visitar better appreciates the radical change that occurred from a hermit's life of prayer, penante and contemplation in the woods to that of a member of an apostolic fraternity, dedicated not only to prayer, penante and contemplation but to balance that life-style with an apostolic ministry to the people living in the town.

It clearly demonstrates the development of Augustinian life that began in Tuscany, spread quickly too many parts of the world and which provided the foundation for what has become the Augustinian friars or Order of St. Augustine in the contemporary world.