Saint James of the Marches

Saint James of the Marches was an Italian Franciscan and priest, an itinerant preacher of the fifteenth century, known for his austere life. He belonged to the Observants, learned from Saint Bernardine of Siena, and worked alongside Saint John of Capistrano. The Church commemorates him on November 28, the day of his death.

He was born at Monteprandone in the Marches and at baptism received the name Dominic. The year of his birth is not certain: John Paul II, in his letter for the six hundredth anniversary of the saint’s birth, gave September 1393, while the bull of canonization gives the year 1391. He came from a family of modest means and, as he himself recalled, tended sheep and pigs as a child. He was taught by a relative who was a priest, then in Ascoli, and he studied law in Perugia. He worked as a notary in Florence and as a judge in Bibbiena.

At about the age of twenty-three he gave up his legal career and, at the Portiuncula near Assisi, entered the Observant Franciscans, who sought to keep the Rule of Saint Francis strictly. He then took the name James. After his ordination to the priesthood he began to preach in 1420. He was taught the art of preaching by Saint Bernardine of Siena, whom he later remembered as his master and friend.

He preached for nearly half a century, most often in central Italy. He spread devotion to the Name of Jesus, spoke out against usury, gambling, blasphemy, and superstition, and reconciled feuding factions and towns. He founded hospitals, had wells and cisterns dug, and helped the poor through the monti di pietà, charitable banks that lent money against a pledge. The popes also entrusted him with combating heresy and with the office of inquisitor; toward heretics he could be severe.

In 1432 he was sent across the Adriatic. In Dalmatia and Bosnia he renewed the life of the Franciscan friaries, and in Hungary he preached against the Hussites; in 1436 Pope Eugene IV appointed him inquisitor for Austria and Hungary. Several attempts were made on his life. Among the countries the saint traveled through, John Paul II also names Bohemia, Poland, and Germany. In 1457 James went to Hungary again, to call for a crusade against the Turks after the death of John of Capistrano, but illness forced him to return.

In his native Monteprandone he founded in 1449 the friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie and gathered there nearly two hundred codices, a library for preachers. He did not accept the archbishopric of Milan, which was offered to him. He spent his last years in Naples, where he went in obedience to Pope Sixtus IV, at the request of King Ferdinand. There he died on November 28, 1476, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria la Nova.

Pope Urban VIII beatified him in 1624, and Benedict XIII canonized him on December 10, 1726, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, together with Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo and Saint Agnes of Montepulciano. Naples venerates him as one of its patrons. In 2001 the saint’s body was transferred from Naples to the shrine in Monteprandone.