Blessed Paoluccio Trinci

14th September

Paoluccio Vagnozzi de' Trinci was born in Foligno in 1309, and had relations in both the Trinci and the Orsini families.  He became a friar at  San Francesco when he was about 14.  He was closely associated with the minority of the friars there who favoured the reform of the order, and was at their hermitage of  San Bartolomeo di Brogliano (near Colfiorito) when the embryonic community was suppressed in 1355.

In 1368, probably because of the intervention of his important relatives, the Franciscan Minister General, Tommaso da Frignano allowed Paoluccio to return to San Bartolomeo di Brogliano in order to follow the primitive Franciscan rule.  A few friars joined him in what they called "the brethren of the family of the observance".  They lived in extreme poverty and wore wooden clogs, so that they became known as the "Zoccolanti".  

Gradually the movement spread and, in 1373, Pope Gregory XI gave his permission for ten convents to be allocated to friars who wished to follow the stricter rule.  These included the Eremo dei Carceri, outside Assisi.  This event is held to have led to the formation of the Observant Franciscans. 

In 1374, Paoluccio defeated a group of Franciscan dissidents in a debate in Perugia and the Minster General transferred the Convento di Monteripido to the new Observant wing of the order.  In 1380, he was made general commissary for what were by then the 12 hermitages of the reform movement in central Italy, with permission to receive novices.  Other convents were assigned to him, including San Damiano, in Assisi in 1384. 

In 1388, Paoluccio established a nunnery for Franciscan tertiaries at the Monastero di Sant' Anna, Foligno.  After his death in 1390, Blessed Angelina of Montegiove became the leader of the community.

Paoluccio was finally persuaded to leave Brogliano in 1390, when he was old and nearly blind.  He walked the 20 miles to San Francesco, where he soon died.  His relics were originally in the Duomo of Spoleto, but they were translated in 2000 to the Franciscan convent at Monteluco, near Spoleto.