The Catholic History of Assisi

Long before Francis, Assisi was Asisium, an Umbrian hill town that became a Roman municipality in 89 BC. Its forum lies under Piazza del Comune, and the columns of a temple built about 30 BC still front the Church of Saint Mary above Minerva. Pope Paul III had the temple rededicated to the Virgin in the 16th century, with an inscription that sets Mary, true Wisdom, above the pagan goddess.

Photo: Feldstein, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Tradition names Saint Rufinus as the first bishop of Assisi and its martyr. He is said to have preached here in the third century and to have been drowned in the Chiascio river with a millstone around his neck. His cult in the city is documented from the ninth and tenth centuries, and he is still the principal patron of the town and diocese. His relics lie in the Cathedral of Saint Rufinus. Another martyr bishop, Saint Victorinus, rests under the high altar of the Abbey of Saint Peter.

The first bishop known from secure records is Aventius, in the sixth century. He went as the town's envoy to the Ostrogoth king Totila and then to the emperor Justinian in Constantinople in 547. Accounts differ on whether he spared Assisi a sack or the town was taken in 545. The oldest local parchment, from 963, places the bishop's house at Santa Maria Maggiore, the first cathedral. That church is now the Sanctuary of the Spoliation.