800th ann. of La Verna donation to St Francis

‘So much good is the good that I expect that every pain is delightful to me’ with these words St Francis, on 8 May 1213, at the Palazzo dei Conti Nardini in San Leo in Montefeltro, enchanted Count Orlando Cattani da Chiusi who, for the occasion, gave him a solitary mountain, known as La Verna, located in the present-day province of Arezzo. The stamp designed by Antonella Napolione seals the official gesture of donation. On one side is the Saint and on the other the Count who, finding comfort and light in the words spoken, in honourable gift, symbolically placed the Mount in the hands of the religious man as an offering. Immediately afterwards, Francis with some companions began the journey to that mountain, also beginning the spiritual journey of Man. The Convents that sprang up in his name, over the course of time, derive precisely from that first pilgrimage to the Marecchia Valley and Rimini. Today in Palazzo Nardini, a room on the second floor is dedicated to that very meeting. The room, with its wooden coffered ceiling, is used as a chapel. On the altar, a canvas by the Pesaro painter Ciro Pavisa illustrates the miracle of the stigmata. On the 800th anniversary of this singular event, San Marino philately wanted to commemorate it with a “historic” homage. The 3.50 euro stamp is featured on a sheet that reproduces a map of Montefeltro and, starting from the right in an anti-clockwise direction, the coat of arms of the Republic of San Marino and that of San Leo, twinned territories in honour of the two founders, Leo and Marino, who in 257, both arriving from the island of Arbe in Dalmatia, bent on the work of Christian evangelisation, escaped the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, taking refuge right on top of Mount Titano. Three years after that adventure, Leo, with a small group of companions, headed for the cliff of Mount Feliciano, eventually giving rise to the city of San Leo. An interweaving of tradition and history that finds in the municipality of Chiusi della Verna, the third coat of arms in a counter-clockwise direction, not only the reference to Mount La Verna donated by Count Orlando Cattani da Chiusi to Saint Francis, but also to the explicit and more recent twinning between the Castle of Serravalle and the town of the same name in Arezzo, which has been hosting a mountain colony for young people for about forty years, promoted and cared for by the Parish and Congregation of Serravalle. Lastly, closing the stamp's symbolic circle is the Tau, which symbolised in the Old Testament the sign placed on the forehead of those who were saved and which, with St Francis, became the support of a true mysticism of faith, a symbol of permanent conversion and renunciation of property.