Benedetto Sinigardi

Benedetto Sinigardi, known also as Benedetto da Arezzo and in English as Blessed Benedict of Arezzo, was an Italian Franciscan of the thirteenth century and a figure of the first generation of the Order of Friars Minor. He was born in Arezzo in Tuscany to the noble Sinigardi family. Later tradition places his birth near the end of the twelfth century, but no contemporary birth record survives and the commonly repeated year should be treated as approximate. As a young man of the local aristocracy he encountered Francis of Assisi during one of Francis's visits to Arezzo. Franciscan hagiography holds that he was converted by that preaching and received the habit from Francis himself in the early thirteenth century, thereby entering the newly founded order while its founder was still alive.

He rose to positions of responsibility as the order spread through Italy and the Mediterranean. He is described in later sources as provincial minister of the Marches of Ancona and of Tuscany. He was then sent east, serving as provincial of the Franciscan province of Romania, which encompassed Greek and Byzantine lands, and afterward as minister provincial of the Holy Land. In that capacity he spent many years in Syria and Palestine, during the decades when the Crusader states were contracting. The Franciscans were establishing their presence at the holy places in this period, and Sinigardi belongs to that early missionary and custodial phase, although the precise chronology of his provincialates is not fixed by a dense run of original documents.

Franciscan tradition, especially from the early modern period onward, credits him with introducing or encouraging the custom of reciting the Hail Mary in the evening at the sound of the bell, in memory of the Incarnation, while he was in the Holy Land. That practice is often presented as a forerunner of the Angelus. Historical scholarship is more cautious: the Angelus developed over a long period in Western Europe, and similar evening recitations are associated with more than one person and region. After his years in the East, Sinigardi returned to Arezzo and resided at the Franciscan convent of Poggio del Sole. He died in Arezzo in 1282. He had lived as a celibate friar; there is no record of a marriage or of children.

A local cult grew up around him in Arezzo, and he has been commemorated as Blessed Benedetto Sinigardi in Franciscan and local calendars, commonly on 20 August. His relics have been connected with the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, following earlier burial associated with the convent of Poggio del Sole. He did not hold the papacy or a patriarchal see. Surviving information about him is limited and depends largely on later Franciscan chronicles and pious tradition rather than on a substantial contemporary archive, so many details of his life remain uncertain. He is remembered as a nobleman of Arezzo who joined the companions of Francis, served the order in Italy and the Levant, and ended his life in his native city.