Father Agostino Orsi

A restless spirit, an early environmentalist, a religious man reluctant to adhere strictly to orthodoxy, and a scholar of scientific subjects, particularly landscape and environmental care and bee keeping, to which he dedicated an important essay published in the Giornale Arcadico in 1834 and appreciated by the entire academic world . After being opposed for his avant-garde ideas and moved from one convent to another in the Marche region, Father Orsi settled in his later years in the Convent of Serra de’ Conti, where he suffered further harassment from the guardian father Vincenzo Palmarini, to the point that all his beehives were destroyed and he was forcibly locked up in a cell, from which he tried to escape by setting fire to the door with the same embers provided to him for warmth, dying in the flames at the age of 67.

In addition to being a figure so far removed from the monastic norms of the time, which had become entrenched in strict discipline, and despite being deeply respectful of his religious mission, so much so that he transfused it Franciscan-style into respect for nature, ‘Padronsi’ became a legend, so much so that it is still said that his ghost still haunts the corridors of the current Town Hall of Serra de’ Conti, where the Convent of St. Francis was located at the time, still seeking peace, frightening people with apparitions and voices from elsewhere, still rebelling against those brothers who had silenced him at the time.

Another magical aspect of Father Orsi’s legacy is that in the courtyard where he kept his beehives, which were regularly destroyed by the head guardian of the convent, bees still nest spontaneously every year, centuries later.