Cardinal Pietro Peregrosso, better known as Pietro da Milano is strictly connected to the local church of St Francis. This cardinal, whose family came from Pozzuolo, was priest of the title of San Marco in Rome, served as vice chancellor of the Holy Roman Church and joined the high ranks of the Vatican curia bureaucracy.  In his will from the year 1295, his poor relatives still living in Pozzuolo were not forgotten. The will reads:

“I Order and arrange for my executors to complete the church of Santa Maria, which I am having built in Pozzuolo, as well as its bell tower, the sacristy, the dormitory, the refectory, the school, the chapter, the hospice/guesthouse, the infirmary, and all the houses and workshops.”

Located along the road connecting Milan to Cassano d’Adda, this prestigious complex, was originally conceived as a well-equipped theological study centre, and a doctrine and eloquence school hosting distinguished visitors. However, due to the cardinal’s death, these intentions were unfulfilled.

The grandeur of the site as well as the display of sacred objects and relics were meant to attract crowds of pilgrims eager to gain merits for this life or the next.

To decorate the walls of the building, frescoes were later added. Traces of them are still visible. These frescoes showed the tasks that the friars were to perform (the school, the hospital…), along with their daily ministry, the administration of the sacraments, and preaching.

The economic prosperity of the friars’ community, which is likely to have had positive effects on the local population, lasted for two centuries. However, by the end of the fifteenth century, economic difficulties began to rise. An unexpected and positive turn occurred between 1528 and the mid-1600s, when, thanks to several bequests, the convent was enriched with money and land.

Above the two single lancet windows of the apse, an inscription dating from 1642 shows that the friars dedicated the new works to the memory of the founder. This probably referred to the baroque vault of the presbytery, created with stucco and plasterwork and decorated with valuable paintings, including a cycle on the most prominent figures of the Franciscan movement.

A direct testimony of this period is a small holy water font with the Christogram IHS reminding of the cardinal’s stop at the convent in 1419, as he was on his way to Treviglio. His preaching there conquered the faithful.

The Suppression and the Looting

In the mid-18th century, Milan’s Ospedale Maggiore needed to set up a health care structure in the county east of the Duchy, in order to treat and look after the local sick. To fund it, empress Maria Theresa of Austria, with the approval of the Milanese Curia, ordered three convents to be suppressed, and their properties to be confiscated. Pozzuolo’s Franciscan convent was chosen, along with Melzo’s Carmelite convent of Santa Maria delle Stelle and Inzago’s Augustinian convent.

On May 31, 1771, a royal dispatch decreed the end of Pozzuolo’s convent’s troubled history. Over the next two centuries, the church and the convent were stripped of paintings and religious items. The friars were sent to Lodi, while the looting has continued up to the present day. Among the recently stolen items are the heads of ten cherubs that adorned the baroque vault of the presbytery, probably ripped off during some restoration work.