Jordan of Pisa

Who was Jordan of Pisa?

Blessed Jordan of Pisa was a Dominican theologian and preacher, the first whose vernacular Italian sermons are preserved. His cultus was confirmed on 23 August 1833 by Pope Gregory XVI and he was beatified in 1838; his day is either March 6 or August 19. His relics are in the church of Santa Catalina in Pisa.

Jordan was born in the mid thirteenth century at Pisa. He was educated at the University of Bologna and then Paris in the late 1270s, where he received his bachelor's of theology. He went on to join the Dominican house there in 1280. At Pisa he founded the Confraternity of the Holy Redeemer, whose constitution survives, and several others, whose do not. He preached and taught variously at Siena, Viterbo, and Perugia before eventually moving to Florence, in which area he was a widely respected preacher, eventually being appointed by the provincial chapter at Rieti as a lector in the church of Santa Maria Novella in 1305. He held that post for the next three years, and contributed greatly to its esteem. In 1311 the Master General Aymericus Giliani appointed him professor of theology at the friary of Saint James in Paris, to deliver his reading of the Lombard's Sentences and obtain his master's degree, but he died at Piacenza on the journey.