Allucio di Campugliano in Valdinievole

Allucio, son of the well-to-do rural landowner Omodeo, was born about 1070 at Campugliano in the Valdinievole near Pescia in Tuscany. In his youth he shepherded the family's flocks. At the same time he began welcoming wayfarers who passed his house along the ancient Florence–Lucca road (the old Cassia-Clodia). Drawn by a simple yet firm faith, he devoted his life wholly to works of mercy.

He founded a xenodochium—a hospice for pilgrims and travelers—with a church dedicated to Saints Luke and Herculanus on his own property at Campigliano near Uzzano. Chronicles relate that many collaborators, attracted by his charity and charism, gathered around him and formed a kind of lay congregation of assistance known as the fratres Allucii. Encouraged by the parish clergy of Pescia and by the bishop of Lucca, his work spread far beyond the Valdinievole, even into the Po plain. He is said to have built two churches, three hospices for pilgrims, and a bridge over the Arno at a crossing where a local lord had long exacted heavy tolls from pilgrims bound for Rome by ferrying them across; the bridge freed the poor from that oppression. He was a generous almsgiver.

Allucio was a man of action and also a fervent adorer of the Eucharist. Especially in Lent he practiced penitential fasts. According to hagiographic tradition his fame drew many pilgrims, and miracles were attributed to the intercession of the hospitaler. Later in life he mediated among Tuscan city-states to avert conflicts that later centuries would see erupt into open war. Devotional legend holds that by his authority a war between Faenza and Ravenna was suspended.

He died at Campugliano on 23 October 1134. His brothers buried him in the church of Saints Luke and Herculanus. On 23 October 1182, noting the great popular devotion, the bishop of Lucca proclaimed him a saint. In 1344 Bishop Guglielmo Dulcini of Lucca ordered a recognition of the relics; they were lifted from the grave and placed in a stone urn on the high altar. During that translation a vita was found in the reliquary—described as a legend of his life and certain miracles written on parchment, thought to date from the twelfth or thirteenth century. The hospice later passed to the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights of Malta until suppressions in 1791. The bishop of Pescia then safeguarded the relics; after dispute they were placed in Pescia Cathedral. In 1934, for the eighth centenary of his death, a new chapel was built for the urn, and the locality of Campugliano took the name Sant'Allucio di Uzzano. In 2000 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at the request of the bishop of Pescia, declared Saint Allucio secondary patron of the Diocese of Pescia beside the Blessed Virgin of Fontenova.

May Saint Allucio obtain for us a generous heart for pilgrims and the poor, and teach us today the virtue of active charity joined to Eucharistic adoration.