The saints are figures close to us: they are not people with extraordinary abilities, but men and women who, aware of their own frailty, followed Christ and discovered that only God can fulfill the desires of the heart. Holiness is not something reserved to a few, but we are all called to be holy.
The canonized saints testify to everyone that it is possible to live Christianity fully. Colle di Val d’Elsa has its patron saints who intercede for mankind with God: Saint Martial, Saint Albert of Chiatina, and since 1651 Saint Gregory the Great. The first chapel on the right as you enter is dedicated to Saint Martial, who is shown in a painting made in 1694 by the late baroque artist Melchiorri. The Saint is resuscitating his friend Austriclinianus, who died near Colle di Val d’Elsa, by touching him with his crosier. To the left of the altar are depicted Saints Faustinus and Jovita; Faustinus, the elder, wears priestly vestments; the younger Jovita is dressed as a deacon. An angel holds a palm leaf, the sign of martyrdom, and a Latin inscription which means “this is true brotherhood.”
On the right appear Saint Albert of Chiatina and Blessed Pietro Gargaglini, founder of the Franciscan convent in Colle, adoring the Holy Nail which is shown to them by an angel. The angel holds a Latin inscription in his left hand which means “The nail of Christ is the key to heaven.” Just as Jesus, through the pain of the cross, reached the kingdom of heaven, so too Saint Albert, struck for twenty-five years by a serious illness which gave him sores all over his body, offered his suffering to Jesus. In 1890 the saint’s bones were moved from the Sacristy of the Chapter House to the third chapel on the left, dedicated to Saint Gregory, which was restored for the occasion by the Sienese architect Giuseppe Partini.
Antonio Salvetti, an architect and painter from Colle, painted for this chapel a picture which is now in the diocesan museum. In the canvas, Saint Albert and Saint Gregory the Great are witnesses to an apparition of the Virgin Mary surrounded by cherubs painted with the facial features of the children of Colle. In the foreground are the symbols of ecclesiastical power: at the feet of Pope Gregory the Great is the papal triple crown; at the feet of Saint Albert is the crosier and miter. Now visible in the chapel in the place of this painting is a canvas in the Caravaggesque style by the Sienese artist
Niccolò Tornioli, commissioned by Bishop Cosimo della Gherardesca . The bishop, in thanksgiving for the end of the plague of 1630, chose as subject for the painting the apparition to Pope Gregory the Great, a future patron saint of Colle, of Saint Michael the Archangel who put an end to the plaque that struck Rome in the sixth century AD. During the same period that Tornioli was working on this picture, in the chapel opposite it
Spadarino was painting Saint Sylvester Baptizing Emperor Constantine, now in the Diocesan Museum. The chapel, now the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, was earlier dedicated to Saint Sylvester, echoing the name of the Salvestrini family who were its patrons.