The patroness of Cascia is Saint Rita, celebrated on 22 May, the day she died. She was born at Roccaporena, the mountain hamlet five kilometres from the town, then one of the Ghibelline castles of the Cascia countryside; the exact dates remain uncertain, but Pope Leo XIII, at the canonisation, held to 1381 and 1457.
The early sources say little of her life: the inscription and images on the «solemn chest» of 1457, the Codex miraculorum — the list of miracles set down by notaries at the request of the commune of Cascia — and a six-panel canvas of about 1480. On that chest one reads «for fifteen years you suffered the thorn»: according to devotional tradition, on a Good Friday, having withdrawn to pray after a sermon by Friar Giacomo della Marca, Rita received in her forehead a thorn from the crown of the Crucifix. Hence the thorn, the roses and the bees, her most frequent attributes.
