Jacob de Marchia commonly known as Saint James of the Marches, was an Italian Friar Minor, preacher and writer. He was a Papal legate and Inquisitor.

He was born Dominic Gangala in the early 1390s to a poor family in Monteprandone, then in the March of Ancona in central Italy along the Adriatic Sea. He studied at the University of Perugia where he took the degree of Doctor in Canon and Civil Law. After a short stay at Florence as tutor for a noble family, and as judge of sorcerers, he was received into the Order of Friars Minor, in the chapel of the Portiuncula, in Assisi, on 26 July 1416. At that time, he took the monastic name Jacobus (rendered James in English). Having finished his novitiate at the hermitage of the Carceri, near Assisi, he studied theology at Fiesole, near Florence, with John of Capistrano, under Bernardine of Siena. He began a very austere life fasting nine months of the year.

On 13 June 1420, he was ordained a priest and soon began to preach in Tuscany, in the Marches, and in Umbria; for half a century he carried on his spiritual labours, remarkable for the miracles he performed and the numerous conversions he wrought. He helped spread devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. From 1427, James preached penance, combated heretics, and was on legations in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and Bosnia. He was also appointed inquisitor against the Fratelli, a heretic sect that dissented from the Franciscans on the vow of poverty, among other things.

He was sent by the Papal Council as an Inquisitor to Bosnia in 1432–33, working in the Bosnian Vicariate. He returned in 1435 and served as Vicar of Bosnia until 1439.[5] He combated the heresies that he found there, which earned him the hostility of its ruler, King Tvrtko II, and even more of his wife, Queen Dorothea, whom James accused of trying to poison him. He left Bosnia citing King Tvrtko I as the cause of failure of Franciscan mission. Between 1434 and 1439 he worked in Southern Hungary against heretics.

At the time of the Council of Basle, James promoted the reunion of the moderate Hussites with the Catholic Church, and later that of the Eastern Orthodox at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Against the Ottomans, he preached several crusades, and at the death of John Capistran, in 1456, James was sent to Hungary as his successor. In 1457 he was sent to Danish king Christian I to discuss the Turkish crusade and also the Bohemian issue.

Under Pope Callistus III, in 1455, he was appointed an arbiter on the questions at issue between the Conventuals and Observants. His decision was published 2 February 1456 in a papal bull.

James spent the last three years of his life in Naples and died there on 28 November 1476. He was buried in Naples in the Franciscan church of Santa Maria la Nova, where his body remained until 2001. Later, the body was relocated to Monteprandone, where it remains incorrupt and visible to the public today. He was beatified by Pope Urban VIII in 1624 and canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726.

Other Saints of the Day
1. Saint Catherine Laboure
2. Saint Andrew Trong
3. Saint Fionnchu
4. Saint Hippolytus
5. Saint Valerian

- catholic.org