The building was built as a place of private worship for the confraternity of the Brothers of Mercy, whose establishment dates back to 1428. The Company of St. John Decollate was also known as the Confraternity of Giovanni degli Impiccati (St John Brothers of the Hanged) for the important activity that they carried out: assistance to poor prisoners and burial of those condemned to death.
They disbanded in 1469 but the confraternity was restored in 1565 on the initiative of Giovanni Battista Orfini and Vincenzo Cantagalli. For this purpose, and due to the strong increase in religious vocations, the group made a request to the city officials and to the bishop of Foligno for a new headquarters and obtained a structure that later became the Oratorio del Gonfalone.
It seems that the Oratory of Mercy was built in 1591 and only completed between 1649 and 1658 in its current forms: a simple brick and stone facade on the outside and beautiful Baroque decorations on the inside, where you can admire four elaborate altars dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the Immaculate Conception, St. Francis Saverio and St. Eligius.
Not everyone knows that on the night of December 13, 1846, Colomba Antonietti and the Count Luigi Porzi married in secret in this chapel. Colomba was an Italian patriot, to whom Foligno has dedicated a road; she was even praised by Giuseppe Garibaldi for having decided to fight alongside her husband who had joined the Roman Republic. Colomba cut her hair and dressed in a bersagliere military uniform; she was killed under the fire of French artillery in the siege of Porta San Pancrazio (the entire event is recounted in the City Council Chamber in the Palazzo Comunale, in the frescoes by the painter Mariano Piervittori).
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