Giovanni Colombini (c. 1304 – 31 July 1367) was an Italian merchant and founder of the Congregation of Jesuati (not to be confused with the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus, founded in the 16th century by Ignatius of Loyola).

[1] His son having meanwhile died and his daughter taken the veil, Colombini with the approval of his wife, on whom he first settled a life-annuity, divided his fortune into three parts: the first went to endow a hospital, the second and third to two cloisters.

Accompanied by twenty-five companions, Colombini visited in succession Arezzo, Città di Castello, Pisa and other Tuscan cities.

A commission appointed by Urban and presided over by Cardinal William Sudre, Bishop of Marseilles, having attested them free of the taint of the Fraticelli, whose views some people had accused them of holding, the pope gave his consent to the foundation of their congregation.

[2] Other scholars have argued that the order was suppressed in retaliation for the activities of its members such as Stefano degli Angeli in advocating Galilean theories as well as the method of indivisibles thought by the Jesuits to be contrary to church doctrine.