90 LaCitadeSancta
could not sound out the Latin texts said Paters instead.^134 Italians much
preferred the recitation of Paters to reading a ‘‘little Office’’ from a book.
So-called books of hours from communal Italy are very rare indeed. The
well-to-do Frati Gaudenti assumed that recitation of Paters would be the
norm. They did change the balance somewhat, saying twelve Paters for Mat-
ins and twelve for Vespers. At Pisa, the Laudesi confraternity, a group dedi-
cated to singing the lauds of the Virgin, recited the Pater and the Ave Maria
(the Hail Mary, taken from Lk 1 : 28 , 42 ) three times for each minor hour,
and five for Lauds and Vespers.^135 Set numbers of Paters are the near-univer-
sal private prayer specified by confraternity statutes of the later 1200 s and
early 1300 s. Associations changed the number and occasion of such recita-
tion according to their needs and devotions.
The penitents’ autonomy allowed them to develop devotions suited to
their own particular tastes. Groups dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary
already existed in the 1100 s, usually connected to churches with that title.
Mid-thirteenth-century Florentine confraternities that had spontaneously
adopted the Blessed Virgin as patron gathered each evening at Santa Maria
Novella to sing hymns in her honor. The early-fourteenth-century Marian
confraternity at Pisa assembleda cantare le laudein the Dominican church of
Santa Catarina.^136 Penitent groups with Marian devotion emphasized acts of
piety, especially processions and candle offerings, rather than social service
or charity. At Arezzo, the members of the Congregation of the Virgin each
contributed 2 d. to the society after attending Terce or None on the four great
feasts of Mary, the Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity, and Purification.
These collections underwrote the community’s candle offerings and Mass on
those days.^137 In Florence, during Mary’s feasts, Marian groups erected vo-
tive altars before images of the Virgin in the city streets.^138
At Milan, according to a record of 1273 , each member of thepiccola schola
of the Virgin contributed 1 d. monthly to pay for votive lights before images
of Mary in the city’s churches and streets. The group recited suffrages for
dead members. That group counted a priest, Don Giovanni of Dugiano, and
two brothers (probably Humiliati) among its twenty-eight members, but all
the rest were laymen and women. Members’ relatives, in particular the
men’s wives, enrolled as auxiliaries to share in the society’s spiritual benefits
without contributing money to the illumination project.^139 Devotional prac-
- ‘‘Memoriale’’ ( 1223 ), 12. 3 – 4 , Meersseman,Dossier, 391.
- ‘‘Regula Militiae B. Mariae V. Gloriosae’’ ( 1261 ), 34 – 36 , Meersseman,Dossier, 296 – 97 ; Lucca,
Biblioteca Statale,ms 1310, fol. 6 r( 1299 Lucca flagellant statutes); ‘‘Regula della ‘vita’ dei disciplinati e
laudesi di Pisa’’ ( 1312 ), Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 1056 – 57. For similar practices at Brescia ( 1265 – 95 ) and Reg-
gio Emilia ( 1295 – 1321 ), see Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 945 – 46. - On these devotions, see Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 960.
- ‘‘Nuovo statuto della congregazione della Vergine di Arezzo’’ ( 1262 ), 18 , ibid., 2 : 1025.
- Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 951.
- The wives’ names are found in a fragment of the group’s matricula in Paris, Bibliothe`que Na-
tional,mslat. 6512 , fol. 103 r, ed. in Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 21 – 22.