FromConversion toCommunity 91
tices varied greatly, reflecting the confraternities’ diverse membership. A
Marian confraternity at Siena organized processions on twelve different
feasts of the Virgin but also cultivated devotion to Christ Crucified. Accord-
ing to their legislation of 1267 , the members recited, probably in the vernacu-
lar, John 8 : 21 – 29 —Christ’s prediction of his Passion—at the end of their
monthly Mass of the Virgin.^140
Perhaps as early as the 1230 s, penitents produced the first vernacular
hymns dedicated to the Virgin, thelaude.^141 After midcentury, various Mar-
ian groups appeared spontaneously, sometimes the result of lay piety, but
more commonly under clerical leadership.^142 Indulgences granted by Pope
Alexander IV show such associations active at Orvieto, Recanati, Reggio,
Bagnoregio, Osimo, and Toscanella.^143 A second wave of hymn composition
followed in the 1260 s.^144 Some confraternities made hymn singing their prin-
cipal devotional focus. A passage in the life of Saint Ambrogio Sansedoni
( 1268 ) mentions such a group, perhaps our earliest example.^145 During the
1260 s, hymn-singing confraternities multiplied, first at Assisi, Gubbio, Borgo
San Sepolcro, Orvieto, and Fabriano; later at Arezzo, Cortona, Urbino,
Siena, Florence, and Rome.^146 In a letter of 2 September 1273 , Bishop Ber-
nardo de’ Gallerani of Siena used, for the first time, the name by which they
came to be known, Laudesi.^147 The Laudesi were mostly a Tuscan and cen-
tral Italian phenomenon. Their heartland was Umbria, Spoleto, and Peru-
gia.^148 That region is the provenance of the oldest extant hymn collections,
theLaudario di Cortona( 1260 s), the compositions of Iacopone of Todi (admit-
tedly a Franciscan and not a penitent), and theLaudario urbinate.The Laude-
si’s anonymous and vernacular hymns show a striking homogeneity in their
piety and modes of expression.^149 They are a remarkable window into the
lay Marian piety of the central Italian communes.
- Meersseman comments on this recitation inOrdo, 2 : 958 ; for their statutes, see ibid., 1029 – 34 ,
esp. 1032 – 33 , on the processions. - The earliest example may be ‘‘Pianto della Virgine della Passione di Montecassino,’’ ed. Mauro
Inguanez,Un dramma della Passione del secoloxii, Miscellanea cassinese, 18 (Badia di Montecassino, 1939 ).
For other examples, see Salimbene,Cronica( 1233 ), Baird trans., 49 ; ‘‘Vita Fratris Aegidii,’’Chronicaxxiv
Generalium Ordinis Fratrum Minorum,Analecta Franciscana, 3 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae,
1897 ), 101 ; and Francesco A. Ugolini,Testi volgari abruzzesi del duecento(Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1959 ),
1 – 50 ( 1290 s). - On rising clerical control after 1250 , see Nicolas Terpstra, ‘‘Confraternities and Mendicant Or-
ders: The Dynamics of Lay and Clerical Brotherhood in Renaissance Bologna,’’Catholic Historical Review
82 ( 1996 ): 5. - Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 974.
- See Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Enzo Quaglio,Lo stilnovo e la poesia religiosa,Letteratura italiana
Laterza, 2 (Bari: Laterza, 1980 ), 151 – 53.
145 .AS 16 (Mayiii), 212 , sect. 14 ; on which, see Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 956. - Pasquini and Quaglio,Stilnovo, 154 – 58.
- Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 954 – 55.
- Pasquini and Quaglio,Stilnovo, 158. For a non-Tuscan example, see ‘‘La Compagnia dis. Maria
delle Laudi e di San Francesco di Bologna,’’ ed. Candido Mesini,AFH 52 ( 1959 ): 361 – 72. - Recent editions:Laudario di Cortona( 1260 s),Poeti del duecento(Milan: Ricciardi, 1995 ); thelaudeof
Iacopone of Todi,Laudi, trattato, e detti,ed. Franca Ageno (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1954 ); andLaudario
urbinate,‘‘Il Laudario dei disciplinati di S. Croce di Urbino,’’ ed. G. Grimaldi,Studi romanzi 12 ( 1915 ):