FromConversion toCommunity 101
control, repeating as he did so the myth that Saint Francis had written the
penitents’ rule.^210 The non-Franciscan penitents of Florence got support
from Bishop Mozzi in their struggle to save their independence.^211 They
ultimately lost. At Vicenza in 1294 , the Franciscan minister Fra Andrea di fu
Federico of Marostica monopolized control of the penitents, rendering them
lay auxiliaries to the Minorites.^212 Penitent confraternities began to admit
clerics, and the tradition of lay membership and governance went the way
of lay autonomy. Reformed as the Confraternity of the Holy Cross, under
the direction of the Franciscans at Santa Croce, Florentine ‘‘penitents’’
might carry on the activities and devotions typical of their tradition, but
leadership was now restricted to clerics.^213
Penitents influenced by the Dominicans resisted Franciscan hegemony
and sought legal recognition and statutes from the Preachers. In one case,
the Dominican Master Munio of Zamora placed a group of women peni-
tents at Orvieto under the direction of the local prior, approved their simple
rule, and gave them permission to wear the Dominican habit. But it was not
until the fifteenth century that such Black Penitents were formally consti-
tuted as the Dominican ‘‘Third Order of Penance.’’ Male penitents aban-
doned Dominican groups for the flagellants, leaving only pious women.^214
The Gray Penitents did not surrender their autonomy easily. In spite of Pope
Nicholas IV, the Lombard Penitents reasserted their right to choose any
priest, even a secular, as visitator. They fought for their rights even after
1289 , when the Franciscan pope ignored their appeal and refused to protect
them.^215 The general chapter of the Lombard Penitents, meeting at Bologna
in 1290 , called on a secular priest, not a friar, as their advisor and then defied
the new papal rule by choosing lay, not clerical, visitators.^216 Even the Mar-
ian confraternities, those most influenced by mendicant spirituality, cher-
ished their lay autonomy right up to the Council of Trent.^217 Penitents mostly
conformed to the requirement that they meet only in Franciscan churches,
- ‘‘Bullarium,’’ 50 (Nicholas IV, 18 August 1289 ), Meersseman,Dossier, 75 ; for which, see alsoBF
4 : 94 – 97 ; Potthast,Regesta, 23044. - See Casagrande, ‘‘Ordine,’’ 250.
- Mantese, ‘‘Fratres et sorores,’’ 705.
- Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,msII.ix. 49 , fols. 2 r– 11 v, stipulates that therettorehad to
be a priest. The 1339 matricula of the Confraternity of the Holy Cross shows that thirty-five of the ninety-
nine members were priests, including three Augustinians and one Dominican: ibid., fols. 11 v– 12 r. For
mendicant-sponsored confraternities in the contado, see Charles M. De La Ronciere, ‘‘La place des confre ́ries dans l’encadrement religieux du contado florentin auxivesiecle,’’Me ́langes de l’E ́cole franc ̧aise de
Rome: Moyen Aˆge–temps modernes 85 ( 1973 ): 31 – 77 , 633 – 71. - Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, ‘‘Writing Religious Rules as an Interactive Process: Dominican Peni-
tent Women and the Making of Their Regula,’’Speculum 79 ( 2004 ): 660 – 87 , shows conclusively that the
‘‘Dominican Third Order Rule’’ traditionally ascribed to the work of Munio of Zamora dates to the
early 1400 s; on the feminization of the third orders, see Vauchez,Laity in the Middle Ages, 115. - On the losing battle of the Lombard Penitents to maintain their autonomy, see Meersseman, ‘‘Il
manuale dei penitenti di Brescia,’’ Meersseman,Ordo, 1 : 416 – 17 ; for the appeal, see ibid., 445 – 56. - Ibid., 433.
- Meersseman,Ordo, 2 : 996 – 1004.