108 LaCitadeSancta
led the commune to cultivate an ever more sacred ethos for itself. As bishops
became less visible in government and cities constructed their own public
buildings, the commune ceased to share the holy aura of the Mother
Church. ‘‘Secularized’’ communes needed their own divine legitimacy. They
sought it in heaven, invoking the protection of new patron saints, and on
earth, saturating their laws, assemblies, and communal institutions with sa-
cred rhetoric, symbolism, and ritual. They had little choice. They had ban-
ished their old sacred imperial overlord, and no one on earth remained to
replace him as a source of legitimacy. When the communes constructed and
elaborated their republican and democratic institutions, they could draw on
neither imperial nor ‘‘secular’’ forms for legitimacy.^39
Although born in war, the Italian republics had little enthusiasm for the
crusading fervor sweeping Europe around the year 1200. Bolognese chroni-
clers claim that ‘‘two thousand’’ crusaders left Bologna to relieve Jerusalem
in 1188 and that ‘‘many’’ went east after the fall of Damietta in 1219.^40 They
exaggerate; perhaps two hundred crusaders left in 1188 , and far fewer, a
mere handful, in 1219.^41 But sacred war did stir communal hearts. Italians
fought, not to defend the distant Holy Land, but their own cities. Through-
out the north, the struggle against the emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the
1170 s was a religious war, fought with intensity and determination. Piacenza
fought pro-imperial Cremona in 1215 under ‘‘divine protection.’’^42 The Pa-
duans spoke of the war against Ezzelino da Romano in 1259 in the language
of First Samuel. Ezzelino was Goliath the Philistine; little Padua was David:
God gave the weak victory over the mighty.^43 The rhetoric of divine favor
and holy war implied that God and his saints led the commune in battle.^44
Heavenly powers granted favor, but the beneficiary might cease to merit it.
Bishop Sicardo of Cremona observed that although Saint Mark the Evange-
list had chosen to be buried in Alexandria, where he had preached, the city
lost his favor when it fell into heresy. The evangelist chose Catholic Venice
as his new resting place and allowed the Venetians to carry off his bones,
supposedly in the ninth century.^45 The other Italian cities could also measure
God’s favor. Its proof was victory on the battlefield. Victory proved the
special relation between heaven and earth, or, better, the part of the earth
- Powell,Albertanus, 121.
40 .CCB:Bol., 50 ;CCB:A, Vill. ( 1188 );CCB:A( 1220 ), 82. - Augusto Vasina, ‘‘Le crociate nel mondo emiliano-romagnolo,’’AMDSPPR,n.s., 23 ( 1972 ): 32 – 39.
Communes did protect crusader property: e.g., at Verona: Verona Stat.i( 1228 ), 49 , pp. 43 – 44 ; Verona
Stat.ii( 1276 ), 109 ,p. 347. - Miccoli, ‘‘La storia religiosa,’’ 600 – 601.
43 .Annales Sanctae Iustinae Patavini( 1259 ), ed. Philip Jaffe ́,MGH.SS 19 : 174 – 75. - On communal patrons, see Hans Conrad Peyer,Stadt und Stadtpatron im mittelalterlichen Italien(Zu-
rich: Europa, 1955 ); Alba Maria Orselli,L’idea e il culto del santo patrono cittadino nella letteratura latina medievale
(Bologna: Zanichelli, 1965 ); and Golinelli,Citta`e culto. - Sicardo,Mitrale, 2. 4 , col. 70 D; on saints’ ‘‘allowing’’ their relics to be stolen, see Patrick Geary,
Furta Sacra: Theft of Relics in the Middle Ages, 2 d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990 ).