114 LaCitadeSancta
A patron saint protected and personified his city, though personification
of the city did not need to be the monopoly of a single saint. In 1187 , Master
Buono de’ Mozzi called Saint Alexander ‘‘standard-bearer of the whole city
of Bergamo.’’^72 Alexander was not the patron of the cathedral in the 1100 s;
that was Saint Vincent. Bergamo was under joint patronage.^73 Shared pa-
tronage was not uncommon: at Vicenza, the Virgin shared responsibilities
with Saints Felix and Fortunatus; at Verona, with Saint Zeno.
As the thirteenth century progressed, intensity of devotion to civic patrons
grew, if government documents are any indication. The earliest extant city
statutes of Verona, those of 1228 , invoked only God and the Blessed Virgin,
and did so only in their preface. The rest of the laws have a distinctively
nonreligious tone. Later in the century, holy protectors multiplied, and their
invocation become almost obsessive. In the Veronese statutes of 1276 , Saint
Zeno had joined God and Saint Mary—with special mention made of his
relics.^74 At Parma in the 1250 s, the fathers invoked the Blessed Virgin not
only in the prologue to their city statutes but repeatedly in routine enact-
ments, even those concerning such projects as wall and bridge construction.^75
At Vicenza, after the expulsion of the da Romano family, the new republican
oath of the podesta invoked God, the Virgin, Saints Felix and Fortunatus,
and commemorated the greatest relic of the city, the Lord’s Crown of
Thorns at Santa Corona.^76 One could multiply examples endlessly. By 1325 ,
the city fathers of Florence invoked by name not only God, the Virgin, Saint
Michael, and John the Baptist (‘‘patron and protector of the commune’’) but
also Peter, Paul, Philip, James, Barnabas, Reparata, Cenobius, and Minia-
tus, and ‘‘all the saints of God.’’^77 The saints’ legitimizing and protective
functions intensified as the communes experimented with more democratic
and imperially unsanctioned forms of government and when they suffered
attacks from princes, the empire, or rival cities.
The cities found new patrons suitable to their new republican identity and
untainted by connection with the old imperial regime. No cult more vividly
exemplifies appearance of the patron as symbol of communal identity than
the Sienese invention of Saint Ansano. This ancient martyr, perhaps a victim
during the Diocletian persecution of 304 , had no cult until the 1170 s. Accord-
ing to the life written for his liturgical Office, Ansano had fled a persecution
in Rome to become the apostle of Siena and so the ‘‘baptist’’ of the city.^78
The rediscovery of his tomb took place while Siena was building and embel-
- ‘‘Instrumentum Litis’’ (September 1187 ), 3. 25 ,p. 161 : ‘‘vexillifer tocius civitatis pergamensis.’’
- Ibid., p. 39.
- Verona Stat.ii( 1276 ), p. 21 ; on the lack of religious reference in earlier statutes, see Webb,Patrons,
111 – 12. - E.g., Parma Stat.i, 87 , 106.
- Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 8.
- Florence Stat.ii( 1325 ), p. 1.
- Preserved, e.g., in an early-fourteenth-century Sienese Franciscan breviary: Siena, Biblioteca
Comunale degli Intronati,msF.viii. 12 , fols. 573 r– 581 v.