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communal palazzi, however, they steeped the city’s ‘‘secular’’ legislation in
heavily religious language and imagery. This was also the age of politically
loaded hagiography like the vita of Saint Petronio. For the first time, the
cities explicitly legislated on the moral and religious life. The communes now
made large-scale investments in city churches and communal chapels besides
the cathedral. By the late communal period, city statutes open with endless
invocations of the saints, and their opening enactment, the podesta’s oath,
always commits him to defend the orthodox Church and suppress heresy.^246
The statutory language of the popular communes was not pious rhetoric;
religious identity and republicanism went hand in hand. The commune’s
religious base became visible whenever its republican independence was en-
dangered. God and the saints most dominated a city’s laws when it had to
throw off imperial control or resist local tyranny. The prologue of Vicenza’s
1264 statutes expresses that commune’s fundamental theology with bracing
clarity. The statutes open with the podestarial oath of Rolando de’ Inglesci
of Padua, who took office that year on the feast of Saint Michael the Archan-
gel—the anniversary of the expulsion of the da Romano.^247 The oath out-
lines God’s rule over the angelic choirs, the eight cosmic spheres, and the
earth’s four climatic zones. It recalls his creation of animals and how he gave
them instinct as their guide. Finally, it celebrates God’s creation of humanity,
which shares existence with stones, life with plants, sensation with beasts,
and understanding with angels. God did not leave humanity without a guide.
The human race, from the beginning, lived in ‘‘cities, villages, and towns,’’
and God established justice ‘‘in the provinces, by dukes, marquises, and
counts, and, in the cities, by podestas,’’ who promoted the good and re-
pressed the wicked.^248 The oath majestically maps God’s creation, with the
commune highest in rank, implicitly an advance on the old nobility ‘‘of the
provinces.’’ Markedly absent is any reference to the old empire. As podesta,
Rolando says he will promulgate statutes unto the honor of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Glorious Virgin Mary, Saints Felix and Fortunatus (whose bodies
lie in the city of Vicenza), and Saint Michael, ‘‘on whose feast the city of
Vicenza was recently liberated from the bloody oppression and rule of the
perfidious Ezzelino.’’^249 The authority of the popular commune came from
heaven, and the commune lived in communion with it.
In their religious concerns, the popular communal laws contrast markedly
with those from before 1250.^250 Late-thirteenth-century communes legislated
on religious matters that earlier would have been left to the Mother Church.
Bologna took it upon itself to supervise the admission of young people to
- E.g., Modena Stat. ( 1327 ), p. 3 ; Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 1. 1 – 5 , 1 : 29 – 48.
- Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 1 – 2.
- Ibid., 1.
- Ibid., 1 – 2 : ‘‘festo cuius civitas Vicentie a cruenta clade ac dominio perfidi Ecelini fuit denuo
liberata.’’ - The lone exception is Volterra Stat. ( 1210 – 22 ), 21 ,p. 13 , which protects ecclesiastical property.