138 LaCitadeSancta
religious life and protect parental rights. Parents’ permission was required
for girls under twelve and boys under fourteen to take religious vows, just
as stipulated in canon law.^251 Cities now regularly provided protection and
financial support for hospitals, leprosaria, and religious houses, some of
which—like the house of Gerardo Segarelli’s Apostolici at Parma—lacked
official ecclesiastical approbation.^252 The funds involved were large enough
to occasion anxiety about fraud. At Bologna, on 3 June 1257 , the city forbade
correctors of city statutes to introduce new grants to charitable institutions.^253
Elsewhere, the trend toward ever larger religious expenditures and increased
legislation on sacred and moral matters continued to the end of the commu-
nal period.^254 The union of Church and city, which marked the early com-
munes, persisted in new forms, and the mutual support between them
intensified. On the ecclesiastical side, the Mother Church helped fund the
nonreligious needs of the city. At Siena and Parma, the bishop and clergy
paid for paving the city’s streets.^255 Everywhere, the communes made the
Church’s old responsibility for ‘‘miserable persons’’ their own. At Parma,
Bologna, and Reggio, for example, the city reestablished legal and special
courts to protect the poor, widows, orphans, and religious.^256 One senses that
the clerical-lay condominium still extended to the whole fabric of the city
and to all its residents.
The cities legislated as never before on morality. At Ravenna, the podesta
explicitly censured loans usurious according to Church teaching.^257 Virtually
every popular commune issued laws against blasphemy, particularly that
defaming its patron saint.^258 Ferrara and Vicenza dunked blasphemers in a
tub in the piazza.^259 Parma whipped them across town.^260 Siena cut out the
offending tongues. Bologna, in a show of chivalry, singled out for that pun-
ishment any man who slandered the Virgin Mary or any other female
saint.^261 Punishable moral offenses multiplied during the period of the popu-
lar regimes, coming to include gambling (especially near churches), sexual
- Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 12. 34 , 2 : 224.
- Parma Stat.i(by 1255 ), pp. 115 – 16. See also the public support of religious foundations in
Bologna Stat.i( 1250 ), 5. 1 , 1 : 435 – 38 ; Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 21 – 39 , pp. 31 – 36 (the hospital of La Scala), and - 96 – 118 , pp. 48 – 53 ; Modena Stat. ( 1327 ), 2. 50 – 54 , pp. 266 – 68 ; and Bologna Stat.i( 1252 / 53 ), 5. 18 ,
1 : 453 – 54. - Bologna Stat.i( 1259 – 62 ), 11. 109 , 3 : 358 – 59.
- E.g., Lucca Stat. ( 1308 ), 1. 2 – 5 ,p. 8 – 12 ; Pisa Stat.ii( 1313 ), 3. 7 , pp. 288 – 89 ; Florence Stat.i( 1322 ),
- 9 ,p. 98 , and 3. 5 , pp. 146 – 47.
- Siena Stat.i( 1262 ), 1. 191 ,p. 79 ; Padua Stat. ( 1274 ?), 4. 5 ,p. 316 , no. 979.
- Parma Stat.i( 1233 ), p. 5 , and Parma Stat.ii( 1266 ), 9 ; Bologna Stat.i( 1243 , 1259 – 64 ), 1. 24 ,
1 : 214 – 15 ; Reggio Stat. ( 1242 ), p. 7 , and ( 1265 ), 1. 16 ,p. 85. - Ravenna Stat., 139 b, p. 78.
- Brescia Stat. ( 1253 ), cols. ( 179 )–( 180 ); San Gimignano Stat. ( 1255 ), 3. 47 ,p. 712 ; Mantua Stat.
( 1303 ), 1. 23 , 2 : 77 ; Lucca Stat. ( 1308 ), 3. 91 ,p. 199 ; Pisa Stat.ii( 1313 ), 3. 34 ,p. 311 ; Modena Stat. ( 1327 ), 4. 41 ,
p. 407 ; Ravenna Stat., 157 , pp. 87 – 88. For the only pre- 1250 examples, see Verona Stat.i( 1228 ), 171 ,p.
130 , and Biella Stat. ( 1245 ), 3. 11 ( 71 ); neither is as savage as later law. - Vicenza Stat. ( 1264 ), 186 – 87 ; Ferrara Stat. ( 1287 ), 4. 68 ,p. 274 – 75.
- Parma Stat.i(by 1255 ), p. 319.
- Bologna Stat.ii( 1288 ), 4. 23 , 1 : 191 ; Siena Stat.ii( 1310 ), 5. 266 , 2 : 345.