OrderingFamilies,Neighborhoods,andCities 155
routes carefully included all parts of the city. San Gimignano had its proces-
sions, imitating the rituals of its diocesan center, Volterra. This small hill
town managed to find enough churches, shrines, and chapels to provide
stational points for elaborate rogation processions. But sometimes the people
had to sing the litanies outside a church door, as at chapels like San Pietro
in Salice, which were too tiny to enter.^80 Outside the walls, the contado
received its holiness by association. Florence forbade processions to leave the
city for the countryside; the contado got its blessing by its dependence on
the city.^81
In a hilly city like Siena, numerological multiplication of stational
churches proved impractical. The Sienese cut their stational churches to a
minimum.^82 Instead, they elaborated the rites along the way, preserving, of
course, the circumambulation of the reduced number of stational churches.
On the first rogation, the procession went to San Lorenzo to hear a sermon
from the bishop, passing three stations along the way (San Peregrino, San
Cristoforo, San Donato). Mass was celebrated at Santa Petronilla, and the
clergy returned to the duomo chanting Terce and Sext along the way.^83 The
next day, they made four stops: stations at San Desiderio and San Martino,
a sermon at San Giorgio, and Mass at Sant’Eugenia.^84 On the third rogation,
after a circumambulation of San Quirico they chanted Terce and Sext at
San Matteo. The last rogation ended with Mass and a sermon at the Arco
di Castrovecchio.^85 Perhaps to compensate for the lack of stations, the
Sienese added a fourth procession on Ascension Day itself. After the con-
struction of the new baptistery under the duomo, the entire city assembled
there and then climbed up the hill—in imitation of the Apostles’ assent of
Mount Olivet—to enter the duomo in procession through the great west
door.^86
In rural areas throughout Europe, chanting the opening verses of the
Gospels while crossing the fields was a common rogation practice. Siena’s
four processions suggest that the clergy recited the openings of a Gospel
during each procession, a practice known elsewhere. At Verona, during cir-
cumambulation of stational churches, a deacon chanted one Gospel while
Day 2 (ibid., 254 – 60 ): ( 1 ) S. Fidele, ( 2 ) S. Dionisio, ( 3 ) S. Romano, ( 4 ) S. Stefano, ( 5 ) S. Calimero, ( 6 )S.
Agata, ( 7 ) S. Nazario, ( 8 ) S. Alessandro, ( 9 ) S. Giovanni. Day 3 (ibid., 260 – 69 ): ( 1 ) S. Eufimia, ( 2 ) S. Cleso,
( 3 ) S. Nazario, ( 4 ) S. Eustorgio, ( 5 ) S. Laurenzo, ( 6 ) S. Sisto, ( 7 ) S. Genesio, ( 8 ) S. Maria a Circulo, ( 9 )S.
Quirico, ( 10 ) S. Giorgio, ( 11 ) S. Sebastiano, ( 12 ) S. Maria di Bertrada.
80 .Ordo Officiorum della cattedrale [volterrana] (anno 1161 ), De Sancti Hugonis Actis Liturgicis,ed. Mario
Bocci, Documenti della Chiesa volterrana 1 (Florence: Olschki, 1984 ), 139 – 43 , editing Volterra, Biblioteca
Comunale Guarnacci,ms 273, fols. 57 r– 59 r, and San Gimignano, Biblioteca Comunale,ms 3, fols. 66 r– 69 v.
81. As noted by Trexler,Public Life, 6 ; cf. later practices in Spain: William A. Christian Jr.,Local
Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981 ), 115.
82. SeeOrdo Senensis, 1. 226 , pp. 208 – 9.
83. Ibid., 1. 226 , pp. 208 – 16.
84. Ibid., 1. 227 ,p. 217.
85. Ibid., 1. 228 , pp. 217 – 18.
86. Ibid., 1. 232 ,p. 221.