Introduction 3
that exist cannot excuse the failure to pursue such a study, although they are
often so used.^8 Indeed, Vauchez has already pointed the way toward recover-
ing the concrete, lived religion in Italy in spite of the lack of sources.^9
The communes were simultaneously religious and political entities. This
may sound like a commonplace, but given the trajectories of modern schol-
arship, this perspective represents something of a reorientation. Historians
of communal Italy once focused on the cities as a precursor for the central-
ized states of early modern Europe, and this political perspective still ob-
scures the religious nature of communal Italy for many modern observers.^10
Recently, historians of medieval Italy have gone beyond a story of political
progress and emphasized instead the factiousness, primitiveness, oligarchy,
particularism, and agrarian dependence of the cities, their ‘‘archaic’’ na-
ture.^11 All to the good. Yet in histories of the communes, religion remains
oddly alien to the civic life.^12 In Philip Jones’s recent 673 -page study of the
Italian city-states, the author dedicates a mere seventeen pages to their reli-
gious life—and these are mostly dedicated to conflicts over ecclesiastical and
secular jurisdiction.^13 The best short overview of the communes available in
English asserts: ‘‘The Italian communes... were essentially secular contriv-
ances whose particularism flourished in spite of a universal religion and the
claims of a universal empire.’’^14 No, I do not think so. What this opposition
of clerical and lay realms obscures is that the city was a single entity, however
jurisdiction and government were divided. And its lay government, far from
being ‘‘secularized’’ by its separation from the cathedral and bishop, came
to express and understand itself through ever more explicitly religious rheto-
ric and rituals. The communes were able to distance themselves from the
medieval empire because they, like the empire, claimed a sacred legitimacy.
It has been argued that the proximity of the papacy and wars with the popes
forced the communes to develop this religious identity—to justify political
- E.g., Raffaello Morghen, ‘‘Vita religiosa e vita cittadina nella Firenze del duecento,’’La coscienza
cittadina nei comuni italiani nel duecento, 11 – 14 ottobre 1970 ,Convegni del Centro di studi sulla spiritualita`
medievale, 11 (Todi: Accademia Tudertina, 1972 ), 197. - Andre ́Vauchez, ‘‘Reliquie, santi e santuari, spazi sacri e vagabondaggio religioso nel Medioevo,’’
Storia dell’Italia religiosai: L’antichita`e il Medioevo,ed. Andre ́Vauchez (Rome: Laterza, 1993 ), 455 – 83 , esp.
460 – 63. - For bibliography on the communes, see Antonio Ivan Pini,Citta`, comuni e corporazioni nel Medioevo
italiano(Bologna: CLUEB, 1989 ), 47 – 55 , 59 – 65. - See Elena Fasano Guarini, ‘‘Center and Periphery,’’The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300 – 1600 ,ed.
Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 ), 79 , 83 , on the changes this has meant for
Einaudi’sStoria d’Italiaseries. - See Diana Webb,Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States(London: Tauris Academic
Studies, 1996 ), which captures the right relation of Church and commune, and Enrico Cattaneo,Cittae religione nell’etadei comuni(Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979 ), but see the review of this book inRivista di storia
della Chiesa in Italia 33 ( 1979 ): 609.
13 .The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 ), 423 – 40. - J. K. Hyde,Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of the Civic Life, 1000 – 1350 ,New Studies
in Medieval History (London: Macmillan, 1973 ), 8. Cf. Jones,Italian City-State, 423 – 25 : ‘‘In the communes
before all states in Europe government and politics were altogether secularized’’ ( 425 ).