182 LaCitadeSancta
theirs was not the piety of the city. Inside the walls, even inclusae—
anchoresses—interacted with the world on a daily basis. For male saints,
such an urban ‘‘hermitage’’ was not an option. Penitents lived at home and
labored at their crafts just like their neighbors. They simply changed their
clothing and abandoned a ‘‘worldly’’ style of life. When Pietro Crisci of
Foligno ‘‘converted’’ around the year 1273 , he sold his property and donned
a simple sacklike garment, without cuffs or buttons. He had made himself a
‘‘penitent.’’^17
Laypeople who took up a life of asceticism after conversion had already
appeared in the twelfth century. Galgano ( 1148 – 81 ), patron and protector of
the commune of Siena, was a rather unexceptional son in a knightly family
of rather moderate wealth. Saint Michael appeared to him as he rode in the
countryside. The archangel told him to dismount and build himself a hermit-
age at the place called Montesiepi. Galgano did so and gave away all he had
to the poor.^18 His poverty did not prevent him from going on pilgrimage to
Rome, however, nor did his hermitage isolate him from townspeople. He
died within the year, on 30 November 1181 , and immediately became the
object of a cult. Four years later, during the week following 4 August 1185 ,a
commission investigated his sanctity and examined witnesses, perhaps the
first example of a ‘‘canonization inquest.’’^19 Galgano gave up a moderately
comfortable life, went on pilgrimage, and had visions, but his sanctity lay in
taking up the life of penance. The thirteenth-century communes produced
similar convert saints. Giovanni Buono of Mantua (ca. 1168 – 1249 ) spent the
first forty years of his life as a dissolute minstrel, wandering about northern
Italy. During a severe illness, fear of death led him to petition Bishop Enrico
of Mantua for permission to become a penitent. He practiced fearful morti-
fications and sought seclusion, first in a hermitage near Cesena and later
near Mantua. But he could not escape devotees and admirers.^20 At his death,
a spontaneous cult developed, and another early canonization commission
investigated his life.^21
Conversion implied a previous life of sin, but what counted as rejection of
sin covered a wide spectrum. Occasionally the break was dramatic. When
Pietro Crisci of Foligno ( 1243 ?– 1323 ) repented after thirty years of wealth
- On his way of life, see Giovanni Gorini,[Legenda de Vita et Obitu Beati Petri de Fulgineo], 1. 6 ,AS 31
(Jul.iv), 666.
18 .Vita Sancti Galgani,ed. Eugenio Susi, 2 – 4 , 6 , and 10 ,L’eremita cortese: San Galgano fra mito e storia
nell’agiografia toscana delxiisecolo(Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1993 ), 189 – 90 ,
192 – 93 , and 196 – 97. For Saint Galgano’s earliest vita (ca. 1220 ), by Rolando of Pisa, see Siena, Biblioteca
Comunale degli Intronati,msG.i. 2 , fols. 195 r– 196 v. - The inquest is found in Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati,msK.vii. 24 , fols. 399 r– 404 r.
- Golinelli, ‘‘Dal santo,’’ 24 – 26 , which possibly exaggerates the novelty of Giovanni Buono’s style
of holiness. On this saint and his order, see Salimbene,Cronica( 1248 ), 367 – 68 , Baird trans., 248 – 49. - His canonization acta are extant in Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Fondo Gonzaga, Busta 3305 ,
Processus et Alie Scripture Pertinentes ad Canonizationem Sancti Iohannis Boni,edited asProcessus Apostolici Auctoritate
Innocentii Papae IV Annis 1251 , 1253 ,et 1254 Constructi de Vita, Virtutibus et Miraculis B. Joannis Boni Mantuani,
AS 57 (Oct.ix), 778 – 885.