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and comfort, he sold his goods to benefit the poor and sold himself into
slavery. Only when redeemed from servitude by a buyer who asked nothing
from him but prayers did he take up the more conventional life of a peni-
tent.^22 Conversion usually happened in the most common of places, most
ordinary of situations, and to the most ordinary of people. It did not need
deadly illness, visits from archangels, or notorious bad living. Ranieri of Pisa
(d. 1160 ), still that city’s patron saint, with a splendid shrine in the south
transept of the duomo, underwent two conversions, one from a frivolous
youth to mercantile industry, and a second from mercantile industry to self-
mortification and social service.^23 The young Ranieri had sat playing the
lyre in a female relative’s house. She happened to notice the reformed knight
Alberto Leccapecore of San Vito passing by the window. ‘‘Do you know an
angel of God is passing by?’’ she remarked to Ranieri. ‘‘Where?’’ he asked.
‘‘It’s Alberto Leccapecore, run and catch him!’’ Ranieri ran out and caught
up to him at the church of San Vito. That encounter convinced Ranieri to
give up his unfocused way of life; the holy man promised to pray for him.^24
Perhaps those prayers later caused him to abandon his career as a merchant
and take up asceticism.
Pellegrino Laziosi of Forlı`(ca. 1265 – 1345 ) was converted through an espe-
cially moving sermon. He listened to the admonitions of the Servite preacher
Filippo Benizzi (himself later a popular saint) and immediately ‘‘left the
world.’’^25 The decision to take up penance might require no external suasion
at all. Penitents made the choice alone, without clerical or miraculous direc-
tion. Giovanni Pelingotto ( 1240 – 1304 ) converted during a lavish feast-day
dinner. He suddenly felt the call of God and sneaked out. He absconded
with some meat, sat down in the square, and passed the food out to the
beggars.^26 A penitent might find her calling through rejection. Umilta`of
Faenza ( 1226 – 1310 ) lived a more or less ordinary married life for nine years,
until the death of her husband. Accepted by the nuns at Santa Perpetua, she
managed to survive in cloister for fourteen years—until the nuns expelled
her ‘‘because she was too pretty.’’ She then found her true vocation. Umilta`
- See his life by his Dominican contemporary Giovanni Gorini,[Legenda de Vita et Obitu Beati Petri de
Fulgineo], 1 – 2 (i.e., 1 – 9 a),AS 31 (Jul.iv), 665 – 68 ; for chapters 9 b– 11 , seeAnalecta Bollandiana 8 ( 1889 ):
365 – 69. - On Ranieri, see Vauchez,Laity in the Middle Ages, 55 , and Colin Morris, ‘‘San Ranieri of Pisa: The
Power and Limitations of Sanctity in Twelfth-Century Italy,’’Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 ( 1994 ):
588 – 99 , esp. 589 and 599 , on the two editions of his vita. I have used theASedition, since the other,San
Ranieri di Pisa in un ritratto agiografico inedito del secoloxiii,ed. Re ́ginald Gre ́goire (Pisa: Pacini, 1990 ), was not
available to me. - Benincasa of Pisa,Vita [S. Raynerii Pisani], 1. 7 ,p. 348 : ‘‘Praedicta autem matrona eum intuens, sic
B. Raynerio ait: Nonne vides Angelum Dei transire. B. Raynerius hoc audiens dixit: Et ubi est ille dei
Angelus? Et illa: En, inquit, prope est homo Dei, qui dicitur Albertus Lingens-pecus: Curre, eumque
sequere.’’ - See the vita by his contemporary Vitale de’ Avanzi of Bologna,Leggenda del beato Pellegrino,ed.
Benedetto Angelo Maria Canali,Vita del beato Pellegrino Laziosi da Forlı`(Lucca: Marescandoli, 1725 ), 165 – 67.
26 .Vita [Sancti Pilingotti Urbinatis], 1. 10 ,AS 21 (Jun.i), 147.